9 Tips to get your cows through winter
By MFA’s Feed Division
Drought has many producers stretching forage this winter.
Try these tips from MFA’s technical livestock staff to help you see the light of spring.
The decisions you make now will impact not only your next calving season, but the next breeding season, the subsequent calving season and ultimately the uniformity of your calf crop 18 to 24 months down the road.
1. Pregnancy check your cows
Cull the open ones. With short and expensive supplies of forage this fall, this management practice is a must. Cow costs for a 90 to 120-day winter can run over $2 per head per day, if hay rates stay at their current prices . You can’t afford to carry over non-producers this winter.
2. Cull your herd—hard
Cull cows of advanced age. Watch for bad eyes, bad teeth, poor udders and subpar feet and leg confirmation. The cows you bring through to spring should be ready to go when warmer weather gets here. Carrying a cow with two and three strikes against her will not help your bottom line.
3. Assess your hay supplies
After culling cows you don’t want to carry, think about how much hay you need to get through the winter. If you’re feeding 100 cows at 3 percent of their body weight (which allows for outer rim spoilage and some feeding wastage), figure 33 pounds of hay per day for each 1,100-pound cow. That’s about 1.65 tons per day for a 100-cow herd. Before looking at how many bales you have in the barn or the fence row, do some investigation:
a. Weigh a few bales from each cutting or each purchase so you’ll know how many tons are out there.
b. Test hay moisture so you can determine how much actual dry matter those cows will get out of every bale. That way you can be as accurate as possible on intakes.
c. Work up your feed budget. With weights and moisture content on hand, you can come up with an accurate forecast for how far your hay will go, how much you need to stretch it, and possibly how much more you’ll need to buy. Don’t forget feed for the bulls!
d. Don’t forget the potential for winter’s wrath. This could be a mild winter like last year. Or it could harbor some brutality. But you can’t predict that with much accuracy at this point. So, remember that for roughly each degree below 40 degrees, cows will need an extra 1 percent of energy to maintain themselves. If it’s 10 degrees outside, they need an added 30 percent of groceries from somewhere. Failure to adjust for the climatic conditions leads to lost body weight, higher maintenance requirements for thin cows, weak calves and poor breed backs next spring.
4. Extend your forage starting now
By feeding protein early in the winter, you get better turns of the forage in the rumen, so it won’t take as much hay to get the same nutritional value out of it. This can be done several ways:
a. If you have sufficient forage supplies and adequate quality (i.e. 10 to 11 percent protein and 52 to 55 percent TDN), we suggest using MFA 20% Breeder Cubes at 2 pounds per day. These can be fed at 4 pounds every other day or 6 pounds every third day for convenience. This approach allows you to get protein, energy, vitamins and minerals in one shot with no need to worry about the sulphur levels that can be experienced with some byproducts. High sulphur levels in the ration can cause a disease known as polio in cattle.
b. If forages are slim, consider MFA 14% Drought Cubes where 5 to 7 pounds of cubes can replace the energy and protein of 10 to 11 pounds of hay. Offer free-choice mineral with this product. MFA has several other cube options if these don’t fit your needs.
5. Body Condition Score your cows
Then do it again, and again—at least monthly. You can draw out a rough, do-it-yourself graph. Use a piece of graph paper labeled 1 to 9 across the bottom. Put an “x” over the score of each cow. After 12 to 15 scores, you should see a readable trend. Date it. When you see your cows every day, you can miss the subtle toll winter takes on them. If you body scored your cows at pregnancy checking time, you’re ahead of the game. If not, it’s not too late to get started. Every month, take another objective look at them. Or, consider having someone else (who doesn’t see them daily) rate them for you. Most MFA feed sales representatives have experience scoring cow. Once you have this information, adjust your winter feeding program to keep them in the right condition—not too fat and not too thin. This is a no-cost procedure that can save you money in the long run. Free body condition score charts can be obtained through your local MFA retail location.
6. Feed your thin cows
If you’ve got pregnant cows at body condition scores of 3 or 4, they need to put on 100 to 200 pounds (100 pounds for each desired increase in body score.). Why is this important? You don’t want weak newborn calves that can’t suck later this winter, and you want to get your cows bred next spring. Proper body condition improves your herd’s chance to produce healthy calves and have proper breedback.
Feeding cows earlier in winter is important because once a cow re-captures her weight, it is much easier to maintain her through the winter. It’s more difficult to bring a thin cow back up to weight when she’s battling the brunt of winter. One critical point: once you’ve identified your thin pregnant cows, separate them from the rest of the herd and feed them separately. Do this until they have reached the desired body condition, then turn them back with the others.
If you’ve got thin cull cows, Cattle Fax says that the absolute worst time to sell them is 2 weeks either side of Nov. 15. Why? That’s when they’ll have the most company at the market, historically bringing the least money.
But with a little help, these cows can still bring you extra cash. Thin cows will compensate nicely with a flush feeding of Cattle Charge full fed for roughly 3 weeks. These cows will need a minimum of hay. Work done at the MFA Marshall research farm showed thin cows gaining 6 pounds per day and converting at 4.3 pounds of feed per 1 pound gain. Those cows safely gained 126 pounds in 21 days. Not only do they put on the added weight cost efficiently, they tend to move up to a higher price bracket because of their overall body condition—and they tend to sell at a later time from the ‘fall rush’. Historically, the best cull cow markets come after the first of the year in February and early March.
7. Don’t quit feeding too soon in the spring
It will be tempting with dwindling hay supplies to skimp on the feeding program with hope that cows will get full nutritional needs from sprigs of grass. But don’t short your cows. Research shows that cows that lost weight just prior to calving had lower conception rates later in spring, especially those that lost weight before and after calving .
Some producers neglect minerals at this time, too. Remember that cows undergoing the stress of a hard winter will use minerals faster than cows with little stress. To obtain optimum immune function and reproductive performance from cows, provide proper levels of copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese and selenium. Bad things happen when mineral are slighted.
8. Early wean your calves
By the time you read this, many producers will have already weaned calves, but it is good advice for the fall calvers in the crowd. Early weaning relieves a great nutrient drain on the cow. Cows just ahead of weaning and still nursing a calf typically lose weight faster than they can replace it. Rather than unnecessarily sacrificing cow body weight and condition, early weaning provides an avenue to recapture the body condition before harsh winter weather. In turn, the cow will require less feed to get through the winter than a thin cow. When forages are short, you can put weight back on a cow faster and more efficiently by pulling the calf and feeding it. Doing so gives the cow a chance to rest and extends your forage supplies.
9. Deworm and de-louse your cow herd
With available nutrients at a premium this winter, it doesn’t make sense to needlessly feed parasites. The relatively low cost of killing parasites can make a sizeable difference in the overall expense of keeping condition on cows.
