High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A Zud is a Mongolian term for an extremely snowy winter in which livestock is unable to find fodder through the snow cover, and large numbers of animals die due to starvation and the cold. The term is also used for other meteorological conditions, especially in winter, that make livestock grazing impossible. It is not uncommon for zuds to kill over one million head of livestock in a single incident. A record was set in 1944 of almost 7 million head of livestock lost in a single winter. In 1999/2000, 2000/2001 and 2001/2002, Mongolia was hit by three zuds in a row, in which a combined number of 11 million animals were lost.