Effects of cold stress on feed intake, growth, and immune response in cattle: A review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cold stress remains a persistent challenge for cattle operations in northern climates, yet its combined effects on feed consumption, growth metrics, and immunological defense have not been synthesized in a single framework. This review assembles peer-reviewed evidence published before 2025 to map the physiological cascade triggered when ambient temperatures fall below the lower critical temperature (LCT) of beef and dairy cattle. Cattle exposed to temperatures ranging from -5 to -30 °C exhibited dry matter intake increases of 15 to 41 percent above thermoneutral baselines, driven primarily by elevated maintenance energy demands. Despite higher feed consumption, average daily gain declined by 18.3 to 37.6 percent in cold-stressed cohorts, reflecting a metabolic priority shift toward thermogenesis rather than tissue accretion. Hormonal profiling across multiple trials confirmed that serum cortisol concentrations rose by 1.8 to 2.3-fold under sustained cold exposure, with concurrent reductions in circulating insulin-like growth factor-1 that suppressed anabolic pathways. Immunological parameters were similarly compromised: total white blood cell counts dropped by an average of 28.7 percent, lymphocyte proportions fell by 21.8 percent, and immunoglobulin G concentrations decreased by approximately 21.9 percent relative to thermoneutral controls. These immune deficits coincided with a 2.1-fold rise in bovine respiratory disease incidence during winter months, underscoring the clinical relevance of cold-induced immunosuppression. Peripheral vasoconstriction, while protective of core body temperature, contributed to frostbite-related tissue damage in extremities and reduced rumen motility through altered autonomic regulation. Nutritional mitigation strategies, including energy-dense rations, increased dietary fat supplementation, and modified feeding schedules, partially offset thermogenic energy costs but didn't fully restore growth or immune function. This synthesis indicates that cold stress operates through interconnected thermoregulatory, endocrine, and immune pathways that jointly erode productivity. Effective management requires integrated approaches addressing nutrition, housing design, and windbreak provision rather than single-factor interventions. Future research should explore breed-specific cold tolerance thresholds and the long-term epigenetic effects of prenatal cold exposure on offspring performance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".