a long post on winter grazing

Grazing All Winter Long: the basics of saving and offering stockpiled forage

Some questions have reached us regarding stockpiled forage. What is it, how do we make it, how do we use it.

Stockpile is the forage in paddocks set aside in mid-summer for winter use. It's not just old grass – in fact, it's not old grass at all – at least in an ideal world – but forage allowed to grow, from some time in summer, such that when winter dormancy sets in, the stockpile is mature but not overmature. Stockpile is what you would get if you could grow perfect hay and then keep it standing in the pasture until use.

Of course, in fact, that's not always, or even mostly, what you get.

We all know this from making (or buying) hay. Under perfect conditions, hay is forage cut at the point of greatest nutritional value and dried, raked, baled, and stored without significant loss of either mass or palatability.

Under perfect conditions – hence, in fact, pretty much never. Real hay is cut when you think you have a weather window for it – three, four, five days of dry, sunny weather -- which in not always or even frequently at the exact moment of perfect maturity. Real hay sometimes gets rained on. Real hay shatters when it's raked, with a resulting loss of leaf mass. Real hay doesn't just love being baled, and sometimes gets its revenge by growing a little mold in its heart. Real hay is real forage, with all the rough stuff still there.

But real hay is also what your cows eat in the winter, and what they mostly do all right on. And real stockpile is like that – only it's better.

So, in our climate, where pastures are nearly or actually dormant for about five months of the year, here's how we plan stockpile.

First, imagine you can see into the future. Look forward in your mind to the date in the late fall when the last appreciable grass growth will come finally, imperceptibly, to a halt. Imagine pasture that has stopped growing at the exact moment of perfect maturity – most nutritious, most palatable.

And ask yourself: on what date in the past year did this grass start growing?

Coming up with anything?

Around here – east central Ohio, the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, the upper Ohio River Valley watershed – we picture this date as falling somewhere between early July and the middle of September. The big window allows, first of all, for the fact that we don't really know what the weather is going to do until it does it; and secondly, for the fact that our cows don't eat by seasons, but by bites, a minute at a time, and so our winter stockpile will be started not once, but every time we change paddocks -- for several weeks, or a couple of months.

Yes, weeks or months -- and that's the second part of making stockpile. The amount of time is a function of how much forage you'll need to get through the time you are hoping to cover – for us, that means all winter – and how much of your total pasture it will take to grow that much forage. (Actually, if you're really trying to get all the way through the winter, you'll need to stockpile more pasture even than what you think you'll need, allowing the extra for weather conditions that 1)deteriorate your stockpile, or 2) increase the amount of forage your animals need to eat.)

And of course you can only stockpile forage in parts of the farm that you can spare from the area of pasture necessary to feed your animals while you stockpile. That is, your farm has to let you reduce the area of your rotation to one part of the farm while you let the other part grow. On our farm, of even date, we stockpile about half of the pasture, starting in mid-July at the latest, and in perfect conditions that forage should let us get through to greenup. But we buy hay anyway, because you never know. In a normal year, the rest of the farm can be grazed once, and part of it twice, between July and the end of December, while the stockpile just grows, and waits.

So that's stockpile.

Where?

Where to stockpile is a function of several factors.

First of all, you don't want to stockpile the same part of the farm you stockpiled last year, or at least not the exact same part. The first year this isn't going to matter, of course.

Secondly, for us, we want to stockpile parts of the pasture that can make use, at least for part of the winter, of our most reliable, easiest-to-access frost-free water sources. For some folks this means frost-free spigots or waterers; for us, it means spring water. Okay, so springs and spigots don't move around, and we've just recommended rotating which pastures you stockpile. It's not a perfect world. Some of the pastures we stockpile don't change from year to year. We make up for our winter emphasis on these parts of the farm by varying as much as we can the order in which we graze these paddocks, and the part of the winter each is grazed. By avoiding repetition we try to vary levels of impact both in the way of compaction and in forage use.

Thirdly, you want to stockpile places where the forage lends itself to stockpile. Meaning what? Well, you want to stockpile areas that are most likely to make good growth during the time stockpile is growing – that is, late summer through late fall – and of a type that will stockpile well. What does that mean?

Think about what your fall weather is like, and what grows then. You're guessing, of course, but at least your guess will be based on what you have observed in years past, and every year will add something to your experience. Is it usually hot and dry? Will late summer bring cooler weather and some rainfall? What grows best under those conditions? Is it something that will mature before winter dormancy? and, when mature, will it stand up to winter weather conditions and keep its nutritonal value?

We'll use our own farm as an example.

Take the west front pasture, where there are some patches of sour, poor soil and thin forage. Improving this area is going to be the work of a good many years. In wet weather there is moss growing under the grass; in dry weather it gets thin and hot. It probably needs more lime. It just isn't going to grow enough forage in the late summer/early fall to make stockpile. If we were to omit it from the rotation earlier in the year it might, probably would, grow sufficient volume, but by December/January that forage would be overgrown, lignous, unpalatable, and poor nutrition. Not the place we want to stockpile, although it would probably benefit from some bale grazing in the winter to increase organic matter.

Or the back pasture to the northeast. We're still fighting a pretty good infestation of briars there, and while the grass is such as would grow well in late summer and make good stockpile, the briars would make a lot of growth, too. We'd lose a lot of utilization if the briars were so thick the cows couldn't reach the grass. If we graze it in July and then clip it hard, though, the low, young regrowth of briars won't deter the animals too much and we can stockpile. The winter grazing pressure will even set the briars back some, especially if we do a little judicious bale grazing on those spots. But if there's not time to clip in July, we're better off including that area in the late summer rotations, and using stock pressure to disadvantage the thorny stuff before a late fall clipping – hence, no stockpile.

Clover pasture is lovely in spring and fall, but mature, dry clover doesn't hold up well to winter weather conditions unless it's nestled into a good grass cover, which can keep the clover upright and protect it from heavy snow and wind. Unclipped summer pasture, with all the stems of biennial and perennial weeds like Queen Anne's lace, ironweed, and goldenrod, can make great stockpile. This is because those lignous stems are going to make a little forest for all the tender regrowth underneath; they'll hold the snow up, protect the forage from wind. But – since they are brittle and fragile – they are easily trampled and knocked over by grazing livestock, so they don't pose an obstacle to grazing.

Geography can be an issue, too; the steep hillside to the east of the convent makes fine grazing in summer, but if we put animals on it in winter chances are good they'd tear it up with their feet, and maybe injure themselves as well. The low spot in the San Damiano pasture needs to be grazed with care in a wet year, or it'll pug up.

Fourth, you'll want to stockpile areas that allow you to manage your livestock with regards exposure. If you anticipate there being occasions when you will want to offer shelter – be it woods' edge, run-in shed, or closed barn – then you want to stockpile somewhere in proximity to that shelter. Two hours before you're expecting an arctic blast to hit is not the best time to start thinking about out how you're going to move the livestock halfway across the farm – especially on a farm with few or no interior fences. Although it can be done! Just think it out ahead of time.

Also, if some of these animals are lactating dairy animals, you're going to have to stay within reasonable distance of the dairy barn.

How do I offer stockpile?

Stockpile is grazed just like any other grass – that is, paddock by paddock. Small area, short duration, long rest and recovery. Only in the winter there is little or no growth happening, so 'recovery' means something different, which is good because if your stock water is stationary (frost-free spigot or spring water) you're not going to be able to backfence as much but will have to leave a lane open back to water.

How big a paddock? Well, just as in summer, you want to outline an area of forage such that, when the grazing period is over for that paddock, you have cows whose nutritional needs have been met, and enough litter still on the ground to protect against erosion. You want the plants to retain their new growth tips, which are in different places on different species, but in general this means 'don't let them chew plants down until they look like stubbed-off toothbrushes'. People settle on different heights for acceptable residual, but of course it really depends on the species and the individual plant. Use your common sense.

How much area this is will, of course, vary from farm to farm, pasture to pasture, individual paddock to individual paddock.

On our farm, we find that the area generally allotted per animal doesn't change a whole lot from summer to early in the winter. This assumes that our stockpile is reasonably thick and robust. If it's not, it's not really stockpile, and we should probably be bale grazing. Later in the winter, when the forage has weathered down a good bit, or in really cold weather, or under snow, we'll probably have to offer larger paddocks to get the right nutrition/litter results. This, like so much of farming, is a day-to-day observation thing, and not something you can put on auto-pilot.

(But think about this – grazing stockpile means that the farm has a harvest all year 'round. And if the animals doing the grazing are lactating, and you're milking them, then you're eating directly from the farm twelve months of the year. If this isn't the stuff of which fairy tales are made, what is?)

Then there's the matter of where to start. Plan ahead for bad weather by leaving the areas proximate to shelter ungrazed until you need them. If you live somewhere where you get rough weather in the winter, you may want to graze your most exposed paddocks first. If you are planning to bale graze – as, maybe, when the weather has offered you snow with ice on top – figure out where you want to be doing this and graze those areas first. That way, later, you aren't putting your cows and bales on top of ungrazed – and now ungrazable – forage.

And once the temperatures are staying down around freezing, you'll have to stay near your frost-free water. Of course, since this is stationary, every subsequent paddock will have to have a lane back to water (unless there's plenty of snow cover and your cows are savvy enough to eat snow for their water). You can line-graze away from your water source, just moving the front line every day and not back-fencing – but you may want to close down this area, leaving only a lane behind them, just enough room to go back to water without jostling. You may also want to move that lane around periodically to spread out the impact of all that back-and-forthing; or you may determine that you'd rather deal with a ten-foot swath of bad pounding than a forty-foot swath of moderate pounding. As you get to know your forage, soil, animals, and weather, this calculation will be easier to make – maybe.

And of course this is going to mean some damage around your water troughs, too. If they are permanent (that is, stationary in all seasons) you can spread rock around them. Or maybe the ground freezes reliably for the whole winter, minimizing the damage of repeated animal traffic. If you can, give the animals a limited approach area – one side at a time – and vary this over the winter to shift the pressure. Nothing's perfect since the Fall, so don't over-stress about this, but pay attention, mitigate impact where you can, and remember next summer to keep an eye on places that saw winter damage. Be nice to them; give them a chance to recover. Bale grazing them last thing in the late winter can be a good way to put a bandage on any bare spots.

If you run out of stockpile, you can either put the animals on a sacrifice area or in the barn, and feed hay. We bale graze in the pasture, selecting spots where we want to add organic matter or stomp briars.

A Note About Spring Grazing

Save your last two weeks of stockpile, if you possibly can, though, for the first two weeks of spring grazing. These should always start, of course, somewhere where you still have some coarse brown forage left from last year, partly because this spot hasn't been grazed in a long time and so is about due for some impact, but largely because if the animals go onto a pasture of nothing but new spring growth they're going to get the squirts, and maybe magnesium deficiency as well.

Diarrhea means they won't be getting all the good they could be getting from the forage, because it's passing through them so quickly, and it means some other things about how their liver is getting overtaxed as well, so you don't want this to happen. Magnesium deficiency – grass staggers – can be fatal, so you don't want this, either.

Only, to prevent it happening, you either have to wait to turn them out on new grass until it's not new anymore – tiresome for you and the livestock, and also probably expensive, since this means they stay on hay for a month longer than otherwise – or you put them on a smallish paddock and then give them some hay to make up the difference. The idea is they'll eat the hay when they run out of grass – they're not going to eat it before that.

This tactic may sort of work as far as the animals' guts are concerned – firmer manure, better utilization of forage. But they'll graze that new green stuff right down to the ground, taking out the new growth points, thus setting back these paddocks so they shouldn't be grazed for a long time. Meanwhile, the bare spaces will fill up with something less palatable, like thistles.

So, what to do? Well, if you have an area that hasn't been grazed since last fall – something that grew decently, stood up to the winter weather, and is still vertical, with new growth coming in underneath – you can turn the animals out in this. In order to eat the sweet new stuff the animals will be forced to graze the old forage as well – every bite part green, part brown. Voilá – automatic forage balance.