Expert: Karin - 11/12/2011

Question
hi

i would like to know your own opinion on what production system do you tend to agree on indoor or outdoor and why

thanks

Answer
From where I come from and the way I have been raised, I am more pro-outdoor production system than inside, though sometimes having a facility to house animals inside of is useful too.  

Indoor is good since you have control of the climate and don't have to worry about problems with cattle not eating or over eating during adverse weather conditions because they're away from these conditions. You can house and feed more animals on a smaller unit of space than you can in a pasture environment.  You also control the type of feed your cattle receive, and don't have to worry about managing your breeding/calving/weaning periods around grass: you can easily have cows calving and breeding all year round.  You can feed your cattle on an individual basis, like what each bovine needs in terms of feed requirement versus the ones on either side of it.

The things I disagree with indoor systems is that not only is it the most unnatural means of raising livestock, but there are higher maintenance costs and manure management and biosecurity is more important to manage than what's in an outdoor management.  You have to maintain the building all the time, and there's risk that these adverse weather systems that go through will damage buildings, if not destroy them.  If that happens, the building can become so compromised that it could injure the animals inside.  Animals are trapped inside this building and have no way of escape if something bad happens.   Manure management is labour intensive because you have to make sure your animals always have clean bedding to lay in, and find a place to put all this waste into.  If manure isn't managed properly, animals can and will get sick.  Dairy cows will develop mastitis from the bacteria in the feces and urine present in the soiled bedding.  Even baby calves that are born in a barn will get very sick (not to mention cold and wet) if the bedding is not cleaned out at least once or twice a day.  On the topic of disease, diseases tend to spread more easily in indoor operations than outdoor ones because animals are in closer proximity to each other, and equipment and tools can be easily contaminated.  However, it is easier to disinfect and clean a building (as long as it as cement flooring) than it is an outdoor corral.

I love outdoor systems because it is much more natural for cattle to exist in, especially if you are raising cattle on pasture, not in a drylot/feedlot/dirt-only corral. In terms of pasture management, cattle are much healthier and have a much less risk of getting sick than those in an indoor or intensive environment. Calves born on pasture during the late spring are healthier than those born in a drylot.  Feed doesn't have to always come to the cattle all the time, it's right in front of them for them to graze, making pasture being the cheapest and labour-saving way of feeding cattle.  In other words, the cattle are working for you, not you working for them. Nature takes care of the manure and wasted/trampled grass, simply by incorporating it back into the soil.  

The bad things about outdoor systems are that you need more area for the same number of head in a barn to raise on pasture. You have to carefully manage your cattle and grass so that overgrazing doesn't happen and so that the cattle are able to keep coming back to eat for each grazing period. You can't manage cattle on an individual basis in outdoor systems: they have be treated as a collective group, and any those that are not doing so well as the others need to be culled. You need to graze your cattle according to the quality of the pasture: growing young animals and lactating females need higher-quality pasture than dry, pregnant cows. Year-round calving isn't desirable, especially in the type of climate that I live in where seasons are much more defined than where you are. Cattle are also more exposed to the elements and predators than those who are safely guarded in indoor environments, which means they have to rely on their own knowledge of the land and themselves to find a safe place to stay to wait out the storm, and to defend their calves and themselves against predators.  Producers also have to actively make sure cattle have access to shelter and are going to be safe from predators (as well as select cows that are going to actively defend their calves against such animals as bears, wolves and mountain lions).  Fences need to be built and maintained in order to keep your animals on your land and not on someone else's property.  Fences are also useful in dividing up pastures into paddocks for better grazing practices.  Water and mineral locations need to be monitored and chosen so that cattle have access to it no matter where they are.


I could go on here, as there are more to these sort of things than what I wrote, but you can see that even though I agree more with outdoor systems than indoor ones, there are trade-offs in between each.  Neither system is perfect, so choosing which one you want depends on what your goals, philosophies and objectives are, what kind of stock you want to raise and how, and how you want to run your farm.

I hope I have provided enough sufficient information for your process in your decisions. :)

-Karin