mudhen;
Good morning to you sir, I hope this finds you and yours well and in keeping with the thread - warm enough too.
Way back when I seem to recall that the cattle operations on the prairies had wind break fences put up - sometimes maybe in an L shape?
Anyway I was told that horses and I want to say cattle too, are able to generate enough heat if they've got a full belly. The trick with horses was to have cold enough feed that they'd be able to munch away throughout the day and it not have an adverse affect on them.
Some of the guys fed straw even in winter as I recall - just to keep the gut going and then hay as well of course.
Sam or one of the other cold weather ranchers can perhaps comment if cows run the same way as horses that way - it makes sense that they would, but I'm not 100% certain on that.
All the best to you all this week mudhen.
Dwayne
All the best to you
Mudhen and Dwayne, wind protection is critical. Whether it be man made or natural, if you're going to winter cattle around here you should absolutely provide them with a place to escape the wind.
Our little feedlot has 'miles' of windbreak for the calves and the cows winter in the river or creek bottoms where there is plenty of coulees, brush and trees.
The horses get all the grass hay they can eat out of a round bale feeder. The cows are fed once a day and I try to match the tonnage to the temps.
There are formulas for feed requirements and temp changes but I basically give them all they can eat. If I find leftovers the following morning I'll cut back the amount of round bales.
And of course you have to factor in the feed value/TDN(total digestible nutrients) of what you are providing them to eat.
Alfalfa and hay barley are gonna have way more protein/TDN compared to grass hay or straw.
It's amazing how much more they will eat when it's cold.
We put out around 20 ton of feed and straw one day during an extreme cold snap and they pretty much ate it all. That's almost double what they'll consume now that it's warmed back up
