Who's looking forward to milking today?

[Clay52]

Not my herd having the problem! I have visited several places incl the Po Valley in Italy and Western Cape South Africa where heat stress/reduced intakes is a major cause of DA's in high yielders. If you can keep them unstressed at high ambient temperatures then fine but in the herd I mentioned then they were obviously not managing to keep them cool.

We dont have sheds or fans for the cows to go in. We have shade trees for them to go under during the day and sprinklers in the holding yard. At 47C they were plenty stressed, most cows with toungs out. At that point we had a week of highs around 45C and overnight lows of around 30. We had big drops in production but DAs due to heat isn't something we have experienced.