We work hard to have a peaceful and orderly feeding at the farm, Red stands guard to keep the sheep away from the donkey feeder, the sheep have their own feeder, Chloe eats in her stall in the barn. Everyone has enough food and enough time to eat it. Red insists on an orderly farm.
Bryan Adams and his wife Sandy came by this morning with 30 additional bales of hay. We are figuring out the new daily requirements for a new pony and four new sheep. The square bales break off into “leaves” and we give Chloe two leaves a day, one in the morning, one in the late afternoon.
We give our nine sheep three leaves twice a day and the donkeys get two leaves a day also. That’s close to a bale a day for all of the animals here. We have about 120 bales in the barn and Bryan and Sandy say they have plenty more if we need it. The weather forecasts call for a cold and wintry winter and Bryan says these new bales are closer to second cut than first cut.
I’m guessing we will need more hay in February or March.
That will be good – some extra energy for a long and hard winter. We also grain the animals on bitterly cold or windy days. It is good to have barn full of hay before the first snows come. It seems we are preparing for winter all year, and winter always surprised.
