Grazing/pasture requirements--converting forest

[Madroaster]

Hi All,

I'm considering a piece of land that is 2/3 treed (young; recently clearcut) and 1/3 pasture. I'd like to convert much of the treed land to sheep grazing land. I don't know much about this, and I don't currently raise sheep. I'd like some advice.

Assumptions:

• the land that is currently pasture is suitable for grazing. Others in the area raise sheep successfully.
• I won't be using the land to grow and harvest hay. Harvesting equipment doesn't need to run over the land.
• I can take time to reclaim the land, building my flock as space allows.

So, from what I know about reclaiming land, I can either remove all the stumps, level the land and bring it up to pasture (expensive and intensive), or I can remove the trees leaving the large stumps in and bring it up to pasture (less expensive and less intensive, though marginally so).

Both take time and money I understand. But what I really want to know is how happy my sheep are likely to be if I leave stumps in and let my grazing land grow up around them. I assume this would really be fine, but I really don't know.

Thanks for your advice,
--Derek

[Bearfootfarm]

I would fence it all in, and stock it with both sheep and goats, and let them do most of the work. If youre not in a big hurry, in a couple of years they will have cleared a large portion of it for you, and the stumps will rot away.

Throw a couple of hogs into the mix and they will clear even more

[Liese]

What Michael says has been our experience here in the upper area of NC - in 2 years most of the browse is gone, I'm quite surprised at how quickly this has happened and now have to figure out how to let areas rest long enough to regenerate browse for the goats. We only have 9 goats and 2 llamas but they go through it quickly. By the way is the land in Korea?

[thequeensblessing]

I'd be careful with any young trees on the property to make sure you don't have cherry or oak trees or Mt. Laurel among them. These leaves tend to be toxic to sheep.

[Madroaster]

Thanks all for your advice. The land is in Canada, btw.

I'd imagined it would work like this, but it's nice to talk with people who have done it.

[Liese]

Cherry is fine in most conditions but not anything in the laurel family but CA is a little north for them I think. Prunus family is only a problem if the leaves are in the wilt stage, fresh on the tree or dry no cyanide (I think it's cyanide) issues. My goats have really done in many of the small cherry saplings here but I make sure to look things over after heavy storms for downed branches. Now when I think of CA I think short growing season, maybe you'll want to do a bit of cross fencing to let things regenerate and have a year 1 section and then let it be fallow for a year to recover. Here in NC the stuff grows like mad and I can graze 9 months out of the year on something (not much in drought tho), so I am cross fencing with 4-6 month recovery periods in mind - this is for browse, grass is a 90 day recovery in the midsummer slump. On the grazeL forum dairy guys up in WI and OR are also stockpiling for winter grazing with a 60-90 day window. Anyway I guess my point is that even that type of situation would benefit from rotational grazing rather than stock setting IMHO.

[thequeensblessing]

Liese, good post, however, I did want to clarify this; Cherry leaves that have been hit by frost, crushed under foot, wilted, or blown off in a wind, can all cause this dangerous poisoning to occur. It's safest to avoid cherry trees altogether in a pasture situation. I've lost 2 lambs and several calves to this before I understood it. Now, we simply rid our pasture area of prunus altogether.