winter grazing -- sheep

There is still a good deal of mixed forage in the home pasture, where our herd of Katahdins mostly graze.  Snow is no obstacle to grazing, and sheep, with their thick wool coats, aren't bothered by even the coldest temperatures.  The sheep will stay in the pasture, being moved to fresh paddocks daily just as in the warm weather growing season, until they run out of forage.  The big difference in winter fencing:  no back fence, so the animals can get back to the barn spring for water.  Actually, when there is snow on the ground very little water is drunk anyway, since grazing includes eating lots of snow.  But the reason the back fence can be dispensed with for the winter, is that when there is no significant regrowth, there is no danger of the forbidden 'second bite' (grazing newly sprouted regrowth).  Granted, with the animals having more or less free acess to a large area, manure will be less evenly distributed, but not so much as to be a problem.