Friday, July 24, 2015

Caving

NW Oregon isn't supposed to look like this, right? Actually, we do dry out and turn brown every summer, but summer came early this year with record low rainfall and record high temps. The horses and sheep have been on full hay rations for awhile now. In the photo above, Blaise, Sarai and Bramble are off searching for something tasty, but they will join Vienna and Bree at the hay piles soon enough. (Vienna could stand to step away from the hay; she already looks preggers!)

We had some sheep and horse hay left over from last year. We knew we'd need more horse hay and bought what our closest source had available; we hoped we'd have enough sheep hay. (The horses get coarser, single-cutting hay; the sheep get second- or third-cutting orchardgrass hay.) But even with feeding the wethers and ram the finer-stemmed horse hay, my stack of orchard grass looked woefully inadequate. So I called my "sheep hay guy," one of the few local growers who irrigates in order to get more than one cutting; he had 50 bales left. I caved; they are being held for us. Good thing sheep sales were good this year!

That's it for today from . . .

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow...can't believe it looks so dry there this early in the season. I hope you get some rain.

Debbie said...

Sure hope you get some rain soon. We've finally had some rainfall today. I put out extra buckets to catch as much as possible as we're at stage 3 water restrictions now.
Glad that you were able to find some hay.
Have a good weekend!

Tina T-P said...

We got .25 inch of rain last night - I never thought I'd be rooting for rain, but Hip hip hooray!!

John will be paying $8 a bale for hay this year - we allowed that is better than the $17/bale that our friend in Arizona is paying...Glad you were able to find some locally.

Hope everything goes well for you today - sending you XOXOX T.