Winter Care Tips for Your Cattle

Depending on where you live, winter can be a really strenuous time for both you and your cattle. Living in Ohio, we are all too familiar with navigating the extreme weather with our cattle. Below are some tips that we wish we knew before our first cold, hard winter. Thankfully, regardless of what kind of operation you are running, these tips will apply to any type of large livestock, so let’s dig in!

Provide an Abundance of Feed

There is a lot to be factored in when you are planning for a cold winter. A good rule of thumb is that you should increase your feed amount by 20% because cattle will eat at least that much or more feed in the winter to keep up their body temperature. If you pay attention to the weather, then you can get ahead of it and make sure there is enough feed set out to give the cattle a headstart on increasing their feed intake. We will talk about why that’s important below!

One of the reasons we want to increase feed intake is that it will increase the amount of fermentation in the rumen, which produces heat, thus keeping your cattle warmer from the inside out. In addition to increasing feed intake, you want to make sure that feed is up off the ground to prevent waste and make sure to also supplement forage with plenty of minerals. 

Always Have Water Available

This might seem like a very basic care tip, but making sure your cattle have access to fresh water during the winter is critical. In fact, most people don’t realize that cattle don’t typically drink enough water during the winter. 

One of the reasons they have a hard time meeting their water intake level is that water sources can be difficult to get to or they can get frozen in extreme conditions. It’s important to put measures into place to prevent freezing and also keep the area around the water as dry as possible through the winter. Cattle usually need between 1 to 2 gallons of water per 100 pounds of weight. 

Have Proper Shelter in Place

This is another tip that might sound basic and well-known but is crucial to get right in order to battle cold weather. Providing a basic lean-to during the cold winter months is great but not always necessary if provided with other means of protection. It’s important to provide a windbreak to give your cattle a place to go to get out of the wind chill. Wind chills affect cattle just like it does humans. In fact, providing proper shelter can even reduce your feed costs, since chilled livestock will have increased energy requirements in addition to the extra feed you’ll have to use to gain back body condition.

As mentioned above, it’s also important to pay attention to the weather forecast because when you know there’s a winter storm coming, you can plan to keep cattle close to the barn or near a shelter.

Focus on Body Condition Score

All the tips that we have gone through so far play a role in limiting the amount of stress that cattle endure in the winter months. What this means as a whole, is that your goal should be to reduce cold stress in your cattle by improving their body condition score.

It’s also important to get ahead of this before it’s a problem. We recommend going into winter with cows that have a body condition score of 5 or 6. This means they will have a layer of fat insulation helping them conserve body heat. The second reason you want to get ahead of it is that cows with a good body condition score are more likely to have a good diet, which results in overall warmer winter coats.

Watch Out For Lice

Cattle lice are a cold season insect that thrives in very cold conditions. Lice populations are most noticeable during December, January, February, and decline when temperatures warm up. Lice are transmitted by contact from one animal to another, which happens more in the winter when cattle mob together for warmth. One cow left untreated can spread lice to the rest of the herd. We use a topical lice treatment in late Nov-Dec and then again in February. 

We would love to hear from you if you have any additional winter tips that you’d like to add to this list! Stay warm out there friends!