Nice dogs you have, in the cold their undercoat stands up and traps air giving a layer of warm insulation same as our skin heats the air inside our cloths. My German Shepard with an undercoat can also run and play in the cold for long periods no problem, however my short haired single coat Jack Russell has to head inside a lot sooner as she shivers from been cold. Dogs also have paws that can give them information about their body temperature by what it called counter current heat exchanger, here the veins and arteries in the paw are very close together and engage in heat exchange, so the vein receives heat from the arteries carrying warm blood enabling the dog to regulate paw temperature. There is a wind chill chart for animals as well as humans, but I reckon myself that it acts only as a guideline really as people experience the cold differently as well as my dogs for that matter. Now the cow with snow piled up on it is going to use a lot more energy to keep warm as it will have to work a lot harder at keeping warm, especially with a freezing wind, when spring arrives that cow is going to be a lot leaner than the chubbier cow been fed the the same feed in a barn. If harsh winter conditions arrive early before that animals winter coat arrives, they may die, same as if I was waring a spring jacket instead of a winter coat in a blizzard. I can't say anything in regards to ponds and wind chill as its new subject for me, so if you don't mind can I pick your mind on something that's been bothering me. Not sure this is the right thread, but here goes. I remember some years ago a lot of dead fish turned up in the wild, I can't remember if it was trout or salmon, anyway the " bleep cold" was apparently responsible. It was said the fish got caught out in an area of water with too much oxygen and it killed them. I know cold water holds more oxygen, but in the situation of the dead fish is was said the extra water falling into the basin produced too much oxygen killing them. If this is true that it can kill in the wild, is it possible to kill Koi with too much aeration in winter months? When building my pond and reading about keeping Koi, I had seen people talk about sick fish with plenty of aeration in winter, also I have read even here that you cannot kill Koi with too much oxygen. Do you have any info on this? I plan to look into this myself also, if you have any ideas on where to look it would be much appreciated.
