November is oftentimes the last month in our region before it gets sloppy and cold. Cows, calves and herd bulls don’t like the winter any more than we do. As managers and owners, the weather conditions and environment for our cattle can make a big difference.

Calves in particular should be able to get “high and dry.” Mud, cold, damp and more mud are typically the common themes from December to March. Calves are no doubt resilient, but even they can only tolerate so much.

Calves will do much better with a sanctuary away from the round ball feeder and other high-traffic areas chock full of cold, wet mud. If you feed using round bale feeders and haven’t lost a calf in the winter, consider yourself lucky. Calves like the appeal of the hay feeder for multiple reasons, but they are obvious suspects for getting hung up in the mire or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At the Northwest Georgia Research and Education Center outside of Rome, Georgia, they are basically ranching on river-bottom ground. To help with calf welfare and reduce sickness, they built small calf huts that look like small calf-sized lean-tos to help calves maintain their body temperature in cold snaps.

They are movable and have a 2-foot-by-6-foot board on the open side to keep the cows out. These huts reduce wind chill by providing improved access to good lying conditions along with a windbreak. This is just one example among many possible options.

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Why go to all this trouble? When calves are shivering, they are using critical energy stores and shifting their nutrient needs from production to survival mode, opening the gates for infectious disease, weakness and death. Stunted calves mean reduced total pounds weaned.

Generally, it takes freezing-level temperatures to be an issue, but a wet or muddy calf can get chilled when it’s as high as 50ºF with a bad mix of wind chill. If calves can get high and dry, it can make a huge difference, and it may even help reduce a death loss at the hay ring.  end mark

Jason Duggin