Livestock Bedding and Shelter
for your Winter Pasture Rotation
Image Credit: Vladislav Nikitin
Although livestock bedding and shelter are extremely important when managing a conventional winter feed program that requires cattle to be kept in confined areas, neither traditional cattle bedding or shelter are necessary when cattle are grazing in a winter rotational grazing program that uses a daily pasture rotation.
Your pastures can provide all the bedding and cattle shelter that your cattle will need during your winter grazing program as long as you pre-plan the flow of your winter pasture rotation to make use of natural bedding and shelter available on your farm to overcome the weather challenges that your cattle will face during the winter grazing season.
A daily winter pasture rotation allows you to avoid all of the high costs normally associated with cattle bedding and shelter. In fact, in a winter rotational grazing program, traditional livestock bedding is actually a health liability, not an asset, as you will learn in this article.
Why conventional winter feed programs provide expensive bedding and shelter...
- In most conventional cattle farming programs, cattle are typically kept in confinement feed areas during the winter feed season. Livestock bedding, such as straw or sawdust piles, is necessary to provide cattle with a dry place to sleep away from mud and manure. Fresh livestock bedding needs to be continually added to combat the increased disease pressures that arise when cattle are congregated together on bedding sites.
- Furthermore, on most conventional cattle ranches calves are usually born inside these winter feed pens, long before the growing season has begun. In this scenario livestock bedding is absolutely essential to keep udders clean so calves don't ingest all sorts of bacteria when they suckle on their mother's teats. Lactating cows also need a warm, dry bed to keep their udders from getting infected or frost-bitten. And so the hidden costs of conventional cattle farming begin to mount...(Click here to read about the grass-fed solution to reducing winter cattle feeding costs.)
- Cattle shelter, ranging from artificial windbreaks to cattle sheds and full-scale barns, are another necessary expense in most conventional cattle farming programs to give cattle a place to shelter away from the wind in otherwise exposed confinement pens and to give newborn calves a fighting chance to stay warm. In the typical cattle farming scenario that does not use grass-fed production strategies, calves are scheduled to be born outside of the ideal natural calving season. Calves are not born with a winter coat, so expensive livestock bedding and shelter have to make up the difference when calving seasons don't mesh with nature's most ideal calving schedule. Follow the link to learn more about how to choose the best date for your calving season.
Why grass-fed beef producers don't need conventional livestock bedding and cattle shelter to keep their cattle warm and dry during their winter pasture rotation...
- A winter rotational grazing program using a daily pasture rotation allows your cattle to bed down in a fresh slice of pasture every day, away from the mud and manure so typical of confinement pens.
- Planning your winter grazing rotation on a map, ahead of time, allows you to set aside naturally-sheltered areas, like heavy timber, for your cattle to seek cover during the worst of the cold winter weather.
- And calving on pasture during the growing season alleviates the health and nutritional issues that force conventional beef producers to confine their cattle to feed areas during the winter, where they have to provide expensive livestock bedding and cattle shelter to keep their cattle warm and dry. Follow the link to learn more about the benefits of calving on pasture during the growing season.
The grass-fed solution to cattle bedding and shelter
Cattle that participate in a winter rotational grazing program must be calved out on pasture after the growing season has begun, timed to give the cows time to fatten up on grass before they calve. I discuss this further in the article about raising beef cattle on grass and at length in my book, Grass-fed Cattle: how to produce and market natural beef.
Since your grass-fed production plan should not allow you to calve outside of the growing season, the issues about calves and dirty udders automatically do not apply. With calves born on lush green pasture, udders are automatically kept clean. Dirty udders are a problem in winter feed pens and in the muddy spring, not on lush, green, growing pastures.
Bedding and shelter during a daily winter pasture rotation:
* Breed selection for winter grazing
Snow or bare ground is perfectly good livestock bedding and will keep your cattle warm and dry during your winter pasture rotation as long as your cattle breed(s) are suited to your climate.
While Angus, Simmental, Hereford, Charolais and other British and Continental Breeds are perfectly adapted to staying warm in cold climates, tropical breeds like Zebu, Nelore, or the Sanga cattle breeds are not. Their bodies are designed to expel heat, not retain heat. Follow the link to learn more about choosing the right beef cattle breeds for your winter pasture rotation.
Daily pasture slices provide your cattle with fresh clean winter pasture to sleep in every day. As long as your cattle have access to fresh pasture every day and are restricted by a back fence from returning to favourite bedding areas to ruminate and sleep, they will always have fresh pasture to bed down in to ruminate and sleep.
Daily pasture moves mean that your are always on 'clean' ground or on clean snow (which has extremely high insulation qualities) and are not exposed to wet mud, ice build-up (which has zero insulating qualities), and manure concentrations, which are typical in conventional winter feed areas.
Like all other wild animals, as long as you pick beef cattle breeds that are suited to your environment*, your cattle will be perfectly adapted to sleeping in snowy winter pastures as long as:
- they can find a place to sleep away from mud or soggy ground (snow is fine - their hair coat is designed to keep them warm and dry even when the outside of their hair coat is pressed against a bed of snow),
- they have clean ground that is not littered with heavy concentrations of manure, such as in a feed area,
- their pasture quality or feed source provides enough energy to let them regulate their body temperature and generate their own heat,
- and they are not calving or heavily lactating during a winter pasture rotation (calving during the growing season prevents this).
You should work with a nutritionist (see below) to monitor that your cattle are receiving sufficient calories from their pastures and supplements to stay warm. During extremely cold periods you can simply mix a few extra energy-rich supplements into their mineral feeder to help them through the cold snap.
Tips to keep cattle warm and dry without artificial livestock bedding or cattle shelter during a winter pasture rotation
Extra feed
Use a livestock nutritionist to calculate your cattle's nutrition requirements throughout the winter based on the forage analyses that you take of your pasture grasses each month. Your nutritionist's calculations will reveal when your pastures have sufficient protein and energy for grazing and when you need to add a few extra nutrition supplements to their mineral mix to make up for any shortfalls in the pasture quality.
As long as your pastures were good quality at the end of the growing season (high in protein and energy), it usually only takes a very minimal amount of feed supplements added to the mineral mix to make up for minor shortfalls during the winter rotational grazing season.
Staying dry is key to staying warm.
As long as the cattle are able to stay dry (i.e. not bed down in mud or manure) they will stay warm. Their hair coat is well adapted to shedding rain water. And their winter hair and the thick fat layer on their back provides so much insulation that it is not uncommon to see snow pile up on cows' backs without melting. The snow only adds an additional layer of insulation against the elements!...
But if cattle have to bed down in standing water or water-logged pastures, then their hair is pressed tight against their body and the the moisture is able to soak all the way to their skin, chilling them. Rain or wet snow is not a problem if your cattle are matched to your climate. But if your cattle have to bed down in soggy pastures or standing water, then they will not be able to stay warm.
Consequently, your winter grazing plan should save soggy pastures or pastures prone to flooding for the middle of winter when the ground is frozen. Or, plan to provide your cattle with access to some high ground to bed down on if you must graze water-logged pastures during your winter rotational grazing program.
Cattle Health
Bedding down in each day's fresh pasture slice will keep your cattle healthiest because the cattle are not concentrated together and exposed to disease-carrying manure concentrations.
Providing livestock bedding or artificial cattle shelters encourages the cattle to congregate together, which increases the risk that the cattle will lay down on manure. The acidity in manure is hard on the skin. Caked-on manure is wet and destroys the insulating qualities of your cattle's hair coats. Hair coated by manure exposes the cattle to disease pathogens when they groom themselves by licking themselves or one another. And manure caked onto udders exposes calves to dangerous bacteria when they drink.
In short, congregating cattle together dramatically increases the risk of diseases in your cattle herd. Livestock bedding is unavoidable in confinement feed areas because there is no-where else to bed down, but it is very expensive and labor-intensive to provide sufficient bedding and continually keep it fresh in order to manage the increased risk of disease transmission that results from cattle congregating on livestock bedding sites.
In a well-managed winter grazing program, livestock bedding simply isn't needed. Winter grazing (combined with a calving season scheduled during the growing season) allows you to eliminate the high costs of buying or growing bedding, transporting it, and refreshing it daily. And your winter pasture rotation allows you to avoid all the disease risks associated with creating livestock bedding sites that entice cattle to congregate together on bedding sites where they continually risk laying in disease-transmitting manure.
Cattle are healthier on pasture as long as the pasture is sufficiently nutrient-rich to provide for all their nutritional needs. As every conventional beef producer knows, the disease pressures start every fall the moment that their cattle are brought in from pasture and confined into their winter feed pens. That's the moment that farmers prepare for and stock up their veterinary supplies.
You can completely sidestep all the health risks associated with confined winter feed areas and congregating cattle on livestock bedding sites when you keep your cattle out in a daily winter pasture rotation. That means calving during the growing season, preparing your pastures for intensive grazing during the winter, and learning how to continue your intensive grazing program during the winter months even when the pastures are covered in snow.
Cattle shelter - reducing the chill.
Grazing during the winter does mean you need to plan ahead to provide some form of natural cattle shelter during periods of extreme cold. This doesn't mean you need to house your cattle in a barn or build cattle sheds for them. They just need some kind of wind break to avoid the wind chill and an area to bed down in that has sufficient vegetation and/or snow cover to provide just a little more insulation and protection from the elements until the cold snap breaks.
Save some treed areas for the cattle to graze during extremely cold snaps or when there is a high wind chill. Simply having access to timber when the weather gets really cold will remove the wind chill, which raises temperatures sufficiently to keep the cattle from getting chilled.
If you've ever been outside during high winds at 20 below, you know how much of a difference simply stepping into the cover of timber makes. After being exposed to the winds it will feel almost pleasant to bed down with a dozen or more cattle beside you inside the shelter of the trees. So designate a few sheltered grazing areas in your winter grazing plan specifically for periods of extreme cold or high wind chill.
Use a livestock nutritionist to monitor pasture quality and design your winter mineral and nutrient supplement program:
In order to ensure that your cattle are receiving sufficient protein and energy to stay warm during their winter pasture rotation, you need to implement a monthly forage sampling program that analyzes the feed quality of your pastures.
Your livestock nutritionist will use these forage analyses to calculate if your cattle are receiving sufficient calories from the pastures to stay warm and keep their body condition (body fat reserves) within safe limits. The nutritionist will also calculate a feed supplement mix to make up for minor shortfalls in the pasture quality, which can be mixed free-choice into the mineral mix in your mineral feeders, allowing you to continue grazing longer in the season even as the grass quality deteriorates. (The salt content in the mineral mix keeps the cattle from gorging on the supplements).
And your nutritionist will be able to calculate when your pasture quality deteriorates too far to provide your cattle with sufficient calories to keep grazing without risk to their health. Working with a nutritionist takes the guess work out of your winter grazing program.
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