Managing cows in drought conditions

Note: This is Part 1 of 2 in this Beef Cattle Mythbuster series. Check out next week’s paper for Part 2.

Hi everyone, I hope your summer is going well. A couple of months ago, we all thought the pastures in our region were in pretty good shape moisture-wise, but wow has that changed in a lot of places. Recently, I was invited to give a couple of talks to cattle producers. The presentations dealt with pastures and cow nutrition management within the current dry conditions across most of the Pacific Northwest.

In reality, from a nutritional standpoint, drought puts cattle in a situation not much different from winter feeding of stockpiled forage which may be of low-quality but in sufficient quantity. The key difference is that forage supplies decline in drought adding an order of complexity to the problem. As with all emerging issues with cow nutrition, we focus on protein, energy, vitamins, and minerals. Beyond protein and energy, we have to be conscious that dry feed may be low in vitamins and we still need to ensure adequate intake of minerals with cow/calf mineral packages. And of course the most important nutrient—water. Assess the nutrient imbalances, understand their implications to the cows’ well-being and then figure out how to address the deficiencies in a systematic and methodical way.

The fundamental question is: What are the options for dealing with the cow herd in drought conditions?

If we were talking a month or so ago we might consider early weaning to take some of the stress off the cows (let’s consider it anyway for future reference). Removing nutritional stress is particularly important for young cows such as first-calf heifers. These young cows are at greatest risk for reproductive failure because not only are they trying to support a calf, but they are also trying to grow into mature cows. We know that there is an inexorable link between the body condition score of cows and her ability to breed back after calving. Calves can be weaned early without a lot of repercussions at 90 days of age. There is a tremendous investment in replacement heifers (either purchased or retained in the herd) before they have their first calf at two years of age. While early weaning will require additional resources to care for and feed the early weaned calves so that they gain equivalent to their traditionally weaned counterparts, it may be beneficial to protect the investment already incurred in developing replacements heifers. The same realities of cost hold true for early weaning mature cows. It is certainly significant in that the nutrient requirements for early weaned cattle are likely 40% less than those nursing calves. Even older cows can benefit from early weaning. In an early weaning study that we conducted at Kansas State University with spring calving cows; our early weaned cows (calves weaned at 90-100 days old) picked up about 1.25 body condition score by the time the traditionally weaned calves were weaned in the fall. With the increase in body condition in the early weaned cows, we found that they required less supplemental feed in the subsequent winter. It may be a little late for early weaning this year, but it is certainly something to consider in similar circumstances in the future.

— Don Llewellyn is the WSU Lincoln County Extension Director in Davenport. He can be emailed at don.llewellyn@wsu.edu