winter: extreme weather

This question reached us from Texas just before the last storm:

This is (names omitted). You may or may not remember us from the Homesteaders of America conference last year. We got 2 cows a few months ago, a full Jersey pregnant that is with her 3rd calf (due in July) and a full Jersey heifer calf (see attached pictures). Your class that we took inspired us to start 'farming with reckless abandon' and your book and pamphlets have been an amazing help with getting us started.

One question that we are trying to figure out is temporary extreme weather shelter. We have a pretty serious ice storm/sleet storm about to hit us in Texas (just east of Dallas near Wylie), and we don't really have any shelter for them right now. We are wondering if you had any advice for us as to what to do. We know that y'all have some Texas roots and thought that you might have some insights for us. Do we need to put up some quick temporary shelter? Maybe we need to get some cattle blankets? Will they be fine? This storm should only last a few days before we get back to "normal" Texas weather.

Our mixed Dexter/Jersey herd were grazing through snow until the recent ice storm.

Dear folks,

So good to hear from you!  And very satisfying to communicate with others in the 'reckless abandon' school of thought.

Ice storms are exactly the kind of weather that has us putting animals under shelter.  When rain turns to sleet, the temperature is dropping, wind is getting up, and it's going to last a while, we want to get our animals under wraps.  Even if it were just the edge of a treeline backing to the wind, we'd get some kind of shelter going.  

Before we built the run-in shed at the convent, we had no shelter besides the woods' edge, so when wet weather was turning into a blizzard we sometimes backed the Sisters' tractor out of the machine shed, tarped the tractor to keep the snow/ice off it, and then ran the cows up into the shed.  It has only three sides, but it backs to the west/northwest, so the cows were effectively out of the wind.  We store hay in that shed sometimes, so if we put the cows up there we had to put stock panels around the bales to keep the cows out.  And since there is no fence around the machine shed, we'd have to set up polytwine around the shed so the cows couldn't wander off.  Sound ideal?  Maybe not, but it worked.  When the weather let up we put the cows back on the pasture and forked the frozen cow pies out of the shed before we put the tractor back.  Fortunately, the Sisters are very understanding, and just glad we could get the cows out of the weather.

At the home farm, when we first came there was no barn, and we sometimes put the goats in the garage temporarily.  No harm done, just a little clean-up job afterward.

This simple three-sided shed is sheltered by the woods' edge and backs to the NW.

If I didn't have a barn or a garage, I'd make a paddock on the lee side of a building, even the house.  Let the cows get right up to the wall on the side away from the wind (east or south), and give them a good bellyful of hay, plus some to lie down on.  If I still wasn't satisfied, I could build a temporary wall of square or round bales at right angles to the house wall so the cows could get into a corner (if squares, I'd have to put up a stock panel or something so the cows couldn't pull it all down).  

Temporary accommodations can make a ton of sense in farming, either because you are not ready for building permanent fixtures (because you don't yet know what you need) or because you use this accommodation so seldom that it's silly to make it permanent.

Good for you with those pretty cows!  Let us know how you ride out the storm.