Greg Judy’s Grass-fed Sheep Operation | Extended Tour

And we're with Greg Judy and Jan Judy.

Yes, I think that's the biggest mistake people make in the sheep business, especially novices getting in. Oh, I don't want two groups, we'll just run them together. Well, you can run them together, yeah, but when they start lambing and it's cold and it's windy and there's snow on the ground, you're going to lose about 50% of your lamb crop. Because when a baby lamb's born, okay, They're just a little bitty guy, and if they drop on the ground and that wind's blowing, it's not the cold that gets them as bad as it is wet. Wet and cold is deadly. They just, they just don't get up and suck. But there's nothing tougher than a baby lamb if they can get up and get their mouth on the teats. Once they get their mouth on the teats, I've seen it, I've watched a lot of it happen. They'll come out, they'll shake off the water from the afterbirth, and they're up and they're on that teat. I would say within 3 to 5 minutes. A calf, they'll lay around for 30 minutes sometimes. A big calf may lay around for an hour before he gets up and sucks. Yeah, but these lambs, they're up and sucking. It's just amazing how, uh, aggressive they are when they, when they come out.

So do you think that's because they come out with a twin?

Well, I think part of it is in nature, if they came out and didn't get up, they got ate. Yeah. You know, something that vulnerable, whether it was a hawk or an eagle or a fox, whatever, they had to get up and suck or they were dead. And nature has a way of working things out, you know.

And I heard St. Croix averages 2.1 births. 2.1? Have you kept track of yours?

It depends how you take care of the sheep.

Yeah.

If you get them up and flush them, they call the term flushing, which means before you turn the rams in, you get them up and you feed them some grain and really get them nice and fat and juicy and all that, and then put the rams in. They, they drop more eggs, you'll get more twins. But my question is, what's it cost you to get those twins? Yeah, I don't feed any grain. So this year we've averaged as high as 1.6 to 1.7 lambs per ewe. Okay, this year it was 1.35.

Okay, so I'm not gonna sweat it if I don't get twins then.

No, and Justin either. What you're gonna have is ewe lambs.

It's their time. Yeah, okay.

So don't freak out if you don't get twins. I mean, you'll get a few, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry about it. But now on the second time lambing, you're gonna have a whole lot more twins than you will singles.

Can you share why you wouldn't want to feed a sheep grain? A lot of— I mean, a lot— that's a shocker to a lot of people.

Uh, you just gotta remember, when you feed a sheep grain, there's two things that happen. One is you're growing hoof. Better get your hoof trimmers out, because grain grows horn and it grows hoof. And if you like trimming the feet on your sheep, feed them grain.

That's what you're gonna have. The only reason you don't do it.

And when the other one is, when you feed them grain, it makes the meat rot. So let me explain that. Yeah, when you get grain fat in a sheep, the mus— the intramuscular fat in sheep, in other words, the marbling and you get fat all through the meat, the shelf life on it just plummets. New Zealand lamb, it's all natural, it's all grass-fed, and that you can put a chunk of that in your freezer and it'll be there for a year, no problem. Our sheep, the same way. But if you have a feedlot lamb and you butcher that dude, you better eat it because it's gonna go rank on you probably 6 months. It just doesn't have the freezer life. Okay, so why would you do that? Other than, you know, the health benefits, uh, grass-fed lamb's a lot healthier for you than grain-fed is. I think it's cool here. I just put these limbs in here. I brought my chainsaw over here about, I don't know, 3 hours ago, and I cut a bunch of invasive autumn olives. They look like a forest in there when I put it in there. I can't believe it. I mean, there's limbs, they were just full of— the only leaves they had in there. What's that?

Or you, you cut them in?

I cut them. No, I brought them in. Oh, you had a pickup load of autumn olives.

Autumn olives.

I drug them in here and I threw them on the ground, and those sheep absolutely cleaned them up.

Yeah, they'll browse, won't they?

Oh man, are they as good as a goat? Uh, no, because— well, I mean, let me repeat, they're a lot better than a goat. And a goat's a lot better. A goat's a lot better than a sheep. Now let me explain that. A goat, if you have more woody stuff they'll climb up and get it, and they'll actually stand on each other's backs with their front feet to get up high enough to get it. And, uh, sheep, they won't stand on their hind legs. Goats will. Goats will graze on their hind legs so they can get higher. But the sheep, I don't think there's a goat out here that you can keep in with one hot wire. Now I may be wrong, but I haven't seen it. Somebody could prove me wrong, but By gosh, these sheep were keeping in with one hot wire.

How are you keeping them in with one hot wire? People aren't going to believe that either.

Well, we're going to see it in a little bit. We're going to go down this hill. But the biggest thing is they don't get hungry. Don't let your sheep get hungry, because if they get hungry, they will move. And they'll move on their own. They don't need you to move, because that one wire, it's a psychological barrier. They get used to seeing it, and by God, they're not going to go through it.

Okay.

But you do have to put your posts a lot closer together. So on cattle, we might go, let's say, 60 to 70 feet. With sheep fence, about 15 feet is all you wanna go. And you've gotta keep that poly braid. Don't use poly wire, you gotta use poly braid. Poly braid has got twice the shock and conductivity of poly wire. And you wanna use a wire that's called, from Powerflex, it's called mixed metal. It's got 6 steel filaments and 3 copper, it will knock you into next week when you touch that. And the other thing about sheep, keep the fence hot. If you've got a little wimpy charger that's putting out 2,000 or 3,000 volts, you're not going to keep them sheep in. You gotta have something putting out 8. I mean, it, it'll light a sheet up, a sheep up when they touch it. And, uh, yeah, guard dogs, they don't appreciate it too much either.

So what are you powering that fence with to get it up to 8?

Uh, I'm using a plug-in type charger. I'm real big on plug-ins. We've got, uh, the StayFix, which is the big one. That's a 36-joule. But Justin is powering 5 farms, that one charger is.

Okay.

There's about 580— there's more than that— there's about 780 acres here all fastened together. And, um, so it's powering all those farms and If you look at— look at the vegetative load right here. Oh my gosh, people say, but Greg, I gotta— I gotta weed eat my fence. Really? I've never weeded that fence since I put it in 17 years ago. But here's the key, folks: you cannot turn your fencer off. Do not turn your fencer off. Now you can turn it off if you need to go work on it. Yeah, but don't leave it off for a day or two, because what happens when you turn it off You've got all these green leaves growing up and touching that, and as it's getting shocked, it's taking the sap out of the— out of the leaf. If you turn it off, it gets a free ride. It grows all up on that fence, and you're going to have 40,000 green leaves, which are ground rods. You don't have any charge, and it may take a week for that charger to kill all that vegetation. Okay, so for a week, you're not going to have any electricity in your fence. Don't turn it off. And I'm a big believer in not putting a lot of switches around the farm. I used to have all these turn-off switches. If you get a— if you get a Stafix charger— Stafix, best charger in the world from Powerflex.

It's got it brought to you by—

it's— yeah, I'm brought to you by Powerflex. It's got a remote control switch on it. You can reach up and go boom, hit it. Turns it off. You don't need to go to the box to unplug it.

That's nice.

And you can reach out there and go on, it turns it right back on.

Wow.

But the biggest thing about that tester is it has an arrow on it telling you what direction your ground is.

Oh, and that's—

so you're not walking all day long looking for it. You know right where it's at. If you hold that tester, it'll take you to your ground.

Wow.

It's going beep beep beep beep, and you just keep going and the arrow keeps pointing. And if you go past your ground It's going to go beep beep beep, you walk past it, it's back there. Uh, and it also has a meter on, or it has a reading on there for amps. Folks, there's two readings in electricity: volts and amps. It takes volts to push amps, okay? Well, when you see amp reading on that meter, you got an issue. If you, let's say 40 to 50 amps, you better start looking because you got something touching that fence, and it's probably not vegetation, okay? It's probably metal. You've got a metal post touching that dude, or you might have had a deer come by and throw a piece of old barbed wire up on it from an existing fence. It's metal, it's usually not vegetative something. So that when you, uh, look at your meter at the end of the month and you pay your meter bill, you're paying for kilowatt hours. Kilowatt hours is being turned by amps, dead ground. So like If your wife turns on the dryer, that thing's spinning big time. That's, that's amps. Same way on a charger. If you've got a dead ground on it, it's going to start turning that meter. But here's the misnomer about electricity on fences: it doesn't use any electricity. Oh really? Doesn't use any as long as you don't have an amp loading on it.

Oh wow.

Because volts, volts will not turn that meter. It's amps. Well, this, this was a brand new meter on this farm, a brand new meter. It was on for a year and had all this fence on. I mean, we had miles of fence. We got sheep fence all over this, 4 strands running everywhere. And I called the guy up, I said, uh, at the electric meter, I said, your, your meter is no good. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, it hasn't turned over 1 kilowatt hour in a year. Really? What do you got on it? I said, I got electric fence. He said, go out there and take a steel post and lay on it. So I stuck the steel post in the ground and I flopped it over on it, and man, I mean, that meter took off. It started turning. That's what it needed. It needed a dead ground. So keep your fence clean with metal. Don't let metal touch it.

You had your fence clean and you had no power bill?

No power. It doesn't take any power to an electric fencer at all. So people that are freaking out about, well, I don't want to increase my electric bill— it doesn't use any electricity.

So why did you go with the St. Croix?

I was at St. Croix because I didn't want to worm sheep. I don't think worming sheep is sustainable.

Why not?

Because as you get older, time flies by. I got more things to do than worm sheep.

You're all about value— valuing your time with things you want to do. So how did you find the sheep?

I found a guy that, uh, I mean, I was on the internet And I just got really, really lucky. Um, I found a neighbor that has stuck to his guns. It's a St. Croix, and, uh, he, uh, he never, uh, wormed them. He let them die.

Okay.

And the ones that died, of course, they didn't— they only die once. And, um, so the surviving sheep were the ones that he kept. And those are the ones he built his flock out of. And I was fortunate enough to get 7 ram lambs from him and some ewes, and that was our base of our small flock, and we just kind of built from there. But those rams, Jan and I isolated them.

We turned them out, we gathered manure on them, we put them in a trailer, and then when they jump out, they poop.

They poop. And we had ear tags on them, so we knew which one, which manure went with each ram. Took it to the vet And they, they put underneath the microscope, and the vet called me up. He was hot. He goes, why'd you bring me? He said, I got more things to do than look at sheep that's been wormed. He said, you shouldn't have wormed these sheep before you brought the manure in. I'm like, sir, I didn't worm them. Yes, you did. He said, there's one that didn't have any. There was none. Wow. Not even 0.000, nothing. There was no—

that's unheard of.

There was nothing in there. He said, I've never ever seen that without worming. I said, I didn't worm them.

And what were the other two?

The other two is like 0.05.

What's a healthy rate? Like, when would it start being alarming so people would know?

Shoot, um, you just— I mean, you can't hardly take a sample on sheep and not find some.

Yeah.

And all sheep have a little bit in, but those two rams, the, the two of the three were just through the roof.

Wow.

Um, and that's what we used to start our flock with. And we still have their ancestors in here, you know, the sons out of those, and We just don't buy any rams anymore. We just try and, try and raise what we can.

Do you have any of them that ever get sick with them?

Uh, we got them all up, uh, yesterday and got all the withers out of there. And, uh, some other sheep, some call ewes— there wasn't a single animal in the whole flock that had a dirty tail. Wow, that's unheard of.

And you don't snip their tail?

No.

Again, you don't want to go around cutting tails out.

No, no. If you don't have wool sheep— if you got—

people say you're going to get parasites if you have a tail.

Hey, if you got wool sheep, you better cut the tail off.

Okay. All right.

They call that fly strike.

So St. Croix is a hair sheep?

Yes. Wool sheep have a big woolly tail, and when the ewe lambs, there's blood gets in that wool, and there's blood in the wool, you've got maggots, and they'll eat the the butt out of the sheep.

Okay.

On hair sheep, I've never seen— and they call that fly strike.

Okay.

I've never had it on them.

Now surely you've had this, you've had one get worms since you inherited. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So what do you do?

If we can get them up to the corral, a lot of times they— you find them that they just, you know, they, they go to the happy hunting grounds.

Okay.

And, uh, sometimes we'll sell them if it's in the fall. We'll see some with dirty tails, we'll just get them up and sell them.

So you cull?

I've never wormed a sheep. Okay, I'm gonna stick to my guns on that. Good.

What, what are the two times of the year, Greg, that are our most demanding time for sheep?

Most demanding time? What do you mean?

When do we work sheep? When, when do we put the man hours into the sheep?

Well, in July. Okay, in July you got to get the rams out. Okay, so the rams are put in. Okay, um, December 1st, that gives you 5 months, which gives you May 1st lambing. Okay, in Missouri. Now that's different. I just had a guy here from Iowa this morning, and I said, don't, don't put your rams in the 1st of December. Still cold up in Iowa in May.

Yeah.

Okay, so he's going to put them in, I think he said, around late, uh, the end of Memorial Day.

So basically you want to have birth after frost date?

Absolutely.

You don't want to chase the green.

So where we are, we're May 10th.

May 10th. So I wouldn't put them in until December 10th.

Okay, yeah, 5 months.

Okay, the worst thing I think you can do to a sheep is put them in a building. And okay, if you put them in a building, you're going to get parasites. Okay, it's just a matter of time. And I've heard people say, well, you know, I'll do a deep bedding pack on it. No, you're not going to get rid of them parasites. They're there. You've got to get them out here on the land, let the sunlight clean them up, move them. That's where sheep belong. Okay, um, everybody gets them up in Missouri to to lamb. I shouldn't say everybody, I'm putting everybody in one window. A lot of people, and it's just not Missouri, a lot of people want an Easter lamb. In other words, they want to lamb them in January and they'll sell a lamb at Easter that's ready to eat. When you do that, you better have a big building, and they call it jugging. So you put them up in these little crates, the mother, before she lambs. She lambs in there, Man, you talk about labor intense and a great environment for all kinds of nasty diseases. Keep them out here where they need to be. This, this is where the sheep belongs, out on the land, and you don't have to do all that other stuff.

Would it be— go ahead, Jan.

And then our second time of really working the sheep is now when we're culling, getting ready for winter, um, selling rams and ewes and dogs. And so it's very labor No labor really to speak of other than 2 times a year, except moving them.

You move on them once or twice a day?

Once. Okay. Sometimes if we give them a little bigger paddock, maybe twice. But I'm gonna tell you what, for somebody that doesn't— has a hectic schedule and is busy, or maybe they're getting older, they don't have the energy, sheep are your deal.

Really?

Oh my gosh. I told Jan after this last winter, I'm like, you know, we get older and don't want to fight the weather anymore, we just go all sheep.

Why are they so much easier than cows?

They'll feed themselves better than a cow will.

They'll eat more.

Their foot, they can push back snow. Cows, cows will take— cows will push their nose through it and eat. But a darn sheep has got a foot like a deer. They'll pull all the snow back and they can feed themselves. You can put sheep in woods in the wintertime and dry oak leaves and they'll come out there fat as a pig. You put a cow in there, she'll starve to death. This stuff right here, you just lock them in. If I lock sheep in this lane, they would clean all that stuff up. But we're moving our sheep fast enough, it doesn't happen. But sheep can make a living on stuff that cows can't.

Okay.

And so they're just a lot easier to, to manage.

When you said you got to make sure sheep's well fed, keep them in, how do you know when a sheep's has had enough, is getting enough to eat.

I can tell by looking at the landscape when a lot of it gets all walked down on the ground. There's, there's a ton of feed left here, okay? Yeah, but you don't want to leave them here much longer because they've, they've kind of— well, let's go down and show you. There's, there's a weed down here, it's called giant ragweed, and when I turned them in here, man, there was a big old thick grove of it down here. Well, when I drove by today, I couldn't— I just couldn't believe it, really. They had already cleaned every leaf off the giant ragweed.

Are we in their paddock right now? We are today. Yeah, so they were moved in here yesterday.

Yesterday, one day.

How many sheep are in this paddock?

Uh, there's probably around 180.

180. And there's— this is probably— I can't see the whole perimeter of the paddock. What, 2 acres?

Yeah, this, this paddock is around 10, but the paddock they're on right now is split in two, so they're on like 4 acres.

Okay.

All right, this is the— this is the dog, the guard dog.

Yeah, I wanna, I wanna show people this.

Um, so it has a, uh, you can put a full 50-pound bag in there plus another half of another one. It'll hold 75 pounds. The key, the key is to keep it up off the ground.

Okay, this is a dog feeder. This is a dog feeder.

Sponsored by, again, Pet Lodge.

An ad by Pet Lodge right now.

Keep it up off the ground. If you don't, you'll get ants in there, and it draws moisture from the bottom up. So in a rainy period, your dog feed will mold and rot. Keep it up off the ground. We have a little chain on here. This is our tongue. We just put that over the ball on our four-wheeler. You don't have to go very far with it, like from here to, you know, 50 feet, you can just pull it by hand. I just use the landscaping timbers and staples, and these are pig panels, and I just stapled it on there. And then at the back, I've got 3 boards going across for rigidity. The dogs have to get down their side, the big ones. The young dogs kind of go underneath like that, but a big dog, he's got to get on the side and pull himself through there. Folks, that's nothing for a big dog to go under.

Okay.

And that, that from there up to here is 10 inches from the ground up.

Yeah, so he's got to be thicker than 10 inches.

Yeah, I've seen them. I mean, they get down at the pole sometimes, but they can get in there. This door, uh, when it's faced correctly, you want the door to be facing south, and it does have a magnet in there, but if you have it facing south When you get a hard rain, we never get a hard rain out of the south. It's always out of the west or the east. So always make sure the opening on it is facing south and you won't get your dog feed wet. Dog feed's expensive, you know, and dogs don't like wet feed. I wouldn't like wet feed either. So keep your dog feed dry. If it gets wet, don't make them eat it. Dig it out there and give it to your chickens or something, but don't, don't leave wet dog feed in there. All you're going to do is draw pests the best. Yeah, into there.

You're gonna have to put, um, a small rock or brick just to open it a little bit. Yeah, because they need to learn how to get in there.

On puppies, we take a brick and we put it in right like that.

Okay.

Because they don't know any better. They don't know how to push that door open. But once the puppies learn, then you can take the brick out.

Now I think I know what you're going to say, because you move your sheep every day. Because somebody would ask me to ask you, could you, could you put chicken feed in something like this where chickens could come in there and eat that?

And, and the sheep, and the sheep wouldn't?

Yes, because the sheep can't get in this, right? So theoretically, somebody could put chicken feed in there. You could, if they're not going to move their sheep every day, or if they're going to— you didn't have guard dogs with their sheep.

You didn't have guard dogs. The guard dogs are probably going to eat the chicken feed.

Okay, and that leads me to ask, why would a lamb want to eat dog food or grain?

Once they get a flavor, once they get a taste for it, why do we eat candy?

Okay, okay, you know, why do kids want to eat candy? So it is bad for them, but they do want—

I went on a farm where a guy, we sold him a couple guard dogs and he was having trouble with them. He had goats and I said, well, dogs are— you can see every rib on them. I said, where's your dog feeder at? Well, you know, I hand-feed them every day. I'm like, you do? Yeah, yeah, it's time to feed them. He reached over and poured the feed on the ground, and about 75 goats came in and just knocked the crap out of the dogs and ate every bite of it. Them dogs weren't getting any feed, and this was a meat feed, and they were killing his— like, they were killing his kids, the goat kids, and eating them. Well, the dogs were starving to death.

So these, these—

you can't let them get a taste of—

he pulled these herbivores, they'll eat meat.

Oh yeah. Well, and if you're gonna have a dog, you don't train your sheep or your goats to eat.

Oh, okay.

You just can't train them to eat, to eat, uh, dog feed, because once you do, you're done.

Okay.

Especially a goat. Goats, goats— this is not a goat-proof feeder, by the way.

No, I'm saying this is—

goats should be in here.

I got short stuff.

Feeder within 30 seconds.

Yep.

And they just jump over it, or they climb under it. The best goat feeder is one that's built like this, but you put a round barrel right here on the front. It's a 30-gallon barrel, and it comes up through here, and you put a rug over the entrance on that side. When that goat sticks his head in that barrel, he ain't going in there because he can't see through it.

Okay.

He's like, there might be a coyote on the other side of that barrel.

He won't go in.

He's not going to go in blind. He can see through it. Look out, he's going to go underneath.

Bouncing a little bit. Back to mulch question.

What's your—

so deep bedding, watch your head.

That's all.

Would deep bedding be such a terrible idea in the winter when you don't have parasites?

Yeah, um, I think if you start locking your sheep in a building in the wintertime, you're gonna have trouble. Really? Yeah.

With what?

Parasites.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I think you're gonna have foot issues.

Okay.

You're gonna have sickness in your sheep. It's just— everybody says, but they're sheep, they got to have shelter. Well, if it's 20 below zero in the wind and wind chill, our sheep can get down in a draw and they're fine. We've had sheep for 17 years, we've never had a building ever. We're a lot colder than you all are.

Are you? How cold do you get?

We can get up to 30 below wind chill. Wind chill. Regular straight, probably the coldest temperature we ever had is probably 12 below. I was just gonna show, these are all giant ragweeds in here. They're walking through. These are just the stems.

Look at this.

There's anything left.

So will that die?

No, it'll re-vegetate. That's what I love about giant ragweed. Look up here, look at all the stems.

So this weed is not a problem because it's Oh, it's a wonderful food.

Okay, it's not common ragweed, it's giant ragweed. There's a big difference.

See the stems over there?

Yeah, yeah, they just cleaned them.

Okay, cleaned them. Do you—

I'm looking at that, Justin. I'm gonna make an executive decision. We're gonna go move the sheep.

Oh, okay. Yeah, that'd be awesome. So what made you decide we need to move the sheep?

Because all the ragweed's cleaned up. Okay, there is no leaves left. Okay, they're not eating the fescue.

In here.

Why not? Why not?

The fescue is not as tasty to them right now. Okay, they're after the weeds. This is, uh, this is the ironweed. This is a different one. They worked that ironweed over pretty good. They need to be moved.

So that you've already got a fence set up ready for the move?

Yep. We're gonna go down here and take the poly wire, and I'm just gonna roll it back. Cool. And I'm gonna go sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, and they're gonna go charging through.

Cool.

And then instead of putting it right back where it's at I'm gonna move it over about 50 feet on the other side of their water tank.

Okay, they got a water tank down here and you're not gonna move the water tank?

No, it's permanent. Yeah.

So how many paddocks can you run off that one water tank?

Uh, when you say paddocks, in the summertime, uh, we can get 3 moves out of here. We're giving them bigger areas right now because we don't want them to graze the plants down too short. That big bottom out there, uh, we'll get Oh shoot, when we strip graze that, we may get 2 weeks out of that big bottom. And up here we'll get 3 moves. So that one little tank there is supplying— oh gosh, probably 12 paddocks. Okay, 12 temporary paddocks.

Are you running a lane to get back to it?

Yep, well, just spokes, wire spokes. You might say spokes. So you start at your tank and you run a spoke out, and then next time—

you'll have to show me what a spoke is.

A wedge down there. Yeah, a wedge.

This is a good place for lambing, Justin.

Okay.

Um, because when they're lambing, they, they have lambing spots and they stay there for like a couple of days. So you don't want the flock to get terribly far ahead of the, the baby lambs.

Okay.

Because if you try to make them stay with their mamas and the— with the flock, you're going to have orphans.

Right now they can come in right here and get their water, or they can drink out of the pond up there.

And tomorrow, how they're going to get here?

I'm going to move this wire over on that side of the water tank. Okay, this paddock's going to be hooked onto the same tank.

So it's okay that near the water they've had— they've, they've been on this grass today and they're going to be on it again tomorrow? This, this one?

Yeah, but look at it.

I know. Why haven't they trampled this down?

Because they're probably getting the water out of that pond up there.

Okay, okay.

We're gonna go ahead and move the wire. Jan? I want you to pull the first 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Pull the first 6 posts, and I'm going to reel this up about where the sheep are. Don't pull any more than 6.

Okay, so how is this not on?

Okay, so here it is. Okay, these are my hot wires. This is my permanent high tensile 12-gauge, 180,000 PSI wire, high tensile. And so to power it up We just take this and wrap it around there 3 times, okay, like that. And then when you hook it on there, there's no fair doing that. That's going to knock you into next week.

Yeah, because you're holding—

I'm holding the metal. You got to hold this.

Okay.

You always find a post, find a fiberglass post or whatever post type post you're using. Hopefully it's not steel. And just hook it on there, drop it, I'm done. I'm powered up because this wire is going through that handle. The handle's wrapped with the poly braid.

Yeah.

And it's pushing 8,000 volts out to it.

And I guess that reel is also a PowerFlex reel. No, no, he's not brand loyal.

No, I go for what works. Terrogate, Terrogate, Terrogate geared reels are the best reels ever made. Okay, they're made in New Zealand. Um, I wish we did make them in the United States, but this is a heck of a reel.

Why is it so good?

Because of this one issue right here. Um, O'Brien makes a decent reel, but their locking mechanism absolutely sucks. Okay, as you're going across the paddock on a four-wheeler— because we're— this is sitting in a four-wheeler, and as this thing's going out, we may be driving 20 miles an hour. If this drops down because you hit a bump, guess what happens?

That reel goes flying.

The reel goes flying out of your handle. It lands on the ground and it breaks. It breaks this, folks. This is a $65 reel. And if the— and if the wire holds on long enough and this doesn't come out, you're going to break your poly braid in two. Now you got a knot in your poly braid. O'Brien has this little wimpy plastic deal. If you blow on it hard enough, it'll drop down, and now you've broken your wire. This is a good locking mechanism. Yes, I mean, look at that. It doesn't take that much to— I'm not an engineer, but I bet you I could take an old Braun reel and build a better locking mechanism they've got. Yeah, and I put that in my book, and they didn't change it yet. They haven't.

You even gave them a memo, didn't you?

Yeah, I told them. Your locking mechanism sucks and they won't change. People are resistant to change. Even companies are resistant, cheap. Shape, shape, shape, shape, shape, shape, shape, shape, shape, shape, shape. If you look up through here, Justin, you can see the graze line. Okay, this is. Look at that. They just stripped that. Yeah, they're ready to move. So we're going to leave the rest of the post in. And if y'all weren't here, I'm just going sheep, sheep, sheep, and they'd all come charging down this hill. Yeah, they're not going to do that with this group of people.

No.

So we're just going to reel it up, let them go through, and then we'll put it back in. You don't have to pull any more posts.

Would you have a tighter paddock if it was winter so they would eat this down to the ground?

No, because I can go around my farm twice in the winter.

Can you?

Yeah.

No hay for these guys? None.

Zero. We had the worst hay in the worst day. We had the worst winter in Missouri history last year, probably in 50 years. And those sheep were in 24 inches of snow on the very back of the farm on a one-wire fence that was buried under the snow and they didn't move. They stayed there. And they cleaned off the whole south side of the hill where the sun was shining. Cleaned it. And I drove back with my tractor and blade It took me almost 2 hours to blade a path back there to them. It was that deep. And when I got back there, the sheep looked at me like, what the heck you doing back here? They were all fat. There wasn't any dead ones. And we were struggling to keep the cows fed. This is 10 days into the snowstorm, and the sheep are like, hell, we're good, get out of here. And I'm like, man, you talk about some tough sheep.

So are they— you're not moving them every day in the winter then?

No. Okay. No, that'd be 2 days.

You can see this.

Okay, and that's because the— oh yeah, about every 2 days. About every 2 days you take a rest in the winter.

Yeah, we take a rest.

So how'd you move them during that snowstorm? You didn't.

We didn't. We couldn't get to them.

But they, but they were just kicking it out of the way and fine because they were sitting on something like this.

Yes.

And they'll eat that fescue.

Yes.

Did you say, honey, we didn't have to take water to them or anything?

Oh, that's the beautiful thing about sheep. As long as sheep are grazing, they don't need water.

Really?

In the wintertime, they will not drink it. You can put it out there until your face falls off, they ain't gonna drink it.

Why not?

Because they're getting moisture out of the forage. They don't need water.

So how much water do they need?

Not very much, maybe a quart to a half a gallon. These aren't— I mean, look at those sheep. Okay, a mature ewe You're looking at 110 to 120 pounds. A wool sheep, shoot, some of them little gals, you can put a saddle on them and ride them.

Okay, okay.

220 pounds. So they're gonna drink more water.

So yeah, we're talking about a different animal then. Well, I'm taking it we're talking about a different animal here. Wool sheep versus hair sheep.

Exactly.

And we ought to clarify with everybody, you're raising these for meat or breeding stock?

Breeding stock.

For meat?

Yeah.

These are not wool sheep?

They are not wool sheep.

Do you have a problem with wool sheep, or are you cool with people doing wool sheep?

I don't know why anybody would run wool sheep.

Why not?

Too much work.

Yeah, there's no money in it.

Well, here, let me give you the— let me give you some figures. It takes 25% of what a sheep—

here they come, Greg—

25% of what they eat goes to produce wool. The wool costs you more money to get the wool off their back than you can sell it for. Why would you do that? It's a net loss and it's a pain to go find somebody to shoot them unless you shear your own. And my back is not that stout.

Do they have fire problems like a cow does?

Sheep. Sheep shape, shape, shape.

Jan, you say no, they don't attract flies as much as cow would.

No, no, they will have flies. And what they'll do, they'll make a big clump, a circle, and they all put their heads in together. But they don't really have the— they're not that bad. What you're seeing right now are those, uh, sea ticks.

Okay, look at that. You have 3 guard dogs on 120 sheep? 5 on 120?

Yeah. Okay, there's 2 old— there they are. That's Mammoth and the little female, we never named her, but you can't touch either one of those dogs. Okay, so I don't have to worry about anybody stealing them. They bark, they'll— I mean, if you come out here, you're a stranger, they'll just bark their heads off.

If somebody's having to feed hay to a lamb in the winter because they don't have enough land— if you're going to feed hay to them in the wintertime, how much are they going to eat? Or what should they know about feeding hay?

Probably a good rule, if they're not getting anything to eat, you just pencil in about 3% of their body weight. Okay, so if, you know, if a lamb weighs 100 pounds, 3 pounds.

Yeah, 3 pounds.

Now here's the deal about sheep. They don't— they're not real crazy about just pure grass hay. They do a lot better if you got a little legume in there, whether it's a clover or a little bit alfalfa or bird's foot trefoil or lespedeza. Just pure grass hay, they'll use it for bedding more than they'll eat it. They like laying on it, they'll walk on it, but they don't really eat. Our sheep won't eat hay hardly. But I don't buy really good high-quality hay for my cows. I just feed them whatever I've got, which is usually normally just grass hay.

Okay.

You see this?

And your sheep won't eat that? That junk hay?

See this big tall plant behind you, Justin? This is called the Indian grass. There's a row of it right here. Going down through here. Heck, it goes clear up that hill. This was a big round bale that I unrolled for the sheep in the fall. Wintertime. Oh, the sheep came in here and laid on it and stomped on it, and look what came up.

Okay, you're saying it brought this up? Absolutely, because that's a good thing.

Yeah, from the Indian grass that I bought, it was just covered full of seed.

You can almost see the line of it is what you're telling me.

Now this, this one right here is actually— this is, uh, okay, this is different. This is a big bluestem. See, the seed heads are different. This is a turkey foot. That one's a shaggy booger. That's, that's Indian grass over there. It's where the big bales were fed. We fed Big Blue and Indian grass. So if you can find some of this in big bales and feed it on your pasture, you will get a lot of it to start to come up just by feeding it on your field.

So you put down the hay for the seeds?

Yeah, I got this. I got to say, the guy was embarrassed. He's going to throw it in a ditch. I bought 200 bales of it for $10 a bale. And it was over mature. It was all— it all had full seed on it, and the animals didn't eat it very well, but boy, I got some good fertility out of it. Well, look at the grass growing.

You can see the strip. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So we see this all over when we unroll our bales, especially the natives. They just come up.

Okay.

This is $30 a pound. He's got to buy it, the seed, $30. So it's pretty pricey.

What do you think about cows and sheep having a relationship with each other, working together in some way?

I think it's the best if you can do it, if you can figure out how to do it, because the sheep, of course, shares— the sheep and the cattle have different parasites, and so the sheep ingest the cow parasite, the cow ingests the sheep parasite, and so the two are acting like vacuum cleaners. They're sucking up each other's parasites. And it's a dead-end host. That parasite can't complete its life cycle.

No, I didn't know that.

And so that is the very best. If you can pull that off, you got cows out there, they're just— they're ingesting sheep parasites. The closer you make your animals eat to the ground, the more parasites they're going to ingest.

Okay.

And so if you keep your animals grazing up here in the top part of the canopy, the parasites are not living on the tips of the plants, they're down here on the ground floor.

4 inches. Is that about right?

Yeah, because they're out of the sun. A parasite can't take sun on the body, it cooks him like that. So the people that are continuously grazing and not moving their animals, that's why they're— that's why they got a worm. The animals are just loaded down with parasites. Ours are not because we don't make them graze that way. Tonight those sheep are gonna pick out a campsite here when it gets dark, and I can tell you exactly where it's going to be, right up there. It's always on the highest point on the paddock, and that's instinct. They go to the highest point so they can see predators coming at them at night to try and kill them. Up here, right there by that gate, that was the highest point. I saw a lot of sheepmen are up there. That's where the highest point is.

Okay.

So when you move your sheep, they don't go back. They can't. They can't go back to the same campsite night after night after night. 'Cause this is what infects them. They get a big dose of their own manure and they lay in that and they're standing in it and they're sleeping in it. They're gonna pick up parasites there.

So they get parasites from their manure.

From the manure.

And then they get parasites from short grass.

Short grass. And if you leave them in one area for a long time, there's gonna be a lot of short grass.

Okay.

You know, the old ranchers called the Western sheep shepherds, they called the sheep on the West maggots. Range maggots because they were convinced that the sheep were destroying the landscape for their cattle. Well, if the two could have got together, the sheep and the cattlemen, they both would have made more money. But they hung the sheep herders.

Oh my. What's that deal then, that the cows, if they're working together on the parasites, should they be in there at the same time?

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's something that we've We're still thinking about how we can do that there yet. We're not there.

The sheep needs a shorter fence.

Well, here's the kicker. We ran our, we ran our, uh, 1,000-pound bulls on this this spring and they didn't jump it.

Yeah, and this was— what was this? This was only 10 inches tall. You've calculated.

And that's even with the guard dogs in there with them chasing them the first 5 minutes. Then bulls would not hop over that fence. So you could use the same sheep fence, okay, on really well-trained cattle. Ours are really well trained. I wouldn't go to the sale barn and buy some cows and expect that 10-inch wire to stop them.

So when are you going to put them together, your cows and sheep?

Uh, when we can figure out how to do the road moves.

Okay.

We have a lot of road moves, and we're going by people's farms that have, uh, pets barking at us.

Oh, okay.

And our guard dogs will kill every pet we between here and June.

Oh, okay, okay.

That's not the way to have happy neighbors is kill their pet. I would be upset.

Tell them, Greg, how we went down to one wire. We didn't always have one wire.

No, 2 years ago you had 2 wires.

Well, we had 3. We had 3. Starting out, the first one was actually a lot lower. It was right there. We had one here and we had one up here. So we went with 3 wires for about 3 or 4 months, and the ones that got out we ate. There would be one that would get out, we just eat him. Because if you go out there to get him, you don't know which one it is. It jumps back in the patty. It'll run back. And so we just go out and we would process him on the pasture with a rifle, and he made a good eating experience. They'll train every sheep in here to be a fence jumper.

They'll train them.

Not only will they be a punk and repeat, they'll train them in less than 7 days.

So that's why you do it so fast.

Quick, quick. Don't let it go on, because the next time you come out, there'll be 3 out. The next time, there'll be 27 out.

We learned the hard way.

Now I'm gonna ask this for a lot of people: killing them out there, are you setting an example? No, they don't know.

They don't recognize.

They—

yeah, I used to go on a sheep hunt. I used to go on a sheep hunt every month. That's the way we processed them. We had a locker plant that was not state inspected, and I could bring in 8 or 10 sheep that I dispatched out here on the field. And, uh, yeah, so they don't recognize death at all.

Yeah, that's what I found.

And we— that's when Greg was working in town and he got a call. We had 40 sheep up on F.

Okay, they were going to town, they were going down the blacktop. And I was at work. That's when I still worked in town.

It was because we didn't think—

oh, it was a big deal. It was awful.

What do you mean?

They left.

The sheep left. They got out.

They got out.

Okay.

I didn't—

and they were on F. F's a road. Yeah, people that don't know the road we came in. Yeah, that's about what, 5 miles from here?

No, it's just right up the hill. Oh, they were headed toward Harrisburg, and, um, they called me at work and said, Greg, you might want to get home. You got a whole flock of sheep heading to town. And I was by myself.

Were the guard dogs with them?

Uh, no.

Killing everything on its way?

No, the guard dog stayed with the good sheep. Not all of them got out. Okay, about a third of them.

Okay.

And so I ran by the house, and I, I don't even think I went by the house. I just had a 5-gallon bucket in my truck. I threw some rocks in it to make it sound like that in there, to make it sound like grain, and I started shaking that bucket. And that little pet ewe, she heard that, like, he's got me a treat. Yeah, I got you a treat. I had a treat for her, all right. And I shook that bucket and she followed me down that gravel road and brought the whole flock with her. And I walked her right into that crowd up there. I closed the gate behind them and I sold every one of them. That was it. Took care of it.

Hey, Jan, some say Greg Judy's no-nonsense kind of guy. Is that true?

That's true. That's true.

I've heard that more than once.

I'm gonna wonder when I'm gonna be shot.

You better keep those meals a-coming, Jeff.

Yeah. So if you don't pull your post up and you put your wire back in, it's really not that big of an issue. I mean, you just— and folks, normally we don't have to roll it up this far, but because we had everybody with us, I did. But they're ready to move. I mean, look at them, they're all out grazing. Your animals, when you move them, are actively grazing. They're hungry. Yeah, see that giant ragweed down there? They're going to go after that. That's going to be just nothing but stems by tomorrow.

And they weren't this actively grazing.

No, they're all just standing up there looking at it.

So it's really just— if somebody's not— a lot of these people, Greg, are not going to know Very little. So they just really need to just go out and just observe the animals.

Watch your animals. If your animals aren't grazing when you go into the paddock, either they're full or there's nothing to eat. And I can look at that, Justin, it's just been fouled. Yeah, I wanted to cover this. People say you can't grow soil with sheep because they're not a big animal, they can't trample. What do you mean they can't trample? Look at that. They just worked that paddock over and they were only on there for 24 hours. They're a small animal, but they do this and they walk, they walk a lot. Now this is really high quality where they're at right now. They're not having to walk very far to find a bite to eat, but they're gonna foul that. So an animal actually eats with 5 mouths. You got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So when animals walk on forage and they've got manure and urine on their hoof, and they're walking on the grass, they're not gonna eat that grass. And so you can look out across your paddock and it looks like you got a ton of grass out there. No, you don't. They've already fouled that. They need to be moved. And if you make them eat that grass that's been fouled, their animal performance is gonna go down. They might start ingesting a few parasites. And the lower you graze that down, the longer it's gonna take to grow back. So move them. I mean, this is just beautiful. Everything in here is recovered, and I can tell that by looking at the grass.

So what do you do in spring? And if you— oh yeah, because it's blade— it's, it's recovered its blade.

It's got a tip.

Yep.

If it looks like that when you come back, you came back too soon.

Did you?

It didn't grow back.

So in the spring, does that tip happen faster?

30 days or less, maybe 20 days. Bermuda grass, which we don't have, those guys say that stuff will come back in like, you know, 14 to 15 days.

Okay. So what would you do in that case?

Clip it.

Oh, okay. Okay. Without bringing the animals back.

Or get more animals. Or get more animals.

Okay. So it would not be a good idea to bring the animals back on it in 14 days?

No. This is our natural reseeding program right here. So we haven't put any— we haven't put down any clover seed now for about 15 years. But this is, uh, okay, this is red clover, and I just gave it a quick— there's probably twice that much more seed in there. That's the good seed, that's the hard seed. And see that the animals have trampled that on the ground.

Mm-hmm.

All those have got seed in them too. I just didn't mill it out of there.

You're just milling it for demo. Yeah.

Yeah. But, uh—

It's not like you come out here and mill it. They do that.

On a really big seed head, I've counted 60 seeds in one seed head.

Okay.

Why are we paying $3 a pound to keep our farms with clover in them? We got all this clover out here that we can let go to— there's another clump of it.

Okay.

They can go to natural reseeding, and it's— this is our seed for next year. And the animals trample that through the wintertime on the ground, it just comes screaming back the next year.

Okay.

But if you don't give your clover enough time to get a full seed head in the fall, you're not going to get any natural reseeding.

Okay.

But we've got it long enough. Look at it out there, bro. It's all those black spot. Those are all— that's all clover that's with the seed. So we got a lot of natural reseeding out here.

So in the spring, you don't do the move your animals over the whole farm in 2 weeks, or do you?

Well, we have 16 farms. We can't get around them in 2 weeks.

But that's okay, because maybe the parent— if somebody can, the parasites aren't as active.

If you go around the farm in 2 weeks, your grass better be screaming.

Okay.

All right, I would say it's going to be more like, uh, 25 to 30 days.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, oh, should we look at your mineral feeder? Is that significant part of the management?

Yeah, we can go up there and look at that.

So when we first got here and we didn't have it on tape, you were telling me a general rule of thumb grazing schedule. So in the spring, which here in Missouri, April May, you're moving them every third— they're, they're not coming back to this land for until 30 days?

That's right, that's right.

Is it the same size paddock every time?

No, no, no, no.

You adjust the—

we just decide the posts. Yeah.

Okay.

So in the springtime, Justin, we have to get the sheep over the land fast enough. We'll give them this whole paddock at once.

Oh, a huge paddock.

Huge paddock. We may only leave them here a day. Or a day and a half, and we're gone. We're just trying to take the tips off and move. Tip and skip, tip and skip.

And then do you clip behind them with a mower?

No, no, not on the first. We don't clip until June.

Okay.

The grass— see, we have the spring flush and it really takes off about May 10th to the 17th. If you go in there and clip real early, you're really going to set that plant back. I want my plants time to get down some roots. And when I say clip, you know, we're leaving— well, I wouldn't clip that. I see warm season, I go around them. I do not clip warm season grass. Um, that thing's got a root on it 8 foot long, and I want it to do this.

Okay.

I want it to go to seed.

You want more of these?

I want more of these, absolutely.

Okay, so you let the—

this gets preferential treatment. Okay. What about trees?

You miss some trees? Are you trying to have a silvopasture?

We, we have trees. I can show you some silvopasture we've been working on, and these guys are the tool for that. Okay, because we went in and cut out a lot of trees, and boy, I mean, the brush just took off. And I'm like, what am I going to do now? Well, I've got the tool right there.

Are they okay going from grass to then brush in a day?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, here's a little tree right here they've worked on.

So they can punctuate in their diet. It's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah. Is that a good tree?

Uh, no.

So it's okay there? Yeah, that's kind of like a chop tree. Okay.

Uh, the multiflora rose bush is having a hard time of it. It's got a few leaves.

Do you want this?

Well, I, I don't want them taking over the farm, and my landowners sure don't like them. So they just love the sheep from that aspect. Okay, if you've got something with a thorn on it, whether it's a thorn tree or a multifurrow bush, sheep are your ticket. They'll get that. Okay, okay.

So we talked about cows and sheep together. Is it better if you can't run cow— I, I could— I run sheep behind my cows and that's better than nothing?

That's what we're doing.

Oh, you are?

Yeah. Never, never run sheep in front of the cows.

Okay, why?

Because sheep do this, they walk a lot.

Yeah.

And you put cows in here, they are going to be so pissed off at you because everything here smells like a sheep. They're not going to eat it, they're going to walk around bawling their head off. And they're like— but see, sheep got a little bitty mouth, they can come behind cows no problem because all the weeds are left. The cows don't eat the weeds and the sheep do.

So the sheep eat more of what the cows cow won't eat.

That's right. That's why the two do this so well. They crop— they prop each other up.

And then the sheep's eating the cow parasite.

Yep. And the cow's eating the sheep. Even so, yes, they're both—

how so? Because if they're not coming back for 45 days, ideally you want the sheep right behind the cows, one day behind them. Yeah.

And we, we have that happen on this farm occasionally, but you know, we have a lot going on here. Um, I would like to have probably twice, maybe 3 times more sheep. And we're working that way. We kept a bunch of ewe lambs this year.

So were the cows in here then?

The cows are in that bottom, um, okay, about 10 days ago, 10 or 12 days ago.

And the sheep are about to go in there?

Yep, they'll be going in there next.

Yeah. How long has it rested, that bottom? Well, I guess it doesn't matter so much if you're following it with sheep.

Yeah, with sheep, the cows and the sheep— the sheep don't eat the same thing as cows.

Okay, so this is your mineral feeder?

Yeah, this, this is the new—

you doing the ABC Minerals?

Uh, this is Free Choice Enterprises, so there's 16 minerals in here. Each one's individual.

Okay.

And, uh, they can actually select exactly what they want. Now people freak out that we've got copper.

No, I know we've got controversial, Greg.

Well, we got copper over here.

And they can eat it if they want to. Look, it's— is that your copper?

It's gone.

No, no, this is— okay, okay.

Yeah, how did you—

yeah, I need to look.

Copper.

Is this burnt in? This? Yes, these. That's where I'm gonna have to buy it.

Oh, you bought this?

Yeah, we bought this mineral feed. Is this for cows or for sheep?

Yep, cows and sheep.

But the cows— this is designed for a cow. The sheep, it's not too heavy?

Yep, you got to get those— the thinner tarp.

Where did you get the tarp? Uh, from the support, which is like a rubber mat.

Yep.

And where— where, I guess, where'd you get this?

Free Choice Enterprises.

Free Choice Minerals.

We got all kinds of ads.

Yeah, Free Choice Minerals out of, uh, you're just Iowa, Minnesota, or Iowa, Wisconsin.

We don't do this, we'll get 1,000 calls.

Oh, I know you will. I will too. Yeah, I'm gonna have to link all this now.

It's conveyor belt. Is it? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, see all the flies?

Okay, yeah. So, okay, you're talking about copper because a lot of people tell you crazy for feeding the sheep copper.

Well, copper in cattle mineral will get you in trouble, or it can. Okay, it's in there at too high a level, and the sheep eat the cattle mineral, they're getting too much copper. But here it's by itself.

Yeah.

And so the sheep— that's enough. Some people don't like pepper on their eggs. My wife.

Okay.

And so if I put pepper on her eggs very much, she's going to know it. Well, the sheep, when they come by that copper, they just may touch their nose to it. There's people using copper to knock the worms out of sheep. Okay. They're actually using it as a dewormer.

Okay.

Now I don't know, I've never— I guess it may work, I don't know. But I know the sheep can eat copper if it's by itself. They're not going to read on it.

Okay.

That's the key. Is to have it separated, not all mixed together.

All right, so they can limit— if it's all mixed up, then they'll eat it.

If you— if your sheep, let's say they need phosphorus, and so they come into that full mineral, it's got phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, iron, selenium, iodine, all of it, all mixed together, and they're after phosphorus, they're going to overeat And they may eat too much manganese or whatever, and that manganese is going to tie up the phosphorus. So what the true mineral they really need, they don't get because they overate and got too much of another one that ties the other one up.

Yeah.

Now I use manganese. I— it's— that may not tie up phosphorus, but you get my drift. I understand. Yeah.

Are you— how anal are you about this? Are we going to drag this over today? No, behind them a couple I'll have the boys move it in the morning.

You can't pull this by hand. This thing weighs about 700 pounds.

Okay, but normally we would.

Yeah, normally it'd be pulled over there, but they're only going to be that mineral tonight, so they're fine. And the dogs won't have their feeder either.

Yeah.

And this is worth the cost, the 16 minerals?

Because we've been on since 2008, uh, our mineral consumption is down about 70%.

Okay, so it is true that the They're remineralizing the land. 80% goes out the butt, and they're picking up on what minerals are actually not in the grasses. Yep. And so they're eating more.

And when do you not start this program?

Don't start this program in the wintertime.

Why not?

Because there's no green grass, and they will— they will overeat. They'll eat it like grain.

They'll eat this.

Yes. Don't—

so just don't give them any minerals in the winter.

Well, once you start in the summertime, you keep it in the winter. But now, yeah, they're kind of used to it. They're not going to read on it because they're used to it. But just starting out, zero, day one, I would not put this out there in the middle of December. They're going to clean it out and it's going to cost you a lot of money. And the thing I found about the sheep mineral— well, heck, you got 5 sheep there. No. Yeah, you're, you're not going to go through much mineral.

I've got one for the cows, same thing, but I've got wheels on it.

Yep.

And I move it like a chickshaw.

Yep.

It works out nice. I saw it works good. You only have 6 head of cows.

Yep.

Yep. So I think what I'm asking you now is, it's good to see that a lamb can pick that up. I didn't know if the mat would be too heavy for a sheep. Yeah, that's real nice. Okay, thanks.

When you buy— if you buy the feeder from Vader, they sell those Just make sure that you want the thin top on. You're going to have sheep in it, and the cows can work it too. Yep. Just remember, the best medicine you can give a sheep is what you and I just moved into, is a fresh pasture. This has all been cleaned off. There hadn't been any sheep on here for 8 weeks. The sun has cleaned up the ground. There's no parasites in here. And so if a sheep is packing a few parasites And you put them on clean ground, they can shed those parasites. And if you move them, they're leaving the parasites behind them. They're not building up in the body of the sheep.

Yep. So in the spring, it's not coming back for 30 days. April, May-ish. June, July-ish, 45 days.

Yep.

August, September-ish, 60.

60. I'm a little bit scared of you giving all these numbers.

Yeah, I know.

And that's because it depends. Yeah, this year we had rain, last year we didn't. Um, we were up to 80 to 90 days last year on a rotation. So you've got to watch your forages. And people say, but Greg, if it doesn't grow back, what do you do? You sell some animals.

Okay. Or you could feed hay if you're—

or you could feed hay. That's going to be expensive. Or look at your neighbor, maybe he's got some land, or you can rent to put your animals on for a month or two. Give yours more time, but don't keep your head in the sand and say, let's go, it's gonna change. It's not. It hasn't rained, things are drying up, you got too many animals. And guess what's coming at you real hard and fast? Winter.

Yeah.

And if you're overstocked in the fall, going— you got a very expensive winter coming at you. You can feed hay all winter, and it's no fun feeding an animal every day hay. It's just no fun at all. This is fun and it's very profitable. Animals need to feed themselves.

Now this is fun even in the winter, even in the snow, when they can, when they can graze.

It's fun.

Yeah, look at this grass though. Yeah, it's half clover.

Yeah, and look out at there, it's just clover everywhere.

So how long has it been since they've been in here?

About 60 days.

And it's ready because it's bladed? Yep.

This is our lifetime lease farm, and when I got this farm, Jan and I got it in 1999, it was all broomsedge. Broomsedge, cedars, and moss. The side of that hill was solid moss. There was no grass on it. And I'm like, man, I'll never get grass on it. But I have. So a good grazing management where you're tramping the stuff on the ground Feeding the soil microbes, good rest periods in between your grazings, and then in the wintertime buying purchased hay and feeding it out on the land. This is what, this is what happens. I mean, there's a lot of money at our feet right here. I mean, there's a lot of gain out here. You can, you can put a lot of fat on animals with this type of grass, and that's what it's about. Stay focused on the grass. The buildings, The equipment, all this other hubbub, it's all just noise. This is, this is where the money's at. It's in the forage. It's— yeah, so I think people overcomplicate it.

Yes. We're actually at another farm now, Greg Judy's, or who we got here, Greg?

This is Alex Weber.

Okay.

Alex and Bobby run goats, and I'm gonna let Alex kind of talk about what they're doing here. Okay, um, yeah, go ahead, Alex.

Goats.

All right, yeah, so we're starting a little targeted grazing business. We're going to be bringing these goats to people's properties, okay, and performing this service. So we're basically— it's kind of an initial step in clearing brush. They can be pretty hard on this brush and eat a lot of the green stuff off of it, strip the bark, even in some cases kill the brush.

Wow, this right here looked just like that. Yeah. How long have they been in here?

Uh, this is a bigger portion. They've been in here probably 4 days now.

Okay. And how long will you keep them in there?

Uh, probably gonna move them tomorrow.

Okay.

Yeah. Cool. Have you got any jobs yet?

Um, we're working on it. We've talked to a bunch of people. We've gone and done a couple site visits and stuff, and we're still lining a few things up.

Yeah, we just—

we're just getting started. Started.

What's all that— what's in all the pans?

Um, we've been feeding a little bit of grain in the morning to friendly them up. We had a little leftover pig feed, and when that's gone, we're going to be done. We might give them a little molasses as a treat. Uh, but it was a bit of work to get them all— to get the group friendly and working with us and everything. And now they've gotten used to the daily moves, which they didn't really get before. They just kind of got turned out. Um, so now that they're used to us, they're— it's a lot easier to work with them.

Yeah. And you've mowed strips here so that you can actually get a fence in?

Yep.

Okay.

And my neighbor did— the guy who owns this place did that for me. There's a bunch of them in there. These things here I've just kind of had to cut with a chainsaw and a trimmer.

How are you keeping this fence hot enough for a goat? So much of it—

I've got a solar charger right there that I, I kind of rigged up. It's just the 3 Yes.

What?

I'm gonna shut it off so we don't get a shock.

It's hot.

It's real hot. Okay, so that's just, uh, you can either plug this into the wall or you can plug it into a battery.

So I've got an old toolbox, deep cycle battery, solar charge controller.

The panel runs through the charge controller into the battery, which keeps it from overcharging. Keeps it from overcharging the battery. But this charger is a little bigger than your typical solar charger that you buy prefab.

Okay, so this is a little more powerful. Yeah, it's a huge grounding rod.

Yeah, I just made my own ground rod.

And that's neat, that step on it so you can actually drive it in without a hammer.

Yep, if it's real hard you can use a post pounder on this.

Oh cool.

But it usually goes in pretty good.

That's cool. What inspired you to start this business?

Ah, we were just kind of looking for a new enterprise and just talking about it with my wife, and she was kind of excited about goats. And I don't know, it was easy for me to get excited about, and it's something that Greg's not doing here yet, so we feel like it's a pretty good fit.

Yeah, yeah.

Come on, goats!

Like it's gonna rain, we're not coming out.

Now, Greg, I heard a rumor that you once tried pigs with cows, but they were so smart they would nudge the cows to encourage them to manure so they could eat it. Is that a true or false story?

They rolled in it, they didn't eat it.

Oh, they use it as a wallow. That's a true story.

It's pretty dark in here, I don't know how well your camera can see, but if you look directly behind you, you see all the dense vegetation. Uh, this looked exactly like that over here.

Okay, before, after. Nice. In just a couple of days. Yeah, cool.

What's amazing, Justin, about these goats is they're actually eating eastern red cedar. Yeah, I've seen them eat as high as they can reach, and they're not only eating the bark off the cedar, they're going on the limbs and eating all the bark off the limbs. And the goats are in excellent condition. It's not like they're starving. Yeah, it's just that they crave it.

Is that good because you don't want that tree?

Yeah, it's an invasive. The cedar is real high in tannin, and so they're probably knocking out the worms in their gut. Look at that goat right there pulling the bark off of it. Yeah, they eat it like licorice. So you got cedar on your property, you can call Alex. They can take care of them without spraying. Yeah, a lot of people don't want spray, and I don't blame them. I don't want spray on my land either. This is a very environmentally friendly way to control invasive brush, poison ivy, whatever. Bring them in, they'll clean all that stuff up. Yep.

Oh my God, all of it clear? Well, yeah, that would take a long time.

The thing is, it'd be hard to get into the trees with the chainsaw.

Yeah, yeah.

For us.

Yeah, I mean, it takes me an hour to clear a path out to the road here. Yeah, and stacks up on the side.

And now what about following this with pigs to uproot grass seed?

Yeah, that would be a great idea. We've been doing pigs here for the last 3 years, and they do a really nice job of stirring up this litter and taking the roots out of some of the other things like poison ivy and stuff. They'll just pull it out by the roots.

Good point. Yeah.

This is thick enough too that they'd have shade in here. Yeah, in Missouri you got to have shade for pigs.

Okay, now shade for sheep— I never got to ask you, do you not give shade to sheep because they always have a tree?

Yeah, they usually have trees.

If somebody didn't have trees, zero trees, um, I don't know. I think it's 95.

They'd be more comfortable with shade.

Okay.

Yeah, they're gonna be happier, but they're gonna be happier. I don't know if they need it, but they'd be happy.

So this is the autumn olive that is invasive here.

Yeah.

And this is going to kill it, isn't it?

Yeah, well, they took all the bark off of it. A tree lives by bark. Look how high they went.

And they were in here?

Yeah.

Okay, awesome. Absolutely. Now, people want more you.

This—

I got some good news. He's launched a YouTube channel, 5 days a week too. Yeah, you don't just When he goes, he goes all out, doesn't he? Yeah, not just once a week, every day, every day, 5 days, as if you weren't busy enough, right? Yeah, check out his YouTube channel, wealth of information. I'm gonna check it out, I'm gonna subscribe. I didn't know about this, so I'm gonna be having to check it out.

Yeah, you need to hit that subscribe button.

Yeah, we'll go get you some. So this is what my folks love to do. How many subscribers do you have?

We started out in January, had about 20, we've got 4,200 now.

4,200. What's the name of the YouTube channel?

Greg Judy Regenerative Ranch.

Okay, I'm gonna link it. Let's get you to 6,000 or 7,000.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, sounds good.

If you guys are feeling real sussy, we'll get them up to 10,000.

All right, go show them some love. All right.