Keeping cattle comfortable and out of the elements contributes to good animal welfare and affects the bottom line for cattle producers. Longer, hotter days can lead to heat stress in cattle, which is why Steve and Joan Ruskamp of J&S Feedlot near Dodge, Neb., began utilizing sunshades in their feedyard in 2015. They are a family operation and started feeding cattle in the 80s.
“We bought one shade in 2015 to see how a small pen would do with it,” Joan Ruskamp says. “We’ve had bunk line misters since the 90s, but it’s more water usage and creates mud and humidity.”
Now they have 35 shades and use them throughout the feedyard.
She says the first shade had to be loaded in a payloader bucket and chained in to move, which was quite cumbersome. The company who manufactures them, 3J & G, is a local Nebraska company, who sells shades across the country. They modified the design so now the shades can be moved with pallet forks on a loader.
The “shade trees” as they are called consist of a 900 sq foot tarp with a tire base filled with cement. Ruskamps says they can fit about 40 head of cattle under them, depending on the size of animals.
“We notice the cattle are more comfortable,” she says. “They won’t huddle around the water tanks as much. They tend to come out, go to water, then come back to shade, which allows better access to water.”
Last summer, Ruskamps saw that between two pens of similar fat cattle, the ones with the shades did better on the grid.
“In side-by-side pens last summer we saw a noticeable difference in the closeout on cattle that went out a week apart,” she says. “One pen had shades and one did not. The two pens normally don’t need shades due to water misters and location for getting air movement.
“There was a difference in their yields,” she adds. “One was a + 4 and the other was the -3 on the grid.”
The cost of the shades is $4,500 each, but that cost is worth the investment to Ruskamps, who put animal welfare as a top priority.
“I bet we also have less pulls because their lungs just don’t have to work as hard to stay cool,” she says.
