VIEW FROM A SHEPHERDESS BY JOYCE WEAVER As usual, it has been very busy here on my small 57-acre Indiana sheep farm. Enjoyed some summer lambing earlier and had ewes and lambs playing in the yard around the house keeping me entertained. May-June lambing is much more fun than winter lambing, in my opinion. You don’t have to keep little families in jugs (pens) as long and can turn them out in the yard for safekeeping and observation. Less feed, carrying water buckets, less work, etc. I’m not into showing sheep so no need to have lambs born in the winter – unless that happens by mistake, like a ram getting into the flock when you don’t want him to. That happens. Good fences are a must. I also was blessed with three Nigerian goat nannies having baby goats, so that added to the activity around here. My goats are spoiled and when presented with plenty of grass pasture, they still INSIST on being fed HAY every day. Summer and winter. My goats also are not good at eating weeds to clean up a pasture as all the experts claim. In fact, I had a squash and watermelon garden in their pasture lot and they didn’t bother them at all. However, as soon as I turned the sheep into the same lot, they began to devour everything. Had to remove the sheep quickly. I managed to get my old hay equipment working well this year. My old New Holland 69 hay baler worked without a hitch. I finally managed to connect the grabber (which picks up the hay bales) to the Kubota M5700 tractor and kept it on the tractor when it was connected to the baler & accumulator while I was baling. In the past I would disconnect the grabber from the baler while I was baling, and then would struggle later to reconnect it when I needed to pick up the bales and stack them in the barn. It makes for a long “train” of equipment, but for me it works. Worked so well I now have over 600 small square bales in the barn. All done by one person and machines. My animals won’t go hungry this winter. I use a 7-foot Enorossi sicklebar mower to mow the hay. This past week I decided to start doing some round baling. I use a 3x3 Japanese made baler that I purchased a few years ago from a dealer in Texas (who delivered it to me). It is rated to be used with a small tractor that can produce 18 hp at the pto. I have used it in the past with a small compact tractor with a 26 hp engine (Mahindra 1626). However, I had been noticing that when the bale gets full in the baler chamber and it is time to stop the tractor and tie the bale before ejecting it out the back, the tractor would labor and act like I was stressing it too much. So, this year I upgraded the tractor to a bigger model that has 36 engine hp and 29 pto hp (Mahindra 1635). That turned out to be a good decision as the bigger engine worked much better with the little round baler and kept its rpm up no matter the load. As I was checking on the sheep this afternoon in the pasture, I discovered my neighbor had started combining the soybean field behind my place. It’s amazing how much dust those machines kick up, especially as dry as it has been. I’m just thankful those combine drivers have a cab because it would be terrible for them to have to inhale all that dust. City dwellers have no clue what farmers go through to harvest these crops. Best wishes until next time, Joyce Weaver, west central Indiana sheep farm lambjoyw@gmail.com. |
