In winter rotational grazing is much more difficult. This is because, the principles don’t always apply as nicely as they do in summer. In summer rest and rotation is great because the rest means the sward recovers. By the time you’ve eaten down paddock three, paddock one has grown again nicely. And all the soil life has been restored, especially if you threw on some muck and/ or kicked poos or harrowed the fields to feed the soil biome once they came off each one.
In winter, however, once you’ve eaten down your three or four paddocks that’s pretty much it, until new growth in the spring.
It’s a bugger! You’ve got nothing to rotate onto without everything getting wrecked if nothings grown back!
So, there is a solution.
In winter on top of your rotational grazing, it’s always best to have one paddock you have in your mind as a sacrifice paddock which you know you will have to repair at end of spring. Keep the paddock small so you have less to repair, it’s cheaper that way. Logistically I would pick whichever one is closest to the yard, (if you have a yard that is like a spider body and the legs coming off are each of your paddocks, as in the picture above, then you’re laughing because every paddock is close. Doesn’t always work like that though and peoples set ups differ), or pick an existing very poor paddock to sacrifice. But also combine it with some hard standing, so even that sacrificed one doesn’t get too churned too early in winter, because if it does you will be tempted to use your rotated paddocks, which you know, need protecting.
This year, for instance, I am choosing quite a poor paddock that’s a bit overrun with weeds, clover, dandelion and compaction as my sacrifice paddock. Its small and I intend to not worry too much if it looks poor. This is because I have a plan to mulch in spring to repair once neds are off. (Doing this, I will be creating soil with hay, poo and seeds. The rest in spring will help grow the soil biome and develop a permaculture there for a healthy sward). It will then be regularly mowed, ready to use in summer.
During the winter,I find it easier for all hay to be fed in a loafing area they can take themselves off to in order to further reduce compaction and churning. All waste can be thrown on resting fields or composted.
The other thing is to be aware that when you put horses on your beautiful rotated fields in the wet, this creates compaction. So .... we need to create some hard standing to protect any waterlogged land, we also must not churn those rotated paddocks either. I use my entire stable yard in wet (and the arena if they have to be off fields for a few days) and leave stable doors open. I’m lucky, mine don’t argue with each other, but if they did, I’d split the stable yard in two. Some just stable, but I don’t like stabling as it’s not healthy and ammonia infested bedding is expensive, dusty, vile, and leads to respiratory issues and mucking out is time consuming. They can still lay down on rubber matting in stables (Equimat are slightly softer than hard black rubber mats for this and if no bedding they won’t pee in there either so it stays clean) or arena if you’re lucky enough to have one. I simply poo pick the yard.
Hope I’ve given you lots to think about ... but I’ve also written this for others all at different stages in their thought processes, so sorry if I’ve covered many thoughts you are familiar with.
It’s not easy, though such a great feeling when we find solutions that work specifically for our situations and if we don’t think they will, tweak them and try again, so they do.
Thank u.