Nationally, approximately 95,000 calves die each year due to cold stress, resulting in an estimated $38 million loss to producers. During the critical weeks of calving, generally mid-January to mid-April in northeastern Montana , ranchers heavily depend upon advanced warning of extreme cold in order to move livestock to more sheltered areas. The purpose of this project is to provide improved advanced warnings of potentially hazardous conditions that will enable producers to minimize their property losses due to cold stress.
This project follows on a previous proof-of-concept project that developed a proposed decision tree. This project will test the tree against historical data, in consultation with stakeholders (extension agents, cattle producers, etc.), and develop a system to implement the decision tree algorithm.