The Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a hard winter this year; both cold and wet. I immediately started having nightmares about the winter of 2022-23. I remember vividly my brother telling me in September of 2022 that the Old Farmer’s Almanac was predicting a cold and wet winter. I scoffed at that, because we would either get snow or cold, but never both.
In the past, it always had to warm up to snow. Well, not in 2023! We had 2-3 feet of snow on the level and temperatures around 10-20° below zero for extended periods of time. We fed about twice the amount of hay that winter as we normally feed. Let’s just say it was rough.
When you are in a situation like that, it’s hard to see anything positive. In retrospect, we were pretty lucky. Most of our neighbors were calving in January and February and sustaining 30-50% death loss. We calved at the end of March that year and didn’t lose any more calves than usual.
We also had access to more hay at a reasonable price. Many ranchers were buying hay at twice the market value, if they could find it. Even if you could buy hay, it was extremely difficult to get it hauled in, due to the wind drifting the roads shut. There were times when ranchers couldn’t even get to their cows to feed them!
I think our biggest advantage is that we had cows that didn’t require much in the way of winter feed. While most ranchers were feeding their cows 50-75 pounds per day, we were feeding around 30 pounds per day. Talk about a cost savings!
We heard of ranchers passing out from fatigue trying to save calves around the clock for an extended period of time. We had a couple of blizzards in April where we checked for calves twice a day, but other than that, we checked once a day. Even in nasty conditions, our cows were getting their calves cleaned off, and the calves were getting up and sucking right away. We didn’t have to pull any calves, and we didn’t have barns to calve in. The cows and heifers had to do it on their own.
Although that winter was horrible, it could have been much worse without PCC® genetics. We have found that PCC genetics are the best insurance against hard winters. The same can be said about droughts. Are you covered if we have another hard winter?