Regenerate Outcomes Feature: How to Maximise the Benefits of Outwintering Cattle, by Stuart Johnson
Stuart Johnson: fifth-generation farmer at West Wharmley Farm, Soil Farmer of the Year 2023, and Regenerate Outcomes mentor
Stuart will be sharing his advice and experience of outwintering cattle in Regenerate Outcomes’ next webinar on 19 March, from 7pm to 8.30pm. He will be joined by Pasture for Life Technical Director Nikki Yoxall and Regenerate Outcomes members who will also offer their tips and insights. You can sign up to the webinar here.
How to maximise the benefits of outwintering cattle
Outwintering cattle can have major benefits for farm finances, livestock health, time management and soil productivity.
However, as 2023 Soil Farmer of the Year Stuart Johnson writes, farmers must earn the right and employ the correct system to enjoy full value from the practice.
Stuart is one of the mentors for Regenerate Outcomes, which supports farmers to grow profits and improve crop and livestock performance by building healthy soil.
He and his family have been adopting regenerative practices on their beef, sheep and arable farm, near Hexham, for the last 12 years.
Their herd of predominantly Stabiliser cows graze in an adaptive multi-paddock grazing system. As wintering cattle is an annual challenge when running a profitable suckler enterprise, they have tried to reduce it as much as possible without impacting margins.
The Benefits of Outwintering Cattle
One of the most enticing benefits of outwintering cattle is clearly the cost saving, writes Stuart.
Overall, we find it is up to 75% per cent cheaper than keeping them inside due to the reduction in supplementary feed and straw and associated machinery costs.
Other benefits include:
- Time saving: Less time making and feeding silage, less time gathering and providing bedding, less time mucking out and spreading.
- Healthier livestock: Living in an open, natural environment promotes better health, with less chance of spreading infection within the herd. The cattle will also benefit from eating a more varied diet if they are grazed on a diverse sward, such as reductions in worm burdens, lower supplementary mineral requirement, and improved nutrient density of meat. They also tend to be better exercised with better mobility and so more likely to calve unassisted.
- More efficient use of potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus in muck: Manure coming out of the animal with the appropriate carbon nitrogen ratios, which can then be utilised by plants and soil biology, is a relationship that has evolved over millennia. There is no better combined form of available nutrition and biological organisms to drive soil productivity and function. Manure out of a shed and stored can still be nutritionally beneficial, but will have changed and evolved somewhat from the original product.
- Fuel saving: It always saves money to take animals to the feed rather than feed to the animals. Outwintering livestock graze plants where they are grown instead of farmers delivering food to them.
- Shed space: Outwintering cattle frees up space which can be used for other stock. Performance stock can continue to perform while low requirement animals (such as dry cows) can handle deferred outwintering.
- Benefits in an arable rotation: Grazing effectively over winter can build soil fertility and structure ahead of growing arable crops.
Earning the right to outwinter
Although outwintering can save money in the short term, these savings can be wiped out if the ground is damaged.
Anyone can outwinter feeding silage and sacrificing fields, the art is doing it in a way that doesn’t necessitate copious amounts of fodder making, along with all the time and costs associated with repairing and reseeding fields.
It is very hard – probably impossible – to go from taking cattle in from September to May to suddenly leaving them out all winter without creating negative compounding results.
Instead we need to build our soil structure (soil aggregation) so it can withstand gradually longer periods of grazing throughout the wet winter months.
Preparing the ground for outwintering essentially comes down to building soil aggregation: building up a soil that resembles chocolate cake or cottage cheese consistency. This can only be achieved with deep plant roots building aggregates at depth.
The best way to do this is to follow the essential principles of soil health encompassed in Understanding Ag’s 6-3-4 approach:
- Context: Considering your own goals, situation, environment and landscape
- Do not disturb: Minimising disturbance of the soil, for example, through ploughing or
applying chemicals - Armour: Keeping the soil covered at all times
- Encouraging a diversity of plants and other species
- Keeping living roots in the soil all year round
- Integrating livestock adaptively and appropriately to stimulate growth and life in the soil
By following these principles we will begin to build greater soil aggregation, encouraging more effective water cycling and therefore carrying capacity. This will be supported by a variety of fibrous roots in the ground alongside deeper penetrating roots.
Although aggregation is key, lignified plant biomass is also an essential piece of the puzzle. Mature plants that have become rigid and woody will provide much more effective armour for the soil during outwintering than young, green leaves and therefore much greater carrying capacity.
As all these factors increase we will then be able to experiment with leaving cattle out for longer and longer periods over the winter without causing any expensive and time consuming damage.
Stuart’s approach to outwintering
It pays to give the fields you will use for outwintering a long rest period before grazing them.
We will shut up fields in permanent pasture at the end of June into July, which gives the plants the chance to fully express themselves ahead of the autumn. This means they will develop seed heads and put some seed down naturally (which will assist recovery in the spring if we make errors) but also become fully lignified to help carry the cattle.
In November/December as the weather changes, we often move from grazing our legume and herb rich swards which tend to naturally have less basal cover, and go onto the deferred permanent pastures. This gives these more sensitive swards time to recover and means the permanent pasture has plenty of thatch, organic matter, biomass and aggregation.
During the winter I go and see the cows twice a day. Depending on the ground conditions I will move them once, twice or even three times if the conditions are really against us.
Even when I move them three times a day, it is still overall more efficient and cheaper than keeping them inside. As and when the weather settles we return to normal practices.
We bring the cows in around February for calving at the end of the month. Depending on how quickly they calve, some of them could be in for a few weeks, some up to a couple of months.
Herd Management
Just as it is important to manage the ground carefully, it is also vital to manage your herd to optimise their capacity to live outside by gradually increasing selection pressures and expectations.
For years farmers have selected cattle which are not the best at outwintering, so we can’t be surprised if some take to it better than others.
The key is to be quite ruthless about removing and culling those that are clearly finding it difficult, without over applying selection pressures leading to a lot of culls in a very short time frame. We need to earn the right with our genetics alongside farm soil health. Over time you will build herd resilience, with knock-on benefits for profitability.
Observe and adapt
Observation is a key skill when it comes to using regenerative practices to build soil health.
Whether it is your first time experimenting with outwintering or your 20th, take time to observe.
Ask yourself: If it is really wet do you need to move them more regularly? Are there particular animals which seem to be having difficulties? Is the land carrying them effectively? Is there anything you can do to stop particular areas of ground being damaged? What decisions can you make which will avoid creating problems further down the line which will cost you money?
It is important to have an adaptive mindset. Don’t be dogmatic about leaving them outside, especially when you are first starting out.
It may well be that it is the best decision overall to bring cattle in if the land is struggling to carry them – forcing it to happen without first building the system will ultimately lead to negative compounding effects and cost you in the long run.
Top Tips for Outwintering
Choose the right fields
It is an obvious but important point to use the driest areas on your farm for outwintering, especially when you first begin and perhaps haven't built up soil resilience. Take advantage of the natural advantages offered by the topography and environment.
Be honest with yourself about the state of the plants and the soil. It is important to choose fields which have well aggregated soils along with mature, lignified growth and good basal cover. Only all three together will increase winter carrying capacity.
Ensure the fields are securely fenced and have barriers which will withstand extreme weather. Stay away from water courses or use buffer strips to avoid pollution.
Ensure fields have the appropriate infrastructure set up for electric fencing and drinking water – not having this creates an awful lot of wasted time and effort (and always seems to affect the weekends when you have plans!).
Use shelter on rough days
If you have fields with natural shelter in the form of woodland or hedges it makes sense to make use of these on stormy days. Plan ahead and consider factors such as the prevailing wind direction on your farm . Often I skip paddocks next to these natural shelters and save them for when the weather goes against us.
Keep water close to the animals
Areas of ground will soon become a mess if the animals constantly trample back and forth over them to reach drinking water. Put the infrastructure in place to ensure this isn’t necessary so water travels with the animals to every new paddock. In our wet UK climate, I cannot over-emphasise the importance of this in helping reduce wasted time and money repairing the land at a later date.
Be selective when supplying extra feed
If you are having to provide supplementary feed to the animals when the ground and weather conditions are not appropriate then it is a good indicator you may need to bring them inside.
If they have not got enough forage then it is very difficult to maintain outwintering. If the weather is on our side (dry and frosty) then unwinding bales or bale grazing can be a great way to not only extend the grazing season, but also intensify manure distribution and biological stimulation, whilst also bringing in new seeds and extra carbon to the system.
However, be selective with these practices as they can create long-term damage if utilised inappropriately. Ensure you have built up the appropriate resilience in your system and understand how to make it work.
Get advice
Talk to other farmers who have been outwintering their cattle. Ask them for advice and tips. Go to their farms and see what they are doing. Sign up to farm walks, workshops and webinars.
Listen to other people; especially if they are locationally similar to you or if they have a lot of experience. Consider how to apply what they say to the context of your farm and farming goals.
Outwintering is a long-game
Earning the right to outwinter for longer and longer periods is a process which takes years and will see gradually increasing benefits.
However, trying to go too far too fast will undo many of the benefits you were hoping to enjoy.
Perhaps you will only gain a few extra weeks with the cattle outside to begin with. This is still a success (100 head saving even just £1 a day will go a long way to creating a profitable enterprise). If you are honest about bringing them in before they begin having a negative effect it will also work towards preparing the ground for next year.
It is easy to look at farmers who have been practising outwintering for a long time and want to get to the same point immediately. However, the truth is that many of these farmers have only earned this right to do this through years of careful observation and management.
Some farmers become disappointed because they try and force outwintering too quickly and see negative compounding effects (carrying capacity actually decreases, repair costs money and takes time). This does not mean outwintering is not possible on your farm, it just means a more measured approach is required.
By being honest, patient and observant it is possible for any farm to reap the advantages that outwintering has to offer.
Upcoming webinar on outwintering cattle
Stuart will be sharing his advice and experience of outwintering cattle in Regenerate Outcomes’ next webinar on 19 March, from 7pm to 8.30pm.
He will be joined by Pasture for Life Technical Director Nikki Yoxall and Regenerate Outcomes members who will also offer their tips and insights.
You can sign up to the webinar here.
Regenerate Outcomes provides mentoring from experienced regenerative farmers to grow profits and improve crop and livestock performance. The programme also baselines and measures changes in soil carbon to generate verified carbon credits which members can retain or sell for additional income.
Find out more at www.regenerateoutcomes.co.uk
