Balancing Ventilation Costs and Milk Production Losses on Wisconsin Dairy Farms
Effective ventilation management reduces the impacts of heat stress on milk production.
Heat Stress
Keep Cattle Cool and Comfortable in Summer
The latest long-range forecasts from the National Weather Service show that Wisconsin has a 40% to 50% chance of a hotter-than-normal summer. Long periods of heat stress are more likely to have lasting effects on cattle, including early embryonic loss in heifers and cows, poor semen quality in bulls, and reduced gains in feeder cattle.
▶️ Watch: Strategies for keeping calves cool in hutches
Jennifer Van Os discusses collaborative work at UW-Madison to identify practical strategies for alleviating heat stress in hutch-housed dairy calves.
▶️ Watch: Understanding the carryover effects of early life heat stress on dairy calves
his presentation will explore how heat stress affects the physiological, behavioral, and developmental aspects of calves during their critical early stages of life and highlight the long-lasting implications that persist into adulthood.
Heat Stress Abatement in Dairy Facilities
When cows are heat stressed, they eat less, produce less milk, have reduced immune function and higher SCC, and show reduced fertility. A spike in lameness often follows the hot season.
Animal Handling During Heat Stress
Combating heat stress in the herd requires an action plan to prevent heat stress and address heat stress-related issues.
Using Bovisync Reports to Assess Potential Impact of Heat Stress on a Dairy – Coding Supplement
Below is a visual representation of what to enter in the report screen to generate charts similar to what is shown in the companion factsheet: “Using Bovisync Reports to Assess Potential Impact of Heat Stress on a Dairy”. Milk Production Butterfat Percent Reproduction Milk Quality Clinical Mastitis and Transition Cow Health
Using Bovisync Reports to Assess Potential Impact of Heat Stress on a Dairy
In this fact sheet you will see examples of the resulting data you can use to unlock the power of your herd’s Bovisync records.
Using DairyComp to Assess the Potential Impact of Heat Stress on a Dairy
Diving into a dairy’s herd management software can help a producer quantify where the losses are occurring and, with some easy calculations, determine the profitability of investing in cow cooling measures.
Effects of Heat Stress on Dairy Reproduction
Heat stress not only affects the productive ability of your cattle but also their ability to conceive and sustain a pregnancy. It is important to understand the effect heat stress can have on reproduction and how you can help minimize the effect.
Impact of Heat Stress in Mammary Gland Development and Health in Dairy Cows
Heat stress occurs when an environment impacts the ability of a cow to get rid of body heat. Cows need to be raised in an environment where temperatures are within their thermoneutral zones to achieve their maximal genetic potential. Failures to establish adequate environmental temperatures can dramatically alter behavior, health, and productivity of cows.
Managing the heat in pre-weaned calves
When we talk about thermal stress in pre-weaned calves, often we discuss cold stress. However, calves can become environmentally stressed when temperatures are too cold or too hot. During extreme cold or hot temperatures, calves utilize extra energy to maintain their core body temperature. The temperature range at which a calf uses no additional energy […]
