Seasonality significantly influences the management of dairy cattle. While summer care is relatively straightforward, winter cow care presents a unique set of challenges, especially for novice farmers.
Preparing the Barn for Winter
Preparing for the long winter months begins with adequately outfitting the barn:
- Seal gaps and cracks: Use insulating material (at least 30%) to seal gaps and cracks in the walls.
- Insulate doors and windows: Use various materials like old boards, roofing felt, and additional sheathing to ensure doors and windows seal tightly.
- Inspect the ceiling: Repair and insulate the ceiling with mineral wool if necessary.
- Provide adequate lighting: Install incandescent or LED lights, which offer long service life and high efficiency.
- Thoroughly clean and disinfect: Conduct a thorough cleaning and disinfection of stalls, water troughs, feeders, and partitions.
When carrying out insulation work, it’s crucial to consider the desired temperature and humidity (microclimate) inside the barn. A well-prepared barn should be well-protected from the cold while allowing for regular ventilation.
Key requirements:
- Temperature: The air temperature should not fall below +4°C. The optimal temperature is +8°C.
- Ventilation: Air intake should be at least 17 cubic meters per hour for every 100 kg of adult cows and 50 cubic meters per hour for calves.
- Airflow speed: Approximately 0.5 m/s.
- Humidity: 50-60%.
Wintering cows is a laborious task with its own specific requirements. However, with careful planning, even the harshest winter poses no significant challenges.
Bedding
Before laying bedding in the barn, ensure the floor is covered with a high-quality material. Natural wood or, as a last resort, concrete is ideal. Some farmers add peat to the straw. However, peat has a significant drawback: it heavily soils the cow’s udder, creating a favorable environment for pathogens. Bedding should consist of chopped straw (approximately 15 cm long) at a rate of about 2.5 kg per animal. This material significantly outperforms other options like sawdust, wood shavings, or leaves in terms of heat retention and moisture absorption.
Stall Management
The nearly constant confinement of cows to stalls requires adherence to specific guidelines:
- Tie the cow to the feed trough with one end of the rope and to its collar with the other. This allows for easy removal if necessary. Ensure the rope is long enough for the cow to reach the water trough and feeder without restriction.
- There are two primary methods of barn cleaning in winter: removing manure daily and spreading fresh bedding, or leaving the manure until spring and adding fresh bedding on top. The latter is suitable for regions with harsh winters, as the multi-layer bedding provides additional warmth.
- Daily stall cleaning and, in some cases, water procedures combined with massage improve blood circulation in the skin, enhance the function of sweat and sebaceous glands, and stimulate appetite. This is done using a stiff brush and warm water, preferably an hour before or after milking.
Outdoor Exercise
Regular outdoor exercise helps maintain muscle tone in cows. If cows are kept in stalls constantly and deprived of movement and sunlight, they become lethargic and lose their appetite. This can lead to weakened bones in adults and rickets in calves. Some important recommendations:
- Gradually acclimate cows to cold weather starting in the fall.
- Create a fenced-in area of about 15-20 square meters with fresh pine branches and separate feeders for part of the roughage.
- Exercise the herd daily for 2-3 hours (in good weather, without rain or snow).
- Cover the exercise yard with thick bedding and add fresh hay or straw as needed to keep the top layer dry. Farmers should establish a strict daily routine for their cows, ensuring they eat, exercise, drink, and bathe at the same time each day. Any deviation from this routine can negatively impact productivity.
Water and Diet for Winter
In winter, cattle require significantly more energy, so farmers must provide a balanced, nutritious diet and an adequate supply of warm, clean water.
Feeding
Cows should be fed three times a day at regular intervals. A typical diet includes:
- Grass hay (part of which can be replaced with straw)
- Potatoes, pumpkin, carrots
- Fodder hay
- Soybean meal
The diet can be supplemented with silage and chopped root crops. Grain feed should be given in the morning and afternoon, and roughage at every feeding. Each cow should consume 30-40 kg of total feed per day. To diversify the diet in cold weather, you can feed:
- Chaff – small particles of the stem and ear of grain crops remaining after threshing.
- Browse – branches from birch, aspen, acacia, willow, poplar, and maple.
- Straw from winter cereals.
Watering
In addition to a high-quality and balanced diet, cows, especially in winter, require clean, heated water. Each cow should drink at least 5 buckets of clean water per day. The water should be heated to room temperature using special tanks or systems installed in the barn.
Vitamins
Vitamin and mineral supplements play a crucial role in a well-balanced diet. Without timely replenishment, cattle may develop:
- Decreased productivity and fertility
- Impaired growth and weight gain
- Exacerbation of latent and overt chronic diseases
Symptoms may include: increased excitability, aggression, irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, and anemia. The modern farming market offers a variety of vitamin supplements for winter feeding, including:
- Injections: complexes containing vitamins A, B, E, folic acid, sulfur, and nicotinic acid.
- Feed additives: increasing levels of selenium, vitamins, iron, and iodine.
- Protein mineral-vitamin supplements: containing crude protein, fiber, crude fat, lysine, crude ash, sugar, methionine, and cystine.
Winter months can be challenging for livestock farmers, as cows require more attention and care during this period. However, with patience and diligence, farmers can successfully navigate these challenges and reap the rewards.