18 « June « 2009 « Dancing Aspens Farm Blog

Last fall Mark no-tilled in a grazing variety of winter wheat to see how the sheep would do on it. It has been growing like crazy this Spring and we turned the sheep out on part of the seeding earlier, just to see how well it would regrow…

Winter Wheat growing back in...

And right now it looks beautiful! The rest of the wheat is just starting to head out…

Winter Wheat heading out...

So we decided to turn the sheep out on it a couple of days ago…

Icelandic Sheep on winter wheat...

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Dugur wading through...

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Maddie hanging out...

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Icelandic Lamb eating his way through...

Icelandic Lamb eating her way through...

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Bruno he's turning out to be so handsome...

Bruno turning out to be so handsome...

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: Lil Briar enjoying being out with the rest of the flock…

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Butterscotch is convinced she is a lamb!

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: Eating down a patch of Shepherd’s Purse…

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A Brown Headed Cowbird hitching a ride on Auðráð...

Just this past week I have noticed that we have had some Brown Headed Cowbirds around. They are a terrible bird, according to Audubon…

The Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater)is North America’s most notorious brood parasite. Instead of building their own nests, incubating their own eggs and raising their own nestlings, Brown-headed Cowbirds have a different breeding strategy. Cowbird females use other bird species as hosts — laying their eggs in the nests of other bird species and relying on these hosts to incubate and raise their chicks. Scientists have now recorded that Brown-headed Cowbirds have parasitized over 220 host species, ranging from the Black-capped Vireo and Wood Thrush to the Blue-winged Teal and Red-headed Woodpecker. While not all hosts make good foster parents — a number of species reject cowbird eggs — cowbird chicks have been successfully reared by over 150 host species, with songbirds comprising the majority of hosts.

The boys are not allowed to try out their BB Guns on birds, but we may have to make an ammendment to the rules for this parasite.

Bianca munching on tender new regrowth...

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Grizel chowin' down...

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Badger eatin' away...

I think it was unanimous that sheep are enjoying the winter wheat, this weekend we will take them off and see what type of regrowth we can get from it again. Hopefully we get more moisture as it has been really dry the last two months and our pastures are already starting to stress. Yesterday we did recieved 1/10 inch of rain, not much but every little bit helps. We have some cooler weather lately but not much in the amount of precip, the clouds just sort of tease us and dance on over. Hopefully we’ll get some more…