Sampling and Monitoring!

It's so exciting to use my grad school knowledge! Due to immune nonsense (EBV, now CFS?), I've taken a break from dashing around feeding/planting/cleaning/fixing/watering/weeding things to plan some rotational grazing for Noah's Arc. I clipped some forage samples to measure pasture productivity by making a sq ft wire hoop and throwing it around the pasture to attempt randomness (it was also exciting to use geometry!).

These two pictures are taken less than ten meters apart, and the difference in plant height, species composition, and amount of litter really shows what happens in continual grazing...PATCHES! Not great for productivity because the areas with lots of litter get essentially choked out, and the areas getting constantly nibbled kill off the desirable species by preventing them from storing energy in their roots. With some portable electric fencing I can concentrate the animals on a small area for a short time so they graze it evenly and then move on before over stressing the plants. Currently this pasture has only ~1500lbs of forage production per acre, and it should have over 4000! Despite the poor/nonexistant management, the ranch still has excellent production (thanks to subirrigation from the Roaring Fork) compared to the northern front range where 300-700lbs/ac is typical.

Anyway, on a more interesting note, our 2 week old cornish cross chicks are growing like crazy (freakish), and eating and shitting like crazy (nasty), and are crazy lopsided from their bizarrely huge breasts (pretty gross). Pictures to come. Their much cuter heritage breed counterparts are less than half the size at the same age, which is completely amazing. We get to put everybody out on pasture at the end of next week which will smell a lot better, but means I have to order fencing Tomorrow! Which means lots of decisions in a very short time. How much? What kind? eeek!

We had two twins arrive yesterday just before lunch from our Alpine goat Deliah. A boy and a girl, both very healthy and cute. I'll have to take some more pictures now that they're a little more lively and fluffy, because they're unbelievably adorable! I got to towel them off, betadine their umbilical chords, and help them nurse. I guess it's important that they get a good drink in the first hour, but they're so adorably bad at finding a teat and pretty much tried sucking on everything from mom's elbows to eachothers ears. I guided a nose to the right area while holding up a very wobbly chest, and after tasting every other part of Deliah's udder and upper thighs nursing was a success!