As livestock owners prepare to care for livestock in frigid temperatures, it is important to know where efforts are best spent. Cattle handle cold weather quite well as long as they have a dry, heavy winter hair coat.

Cow energy requirements change throughout the year. As we enter into the winter months, it is important to remember the nutritional needs of the cow herd are a dynamic situation which operate as a yearly production cycle.

As feed prices have skyrocketed over the last several months, many producers are rethinking their winter feeding strategy in the southeast U.S. While weather is a big driver of our forage growing conditions, there are many forage management strategies that allow us to extend the grazing season well into the fall forage gap.

Feeding hay is a common practice for many producers during the winter. When selecting hay-feeding sites, try to feed in areas with well-drained soils or in less productive areas of the pasture.

A general rule of thumb is: It takes 2 to 3 tons of hay to winter a beef cow. If $125 per ton and feeding for 150 days, it’s going to cost $1.70 to $2.50 per cow per day in feed expenses alone – without labor costs and machinery expenses.