Most site owners we talk to know what sheep do conceptually but have never seen a full season laid out. Here is the calendar we run against on a typical 80- to 150-acre Michigan array.
March — Pre-turnout
The flock is still off-site, but our work on the array has already started. Two passes of the perimeter fence look for storm damage, posts heaved by frost, and any cuts in the high-tensile lines. We walk the interior alleys for trash, broken bottles, and anything that does not belong inside a paddock with a curious sheep.
Soil temperature is the trigger we watch — once the top six inches sit above 50°F for a week, cool-season grasses break dormancy and we can start scheduling turnout.
April — Turnout
Flock arrives in two truckloads, typically the second or third week of April depending on the year. We start at low density — about 3 sheep per acre — on the first paddock, partly to ease the animals onto new forage, partly because grass growth is uneven and we want to spread impact.
This is also the month where the most things break. New fence chargers fail, water lines clog, and we discover whatever the EPC left behind in the grass. Plan for it.
May–June — Peak growth
The grass is growing faster than the sheep can eat it. We move paddocks every 3 to 5 days to stay ahead of growth, and we measure forage height twice a week. The risk in this window is not under-grazing — it is letting one paddock get away from us and having to clip it mechanically. We try not to.
July — Heat and rotation discipline
Growth slows, the sheep slow down, and shade matters more than it did a month ago. We pull water lines to follow the flock and add salt blocks at the new corner of every paddock so the animals spread out instead of clustering.
On clear-day sites without much panel shade, this is the month we are most likely to push a paddock for 6 or 7 days instead of 4.
August — Lambing prep on year-round operations
For flocks lambing in the fall (we run a split program on some contracts), August is when ewes get separated and moved to dedicated paddocks closer to the truck access road. On a spring-lambing flock, August is just continued rotation.
September — Cool weather, second flush
Cool nights and intermittent rain bring a second flush of growth. The sheep eat more per head than they did in July. We tighten the rotation again to 3 to 4 days and start watching for the first frost — it does not kill grazing, but it changes the protein content of the forage and the flock's preferences shift.
October — Pulling back
We start reducing stocking density in the third week of October. Paddocks closer to the access road get grazed first so the trailers do not have to drive far in mud later.
November — Pull-off
The flock leaves the site in two truckloads, the same way it came. We do a final fence walk for damage, document any panel issues we noticed during the season, and hand a closeout report to the asset manager — including total head-days, forage height logs, and any incidents.
Then the fence chargers come off, and the site goes quiet until March.