Huddling and putting your *** to the wind only gets you so far.
In Alberta, we are blessed by 'dry' snow typically. We virtually never get massive dumps of snow this deep, while it would be wet. Even in Alberta, the combination of wet and cold, would kill herds of cattle.
Consider also that cattle need to acclimatize. Temperatures drop gradually, not all at once. It gives them a chance to get used to the cold. To take cattle that one day were warm, and then dump so much wet snow on them that some of them smothered, not frozen, and it's a recipe for disaster.
argh, my bad for not reading through.... yours was much more succinct.
The dripping sarcasm could be what made the comment seem so attractive to you.
Calgary can have a snow blizzard in any month of the year. May long has more than a few late snowfalls that come after the crops are already in.
Yes that -60 windchill is a real blessing, not.
If it was that bad where was the warning that is supposed to come with all that expensive hi-tech weather data that tracks things like this. It can drop very fast. I'm thinking that the rain wet the fur and the big fluffy snow started to fall and that did not melt and it was very heavy, like all sticky snow, Vancouver type snow to be exact. The cooling temps froze that into ice and allowed more and more snow to accumulate until the weight drove them to their knees and that is when compression war applied to their ability to breath and goody night bossy.
From 5% to 15% loss, calves high on the list of downed animals. The ones losing the 15% are pricing it out already. $1k/ calf in a world where only slaughter sized animals are processed. I can see some 'farmers' will be going out and breaking some legs of healthy calves just because there are pricks everywhere.
It rained hard before the snow fell.
That's what made me question why they were said to have froze to death, once you stop patting yourself on the back perhaps you can look at all factors rather than finding one and going all high-five for the duration of the thread, oh wait, that is normal behavior for you.
PS a drizzle will get you just as wet if you are a cow. If it got that cold that fast there would be ice on the trees. When we close that freezer door once I have my buffalo skin robe on (hair to the outside) I'm still going to want to have the key to the door on my side of the same door. Know what I mean?