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sheep fence in an olive orchard

 
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Hello all,
finally I join this community from which I got advice many times before, thank you for that.
now I live in a homesteading farm in an island of Greece and as expected the land was an olive orchard, which i m trying to permaculturize a bit removing some rows of trees and planting other production trees and at the same time include animals in the orchard. There s very little out there about how to do holistic management in orchards with old, big trees !
so i m writing to you to ask for an advice on fencing between trees ! the idea would be that sheep eat the grass, brambles and even young shouts from the roots of the olive trees and at the same time fertilise the place. It is a 7 hectare land with around 1500 trees in rows of 30 trees approx.
https://oldwatermill.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/design1.png
so after reading a bit i m thinking that 5 lines of high tensile wire would serve to hold in the beast of a ram that we have, but i m not so sure what to use as poles (put wooden ones in the ground, maybe make bases from tires and cement...) and how to lay them out in the orchard... not sure how to go about making something practical and with not such an overhead to rotate their grazing and at the same time not to disturb the orchard works (harvest, pruning, irrigation).
Please if you ve seen a similar scenario or even better you tried something like that in the past, give me some hints !
all the best and many thanks
 
pollinator
Posts: 5366
Location: Bendigo , Australia
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FromMixing sheep and Olive trees
I found this comment
"Grazing the grove
Sheep are an integral part of Eagle Vale's olive operation. They run 200-300 merinos, sometimes buying in fat lambs during winter to sell into the spring market.
The sheep graze the grass between the rows of olive trees, reducing the fire risk and controlling the weeds.
When the pasture becomes too short the sheep begin to eat the bark and the olives on the trees.
At this point the sheep are removed from the grove. Some will be sold while others are relocated to new pasture.
The feed situation determines what number they carry from year to year. They also grow some oaten hay used for supplementary feeding during Autumn."
 
John C Daley
pollinator
Posts: 5366
Location: Bendigo , Australia
485
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Some more information
Teaching sheep to not eat olive


Forage management
Direct browsing
Browsing of olive forage is used in integrated systems combining livestock and olive oil production.
The trees are browsed after olive harvest, and only during winter and spring. Ruminants (mainly sheep) are allowed to enter the olive tree fields and browse freely.

In traditional "Iberico" pig production, pigs enter the olive fields but only graze the understorey grass
and eat the fallen fruits without browsing olive forage (Gomez Cabrera, 2010, personal communication).

foraging
 
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