Cold comfort for Saratoga County calves

It may make them look a little like junior space cadets, but earmuffs are helping get baby calves through this Arctic streak on one Saratoga County dairy farm.

Just as with people, calves’ thin ears are among the places they feel cold the most, potentially susceptible to frostbite — but colorful earmuffs are part of an ensemble that can include face masks and a body-covering jacket similar to a horse blanket.

At Kings-Ransom Farm in Northumberland, they use such coverings to keep their 150 Holstein calves comfortable through the kind of bitter cold the region has been seeing, even though the calves stay in outdoor hutches. Below-zero nights are expected for the rest of this week, according to the National Weather Service.

When it’s that cold for an extended period of time, keeping young animals warm is one of the big challenges farmers face.

On most modern farms, calves live their early lives in individual, fenced-in plastic hutches. The hutches offer shelter from the wind while still letting the occupants step outside for access to fresh air. They also prevent the spread of illness to others if one calf becomes sick.

The washable body jackets are standard for outdoor calves this time of year, farmer Jan King said. Earmuffs — which are more like ear-fitting mittens — are generally only for the youngest calves whose circulation systems are still developing.

“We don’t do anything different on a day like today than when it’s 25 degrees,” said King, a partner in King’s-Ransom Farm and in King Brothers Dairy, which home-delivers fresh dairy products. “We put the calf jackets on them anytime it’s below 30 degrees.”

In addition to keeping their young stock warm, this kind of weather means farmers have new day-to-day problems like frozen barn water pipes to contend with — and often, the cold weather means cows will produce less milk.

“The equipment works harder, and nobody wants to be out in this kind of weather,” King said.

“Cold is always an issue,” said Dean Casey of Schaghticoke, regional director of the New York Farm Bureau. “You make sure they have extra bedding, have covering. It’s not so much the cold that gets to them as the wind.”

Farmers throughout the Northeast are dealing with similarly frigid conditions, Casey noted — but they have strategies for coping.

“Farmers are diligent, and their animals are their top priority,” Casey said.

In general, grown cows are kept inside barns in the winter — but even so, milk production drops during severe cold.

That’s because barns are unheated. Farmers rely on the body heat produced by the animals to keep the indoor air temperature comfortable; that’s energy-efficient, but means cold and wind outside has to be balanced with the need to keep fresh air circulating.

A colder barn means animals are expending more of their energy on maintaining their body temperature and less on producing milk.

“The No. 1 reason animals eat is for their own health, to meet their own energy needs, and if they are carrying a calf to meet the needs of the calf,” Casey said. “Milk production is their last priority.”

For calves, however, the goal isn’t milk production but to give them enough food to stay warm and also keep growing. Calves lack the insulating fat reserves that a mature cow has built up.

“The big thing is to increase their milk, because they need more energy, more calories, more protein,” King said. “We feed them milk three times a day instead of two, and they have access to grain at all times.”

King and his brother, Jeff, operate one of Saratoga County’s largest dairy farms. The 150 calves are being raised to join the farm’s 800-head milking herd.

The kinds of jackets the Kings put on their calves are made of wool or a material like Thinsulate. They are used nearly universally among farmers with calf hutches, Casey said.

Casey said the individual calf hutches are actually what’s best for the young animals under the circumstances. In general, the hutches face south, which exposes them to the sun, while cold winds usually hit from other directions.

“They have the fresh air but they’re out of the wind,” Casey said.

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