Winter is the trickiest time to keep animals fed, but Logsdon offers enough suggestions to fuel years of experimentation.  First, there are the basics --- stockpile grasses for ruminants so they can eat in the fields, spreading their manure as they go.  But if you want fresh winter food for your animals to harvest on the hoof, there are other options as well.

Although fescue is not one of the most palatable grasses, Logsdon (and his buddy Bob Evans, of restaurant fame) consider this grass the key to year-round grazing since it will grow a bit even in the winter.  This photo shows a clump of fescue in my garden, amid our usual bluegrass --- you can tell that the fescue got a jump start on spring and is already too tough for a chicken to nibble on.  To manage a fescue pasture, Logsdon suggests keeping it short and tender with frequent cutting in the spring, and being careful of the endophytes that can make certain animals sick.  He lets fescue and bluegrass grow together, mowing closer if he wants to encourage the bluegrass and higher if he wants the fescue to spread.

Winter grains can provide lots of winter forage as long as you don't mind cultivating the ground and replanting every  year.  Logsdon mentions a recent study in Ohio where oats were planted in August and then strip grazed by cattle from November through March (with a few weeks break in February when ice was too thick for the cows to break through).  Tender young oat leaves contain 20% protein, and our chickens were willing to nibble on them once other greenery died back last winter.  Other winter grains have varying levels of palatability and winter hardiness, but you might try wheat, barley, and rye as well.

Roots like turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, mangels, and sugar beets fill the niche of corn (providing lots of carbohydrates), but are generally more expensive to grow.  The positive side of roots is that you can sometimes plan them so that the animals harvest the roots right out of the field.  Turnips and rutabagas are best for winter harvesting since the roots stick out of the ground some, while hogs will harvest sweet potatoes earlier in the year.

However, roots do have their problems as winter forage for livestock.  They're all very watery, so animals have to eat a lot to get the same amount of energy they'd get from grains --- it takes four bushels of sweet potatoes to equal the nutritional value of one bushel of corn, and other roots are even worse.  Roots also tend to cause diarrhea in some animals if fed fresh in the field, and all but mangels and sugar beets change the flavor of milk.  Bob Evans feeds his livestock 75% turnips and 25% stockpiled grass to work around some of the issues with roots.

The final option for non-grain winter feed is leafy greens.  Crucifers like kale, rape, kohlrabi, and cabbage are all eaten happily by sheep, while chickens love Swiss chard.  Our chickens seemed to prefer the mustard greens we sowed along with oats in our experimental winter pasture over the grain.  And although Austrian winter peas have a big following, our flock turned up their noses at the overwintering legumes.

Are there winter pasture options you use that I didn't mention here?  I hope you'll leave a comment and share your wisdom.

This post is part of our All Flesh is Grass lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: All Flesh is Grass Permanent pasture fences Plants for spring and fall grazing Summer pastures Winter pasture options

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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