Cow Hair Shedding

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Hi, I'm Dr. Brandy Carish, MSU Extension Beef Cattle Specialist. Do you know when you look at cattle during the spring time of the year, they have extra kind of scruffy looking hair coats?

[00:00:11]>> [music] >> Basically, what happens with cattle is they'll start shedding from the front to the back. And our goal is for cattle that are adapted to our weather conditions to lose that hair early in the season before it gets too hot so that they'll stay cool. If you look close, you can see some bare patches starting to show up. And the goal is that they'll be slick and they'll be pretty come the heat of the summer time because hair will actually insulate body heat and cause those cattle to stay hotter and have an hotter internal body temperature.