What is your calf barns “RealFeel”

When you open your weather app, it likely tells you the actual temperature, but there is also another temperature on there called “real feel”. Real feel takes a couple things into consideration, depending on the time of year, but what it is referring to is how being outside really feels to your body. 

While this is a great feature for you to know how many pairs of pants you need to wear outside in January in Wisconsin, it’s also a great tool to help better prepare your calves for the weather conditions. In addition to extreme wind and heat, a measurement that many people forget about is humidity. 

We (or for sure the people in the Midwest) live by two sayings, “it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the wind.” and “it’s not the heat, it’s the gosh darn humidity.”

Well, your calves feel the same way! One thing that is often not considered is when those two things are put together, for those bone chilling, humid, cold days in March, April, or May. 

That “chill” factor is a little tricky to put a value on without actually knowing the real feel, which is easy to use if your calves are outside but it’s not quite as easy when your calves are inside, but it’s just as important! 

For the same reasons it’s important to offer more calories in the winter, it takes more energy for her to stay warm when it’s chilly and damp out too, whether your calves are inside or outside. 

You might have a certain time of year or temperature that you switch back to your summer feeding schedule or take your calf jackets off, but have you considered humidity in that equation?

Humidity is a little harder to use as a measurement tool because of the fact that there isn’t a specific calculator to consider humidity when it is cooler out, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an impact on your calves ability to stay warm!

Speaking from personal experience raising calves for many years indoors, it feels a lot different in the barn than it does outside! It might be 70F and sunny outside, but if it had been 30-40F the last two weeks, the barn is going to feel like it’s a lot colder than 70F. This is especially true with  concrete. It takes days for the ground to warm, but it takes double that amount of time for concrete to get to temperature. 

You know the feeling, you walk into an old dairy barn, it’s a cool April day and it’s around 40F outside, there’s some moisture on the floor. It’s not “cold” out but dang is it chilly in there! 

This can be a good thing when it gets really hot or really cold for short periods, because the barn won’t fluctuate as much, but it also makes a lot more time for it to get up to temperature when it does warm up. The other factor to consider is that concrete sweats A LOT in the spring. This will also add to the humidity of the barn. 

Below is a chart outlining a couple of examples of humidity affecting the realfeel. This information was pulled from Accuweather in Wisconsin on March 31, 2023. Each row represents a one hour time difference between each data point. 

 Check it out!

As you can see by this first example, the largest spread in temperature was when the humidity was the highest and the wind speed was the highest (of course). But throughout the day, you can see the wind speed drop significantly, but the realfeel and the actual temperature never get closer than 10F. 

Below is another example:

Wednesday April 19, 2023

As you can see, on this day there was a decent breeze, but the humidity was high, causing the temperature gap to be large.

Humidity is used in the summer to calculate heat index, but it’s just as important in spring and fall when temperatures are cool but there is still humidity in the air. 

If your calves are housed outdoors, the realfeel from https://www.accuweather.com/ can be a simple way to track humidity and realfeel conditions. If you raise calves indoors, you will need a humidity measurement tool. 

Humidity is something that can be easily measured in your calf barn with the temperature and can be a great tool to add to your management toolbox! There are many gauges out there that do both of these things. One great tool that will track temperature and humidity is this device:

https://kestrelinstruments.com/kestrel-drop-d2-humidity-logger?gclid=CjwKCAjw_YShBhAiEiwAMomsEAh6w5zfMR2SPRERkpr8edA1yNa3ScD4OZQ3tfkAaL25iaqq-Rs7eBoC97kQAvD_BwE. It will wirelessly link to your phone!

While we know these examples aren’t perfect, and they aren’t earth shattering either, this information is intended to get the wheels turning on how humidity might be effecting your calves.

If you want to learn more about how humidity impacts calf health comfort, and how to manage it in your calf barn, send us a message!