Efficient milk production under heat stress condition

Dear Rajesh, I have very poor knowledge on cold stress. Hopefully, one of the members can answer your question

I work a lot in dairy development in India, China, Vietnam and northern Australia. I agree that heat management is essential and good cooling systems are available, but must be implemented professionally. However in many tropical climates I work in (hot and very humid) I still firmly believe we should be looking at genetics, both within HF also considering other breeds, including Brown Swiss, and cross breds, including Jersey X HF and local breed X HF. In Vietnam, on lowland farms, HF X Jersey overwhelmingly outperform HF in annual production, inter-calving interval, general health, lameness and longevity. I always advise new and current dairy clients in the moist tropics, to take breed/genetics seriously, especially in relation to environmental adaptation, especially managing heat and humidity.

Hello Philip You are right in your observation and it will be better use crossing in case you can't provide cows with good feeding , housing, veterinary care and effective cooling. Anyhow, my experience in these same tropical regions is that, once you manage giving all these factors, then HF is able to manifest its potential and be superior over other breeds or crosses.

An animal needs chromium to optimize the insulin response which impacts glucose metabolism and creates cellular energy. Insulin does not function properly if an animal has a chromium deficiency and deficiency can lead to significant energy loss. Chromium allows cows to use energy efficiently.

Also feed energy rich diets. With proper buffering agents due to pleasant rumen environment.

Dairy cows in New Zealand of all breeds including HF and Jersey are not housed inspite of the cold and wet climate and still continue to produce high quantity of milk. The farmers there say that it is not economical for them to house the cows. Their production levels as you all know are comparable to the World's top countries.

In the hot tropics most of the water is used for cooling. Water is scarce. Increasing milk production will need reduction of body size.

I have a dairy farm for 10 HF cows. I want to increase for 50 cows. In summer i want to use Air blower to cool cow shed area. I want to know is it ok or any humidity problem will com. Please known people advice e. Thanks

Energy requirement is increased up to 20% in heat stressed cows for each 1 degree Celsius increase in body temperature. So, energy rich diet should be fed optimizing buffering effect. So that we wouldn't face acidosis

Acidosis directly stems from excess feeding of grains. The better alternative is to reduce the ill effects of high temperature by cooling of the body by just spraying water on the body three or four times between 11 to 4 pm with a gunny sack on the torso. Reduce exposure to radiation heat in these timings. Crossbred cows form less than 25% of total female bovines. Rest 75% are generally unaffected by heat stress.

Heat stress is now considered to be the cause of the largest economic loss to the world’s dairy sector. The reasons for this are global warming, the increase in milk output per cow and the “immigration” of dairy sectors from temperate to tropical and sub-tropical regions, where the demand for milk in most cases is increasing.