October is a transition month as we welcome Autumn.
Cooler temperatures slow the grass growth down and provide relief to the animals – you are much more apt to see sheep out grazing during the day and lambs jumping around.
It is also the start of breeding season for many things – including the deer and our sheep. The rams that have spent most of the summer laying around and not doing much of anything are now getting ‘rambunctious,’ facing off, and knocking heads with each other. It is also a time for people to be extra careful around the rams for the same reason. We will be deciding on our breeding groups during October and double-checking fences to be sure they are ‘ram proof.’ We will move the ewes to be bred into the pasture near the rams about the middle of the month. This helps to get them all cycling together and prepped for breeding. At the same time the ewe lambs will be moved out back. While many shepherds will breed their ewe lambs we do not. Leicester Longwool sheep (our breed) tend to mature a bit later than some other breeds and we prefer to wait until they are a year old to breed. We generally put the ram in with the ewes on Halloween which gives us lambs around early April.
While some of our sheep are moving to new homes we will also be adding new steers this month. We get our Hereford steers from a local producer at 6- 7 months of age. We will then feed them out on brewers grains, pasture, and hay over the winter and through next summer.
The other main October task is getting the final cuttings of hay in. This becomes extra challenging this time of year. Shorter days and heavy morning dews make it harder to get the hay to dry.