Our farm is located just outside Windsor, NS. We raise registered purebred North Country Cheviot Sheep. Our sheep are all offspring of ARR ARR scrapie tested sheep. Our operation is pasture based.

Our pastures are divided into 4-acre sections to work with our rotational grazing system. We use rotational grazing to achieve maximum output from our pastures with a minimal amount of labour input. The sheep are rotated when the pasture has been grazed to a height of 1 - 2”, or within 7 days, whichever comes first, to avoid the sheep re-grazing the field and picking up worms. The fields are clipped when required to prevent unpalatable grasses from thriving. We have enough fields so that the sheep do not re-graze an area for 60 – 90 days. By this time, most of the parasites (worms) have died off - worms being a problem in any grass based system. This also gives the pasture sufficient time to re-grow .

We frost seed our field with clover and other preferred forage in the spring, then chain harrow. We seed using a cyclone seeder on the front of our gator. With the low ground pressure of the gator, we can get on the pastures where we would not be able to with our tractor.

We have water bowls in each pasture so that the sheep have access to clean water at all times.

We feed round bales of hay on pasture. We usually start feeding hay in late November and end in late April. We do not use feeders and find that the sheep waste very little. We try to put the bales in places where the ground needs nutrition. In the spring we seed the areas where the bales were placed with grasses that compliment our system. We deliver the hay to the fields using our JD Gator and hay wagon.

The perimeter of our pasture is fenced using a five-wire electric fence system which is constructed using pressure treated poles and 12.5ga High Tensile galvanized wire. The second and forth wires are grounded with ground rods along the fence and also tied back into the ground terminal on the electric fencer. Even during a dry period, any animal trying to get through the fence will touch both the live and ground wires, which delivers maximum shock. We trim/ spray below the fence once or twice a year to keep the growth off the fence. Inner pastures are divided using treated posts and three live electric wires. We have one run/ road through the pastures, which gives access to each pasture. This run is 16’ wide, which seems to be wide enough to keep the sheep moving well and allow them to avoid the fence on both sides.

We use a Gallagher SmartPower MX5000 fencer that has a maximum output of 48 Joules. It monitors fence loads and adjusts the power to the fence as required. It also gives a digital readout that indicates the grounding status among other things and sounds an alarm should anything go wrong.