What do you think??

[Colorado2008]

For those of you who live where it can easily get below 0 at night.

When it gets cold outside at night do you tend to feed more grain or less grain? The reason I ask is because some friends of ours feed more at night than they do in the morning to 'keep the calves warmer.' I guess I have never thought of this and it does kinda make sense. But processing the grain could use more energy that could be used to keep the calves warm...

Mine get the same amount cold or warm, but I thought that it was an interesting concept.

I don't really know...i just thought that I would get some different opinions. ;-)

 

[Keren]

I live in an area with a pretty stable temperature, but this tactic does make sense. An animal's total heat load is made up of the environmental heat load (ie how hot it is outside) and the metabolic heat load. Metabolic heat is created by the animal digesting its feed. So processing the grain you give them at night wont take away energy needed for keeping them warm, it should do the opposite, keep them warmer. Your friends are right. I've never heard of anyone else doing it though.

Actually this can be a big problem in feedlots around here in summer, if we get sudden heat waves, when you add that to the high metabolic heat load (because they are on large amounts of grain) the animals just can't cope. Around 400 animals were lost near here a few years ago because of this happening.

 

[glover36]

our calves outside dont get grain at all they get wrapped hay and silage and stay in the woods