Wind chill is applicable to many mammals, unfortunately farm animals often feel the effects of wind chill more than animals in the wild as they may lack adequate shelter,or have no access to a natural wind barrier, conditions for these animals all depend on the farmer. When an animal has wet fur due to rain or snow that has melted, the thermal air layer provided by fur trapping warm air from their body is compromised, this means the animals body has to work a lot harder to regulate its temperature and the wind chill does make it harder on the animal. When temperatures take a plunge and the wind chill is low young animals can become susceptible to more illnesses, or can sometimes die. Sheep are normally the ones to fair better as their wool is waterproof. I think dogs and other animals have a sweat gland on their nose that expels water just like a human sweat gland, and pigs have sweat glands like other animals that have fur only the fur has been bred out of domesticated pigs, this may or may not be true I'm just not sure. Also every year some poor opossum living somewhere cold loses a bit of its tail to frostbite, it's very sad.
I was trying to understand how our dogs seem to be more comfortable outside in -20 rather than inside at +70.
Our dogs (Black Russian Terriers) have a dog door that they can use 24/7 and during the winter they would prefer to lay outside on the deck in -20 for an hour, with or without wind. Their beverage of choice is snow, which could be a way that they can cool themselves down, I don't know.
The more I looked into it, the more it made sense to me that we humans sweat water which evaporates at a much faster rate than oil, so our dogs cannot feel the same wind chill values we do, because wind chill was designed for us humans.
From what I know about evaporative heat loss in our ponds, that makes sense.
Different animals have different layers of fat, fine hair, downy feathers, etc., so I expect every animal is different.
Lots of times I see cows and horses with snow piled up on their bodies which tells me that the surface of their bodies are insulated enough that snow will not melt.
That would never happen with a live human.
