Producers got a close look at several of those approaches during a Jan. 12 winter grazing tour at the Bos family farm. Jordan Bos demonstrated how cover crops, straw and silage pile grazing fit into the operation’s winter feeding plan.

Rather than relying heavily on chopped silage, the operation is grazing a mix of feed sources through the winter. These include pea straw, barley straw and hay at roughly 20 pounds of dry matter per head per day.

“Three times a week we come out with a rack of straw and just roll it out for them so they all have access,” Bos said.

WHY IT MATTERS: Experts say that using cover crops, straw and silage grazing can help cattle producers manage winter feed costs, as long as rations are carefully balanced to meet herd nutritional needs.

Cover crops on the Bos farm cost about $35 an acre to establish, with funding support for a water site provided by a local watershed district.

“It’s nice if you can get some funding and cut the cost,” Bos said.

The farm typically fertilizes its corn but not its cover crop.

The tour included a demonstration of the farm’s feed truck and TMR mixer, which they call “Mad Max.” The truck reduces labour during the winter.

“The idea is to use that truck as much as we can for a good part of the winter,” Bos said.

Silage pile grazing in practice

Silage pile grazing was another stop on the tour. Cattle are grazing the pile with minimal waste, Bos said.

“I don’t think they’re wasting much. They’re eating it right down to the dirt,” he said. “It seems to be working good.”

The silage pile is about 70-feet wide, with both sides exposed, providing roughly 140 feet of space for about 300 head. Electric wire is adjusted daily to control access and manage utilization.

“You get pretty good utilization like this,” Bos said. “It’s cheaper than hauling it out.”

The winter feeding system appears to be meeting cattle needs, Bos said.

“The animals seem pretty content and full.”

Importance of feed testing and balanced rations

While alternative feed sources like pea and barley straw can help manage costs when available, provincial livestock and forage extension specialist Kristen Bouchard-Teasdale said that it’s important to ensure proper feed testing and balanced rations.

“Winter feed supplies are our biggest expense in these cattle productions,” she said.

“How people feed and what proportions they’re able to mix into their ration is going to be dictated by the quality of the feed ingredients that they have on hand.”

Producers incorporating straw into winter rations need to ensure cattle receive sufficient protein and energy, particularly during extreme cold periods like the one that has been gripping most of Manitoba for the past few weeks.

“Cows can’t eat enough of those fibrous feeds, like the pea straw and the barley straw, to be able to meet those energy requirements in particular,” she said.

That’s why feed testing is so critical for developing effective winter feeding strategies, she added.

“Get your feed tested, know how much you have of something and exactly what’s in it, and then you have that information. It makes it much easier to be able to change your strategy if need be,” Bouchard-Teasdale said.

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That’s not exactly true. As with many things, the reality is more complicated. Here’s the distinction: Being cold isn’t why you get a cold. But it is true that cold weather makes it easier to catch respiratory viruses such as the cold and flu.

Research also shows that lower temperatures are associated with higher COVID-19 rates.

As a professor of nursing with a background in public health, I’m often asked about infectious disease spread, including the relationship between cold and catching a cold. So here’s a look at what actually happens.

Many viruses, including rhinovirus – the usual culprit for the common cold – influenza, and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, remain infectious longer and replicate faster in colder temperatures and at lower humidity levels. This, coupled with the fact that people spend more time indoors and in close contact with others during cold weather, are common reasons that germs are more likely to spread.

The flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, tend to have a defined fall and winter seasonality. However, because of the emergence of new COVID-19 variants and immunity from previous infections and vaccinations decreasing over time, COVID-19 is not the typical cold-weather respiratory virus. As a case in point, COVID-19 infection rates have surged every summer since 2020.

Virus transmission is easier when it’s cold

More specifically, cold weather can change the outer membrane of the influenza virus, making it more solid and rubbery. Scientists believe that the rubbery coating makes person-to-person transmission of the virus easier.

It’s not just cold winter air that causes a problem. Air that is dry in addition to cold has been linked to flu outbreaks. That’s because dry winter air further helps the influenza virus to remain infectious longer. Dry air, which is common in the winter, causes the water found in respiratory droplets to evaporate more quickly. This results in smaller particles, which are capable of lasting longer and traveling farther after you cough or sneeze.

How your immune system responds during cold weather also matters a great deal. Inhaling cold air may adversely affect the immune response in your respiratory tract, which makes it easier for viruses to take hold. That’s why wearing a scarf over your nose and mouth may help prevent a cold because it warms the air that you inhale.

Also, most people get less sunlight in the winter. That is a problem because the sun is a major source of vitamin D, which is essential for immune system health. Physical activity, another factor, also tends to drop during the winter. People are three times more likely to delay exercise in snowy or icy conditions.

Instead, people spend more time indoors. That usually means more close contact with others, which leads to disease spread. Respiratory viruses generally spread within a 6-foot radius of an infected person.

In addition, cold temperatures and low humidity dry out your eyes and the mucous membranes in your nose and throat. Because viruses that cause colds, flu and COVID-19 are typically inhaled, the virus can attach more easily to these impaired, dried-out passages.

What you can do

The bottom line is that being wet and cold doesn’t make you sick. That being said, there are strategies to help prevent illness all year long:

• Wash your hands often.
• Avoid touching your face, something people do between nine and 23 times an hour.
• Stay hydrated. Eight glasses a day of water is a good goal, but that could be more or less depending on lifestyle and the size of the person.
• Eat a well-balanced diet. Dark green, leafy vegetables are rich in immune system-supporting vitamins, while eggs, fortified milk, salmon and tuna have vitamin D.
• Stay physically active, even during the winter.
• Get adequate sleep.
• Clean hard, high-touch surfaces in your home often.
• If your nose or throat gets dry in the winter, consider using a humidifier.
• Get your annual flu and COVID-19 vaccine.

Following these tips can ensure you have a healthy winter season.

Libby Richards is a professor of nursing at Purdue University. This is an updated version of an article originally published on The Conversation on Dec. 15, 2020.

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Over Saskatchewan, the low is forecasted to bring a band of snow from southeastern region arching northwestwards through Saskatoon on Monday. It looks like this region will see upwards of 10cm of snow before the system moves off to the east. Behind the low temperatures are forecasted to plummet with daytime highs falling into the -15 to -20 C range. Luckily the cold snap does not look to last more than a couple of days.

In Manitoba, thing really get tricky with very warm air to the south of low and very cold air to the north, the exact track of the low will result in huge differences in the weather. You will need to really keep track of the local weather. The weather models have been coming into agreement with the Alberta low splitting into two with the main low over the mid west U.S. becoming the dominate low.

This looked to result in a band of snow moving through southern Manitoba late on Sunday and into Monday, with a general amount of 5cm can expected. As the southern low organizes and moves northeastwards on Tuesday, expect another quick shot of snow over southern and eastern regions. Cold air will pour in behind the low bringing a short return to winter like temperatures with daytime highs falling into the -15C range with overnight lows falling to, yep, you guessed it, possibly -30C.

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The government agency called for a 50 to 60 per cent chance of above normal temperatures from January through March across most of the country, with an even greater chance in the Atlantic provinces, parts of Northern Ontario around Lake Superior and eastern Quebec. Looking ahead to the spring, the four to six month forecast for April/May/June also predicts a high probability of above normal temperatures in the spring.

Precipitation is expected to be normal across most of Canada through the winter months, with a wetter bias in Labrador and a small pocket of northern Saskatchewan.

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In the case of cold weather and falling temperatures, producers can have problems managing morbidity, mortality and suboptimal growth rates, says Dr. Sarah Morrison, a research scientist with the William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute in Chazy, N.Y.

She was the presenter at a recent webinar hosted by the Dairy Cattle Welfare Council, based at Ohio State University, that focused on cold weather management.

Why it matters: Calf morbidity and mortality can be reduced in cold weather with attention to detail.

“If we can make changes to the nutrition and management of these animals during these weather conditions, we can set them up for success when they enter late lactation and through the rest of their heifer program,” said Morrison, whose research focuses on dairy calf nutrition and management.

To start, Morrison defined the term “cold stress” and what happens when calves experience a range of colder temperatures, particularly in the “thermal neutral zone” when they are trying to maintain body temperature.

In that zone, they don’t have to expend extra energy to help maintain body temperature, and for calves less than three weeks old, that’s a range between 15 C and 28 C.

“For calves less than three weeks of age, we really need to start talking about it when temperatures dip below 59 F (15 C),” said Morrison. “We often focus a lot in terms of cold stress or it’s more characterized in terms of temperature, but certainly precipitation, wind and other conditions can make it more challenging.”

She has studied several important factors that can stress calves during pre-weaning, including the effects of ventilation and the amount of fat provided on a daily basis in a liquid diet. With ventilation, calves housed in mechanically or cross-ventilated barns were at higher risk of illness during pre-weaning compared to those in naturally ventilated buildings.

As for the effect of fat in a liquid diet, Morrison cited an example of a calf fed one kilogram of solids per day from milk or milk replacer.

“If that milk replacer was 15 per cent fat, those calves were at a higher risk of dying in the pre-weaning period compared to calves that were fed a 22 per cent fat milk replacer or milk,” she said.

The goal in her calf programs is to double the birth body weight by 56 days of age.

“If we’re not able to do that because we don’t have energy left to meet that growth requirement, we can’t expect them to grow the same as if they were under thermal neutral conditions.”

Maintenance requirements will change with temperature, and vary depending on the calf size. Those also change as the animal ages. Morrison has done the calculations for an 88-pound calf starting at the lower range of the thermal neutral zone.

“In the north country where I am, we certainly get down into these colder temperatures,” she said. “As we go from 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 C) to 32 degrees, that’s an increase of 35 per cent of her energy requirement just to meet maintenance. Once we get down into zero degrees Fahrenheit, that’s an increase of 82 per cent for that calf.”

Other factors

Newborn calves have approximately two per cent of body weight in brown adipose fat, which helps with non-shivering thermal regulation, but it’s a short-term reserve.

They also have a low surface-to-mass ratio and fairly poor insulation, which is why the intake of colostrum is so important. It provides immunoglobulins but also contains significant amounts of fat and protein and helps generate heat production in a calf.

Drying a newborn calf is another aspect that Morrison has studied. The goal between the time of birth and when a calf is dry needs to be minimized in cold weather because they take longer to stand, resulting in a loss of body heat.

That led to discussions about warm boxes, the temperature of mixed milk replacer and the thickness of straw used as bedding.

Although warm boxes are useful in drying calves, she noted, they are also efficient at producing bacteria, which means more care in cleaning newborns before they’re placed in one of those units.

Tracking temperatures at mixing and feeding was another consideration. Depending on the mixing guidelines of a milk replacer, the water temperatures may fall somewhere between 105 F (45.5 C) to 130 F (54 C). But if the milk replacer is cold when adding it to the water, it may significantly lower the temperature of the complete mixture.

“If you’re warming up whole milk, make sure it comes to the appropriate temperature at delivery,” said Morrison. “We want to make sure that each calf is getting an appropriate temperature so that the first, middle and last calf are all hitting that benchmark of above 105 F.”

The goal is to avoid the calf warming up the meal its consuming to meet body temperature. Instead, make sure it’s warmer than body temperature so the calf doesn’t have to expend extra energy to warm that meal.

A bed of straw

Keeping the calf off cold, wet concrete is another important factor in minimizing cold stress. According to Morrison, there should be at three inches of clean dry bedding between the calf and the floor. Wheat straw is a good option, allowing calves to create a pocket they can warm directly around them.

“To sum things up, we need to identify the increased maintenance costs to those animals and think about the factors we can hone in on to minimize those impacts so we’re setting our calves up for success,” said Morrison.

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Chickpeas saw the largest projected production decline, dropping 41.5 per cent from the 2021-22 marketing year to 621,000 tonnes this year, Australia’s smallest domestic chickpea crop since 2019-20. Projected chickpea area also declined, falling by 31.7 per cent from the year before to 423,000 hectares, the smallest area since 2019-20.

Lupin bean production in 2022-23 is forecast to decline by 26.9 per cent to 700,000 tonnes, also the lowest total in three years. The estimated seeded area for lupins was cut by 19.5 per cent to 395,000 hectares, the smallest area since 2013-14.

Faba bean production is expected to be lower for the second straight year, 20.4 per cent from last year to be exact, at 463,000 tonnes. However, the seeded area is only estimated to be 6.2 per cent less than in 2021-22.

Meanwhile, lentils are set to become the highest producing winter pulse crop in Australia for 2022-23 at 924,000 tonnes, a 7.6 per cent increase from the previous year and a record amount for winter. There is also a projected 9.7 per cent increase in seeded area from 2021-22 at 576,000 hectares, the largest seeded area ever in the country.

The winter field pea harvest is projected to be 3.1 per cent larger than last year’s at 269,000 tonnes, while 205,000 hectares were planted for a 6.8 per cent increase.

Australia’s total winter crop production for 2022-23 is forecast to be the fourth-highest on record at 55.5 million tonnes with above average yield potentials for all states.

— Adam Peleshaty reports for MarketsFarm from Stonewall, Man.

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Since mid-December, the Prairies have been in a deep freeze beginning with temperatures at least 10 C below-normal. Since the holiday season, many towns and cities in the region experienced record-breaking temperatures and wind chills of -45 C or colder. Over the past week, much of the region has been under an extreme cold warning from Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Drew Lerner, senior agricultural meteorologist for World Weather Inc. at Overland Park, Kan., said the cold snap is part of a reoccurrence of La Niña — a phenomenon in which cooler-than-normal sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean affect weather patterns.

“La Niña tends to produce a northwest flow across North America and it brings cold air down from the north,” he said. “If you look at historical La Niña events from the past, they usually make the Prairies cold.”

This cold snap is severe, he said, because of a quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) over the equator, which can influence stratospheric weather patterns over North America.

“When it’s in its negative phase, there is a tendency for winters in North America to be more brutally cold,” he said. “When you have a La Niña event that’s already generating cold and the QBO playing at the same time, you tend to get some impressive cold surges.”

However, one benefit to the freezing conditions has been the presence of snowfall. Some parts of southern Manitoba already have more snow than last winter and parts of southern Alberta and central Saskatchewan have also received some of the white stuff over the past few weeks.

While the recent precipitation will help drought-stricken areas of the Prairies, how much it will help depends on the ground, Lerner said.

“This week, we put a little bit of snow across (Alberta and Saskatchewan), so that’s been very helpful. But we have so much frost on the ground now that when it melts, it might help some dugouts, it might moisten up the topsoil just a tiny bit. Until the frost comes out of the ground now, there won’t be any way for that snow moisture to get far into the soil.”

Lerner predicts frigid temperatures will be here to stay on the Prairies, for the most part.

“A continuation of cold weather will occur. There will be a short-term break next week where we’ll warm up relatively nicely, but it’s not going to last very long,” he said.

“We’ll go back to more cold weather as we move through the middle of the month and the rest of the month will have a cold bias in the majority of the Prairies.”

— Adam Peleshaty reports for MarketsFarm from Stonewall, Man.

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Weather maps show a 40 to 60 per cent probability of more precipitation than normal across much of the country from December through February, with the heaviest accumulations expected in Quebec.

Only southern Manitoba, parts of northern Ontario, and the far north reaches of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories were forecast to see normal precipitation.

From a temperature standpoint, above-normal temperatures are forecast across much of the southern reaches of the country, including all of the agricultural areas of Manitoba. Southern Saskatchewan and south-central Alberta also have an increased probability of above-normal temperatures, while the northern Prairies are forecast to see normal winter temperatures.

Colder-than-normal temperatures are forecast for Yukon and the Northwest Territories, with Hudson Bay also likely to see colder weather.

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“Last week there was some buying in the deferred months, from January onward,” Allen Pirness of Market Place Commodities at Lacombe, Alta. said.

Pirness said the strong prices were unexpected, noting that when prices climbed higher, producers started to hold back their product to support the rally.

Simultaneously, buyers have been concerned prices will go higher, and are opting to purchase more feed grains.

“These competing forces take the market higher,” he said, as farmers are waiting on optimal prices to sell.

“There’s no rush to throw in the towel just yet.”

Feed barley prices are around $265 per tonne delivered in Lethbridge, with feed wheat and feed corn prices in a comparable range.

“All three are right in the same neck of the woods,” he said.

It’s currently too early to tell the level of coverage buyers achieved, but Pirness expected prices to correct lower in coming weeks.

“If there isn’t any underlying reason for it to move higher, I think it could easily correct from these levels.”

— Marlo Glass reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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A La Nina generates colder-than-normal temperatures, as opposed to the warm temperatures garnered from an El Nino. Both weather phenomenon can be found over the Pacific Ocean.

For the Canadian Prairies, a La Nina will likely mean a drier bias on the whole, Lerner said.

“Usually in the early winter the cold is further to the west. In the late winter, it comes further to the east,” he said, noting this La Nina is expected to diminish come spring.

“If that’s the case, you would be more vulnerable to other weather patterns,” he said.

“If it’s a traditional La Nina, it will produce colder-biased temperatures in the western Prairies, with above-average snowfall along the front range of the mountains in Alberta and across parts of southern Saskatchewan.

For Manitoba, Lerner said a La Nina tends to have little impact.

“When we get into late winter/early spring, there’s some potent shots of cold that can come from that,” he said.

As for the U.S. Midwest, Lerner forecast below-normal precipitation for the western Corn Belt along with colder temperatures, particularly toward the end of winter.

“It’s important to know that the prevailing weather patterns for the winter, without La Nina, is for a tendency for troughs of low pressure over the eastern part of North America. There will be an open door for a cold shot to move across the central and eastern Prairies, down into the Midwest and northern Plains.”

However, Lerner exempted Ohio, Indiana and Michigan from the scenario, predicting these states should receive normal precipitation during the winter.

“The further west, the drier,” he said.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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