One new thing we discovered about sheep: they eat more than you would ever think. To help satiate their voracious appetites, we invested first in some temporary electric-net fencing to create a 4th paddock just east of the barn. But over the summer it became apparent that even the additional paddock in the rotation scheme was still not enough for 25 hungry sheep. Thus, on October 8th, we installed approximately 1,500 linear ft of woven wire and effectively fenced in about half of our hayfield (about 3.5 acres) We manually pulled all the remaining milkweed out of the field and released the sheep, goats, and donkey into their new pasture wonderland. Now there is plenty of grazing and the animals seem to love the grand expanse of grass available to them. They happily trot out into the hayfield every day and eat their fill.
