Cooler .. Wet or Dry

When you put your calf in a cooler do you put it in the cooler wet or dry, and what is your reasoning for why you put the calf in there wet or dry?

Always dry for us.  We condition the hair and brush thoroughly which ends up in a dry coat.  I'd also be concerned about the training of hair just leaving them wet.

MKC Showcattle said:

When you put your calf in a cooler do you put it in the cooler wet or dry, and what is your reasoning for why you put the calf in there wet or dry?

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For training and maintaining hair, if I remember right, Mr. Stierwalt suggest always blowing your calf out.

We have put ours in damp but usually not wet.

we've done it both ways.. well not really wet but damp to the touch, thinking that it would cool the calf  better initially. the only thing I found wrong with doing this is that they would kinda get "bed head" we did sometimes tie them for a little while so they would dry before we would let them loose. (we had pens in the cooler) I think that I did prefer just drying them completely   because it seemed better for training the hair and also less of the bedding would get into the hair

JMO but strongly suggest dry. The secret to the rinsing deal is that you have to rinse the calf long enough with cold water to actually make the calf feel cold. That's why some PPL use an old freezer to cool their water for rinsing. If you leave your calf wet, the body temp of the calf just somewhat turns this situation into a sauna type of a deal where you can feel the heat & humidity rise up from the calf. Summary, dry but rinse long enough with as cold of water as you can feasibly use.

I don't have a cooler but have watched them rinse (with the chilled water) comb them up but them back in the tie area with the fans blowing on them for about 30 minutes then blow them out dry. They rinsed in the cooler as well so it was pretty dang cold the whole time.

It is amazing how blue the mountains get, floating in the freezer they use to make the chilled water