This week I have been able to finalise the set up of my grazing experiment. Earlier this summer I was able to install the grazing exclosures, collect baseline data and welcome the sheep but the grassland plots were only marked temporarily. Sheep are surprisingly curious creatures and when something new appears in the field they will investigate it. Mostly this involves chewing and trampling so any plots markers need to be sheep proof. On the rock this was easy as we used the spray pain used in the quarry. Marks will need renewing a couple of times a year but this is a simple process. In the grassland this is less easy, especially as the soils are too shallow for the wooden stakes we would usually use. To get around this I am using metal plates which I have buried a couple of centimetres below the soil surface. These steel plates are quite substantial and so will easily be found again using a metal detector. However they are also safe from the curious attentions of the sheep and avoid having a trip hazard on the hillside. At the time the plots were installed it was very dry and burying markers might have led to dead patches of vegetation, now it is wetter the vegetation will rapidly recover from the small incisions I made to insert the plates.

Being up on the site I was really pleased to see that even though the sheep have only been in the field for two weeks so far I can already see a visible difference between the plots – exciting times!

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