THE recent rain and cool spell has been nice, but the forecast remains for a hot summer.
What can you do to get prepared?
Dealing with heat stress is an important part of caring for our animals. It affects herd milk production and income, but its impacts on cow fertility, health and welfare last well beyond seasonal hot weather and can double these losses.
The good news is that it can be managed effectively.
There are three locations on a dairy farm where you can focus your cooling efforts - paddocks and laneways, the dairy yard, and the feedpad.
Which of these locations works best for you will depend on a number of factors, including your herd's susceptibility to heat stress based on location, breed, milk production level and age profile.
Other factors such as trees, access to irrigation infrastructure and water, feeding system, walking distances for cattle, how long they spend in the dairy yard and how many times a day you milk, are also important in deciding the best approach to managing heat stress.
To help farmers in making decisions on dealing with heat stress, Dairy Australia, with support from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry, has developed the Cool Cows program.
It is full of suggestions to help cows cope in hot weather - ideas to provide shade and evaporative cooling, hot season strategies, and ways to monitor how a herd is coping with the heat.
Shade and evaporative cooling play important roles in managing heat stress, but many farmers have doubts about the capital cost, payback period or lack detailed design and management information required to proceed with confidence.
The Cool Cows website has a cost-benefit calculator that estimates the likely return on investment and payback period for a new cooling infrastructure item on your farm.
The website also provides an 'actions generator' tool to help you identify actions you can take on your own farm to improve your heat stress management, a weather forecaster tool to enable you to monitor the daily heat stress risk level in your local area and adjust your cooling strategies to suit, and a heat stress alert service.
You can subscribe to the service to automatically receive alerts either by email or SMS of potential 'meltdown' events forecast for your area.
