> The conundrum that has me baffled lately is how we can ever get out from
under the expense of wintering the cattle (beef), so that we might take
> advantage of the grazing season. We've reduced our cow number (to a
measly
> 6) thinking that we should stay very small until we seem to have a system
that works. I'm just not seeing how this can work though. Our winter
set-up > is not at all what I would like, but the expense of building a
barn, and furnishing it with bedding, seems absolutely crazy.
> Our own land isn't being used yet, and I've offers of other land to use.
> But how can I possibly keep all those animals through winter?
> I heard Greg Judy recently, advocating for no-hay whatsoever, and planning
for grazing 365 days/year. Could it work here in Vermont? (Perhaps in a
> year when we don't have so much freezing rain?) I keep thinking about
getting cows out to where they can winter in the trees, but there's still
the
> feeding question (not to mention water out there).
> Perhaps smaller cows would help. If the cows are significantly smaller,
is there significantly less mud? (Shorter time to finishing might lessen
the
> winter feed costs by reducing head count for winter.)
You need to graze as long as you possibly can. Where Judy is from in MO. I
think he stated there's a week where he can't graze, I would guess do to
ice. That's not going to happen in the near term in Vermont, nor Wisconsin.
Snow is inevitable the question is when and how much. Our cows will readily
graze through about 8-10" of snow, depending on the type of snow, I'm told
they'll go through deeper snow if the forage is there, but I've been a
chicken about pushing that hard. The key to Judy and here is that you have
to have adequate forage available to graze, and it can stand up to certain
degree under some snow.
You need to have enough acres to drop them out of the rotation and allow
then to grow and develop a stockpile for fall/winter. In this corner of the
world were talking about starting a stockpile sometime around the mid August
time frame, this allows 45-60 days regrowth period. There's also a species
factor, our bluegrass tends to lay flat under heavy snow. Our best forage
to stockpiling under snow or into winter is tall fescue, perhaps meadow
fescue would stockpile well also, but don't have enough experience with
that. If your calving in late spring to early summer and your cows enter
winter in average condition score, they can lose some weight and put that
back on when new grass arrives.
If you look at really tall species, corn can stand up in deeper snow and be
available for dry beef cows, it might take a little protein supplementing,
but still would be cheaper than full hay ration. In the brassica's there's
giant stem kale and rape both of which can get 3-4' tall and could be
available to winter grazing.
Cattle might need some shelter from the wind, but otherwise I don't think a
barn and bedding is necessary. Ours have never been inside a barn and we
bottomed out a -19 one morning. When it gets well below 0 F, feed
consumption increases about 25% as they consume more to generate heat. So
you need to be prepared for that. You can pre-position round bales in fall
and move the feeders as they are consumed, if the cattle will respect
electric in winter. Cattle will walk to water once a day in winter or every
other day, and can and will consume a bit of snow for water as well.
While Judy is right in concept, that we need to plan to graze 365 in his
region, but you and I need to temper that with what our region throws at us
most winters. On average how many days is the snow depth deep enough to
prevent grazing?
Gene Schriefer
Shepherd
Dodgeville, Wisconsin USA
Commercial Texel-x and Charollais-x Sheep
Red Poll Cattle
