Four Tips on how to Identify and Prevent Heat Stress in Dairy Cows

9 Jul 2021 News 2 min

Cows that suffer from heat stress have reduced feed intake and rumination time. It’s also possible that they won’t lay down and can be panting. This leads to rumen acidosis, less milk production, mastitis and hoof problems. Consequences of heat stress are production loss, more sick cows, higher medical costs and reproduction problems. Four tips on how to identify and prevent heat stress in dairy cows.

1. Prevent Heat Stress: Cool your Cows

Cool your cows and supply them with fresh water. On warmer days the required water intake of a cow can increase by 50%. Because of this, fresh water supply for cows and calves is very important. Cool your cows in a ventilated location or with a sprinkler. When you use water it’s key to also use fans, this will stimulate evaporative cooling. Only using water could increase humidity levels and therefore have a negative effect on your cows.

2. Adjust your Ration and Reduce Cow Stress

Instead of feeding your cows during the hottest time of the day, feed them in the evening or twice a day. In order to avoid a drop in rumen pH, the feed should always contain a buffer to hold the acidity in the rumen.

3. Measure Temperature and Eating Behavior

Your cow’s ear temperature and eating behavior are good indicators of early signs of heat stress. CowManager’s Nutrition module can help you improve your heat abatement strategy by sending alerts on when heat stress is expected.

4. Keep Measures in Place All Year Round

Even after hot days, it’s important to keep measures in place. Create optimal lying comfort and keep stalls clean. This will have a positive effect on lying behavior and also prevents infections.

With the Health module you will also be able to continuously monitor your cows health on all fronts. You can check how your cows are doing every moment of the day through simple graphs and statistics.

Do you want to know more about monitoring your cow’s health and preventing heat stress? Our CowManager specialists are happy to introduce you to our service. Please get in touch and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Try CowManager now. Download the free Demo App and discover the benefits of monitoring your herd 24/7 with CowManager. Happy cows, happy life.

Modules & Extra Functionalities

Health

Get an alert up to 3 days before any signs of clinical illness. Or, if your cow is already sick, monitor recovery in detail.

Fertility

Increase profit with timely insemination. Know exactly when a cow is in heat and when to inseminate.

Nutrition

Prevent heat stress and disease, take your feed management to the next level, and achieve the goals set for your herd.

Transition

Experience smoother transitions and healthier herds with our advanced Transition Monitor.

Youngstock

Effective calf health management leads to increased future milk production and a healthier, more productive herd.

Auto Drafting

Separate cows with heat or health alerts from the rest of the herd with the integrated Auto Drafting functionality.

MultiView

Give your staff, veterinarian, nutritionist, and other advisors access to selected cow data.

Sort my Cow (USA)

Automatically separate cows with heat or health alerts with Sort my Cow and the CowManager sorting gate.

Draft my Cow (NZ)

Automatically separate cows with heat or health alerts with Draft my Cow and the CowManager drafting gate.

Find my Cow

Find a cow that’s in heat, sick or in the wrong pen within seconds with our Locator and Flash tools.