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Episode 50! At a listener's request, we talk about outwintering cattle. For both dairy and beef this is a viable option if you have the right management pieces. We have some impromptu guests join along the way. Thank you for listening!
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
[music]
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. Right now it's just the OG3, and today is our 50th episode.
Emily: Woo.
Joe: 50 episodes. It's gone by super-fast. It's probably a good thing because in 2020 we needed something to help pass the time and keep things moving. We're still rolling and if I have to say so, I'm pretty impressed by us that we've kept it together this long.
Emily: Same.
Joe: Exactly.
Emily: For people that know us as individuals, I think they're just as surprised.
Joe: I think that's true. I think that's true, so yay for us.
Emily: Yay for us, The Big 5-0. We've been podcasting for close to a year, holy buckets.
Joe: It's a long time and we're still having fun. I assume we're going to continue.
Bradley Heins: They don't hate me yet. You don't hate me yet, right?
Joe: Not yet. Not quite yet.
Emily: We're past that, Bradley.
Joe: We've just learned to live with it now.
Emily: Yes, yes. Obviously, we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't have our awesome listeners, so we have to shout out to them too.
Joe: Which is true. Which is true. We truly appreciate everybody listening and hopefully-
Bradley: All over the world. There's lots of countries too.
Joe: Absolutely.
Bradley: Thank you.
Joe: We're up to 12, 13 countries now, and we're just excited that we've reached that many people. We really want to continue and hopefully one day we'll be able to meet some of these people in person. I'm really excited for that too.
Emily: We can go on a live tour.
Joe: I would love that. I would love that. Let's get into today's episode with episode 50. There's going to be some surprises along the way. We're going to talk about outwintering, and this is a question that we got just this last week. Dairymen, Peter Beck shouted us out, asked for this episode-
Emily: What's up Peter? Thanks.
Joe: -through Emily under the bus a little bit-
Emily: A lot of it.
Joe: -in his email, but that's fine. That's fine. We're used to that and we don't mind it at all. We're going to talk about outwintering and it's a big concept and I think it's something especially that we like to talk about with the general public if we can. Because it's somewhat misunderstood and people see it as potentially cruel when it's not. Outwintering is a perfectly viable thing to do with cows, dairy, and beef. That would be the second misconception is that dairy cows just can't do it and that's not true. That's why we have Brad here to tell us what they do up at Morris and how tough dairy cows really are because they can survive outside just fine.
Emily: Dr. Bradley J. Heins, outwintering expert.
Bradley: Exactly. It's fitting today because we are in the midst of a snowstorm in Minnesota. The cows are outside today and things are going well.
Joe: This is going to build a little bit off of our severe weather episode that the Gruesome Twosome did the other week when Bradley couldn't join us. There's a lot that's similar to that episode that we're going to talk about today. For the most part, the big message right now is that this is a viable thing for beef cows and I think everyone has accepted that.
This is definitely an option for dairy cows and they're tough. Yes, they have some different metabolism because of their milking and different requirements. They're tough animals and they can do just fine outside. Bradley, what do you see as the biggest thing you need to do to be able to make this work to house milking dairy animals outside during the winter?
Bradley: First off, I think it really doesn't come down to facilities or anything. I think it's mindset. You have to be prepared to change at a moment's notice and be able to not worry that the cows are going to freeze outside or heifers are going to freeze outside or anything like that. You have to just allow it to happen. Obviously, there's things that you can do from a management perspective that help with that and we can talk about those. First off, it's a mindset. It's just getting over the fact that you don't have to house cows in a barn or heifers in a barn 365 days of the year even in the wintertime.
Joe: This seems like a natural fit with grazing. Because some of that mindset is just being willing to adapt and change things at the drop of a hat based on conditions, right?
Bradley: Right. Really it's what we call low lower input dairy production where you put the cows outside because you don't need a barn or facility. In some regard, I think it's help some beginning farmers get into dairy farming because you don't have to have all the capital to build barns or have barns, and you can just house your animals outside with minimal. There's other ways to make sure cows are comfortable outside.
Emily: Now Bradley, and maybe I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here. With outwintering your cows, how does that coordinate or mesh with you doing seasonal calving? Do you feel that seasonal calving is something that you have to do if you're going to outwinter a dairy herd, or does it all come out in the wash in the end?
Bradley: No, I don't think you have to seasonal calves to outwinter your dairy herd. Obviously, it helps if you're not calving in a snowbank or anything. There are those things I think if you caved in a warm drape dry place, that's really to protect the calf. Once the cow is outside, we don't really see many problems. I think it may be easier to not calve during the winter because you might have some frostbite or something on first lactation heifers. Really it just depends on each farm situation. Obviously, we know the weather's not the same every winter, so it's difficult.
Emily: Dare I say, it probably depends on your management as well.
Bradley: Of course, of course.
Emily: This is the 50th episode, we got to call in as much stuff as we can here.
Joe: That's true.
Bradley: Exactly, exactly.
Joe: That's a good question, Emily. I hadn't thought about that. Is it necessary to seasonally calve? Now I think Bradley set up pretty good to, if he wanted to calve year round, even with housing cattle outside because of the way you guys calve out. You have a separate building for when cattle are getting real close up, and you can bring them up someplace where you can watch them and they're dry and somewhat warmer.
Bradley: We do have a building where we can calve if it gets really bad in the snow, or wind, or anything like that. I would say if you don't have a building to calve in, you probably shouldn't be calving outdoors in December, January, or February really. In my mind, I wouldn't do it if you didn't have a building to calve in. It's not about the cow in that situation. It's about keeping the calf alive and keeping the calf safe.
Joe: The wind, especially. Bradley's in Morris and I went to school up there. We're familiar with wind and that's a huge piece of what you have to deal with. Whether you're calving or just having animals outside like Emily and I talked about a couple weeks ago. Tell us how you built your windbreaks up there, Bradley. What do they look like, how'd you build them, how big was the investment, that kind of thing?
Bradley: I think it's different for the cows and the heifers. Our heifers are outdoors and they're fed in feed bunks. They just have natural tree windbreaks. That's how we keep the wind away from the heifers. Now I'm not talking young calves. I'm talking yearlings, breeding-age heifers, and up towards springing heifers. They're just with natural windbreaks and that seems to do well if they can go into the trees or get behind the trees.
Trees are a great windbreak and that's helped the heifers in an outwintering situation. Milking cows, a little bit different. We have natural windbreaks too. We got trees. I don't think it matters what trees. We have pine trees, regular trees that help protect the wind. We've also built some manmade windbreaks, just what I call telephone poles in the ground, and place some boards between those poles.
You want to leave a little bit of gap between the boards. You don't want it totally closed off because you want the wind to allow to go through the windbreak. Otherwise, it causes other issues if the wind hits it and comes up over the windbreak and can go right back down on the cows and it really doesn't do much. If you leave a little gap in the boards, it creates a great windbreak.
Joe: That's something that I wanted to bring up because in our severe weather episode, I said that I prefer windbreaks that are taller with not a whole lot of gaps, you need some gaps. I just don't want you to build a snow fence and expect it to act like a windbreak. That was my point.
Bradley: We're talking maybe a inch gap between the boards, or a few centimeters between boards. It's not a very big gap in between. You don't want the wind to blow right through the windbreak, but you want some wind coming through there.
Joe: The windbreak to me, like Emily and I talked about that, I think that's the biggest piece. That is the biggest factor. Okay, maybe I'll probably eat those words a little bit when we talk about keeping cattle dry, but-
Emily: I feel it to be like wait a second, but that ties into keeping them dry.
Bradley: No. In my mind, wind is the most important factor in outwintering is to keep the cattle out of the wind.
Joe: It's such a big factor and it influences how well those cows can stay warm in any way. You can see it if you don't have a windbreak built for them, they're going to look for one constantly. They'll use buildings. Like Bradley said, they'll find trees, they'll do anything that can to get out of the wind. Yes, wind is first and then from there, there's a bunch of competing for number two, but I think dry is big for me.
Bradley: Wind and then dry bedding is number one. We'll put a sensor in it and we can look at those cows. If it gets really windy, you can see the cow activity is up a lot, and if they're searching for windbreaks the activity goes through the roof in the wintertime because they're trying to search out places. If we have a really bad blizzard or a storm here, we'll have all kinds of cows and heifers show up on the activity list because they're just searching for ways to get out of the wind.
Bedding, yes, number two, clean, dry bedding. There's many different things that you can use for bedding. I prefer straw because it also provides some sort of insulation factor for the cows, and the udders of cows because we have milking cows outdoors. There are some people that cringe at that thought where people put their heifers outdoors but could never fathom putting a milking cow outdoors on a straw pack and expect that cow to survive. They do just fine.
Joe: Yes, that's a misconception. I think we've babied some of these dairy cows for so long that people assume that they have somehow become a different species and they're not a cow anymore. They're a cow. They're tough. I would say they're probably not as tough as a beef cow, but they're still super tough. They're way tougher than any of us.
Emily: Yes. One other question I have for you, Bradley, related to dry and yes, the bedding. This is something that Joe and I had talked about in our Gruesome Twosome episode and that's the hair coat that the cow has. Obviously, when they have their thick winter hair coats, them getting wet is not as much of an issue. I'm just curious, have you ever experienced any issues? I know we've seen it in the past with beef cattle, like when we had Winter Storm Atlas in South Dakota, where that was a really early winter storm so the cows didn't have their thick winter hair coats yet. Yes, I'm just wondering what your experience is with that, or you know we get early snow and late snow and all that.
Bradley: A cow and a heifer growing winter hair coat is a good thing to provide insulation for the cow. They can get snowed on and that long hair coat provides insulation, rain not so good. If it's raining like it has before in Morris on Christmas day or something, I think a few years ago. That is bad news because rain does not insulate very well when it hits the cow. Snow provides some sort of insulation.
Yes, early snow storms, I don't necessarily like because, yes, they haven't developed their hair coat. One other thing, and some people talk about, we let the udder hair grow. We don't flame udders or anything like that, some dairies do that. We just don't flame udders because that provides some insulation value to the udder if they have longer hair on the udder. Now that provides other challenges, but that seems to help out as well.
Joe: I think we should stay on the udder because what I hear a lot of times is, "Okay, you're outwintering this dairy cow. How are you handling frostbitten teats and teat ends, and what kind of dip are you using post it, and how does that all work?" Even some people will claim that if you have a really nice bedded pack and you've got cows laying on it, it's going to kick up heat and then there's going to be condensation from the cow. Then you've got wet teats and all these other things. How does that all play out?
Bradley: For the cows, we use a powder teat dip. It's a chlorohexidine powder teat dip. For us with our organic herd, we can use that on it below a certain temperature, below 15 degrees Fahrenheit. It has to be relatively cold to be able to use it, but otherwise, teat dip seem to work just fine. We don't get much frostbite above 20 degrees or anything. We do wash for it. We don't have very much frostbite. I should say there's always some depending on the year. Here we are a month or so into winter and we haven't had any yet and it's been cold and snowy, so we're doing good.
Maybe one heifer a year it's typically we see it in the heifers more so than anything. The powder teat dip seems to work quite well. It's just a powder so that teat is dry when the cow goes outside from the milking parlor and keeps it dry. Then obviously the dry bedding, if you have wet bedding, it's not going to help. You need to have dry bedding for that cow to go lay on afterwards. If you have dry bedding and dry teats, when they leave the milking parlor, you shouldn't have a problem with frostbite at all.
Emily: We need to cut in here really quickly. Our first surprise of episode 50. We are joined by a former guest and a very good friend of The Moos Room. Michael J. Cruz, PhD is here.
Mike Cruz: Hello.
Joe: Hi, Michael. We're going to have a few other people dropping in during this episode. Maybe not a few, maybe one more, it depends on what happens. Michael J. Cruz, PhD, he was on the podcast quite a while ago now, quite a while ago now. If you don't remember or you haven't listen to that one, which you should go back and listen to all of our questions from Michael J. Cruz, PhD. It's a great episode. He is the Extension Educator for Houston and Fillmore County, Southeast Minnesota. How's it going, Mike?
Mike: I'd say fantastic. How's it going for the team over here?
Joe: It's good. 50 episodes is a long time, and we're not quite sick of each other yet. Emily and I have our days.
Emily: Yes, and Bradley, whoosh, don't even get me started.
Joe: It's good. It's good. Right now we're continuing to talk about outwintering dairy cows, might get into some beef. There's really not a whole lot of difference between the two, to be honest, and what you do to help them. We've covered windbreaks, we've covered keeping them dry. I think we're going to move on to--
Bradley: We can talk about feed.
Joe: Feed?
Emily: First, I have a question for Michael J. Cruz, PhD.
Mike: I love questions.
Emily: Fillmore and Houston County, Southeast corner of the State of Minnesota. Are you aware of herds that do outwintering?
Mike: There are plenty. It's a varied landscape. Rolling, we have confined situations. We have people that outwinter. We've got people on cropland. We've got people on pastures, people using trees and every other thing to block the wind. Yes, so there's quite a bit of variation down here.
Emily: Yes. It's not all flat and windy like [unintelligible 00:18:10].
Bradley: Southeast Minnesota is the best place in Minnesota. It's great with the river and hills. Sorry, I'm biased. I grew up there.
Mike: Yes, it's God's country. It's painted on a barn, so yes.
Joe: True, true.
Emily: We all have a connection to Southeast Minnesota one way or another.
Joe: That's true. I'm a huge fan of it and yes, it's not flat, which is what I struggle with.
Emily: Yes, and so that landscape lends itself well to outwintering.
Joe: Mike brought up something really-- he said it in passing there, wintering on crop ground. That is my favorite strategy for beef. Your limiting factor being fence. It's mostly about fence, but with frozen ground, corn ground, crop ground is excellent for outwintering, especially because you've got all your cattle depositing manure right there. They're putting manure there, you're not hauling manure anywhere. I love crop ground for outwintering beef cows. Obviously, that's probably an option for dairy cattle too, right, Brad? Because not all the cows are milking. You've got heifers, you've got dry cows, that's an option as well, right?
Bradley: Sure. You can outwinter them on corn stalks or something like that. Sure, that's not a problem at all. Provides a little bit of feed in the fall and you don't have to spread manure and it helps with the crop ground the next year. Yes, I see that as a benefit too. You got to think about fencing it in October before the ground gets hard, but there is some thought process to that as well.
Joe: Yes, and that's like we talked about in our Severe Weather episode that we tend to procrastinate and try not think about winter sometimes just because we think if we don't think about it maybe it won't happen. You've got to be thinking ahead if you're going to be doing something like especially with fence.
Mike: Some of the fencing down here in the southeast is very nice. You can see that they've made a very good investment in it. It's permanent. It's there year-round. It's not something they're going up and taking down to get equipment in. It's some really nice stuff here and it works. You can tell that the system works for them.
Joe: That's the right word for it too, is investment. It's a long-term deal and it's valuable. Putting up a nice fence that you don't have to worry about as much is definitely worth it in my mind. Expensive but worth it. We have another drop-in here, Ms. Ashley Kohls is with us.
Emily: Woo.
Ashley: Hi, friends.
Joe: Hello.
Emily: Hi.
Joe: Ashley, she's been a consultant for The Moos Room, we'll say for several episodes. She was on Episode 24.5, actually, the infamous Burger King episode.
Emily: Yes.
Ashley: That was a fun one.
Joe: Yes. Ashley is here with us dropping in on Episode 50. We're talking outwintering dairy cows, Ashley, and we're about to move on to feed and things like that. First, where are you, first of all? You look like you're in Nebraska.
Ashley: I am in Nebraska. Congratulations on 50 episodes guys.
Joe: Thank you.
Emily: Episode 100, you better get us the balloons.
Bradley: You can just make us steak dinner in Omaha.
Ashley: And glitter.
Emily: Yes.
Joe: Glitter-- I'll take the steak dinner though. I agree with Bradley. That's a better [crosstalk].
Emily: Yes, I want that too.
Bradley: The steakhouse in Omaha is yummy.
Joe: Yes.
Emily: Anyway.
Joe: Nebraska, let's talk about winter in Nebraska. Not as much snow, not quite as cold, but wind is a thing. Definitely a thing down there, right?
Ashley: Yes. The wind is definitely a thing. You're right, it's cold, but they do get a fair amount of snow and a lot of moisture on a regular year I guess down in Nebraska. A lot of cows out on cornstalks, beef cows out on cornstalks. There's not a lot of dairy farms in Nebraska, but they like to claim themselves as small but mighty industry. They're working hard now to recruit more dairy farms to Nebraska. They're trying to adopt the model of what South Dakota is doing to recruit farms to South Dakota. That's something they're looking at. There's no dairy processor in Nebraska, so that's another thing they're looking at and hope-
Bradley: All goes into Iowa or South Dakota.
Ashley: It does. Yes, that's right. It does. They're going to find a place to-- the hope of growing the dairy industry infrastructure in Nebraska. I work pretty closely with the dairy folks because typically after they're done being a dairy cow, they'll be a beef cow.
Joe: Minnesotans and Nebraskans get along really well because the systems tend to be fairly similar when we're talking about cattle and the difference being winter. I think the cattle actually fairly similar on the beef side in size, stature, and what we're able to do because of the quality of feeds that we can provide. For the most part, yes, the biggest difference is just the weather in the winter and what can we get away with in Nebraska in terms of grazing and body condition loss during the winter and how much we have to feed if we're going to keep cattle outside. It's a good place to look for info and ideas. Just definitely someplace that I recognize not everything can transfer to Minnesota based on our weather up here.
Ashley: Yes. An interesting conversation that we're just starting down here in Nebraska is the cover crop and integration of livestock and the row crops with cover crops. That was a conversation we've had in Minnesota extensively over the past five years and it's something that they're really just starting down here, which was surprising to me when I started working with the folks down in Nebraska. It's fun to have them reach out to folks in Minnesota to learn what works, but almost more importantly, what doesn't work in their efforts up in Minnesota. That's going to be a fun conversation to continue for sure.
Bradley: On the number one beef breed does well in any sort of out-wintering situations, right? That would be Hereford.
Emily: Black Angus,
Bradley: They will do quite well. They are the champions.
Emily: Chianina, Brahman. [laughs]
Joe: Brahman, no. They do not do well.
Ashley: [crosstalk] for episode 50, give an update when you-- don't you guys or do you guys still ask your guests their favorite?
Emily: Yes.
Bradley: We like to say that at the end.
Joe: We'll say that at the end because Brad just wants to hear Hereford's repeated that's the number one.
Bradley: There is only two correct answers. One for--
Joe: True. I'll agree with you on the dairy, but not on the beef. [chuckle] All right, let's talk about feed. We talked about keeping cattle dry and part of that it just costs more the colder cattle get because you have to feed them more to be able to keep up production and body condition and things like that. The thing that I've always used is like my rule of thumb is that for energy requirements for cattle, they go up 2% for every degree, less than 60 degrees if they're wet.
If they're wet, that's a huge increase to their energy requirements and it starts relatively high. When we think about cattle, we think about them being very comfortable at 60 degrees, very comfortable. If they're wet, things get really rough for them pretty quickly. Just like for us, when you're outside, wet is your biggest enemy.
Bradley: It really depends on how cold the winter may be and how much more they're going to eat. They may eat 25% more dry matter intake during a really cold winter. A few winters ago we saw that they ate 25% more when it was really cold, but that one was when we had air temperatures that were from zero to minus 20 Fahrenheit, so minus 20 to minus 30 Celsius. They're going to eat more when it gets cold, but if the temperatures are around 20 above zero or right around freezing Fahrenheit. They probably aren't eating as much more than what they would on a normal basis, so it's really going to be weather dependent.
Joe: I make that my cutoff usually is somewhere around that freezing temperature, 30-32 degrees Fahrenheit, zero on the Celsius. I think that for me when I think about, I have a bunch of rules of thumb in my head when it comes to nutrition because I'm not a nutritionist and that's the only way I can remember these things. For me it's at freezing, basically, the normal 1,400-pound cow is going to eat 35 pounds of dry hay. If you just take that same cow and make the temperature zero degrees, so zero degrees Fahrenheit, that same cow is going to be eating 46 pounds of dry hay.
That's a huge difference. That's definitely hits to the wallet. All these other things that you have to be aware of because you can't give them the same amount of hay and expect them to maintain body condition and production. Especially if we're talking milking. These are beef cow numbers in my head because that's the side of nutrition I get involved on the most. When I think about that, that's a massive increase in hay.
Bradley: Right. You want to prepare for, going into winter, you want to make sure you have enough feed otherwise you don't want to be in the middle of a really cold winter when it's minus Fahrenheit and Celsius. Now you're running out of feed because they've increased their energy requirements. That certainly can happen, so you just have to think about it and be prepared.
Emily: Related to feed and this is something again, Joe, you and I have previously discussed, and that is water. Making sure that cattle still have access to water when they're being outwintered because we know they're still eating a lot, they're eating more. That water is still a necessary requirement. We've heard different things of, "Oh, the pasture has a stream going through it, or the cows can just eat snow." As you recall from our episode, Joe, we were both not in favor of those ideas.
Bradley: A cow cannot eat enough snow to get enough water. It doesn't work. Don't believe that. That's not true.
Emily: Bradley, what do you do for water? Are they heated waters?
Bradley: Yes, we have heated water. It helps with wintertime and all of our animal groups that are outside are all on heated waters to help out. That's what a lot of people use. No, that's not what everyone uses. Some people have natural springs and stuff where they can keep the water going. There are other reasons. By and large, most people that are outwintering have heated waters.
If they didn't they have gone to heated waters and that's probably the best decision they made just because it's just a lot less hassle to get water to cattle. Because you don't want a pipe to freeze or something to freeze and all of a sudden you have to figure out how to move 200 animals a mile away just to get water.
Joe: Bradley, how does it play though when you-- we were talking about dry matter intake and how that having to go u. Usually, that's driven by water consumption, or if the water isn't available then the dry matter intake doesn't increase. Is the drive big enough in the winter that the cows will still eat the additional feed that they need if they don't have the water?
Bradley: If they don't have water, they're probably not going to eat as much. It's essential to have both obviously. I think that there is going to be drive to continue to eat feed because they need to keep their maintenance requirements up, or otherwise something starts sacrificing, and milk production will be the first. If they don't eat and don't drink water, then your milk production's going to go down. Because all that feed is going to go into maintaining body heat, so something does start sacrificing when it gets to a certain point.
Joe: All right. Michael J. Cruz, PhD, as an Extension Educator you get a ridiculous amount of questions about all sorts of things. My question for you, Michael, is we talk about water a lot on this podcast and we keep coming back to it and we keep saying it's forgotten. If anybody's going to get questions about water and cattle, it's going to be you. How often do you really get questions about water?
Michael: Not often. It is not on the top of my list. I'm sitting here trying to remember the last time I had one. It is not a common topic that comes in my office.
Joe: I think that's too bad because I think it's one of the things that I look for first when I'm on a farm and when I'm evaluating farm or if there's a problem with anything, I mean anything. Health-wise, first thing I'm doing is checking waters. Hopefully, you'll start getting more questions after everyone listens to this podcast.
Michael: Everybody's going to listen to podcast. We got to call this Cruz guy.
Joe: Right. There you go. While we're on this topic and we've got Michael talking here, give us your best question from the last 50 episodes or the last year or so.
Michael: I got a call about a neighbor poisoning your neighbor's plants.
Emily: With?
Michael: Rubbing alcohol. [laughter] First of all, how am I supposed to save it? Second of all, what am I supposed to do about it?
Joe: Someone thought their neighbor was poisoning their plants with rubbing alcohol. I don't even know how you get to that.
Ashley: That was a question that came from your podcast.
Michael: No. Some person came into my office.
Emily: Somebody called the extension office to ask that.
Ashley: Oh, geez.
Joe: I don't like that. That whole situation makes me uncomfortable. I don't like it at all.
Emily: A big one when I was a local educator was people calling about Minnesota Fence Laws and, oh, my neighbor's fence is on my property and da, da, da. I was just like, "I want no part of this."
Joe: That's awkward.
Ashley: Here's a fun fact about Minnesota Fence law. It predates statehood if you didn't know that about Minnesota Fence Law.
Emily: I did know that because of all the extensive research I've had to do. [laughter]
Joe: I don't like neighbor disputes. I've been involved in a few on the veterinary side because of people claiming that someone is poisoning animals or anything like that and it's so uncomfortable. 99% of the time is unfounded and it's so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable. You got to be careful with those fence laws too. I've seen a couple times people are like, "Their fence is on my property." Then they get the survey done and actually there's a lot of property that the person who brought the complaint doesn't own that they thought they did.
Bradley: It's a train wreck here. Let's talk about outwintering. [laughter]
Emily: Hey, this is The Moos Room at its best, Bradley.
Joe: We were just bouncing around. It's episode 50. We talked about some really important stuff already when it comes out answering.
Emily: Bradley was just getting bitter because he wasn't talking enough.
Bradley: Actually, no.
Ashely: Also fencing is pretty important to outwintering. True.
Bradley: Everybody's just going after me now. Wow.
Emily: Yes.
Bradley: Shows you how much love--
Emily: Episode 50, woo.
Bradley: Shows you how much love they have for me on this podcast.
Michael: I love you, Bradley.
Bradley: Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'll give you all the swag I got so you can have it, Mike. Don't pass it around to anybody else.
Joe: Bradley, what do you want to talk about? Let's talk about more out wintering. What else do we need to cover?
Emily: There's obviously something you want to say.
Joe: Bradley, is there a study or anything that has been done to show us what the benefits or economics or how wintering does for production?
Bradley: I would like to give a shout-out to my former graduate student, Lucas Sjostrom, Executive Director of the Minnesota Milk Producers. He did a study on outwintering where he compared out-wintering cattle on straw packs versus cows housed in a compost barn. In a nutshell, we found that there's economic advantages to outwintering, I think profitability was 25 cents more per cow per day in an out-wintering system just because you don't have cost of building and labor costs are less. That's the real reason why.
Cows were healthy, milk production was the same whether they were housed out wintering or in a barn. Just a lot of things. We have done studies, so it's not like Brad's just rambling about stuff and doesn't have any research behind it. We have done those projects and it has worked out quite well. You may use more bedding outwintering. You use a lot of straw. 17 pounds per cow per day is what I would think about from a straw perspective, so that's a lot of straw.
Joe: That's a lot of straw.
Bradley: If you got a lot of cows outdoors, you're going to have to use a lot of straw. There's lots of things to think about. Just call Lucas, he'll answer those questions.
Joe: Call Lucas, who he can answer all those questions. You can call Bradley too, I guess.
Emily: No. Call Lucas and tell him The Moos Room sent you
Joe: Yes, exactly. I feel like there's a lot of farmers that look at outwintering and they say, "All right, yes, outwintering makes sense." They're still in the back of their mind like, "If the weather gets bad enough, I need to be able to get my cows inside." They're still thinking about I have to have a building.
Bradley: Of course there's some farms that do think that if it gets bad enough you do need a building. I'm not so sure that you do. I think like we've said at the beginning, it's all about keeping them out of the wind and keeping them on dry bedding, and keeping plenty of feed in front of them and clean water. I think if you have those things, you're not going to see a problem.
Lucas did his study during the polar vortex of 2013 and 2014 when it was minus 40 Fahrenheit and Celsius and we didn't lose milk production. We just didn't lose production at those cold temperatures. I don't have high-producing cows outside. This is a grazing lower input herd, but they were still milking quite well and we didn't lose production. I'm not afraid to put them outside. Bedding is number one and keeping them out of the wind.
Joe: Those considerations, if you can do it like this isn't a-- it's nice to have the cows outside, but I still have to have a backup building. You don't actually have to have the backup building, if you do it right and you're prepared, and you have enough bedding.
Bradley: That's right.
Joe: That's awesome. I am excited about this. I think, like Bradley said, the big piece for me when we're looking at this subject is this is a way for people to get into the industry without a giant amount of overhead to start. It's possible. If you really prioritize the things we talked about today, I think that's the way to go. Windbreak, bedding, maybe additional feed, and water being the biggest things you need to consider.
Just like everything else, our management includes clean, dry, well-fed, watered cattle, and that's about all you can do for them and they do really well. They do really well. Ashley Coles, anything to say? Anything you want to just plug or do or talk about, questions, comments, scathing rebuttals?
Ashley: I always have something to say, Joe. In context to outwintering, I know Brad kept referencing the stuff that they're doing at their dairy. The beef side, I'm sure as you guys talked about before I hopped on is very similar in regards to the need for all those things. Especially if you winter your mama cows, your beef mama cows in a barn like my family does. Making sure that you have adequate bedding made, quality bedding made in the fall is key to success for that. It does increase cost for sure because you also have to remove all of that bedding on a regular basis to keep them dry and comfortable too. In regards to plugging anything else, not really.
Joe: Good. I kept meaning to say this when we were talking about bedding, but they will eat it, you have to plan for that as well. Especially if you get a big drop in temperature, cattle are driven to take dry matter in. They're going to eat more bedding the colder it gets. If you don't provide more in the bunk they'll find it somewhere. That can burn through bedding pretty quick if you're not adequately keeping up in the bunk, and it can be an indicator that maybe I do need to put more in the bunk. Keep an eye on that when you're, when you're talking betting. Michael J. Cruz, PhD, questions, comments, scathing rebuttals, final thoughts.
Michael: Final thoughts, congrats Moos Room. Way to go guys. That's number 50.
I can't wait for the next 50. As far as beef are concerned-- yes, oh. As far as beef are concerned, local educators are working pretty hard right now to get beef quality assurance training out. I know we're going to have a few more of those across the state. I'd encourage everybody at the time this podcast's released to look into that if they need to do some of that. Keep an eye out for what Extension's doing for livestock education, some good stuff widely available.
Joe: Good deal. Happy 50th episode, Emily and Brad. Thanks to Michael J. Cruz and Ashley Coles for being here today.
Emily: For being the OG friends of The Moos Room.
Joe: Exactly, OG friends of The Moos Room.
Bradley: Remember, Herford and Jersey are number one.
Emily: Yes, actually, if we look at the totals--
Bradley: You don't have to tell us. We already know.
Joe: Okay. I won't tell you.
Emily: Off the 50th episode scoreboard.
Joe: We can do it, I guess. We'll do the dairy for sure or the beef for sure, because I know that will make Bradley happy. Dairy total right now, Holsteins are at five leading the pack. Jerseys are at four. Brown Swiss at four. Dutch Belted at two. Normandy at one and Montbelliard at one. On the beef side, Bradley, Herefords are number one.
Bradley: Hereford.
Joe: Six votes.
Emily: Oh my gosh, I wish the listeners could have seen Bradley's smile. It is just like the smuggest little grin.
Ashley: That's kind of a shocker to me. I feel that they may have been coached by Bradley before they came onto the podcast.
Joe: I would have thought that as well, but I was here for all of them, and there was no coaching. There was no indications of Hereford beforehand. These people chose Hereford because they truly love them themselves. They're famous.
Bradley: Because we know it is number one.
Joe: Number one. Herefords is number one. Black Angus at four. Chianina at one, Brahman at one, Stabilizer at one, and Black Baldy at one. We'll have some more guests on here soon and we'll get these totals fixed. On the beef side, Black Angus will jump the board I'm sure, and then on the dairy side we'll get Jersey back in the lead soon. It won't be in second for long. All right.
Emily: We'll see about that.
Joe: Yes. Scathing rebuttals, comments, questions, send them to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: To catch up on events we've got going and things that Mike was talking about, please visit us on Facebook @umnbeef and @umndairy, and check out the website extension.umn.edu. We're on Twitter @umnmoosroom. Emily.
Emily: And @umnfarmsafety.
Joe: There you go. All right. Thank you for listening, everybody. We've really enjoyed these first 50 episodes. We hope to be with you for a long time in at least another 50 episodes.
Emily: Goodbye. Thanks.
Joe: Bye.
Bradley: We have done studies, so it's not like Brad's just rambling about stuff and doesn't have any research behind it. We have done those projects and it has worked out quite well.
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