I am planting 275 apple trees this spring. They will be planted mostly in my Icelandic sheep pastures. I revel in the idea of double use of the land. The challenge is that the Icelandic sheep are browsers somewhat like a goat but they do not climb like a goat. I have never seen the Icelandic sheep with it's front feet off the ground, so they only browse to a level of about 3-4 feet high. I know from experience that they love to debark young apple trees. I need ideas on how to protect them economically and practically. I have had about a million different ideas on this subject. The best so far that I have come up with is to use welded wire about 4 feet tall form it into a tight hoop about 1 foot in diameter, put it over the tree and wire the hoop securely to a metal T-post driven well into the earth. Any branches that grow out to low will be eaten by the sheep or cut off by me, thus the tree will start to limb out at about 4 feet. This system will cost about $3 per tree!!! Any better ideas?

-- Cal (calvin@dwave.net), February 01, 2002

Answers

I'm not sure how aggressive sheep are, but if you are buying new, a roll (or several) of woven wire cut up & 2 portable electric fence posts per tree might be cheaper - not as strong tho, don't know what you need. Will the trees still need protection when grown in 10 years?

Farm auctions - T-posts go < $1 each, save some money. In my area the cattle/hog panels go for new price at auctions tho, never understood why...

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), February 01, 2002.

I'm not sure how big these trees are you are planting, but check with your local Soil & Water Conservation Agency. Its part of the USDA. They have a plastic tube like apparatus that they use with new hardwood seedlings to keep the deer from eating them till they are a few years old. Its like a spiral wrap. I have seen it in use quite a bit this past year. Contact me if you can't get info locally and I will try to get more info at our local office. Another method we have used on older trees is to paint on a slurry of fresh manure and water. I supposed a manure tea could be sprayed on with a backpack orchard sprayer as well. It does need to be reapplied periodically, but should imprint to the sheep early on that the trees are not appetizing. Hope this helps.

-- Kate henderson (kate@sheepyvalley.com), February 01, 2002.

I've heard of dual use of land, on similar orchards, but that was using ducks to eat the weeds around the tree and then selling off the fattened up ducks.

-- BC (desertdweller44@yahoo.com), February 01, 2002.

I don't have any good ideas for you, all I can tell you is that my sheep will eat anything they can get to once the snow hits the ground. I put farm fence, 3' in diameter around trees with 3 long stakes holding in place and they just push their heads in and rub on the wire until they can get to the tree. I don't have any hope for the young trees in thier pasture. A woman I know who raises sheep for wool as a business had to move, literally leave her farm, because neighbors moved in an landscaped (big money). Apparantly the landscaping was so attractive her sheep plowed the fence down and spent a whole afternoon eating his $$$$$$ landscaping.

-- Jenn in MI (jhammer@systime.com), February 02, 2002.

Thats a lot of apples, Cal. I was thinking of some methods but for 275 trees the price is to put it bluntly-prohibitive. You might want to check out local sources of shipping pallets. Sometimes you can find a constant free source of them. With these you could slap together an enclosure around the trees individually. of course you'd have to take care of the suckers coming out of your rootstocks some other way, but you didn't expect this orchard thing to have no weeding did you? Why not try chickens, or ducks; they are so much more orchard friendly. You could hire a coyote to piss on the trees; sheep don't like coyote piss. In short: I don't know; if that wasn't obvious.

-- roberto pokachin in B.C. (pokachinni@yahoo.com), February 07, 2002.

Well, I love the sheep perhaps even more than the apple trees so I think I will try the coyote piss. Thanks Roberto.

-- Cal (calvin@dwave.net), February 07, 2002.