Transcript

Well, welcome back to our Pasture to Profit podcast with CSU Extension Specialist.

I'm Travis Taylor out of the office in Ray, Colorado, and I'm joined today by Scott Stenett, our 4-H Livestock Extension Specialist out of the Kit Carson County office.

And it's the middle of summer, Scott, and today we're talking about heat.

That's right.

It's getting hot out there, Travis.

And I can tell you, I just traveled back home to Oklahoma and sat in a 100-degree heat with high humidity that made the heat index feel 110 to 115 degrees.

I'd forgotten how to sweat until I got home.

Well, you know, it has a dramatic effect, and we're talking about the heat index, and that's the relative temperature index that we're used to dealing with.

But when we talk about cattle, we have a little different index that we kind of use, and that is the cattle temperature humidity index.

And, Scott, can you kind of briefly tell us what that index tells us?

Well, first of all, let's kind of review real quick the normal heat index that we're used to hearing from our weathermen and our weather forecasters.

They usually take the air temperature, they add the humidity, and then it's more about the feel, how it feels to us.

So, for example, I just said, you know, got back home, it was 100 degrees with high humidity, feel outside, the heat index was going to be 110 to 115, depending on where you were.

In our temperature humidity index, it is an index, so we have numbers less than 100.

But on that index, for our cattle, we take the temperature and we do take the humidity, so we take the same two items, but it's calculated a little bit differently.

So, for our cattle, if we're at the index is below 75, we say that's comfortable, that's normal for heat.

When we start getting above 75 to about 78 on the heat index, so, for example, at 76 degrees with 85 percent humidity, which I don't think would ever happen here on the high plains, we start at that 75.

But if we were to hit, say, 90 degrees with about 30 percent humidity, which we can have definitely some days like that, it starts getting about 78, which is just in a low range for what we call an alert for our cattle.

But if we got up on those higher days, you know, and we'll get some of those where it's 98 degrees and 35 to 40 percent humidity, we get into what we call the red range, the danger or emergency range for our cattle.

We're going to be at an 84, 85, 86, somewhere in there for between 35 and 45 percent humidity.

And think about those days when we know that cold front's coming, we've got the humidity here, we can feel it, we can see the clouds, but it just hasn't quite rained yet.

Those are those days where we as human beings even can feel the effects pretty well.

So the temperature humidity index works, like I said, a little differently.

It's less than 100, but anything above a 75 on that, we need to start thinking about what we need to do for our cattle.

Yeah, and just looking at it, we want to stay between that 75 and that 85 degree range for sure.

Those are critical temperatures in there.

If we can stay below 75, we're fantastic.

If we get above 85, we're really in that danger zone on our cattle temperature humidity chart.

So looking at that, Scott, what are things we can do, you know, as a beef producer to kind of help limit those things when we see these cattle?

And maybe I'll back up just a minute.

How do we tell when our cattle are really in that problem stage when we start looking at just cattle behavior?

Well, our cattle will start telling us when they're hot.

And a lot of these things are going to seem pretty obvious to us.

We've all seen hot cattle.

We've seen other livestock that are hot.

You know, if we're not seeing anything out of the ordinary, a normal respiration, normal activity out of our cattle, we're going to give that what we call a panting score.

And so that panting score is going to be a zero.

That's our baseline.

We start seeing our cattle breathe a little bit heavier when they haven't been active.

That's going to be a panting score of a one.

Then we get into a panting score two, and this is where the panting is going to be more moderate.

And, you know, we may see our cattle trying to, you know, they're actually going to drool a little bit more, going to have a little more saliva coming out of the mouth.

Now they're breathing out a lot of hot, humid air out of their body to try and, you know, regulate their body temperature.

Then the panting scores go up to three.

We start seeing that heavy, real heavy, deep panting, open mouth, definitely got saliva present.

Probably to go along with that, we're going to see some listlessness.

Cattle trying to find places to be to be cool if they can.

They're probably not going to be laying down.

They're probably going to be standing up trying to get as much air flow around their own body.

And we're going to see them probably stop grazing as well.

And then the worst case scenario is when we get to a four.

This is when we're going to have cattle that are probably going to be on the brink of needing some assistance of some kind.

You know, definitely open mouth, panting, tongues hanging out.

You know, we make that as a joke.

It's so hot my tongue's hanging out.

But literally, that's what we'll see with these cattle is their tongue hanging out, lots of saliva coming out of the mouth.

They're going to be extended out in their neck.

You're going to be standing up.

They're going to be listless.

They're really going to be in a lot of hurt.

So if we see cattle in a four, and I'd really be watching those cattle, especially those ones that are in pens, or we're getting ready to ship, or maybe we've got them in a lot somewhere that are kind of bunched up.

That's going to be kind of what we're looking for.

Well, I think you and I, and on a previous Pasture to Profit podcast, discussed the importance of water, the necessity of water to make sure that it's cool and can help with some of these things.

I think today we're more interested in maybe talking about cattle behavior.

Because like you said, when these cattle get hot, they're going to be more restless.

You'll see them getting up and down.

Cattle have a little different way of dealing with this.

When they get hot, they tend to group more than they do when they are cooled off, which is unusual as we talk about livestock species.

They tend to come together, so they're actually absorbing more body heat from the cattle around them as well.

So they tend to compound some different things.

So I believe, like you said, some of those things in terms of taking care of our herd numbers, our groups, being able to maybe spread cattle out a little bit more, or get them out away in pens when it does get hot.

We can sure help ourselves as beef producers in terms of helping regulate some of those heat problems.

My dad always said, "If we're going to work cattle, we're going to work cattle in the morning, Scott."

Is that still the case that we need to be paying attention to?

Yeah, and I've had other producers tell me the same thing.

An hour in the morning or two in the afternoon, especially when you're doing work in the heat, we probably need to be done by 10 o'clock in the morning.

If we've got a lighted facility, if we need to work some cattle and we can work them in the dark in the early morning, yeah, it's worth it getting up in the morning and doing those things, starting it.

If you're going to start at 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning to get things done, you may even get done before the sun rises just to make sure that you are going to stay out of the heat of the day and in the coolest part possible.

If you'll even watch some of our large feed operations out here, they'll work, sort, and ship cattle in the middle of the night in the coolest part of the day that they possibly can.

But you and I were having a side conversation a little bit earlier about some of this stuff and how long it takes cattle to cool back down once they do get hot.

Yeah, when we were talking about that, some of the data indicates that cattle, their actual core body temperature peaks two hours after the peak of the daily temperature.

And once they get hot, it can take a beef animal up to four to six hours to cool back down from that.

So, you know, particularly for our younger people that are going to county fair, those steers have been used to a nice cool barn.

If you're going to take them out and stand them at a hot county fairgrounds, pay attention to what's going on and try to keep those cattle shaded up as much as possible in the barns when you're not working them or happen to lead them across between the show ring and the barn.

So, I mean, those type things to take into mind that when we can handle those cattle and it's cool, we have some shade in our facility.

You were telling me on the start of this about shading up your cows in Oklahoma back along the oak trees, I believe you said.

It may be important for some of us to start thinking long term about how we're going to provide some relief from heat stress from these cattle.

Right.

And out here in eastern Colorado, shade is definitely at a premium.

We have lots of conversations, yes, being from eastern Oklahoma where we have shade trees, we trade humidity for shade, unfortunately, is our trade out there.

But we've talked, we've had conversations with producers, you know, maybe planting some trees just on the end of the overflow from the windmill, you know, where it can maybe can grow a tree or two and get a little bit of shade, give some cattle some relief.

You know, some downside to some of these things like maybe doing that or even putting up some shade, artificial shade out there is cattle tend to group up in those, especially in the hot weather.

And they're not going to go out and graze as much and utilize a full pasture if they have opportunities to shade.

But also in our think about in our working facilities, we think it's really great when we have solid sided working facilities and crowding tubs and alleyways.

But man, the metal reflects heat as well as the fact that there's no breeze flowing through there.

So if you're going to work cattle, think about how much warmer it gets there.

And and lastly, I would, you know, I would think about, you know, when we're hauling cattle, you start bunching groups of cattle in a trailer.

If there's not good airflow, it doesn't take long for it to heat up in that trailer and raise the temperature inside the trailer pretty high.

Well, I think when we stop and just think about it, you know, the core body temperature of a beef animal is 101.5.

So they're already pretty hot to start with.

And I think you're right.

And some other things that we can probably think about is figuring out what time of day they're going to eat.

You know, our grazing cattle get up and eat very early in the morning as daylight comes.

And then they're resting as we get into that nine o'clock hours.

They come to water and lay around and as it cools off, they go back out and graze more and probably graze more through the night than we'd like to admit at times, particularly during the hot parts of the year.

So I think it's important for us to make sure that we're moving cattle, particularly if we've got some rotational grazing or some cell grazing, moving those cattle early in the morning, letting them get filled up and acclimated as we rotate grazing cells or new pastures.

Or if by chance we have a windmill go down, we want to make sure we're checking these cattle early in the morning so that if we do need to drive them someplace to water sources, we can get that done before it gets too hot.

Right.

I mean, we can't change the temperature and the weather outside, but water, shade and other management practices we can control.

And kind of last thing I'll throw out there is we need to watch ourselves, our own personal safety, safety of workers and other farm and ranch hands.

Make sure you carry plenty of water and that it's cool.

It doesn't have to be ice cold.

We need to stay away from maybe some big heavy meals or heavy snacks as well.

And lastly, let's watch any alcohol intake.

It might feel really good to have that ice cold beer, but kind of keep an eye on what you're doing there and we need more water than anything to help regulate our own body temperatures.

And if you're starting to feel any effects of the heat, and I know I've overheated once in my life and a lot more aware of it than I have whereas in the past before.

But keep an eye on your personal safety.

If you start feeling hot, go ahead and stop.

Figure out a way to cool yourself down, have some big drinks of water.

If you need to call somebody because you're really feeling sick, watch yourself in all this high heat as well.

Well, I think you kind of wrapped up our podcast there, Scott, because we're not only about raising cattle, but we're about raising the quality of life that we have out here in the eastern plains of Colorado.

So with that, if you have any other topics you'd like to see visited about on our Pasture to Profit podcast, don't hesitate to call us.

Or if you have questions about this one, I'm Travis Taylor and I can be reached at the Extension Office in Ray, Colorado at 970-332-4151.

And Scott, where can we catch up with you?

Again, I'm here in the Burlington, Colorado office for Kit Carson County, and our phone number here is area code 719-346-5571.

Well, that concludes this Pasture to Profit podcast.

We'll see you on the next one.