Brush hogging is a term used to describe clearing brush from the land. There are really fancy machines that will chop up brush, but the brush comes back and then there are are the suckers that grow back. This is where sheep come in handy. They love to munch the random twig. Here is the warning and the disclaimer:
Be very careful about wilted Cherry. Toxic to sheep. I don’t know how much is toxic, but take care. Here is a link: http://www.sheepandgoat.com/poison.html
But don’t get too caught up in toxic plants, sheep have an amazing way of keeping out of trouble. They have generally left the clover and milk week in my pasture alone. However if the sheep are starving, because of not enough feed, then they might get into more trouble.
I think is it good to get a couple of “how to” books when you first start out, but the books can really freak you out with all of the things that can go wrong. If you are a worrier by nature, then sheep are not for you.
Also, lambs learn about which plants to eat from others in the flock, so a batch of bottle babies don’t know squat.
Sheep will gird small trees and love eating the leaves off the shrubs and bushes. We are converting the woods back to pasture. The wood that has been cut will be used for fire wood and in some cases wood for home projects like flooring and trim. The clearing is a bear of a job, which is were the sheep come in.
We opened up the pasture to the woods and the sheep go after the small trees. Sometimes during the evening pasture walk, I will bend a young tree down and the sheep will go after the leaves. I call the flock down to the saplings we don’t want. Maple is their favorite. But almost any good hardwood will do.
So far the work the sheep have done have saved us a ton of work. They like the diversity of the plants and I like the woods slowly turning to pasture. The evening walks around the woods are my favorite and I think the sheep like it as well.
