Moving Lambs and Transferring Corn

#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk

During this week of my GrowinG-WY Internship, we have been able to get just about all the bum lambs off milk. We have three bum lambs that will remain on milk for a few more days. Once those three are off milk, we will have successfully transferred all the bum lambs to creep feed full time. Along with weaning bum lambs, we moved sheep from grazing to the corral. This week we utilized the horses to move the sheep, as the horses have not been ridden in a while. In addition to working with the lambs and sheep, we needed to move corn to the farm from a different property.

We have been continuously refilling the creep feeders, where the formally milk-weaned bum lambs are feeding, as we have been finishing up milk feeding the few bum lambs left. We were running low on corn, so we decided to take the corn truck to another property and filled from a bin where we are keeping the yearlings. We used an auger to extract the corn and fill the truck, then drove back to the farm to refill two bins located at the farm. During this program I have been using many different augers for multiple purposes. Whether that be to refill the creep feeders or the corn bins, I have learned augers are essential to efficiency on the farm.         
 

Continuing, we have started to ride the horses more and for various reasons. Since I don’t have much riding experience, we started with the basic of tacking up the horses. Once I was comfortable tacking the horses, we rode at a slow and steady pace, working on turning and halting the horse. Since then, we have progressed to using the horses to move the sheep from the corral where they are supplemented corn to the pasture to graze.

I have really enjoyed riding the horses this past week and have found quite a passion out of it. Some questions I had this week were: what are the proper ways to trim horse hooves, how can horses be utilized other than moving livestock, how do you break in a horse, and what are the approaches they [my host farm] take.

As I previously mentioned, I have really enjoyed working around the horses and it has been quite the experience moving sheep with them. This week created my plan to invest in some horses back home and use them to move livestock. I also plan on using the continuous knowledge I have gained in raising and weaning the lambs to raise my own one day. With how volatile lambs can be, it has been awesome to understand the signs and symptoms of various issues in order to tackle the problem quick and ensure the lamb recovers.

Submitted by: Elijah Richardson
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team