Farm of the Week: Paddocks stand the test of tough British winter

He is happy with the way they have come through. And he can take reassurance from a favourable report on three years of Government-funded research into similar facilities – 'out-wintering pads', or OWPs. That means outdoor enclosures with a thick floorbed of chopped wood, on top of a permeable membrane.

Muck is washed down, leaving a clean surface, but the solids are held in the litter – so they do not cause any problems in terms of run-off and can be reclaimed later for fertiliser.

It is not a new idea but it is newly fashionable. Tight margins in beef and dairy mean need for a cheaper alternative to full winter housing. Straw is becoming hard to get, in places, and it eats space in storage. And there are spin-off advantages to using wood instead.

Ray, 60, from Osmotherley, is manager of Cinquecliffe Grange Farm, Thirlby, on the lowland running up to the cliffs of the moor edge heading coastwards from Thirsk. It belongs to local landowner and horse breeder 'Brook' Holliday.

Food business entrepreneur Chris Blundell became its latest tenant in 2007 and hired Ray to try to make it support itself as a beef and sheep operation, trading as Mount St John Estates.

The way prices were, that meant thinking again about everything. The farm was previously in the fattening business. Now it is producing its own lambs and calves and taking them through to slaughter for Morrisons, Asda and Waitrose.

As well as doubling the opportunities to make money, full rearing gives the farm some advantages in traceability and standards assurance and more control over the low-level sicknesses which eat at margins. The farm is in the Premium Cattle Health Scheme, a drive against Johnes, BVD and leptospirosis, which has snowballed from a start in Scotland.

The sheep flock is building towards 650-700 Lleyn ewes, working with Charollais terminal sires for first butchers' lambs, and Texels after that.

The ewes come inside on the January-February turn, for feeding up before the April lambing rush. A 20,000 feed mixer was one of the investments Ray thought essential, for both the sheep and the cattle, which calve January to April. The cows are mainly Angus-crosses and Salers, covered by 5,000 Angus bulls, working towards a target of 180 finished beef animals a year and self-sufficiency in heifers.

A lot of work has gone into taking thistles and docks out of – and putting clover into – the 730 acres of grass available for summer feeding and silage. But at this end of Yorkshire, the cattle need to come off the pastures for most of the winter.

One way and another, it was clear pre-existing housing would be full before the plan was complete

Ray went for the OWPs – four of them, 16 metres by 30, side by side, separated by fencing so the calves can be grouped according to size and sex. The floor is two feet deep in Scots pine chunks, the size of a fist. A good depth is what makes the system work, says Ray.

The wood cost 25 a tonne for 600 tonnes. Chopping cost 12 a tonne, using a power-hungry machine borrowed from Scotland, compared to 5 a tonne for the usual small chips.

The animals appear content on it but they do retreat to a roofed sleeping area, with straw bedding over hardcore, and Ray is considering a layer of smaller chips on top of the chunks, to encourage more all-day use of the paddocks. He is hesitating because he does not want to interfere with the drainage.

It is that combined with the drying effect of wind which makes the system work.

At the outer edge of the paddocks is a concrete walkway on which the animals stand while putting their heads through the fence for their feed mix. It stops the feed being pulled back into the wood litter and a lot of manure is dropped on it and can be scraped away.

The rest falls as far as the membrane under the chips, while the water runs through and is drained away and pumped into neighbouring fields for distribution by sprinkler. Elsewhere, the ADAS consultancy has tested this run-off and declared it nothing more potent than dirty water. The result, according to Ray and head stockman Chris Coldbeck, is a hygienic low-maintenance enclosure big enough for 200 calves, from weaning in November to turning out for final fattening on grass from mid-April. It has cost them 550 a place, compared to 850-900 for a barn. They guess they will save 150 acres of straw a year at 30 an acre.

And straw is increasingly hard to get, because the arable men would rather chop it back into the soil – thanks to the price of fertilisers, and the pace of field clearance and replanting required nowadays. The farm also saves on collecting and storing straw and on the labour of mucking out and rebedding. The wood litter should last five years. The best way of dealing with it after that is still under discussion.

Meanwhile, there is one clear spin-off benefit – a healthy stock. Pneumonia thrives in the thick air of a cattle house but there has not been a whistle of it in the paddocks at Cinquecliffe Grange this winter.

"And no feet problems whatsoever," adds Ray.

"Animals are always better outdoors, provided they have a little bit of shelter that is reasonably dry and out of the draught."

Even with parts of the equation still vague, he thinks he has made a good investment.

And a new report, on three years' research supported by Defra and the Environment Agency, DairyCo, Eblex, the British Grassland Society, and interests in forestry and wood supply, concludes: "OWPs offer a sustainable alternative to out-wintering livestock on grassland and a reduced-cost alternative to conventional housing."

The report says: "These pads are well suited for use by young stock, dry cows, beef sucklers and growing beef cattle.

"The project is currently developing more in-depth guidance on the design and management of OWPs, to reduce the risk of problems such as pad failure and pollution and this information will be available in the autumn."

Meanwhile, a factsheet on OWP design, construction and management, is available from both DairyCo and Eblex.