Late March we started the cows on paddock shift again at the top of our largest pasture. We’ve been working them steadily towards the other end and today we’ve arrived. When we first started there was just a bit of green, no real grass. We also made our paddocks small, maybe 18 yards wide by the full length of the pasture long. As we arrive at the end, with three weeks more growth on the grass, we are at 39 yard wide paddocks and the cows are still over grazing. About 90% of the grass is grazed and they are still reaching under the wire for more. A good portion of the grass has been second grazed. We have the four pond paddocks coming up, and then the front pasture which Sam and Dottie are sequestered in currently while Dottie dries off, I hope. That means we will be back to the winter paddock in about a week. It’s slowly coming back after all the traffic this winter. Hopefully it will have recovered by the time we get there because I need the cows to stay a while so our first paddock in this pasture will have time to recover. Soon we will be in the spring flush, with more grass than we know what to do with but it seems a long time coming.
Sunday after church the kids and I fed the cows their daily ration of veggies. As always the cows and the kids both had fun. I don’t always have the kids to help and I certainly don’t get all of them that often. I was happy to have them all yesterday.