Preparation is the key to managing heat stress

Worth reading and worth repeating to read before every summer season as it looks Bible to rescue your animals from heat stress.

Unfortunately, the most important thing was not mentioned, and it is intensive cooling for sufficient hours per day. Water availability, shade and preventing of cows movement will not liberate the high yielding cow from the high quantities of endogenous heat generates and so, will not prevent summr drops in performance. Only proper cooling can reach this goal!

Israel Flamenbaum it's true, I agree with you. I began to work with intensive cooling 4 years ago and the results are very good, 3-4 litres more milk and 3% more pregnancy rate compared with the previous year where the cooling system was present but not properly used. I increased the fat (by-pass) to improve the energy supply to meet the requirements (during heat stress there is vaso-contriction in the intestine, less absorption surface).

Cristiano Ossensi Sounds good, congratulations
I would call it "cooling in the Israeli style"!

Israel Flamenbaum it is... thanks a lot!

The sprinklers are located at around 2,00 meters from the floor (enough tall that the cows can't damage), the cows stay 1hour every session, so 6 hours per day! Every four hours (four hours is the time after cooling needed for the body temperature to rise again to the critical level)

Richard Stephens Dear Richard, sorry to say, but your words show that you don't really know what is a cow in heat stress! Of course, the best is to produce in an environment where temperature is below 25 C. But what to do, most of us experience 4-6 months a year when temperatures are above this threshold, sometimes 24 hours a day! In this case, barn design, clean water and even forced ventilation alone, can't maintain cows in normothermia, and prevent drops in performance. I am "only" 45 years in the cow cooling business (including M.Ss and PhD in this topic and, when it comes to high production cows (in Israel average 12,800 KG/305 d), only intensive cooling, combining wetting and forced ventilation for at least 6 cumulative hours per day, can solve the problem. more about that in my web site - www.cool-cows.com

My friend Dr. Flamenbum is correct and even 6 hours of forced cooling is only alleviating the stress, it does not solve the entire problem of heat stress. Furthermore, as cows produce more milk per day they create more stress as rumen fermentation is the heat source of this issue.