Take a moment to review the impact of cold weather on cattle

With cold weather forecast for the near future, it’s a good time to review the impact cold weather has on our animals, especially the increased energy demands from feed to keep animals warm.

When we talk about cold weather aecting animals, we have to start first with understanding what lower critical temperature is. The lower critical temperature is the threshold at which point animals need to start using energy to maintain body heat. This threshold is impacted by a va- riety of dierent factors including animal condition, hair coat condition, whether the animal is wet or dry, and wind chill.

Typically, animals should be going into winter at a 5 to 5.5 Body condition score. If they are lower than this, cold weather can raise up the lower critical temperature, increasing the cow’s energy requirements and causing us to burn through hay.

For example, a cow with a BCS of 5 with a dry winter coat will have a lower critical temperature of 19°F while a thinner cow with a BCS of 4, with the same dry winter coat raises that temperature to 27°F. Cows on the thin side lose heat through their top side easier than animals with more condition. If you’ve ever seen a cow in a snow storm with a layer of snow on her back, you’ve seen the insulating power of body condition in action. The hair coat and fat on the animals back are trapping enough heat that snow can build up. On a thinner animal, a snowy back is a rare sight as the amount of heat leaving through her top is enough to melt snow as it accumulates. We can also address the physical impacts of weather on lower critical temperatures. That same BCS 5 cow that with a dry coat had a lower critical temperature of 19°F will have a lower critical temperature of 53°F if their coat is wet. Providing animals shelter in bad weather can help keep coats dry and limit wind chill eects, both of which will work to minimize the impact of the cold.

Finally, know what you have to work with from an energy perspective in your feed yard. A general rule of thumb we can use is that for every degree of cold stress a cow faces, they increase their energy requirements by 1%. When we hit a situation like this week, grass hay just doesn’t have enough energy to meet this uptick in demand. High quality alfalfa hay usually has a TDN of 58-60% and should meet requirements for dry, good condition animals at windchill temperatures down to -15°F.

When we get even colder, for an extended period, we might want to look at providing some additional supplement for energy. Corn is a great high energy option, but we need to be careful to work it up in a diet slowly. Pair it with free choice hay for fill and make sure not give too much at once to animals whose rumen hasn’t shifted yet. There are plenty of other high energy supplement options to choose from, so pick the one that works for your operation.

Cold weather is not fun for producers or our animals, but if we know how it impacts our herd, we can do our best to mitigate its impact.

— Ben Beckman is a beef systems Extension Educator serving the counties of Antelope, Cedar, Knox, Madison and Pierce. He is based out of the Cedar County Extension oce in Hartington. You can reach him by phone: (402) 254-6821 or email: ben.beckman@unl.edu