Getting caught in the middle of winter with no supplies, frozen water and livestock to feed is a scary place to be. However, it is one that can be easily avoided with some preparations now.

Securing hay to ensure you have a steady supply throughout the cold months is No. 1 on the winter preparation checklist, says Ron Lemenager, a beef cattle specialist and professor of animal sciences at Purdue University. He says you should check your inventory now and figure out how long that supply will last.

Here are some additional items to put on your winter prep to-do list:

Prevent frozen water. If you have automatic waterers with heating elements, test them to see if they’re working. Or, if you plan to use tanks, ensure you have tank heaters on hand.

“Making sure that your water supply is frost proof, or not freezable, is an important piece,” Lemenager says.

Check equipment. Pull aside equipment that you plan to use over the winter for your livestock — like your hay-feeding tractor or the one that runs the feed-mixing wagon or your skid steer — to perform maintenance before the cold months. Lemenager says to ensure those primary vehicles and machinery have adequate levels of antifreeze for cold protection, and he adds that you should check batteries.

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“When it gets cold, that’s when stuff is going to start to fail,” Lemenager says. “Now is the time to look over your equipment, including your waterers, to make sure it’s ready for cold weather.”

Build a windbreak. Wind chill can affect nutritional requirements for your livestock and cause their body condition score to drop if those requirements are not adjusted. To avoid that scenario, Lemenager recommends constructing a windbreak if there is not already a tree line or natural windbreak present.

“Just try to reduce the wind speed,” Lemenager says. “Cattle can handle the cold weather, but the wind chill is what really changes nutritional requirements.”

When the wind chill drops below 30 degrees F, nutritional requirements go up by 13% for each 10-degree drop in temperature. For cattle with poor body condition or a wet coat, that number is closer to 30% for every 10-degree drop. Simply building a windbreak could significantly reduce that wind chill component.

Track condition. Starting now, pick a handful of individuals from your herd or flock to track throughout the winter — like a livestock barometer, Lemenager says. He encourages producers to write down their current body condition and check on them monthly. This will allow you to make nutritional adjustments if you notice some of those body condition scores dropping. You need to start tracking now to ensure you have an accurate starting point going into cold months.

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Prevent mud. If you have drainage issues causing muddy conditions, Lemenager advises moving some dirt or rebuilding a mound to help drainage.

“Mud is always a potential problem, particularly in a dry lot or semi-dry lot,” Lemenager says. He adds that you also could add heavy-use pads to those areas. Additionally, there is Environmental Quality Incentives Program funding available through the Natural Resources Conservation Service to install those pads.

Make the most of hay supply

Pasture time will be cut short in some areas of the state, with droughty conditions affecting growth. Without many rainfall events, producers could be pulling their livestock off pasture sooner than normal.

“Pasture growth has really slowed down, and it’s because we didn’t get enough rain,” Lemenager says. “Local hay could be in short supply.”

Producers should inventory their hay supply now, Lemenager says. A good rule of thumb for cattle is to multiply the average weight of one of your cows by 3% to account for consumption and waste. For a 1,300-pound cow, that number would come to about 39 pounds of hay dry matter disappearance from inventory per day per cow. Adjusting for moisture, this works out to be about 46 pounds. This can give you an idea of how much hay you’ll go through this winter.

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Although it may be tempting to graze pasture longer to save hay, Lemenager stresses the importance of avoiding overgrazing. With dry conditions this year, pastures are even more susceptible to damage from overgrazing, and it will affect not only winter plant survival but also next year’s forage yield.

More hay feeding could lead to a shortage, Lemenager says, which will lead to higher hay prices. However, those prices likely won’t appear until late winter, when producers discover they don’t have enough hay. For that reason, Lemenager recommends evaluating your inventory and purchasing additional hay when prices are cheaper.

Another option would be forward contracting and storing byproducts such as soybean hulls, corn gluten or distiller’s grains if you have the space. Commodity prices for those byproducts are lower now, so Lemenager says now is the time to buy before everyone else is in the market.  

“If you have the potential to store several tons of soybean hulls or corn gluten or distiller’s grains, you need to be thinking about how to lock in some prices,” Lemenager says. These byproducts could be a part of your supplementation strategy to ultimately help meet animal nutritional requirements and stretch your hay supply. A gravity wagon makes for a great place to store these dry products.