Managing Heat Stress

Just like you or I, the hotter it gets, the more water we need, right? Um, the drier the conditions, the more we dehydrate.

But then again, sometimes the higher the humidity, the more we'll sweat.

So having plenty of water for our cattle is, is a big deal, so we're gonna start there.

The, having water is the most basic heat stress management item that you can do.

And so a lot of times we're looking at water, how much will they consume a day, and so we're gonna give you some good rules of thumb out there to think about.

So first of all, any day over about 90 degrees, your, your average cow is gonna drink somewhere around 20 gallons of water, whether she's doing a whole lot that day or not.

Now, this is drinking, and there can be some water provided by, you know, we get a good, a good rain and the grass grow, gets lush again.

There's a little bit of water when they intake that natural pasture grazing.

Um, but then again, like we are right now, it's pretty dry, so we're gonna have to provide most the water as in a source that's consumed by drinking.

And so a good rule of thumb is for days that have highs over 90 degrees for our, our cattle, we need to provide about two gallons of water for every 100 pounds of body weight.

So if you got a 1,200-pound cow, they're gonna need 24 gallons of water.

You got a 1,600-pound cow, you're gonna need about 32 gallons of water per cow.

So number one, knowing the average size of your cows that are out there, if you got 100 head of 1,200-pound cows that need two gallons a day, they're gonna drink up somewhere around 2,400 gallons of water every day.

But then if they got calves at their side, the calves are gonna need a drink too, right? So we need to match maybe tank size.

And some of the things that are out there, you know, most of our stock tanks, whether they're solid bottoms or whether they're, uh, bottoms we pour concrete in to make a hard bottom, they're most of the time we get them about two feet deep, and the reason we do that is, you know, they, the cattle will drink it down, it'll refill, but the amount of water that's in the tank will help keep the tank water relatively cool.

So looking at our tanks, if you're in a, let's say you got a little lot.

You got your kids' 4H steers.

They're drinking out of a six-foot tank that's two-foot deep.

That's about 395 gallons of water.

So that thing probably needs to refill pretty often to freshen up for that, you know, nice, right, we're almost fair time here, that nice 1,500-pound steer, correct? Now, our bigger out on the pasture we may have 20, 21, 24-foot tanks, and so a 24-foot tank that's approximately two feet deep will hold about 6,700 gallons, 6,700 gallons of water.

So could we take care of 100 head of cows at a 24-foot tank during the day? Probably so, especially if it refills at a appropriate rate and we don't have all the cows kind of hitting it at the same time.

But let's talk about cow behavior.

When one, one or two lead ones goes to drink, here comes everybody else, right? And keeping it fresh, keeping it clean, keeping those calves out of it.

Kids, this is something to drink.

This is not the pool where it shouldn't be swimming, right? That's our number one thing that we get into in the summertime.