Article published the July 29, 2023
An article dealing with this topic was recently published in the prestigious journal of the dairy industry, Journal of Dairy Science (Espinoza-Sandoval et. al., JDS 106: 2023). The article examines, using a statistical model, the feasibility of investing in cooling the cows in the summer in various countries around the Mediterranean Sea (Europe, North Africa and the Middle East), where there are d ...
Article published the July 12, 2023
When talking about the negative impact of heat stress on milk production, we usually refer to the impact on milk volume (liters per cow per day or per lactation). The reality is that this is only part of the problem, which causes economic losses to farmers and dairy industry. As will be presented in this article, heat stress negatively affects milk fat and protein content and reduce milk quality, ...
Participation in Forum on June 14, 2023
celal izci The reduction in immune system negatively affects also foot. In addition, cows standing more time due to being heat stressed suffer more from foot problems.
Article published the May 23, 2023
A lot of information has been published in the last decades, dealing with the negative effect of summer heat stress on the productive and reproductive traits of the high yielding cow. Very limited information existed however, up until the last years, on the effect of heat stress on the feed efficiency of cows (as estimated by the feed to milk ratio). Knowing the full extent of the e ...
Article published the May 8, 2023
Heat stress related production loss, compromised welfare and cattle mortality are global concerns which are increasing in the context of climate change and global warming. To maintain the welfare and performance of livestock, monitoring the effects of climatic extremes is important. Farming systems are becoming increasingly automated and remote/automated monitoring of animals is an ultimate need t ...
Article published the May 8, 2023
Heat stress related production loss, compromised welfare and cattle mortality are global concerns, which are increasing in the context of climate change and increase productivity of the cows. Cattle response to heat stress varies, based on individuality and thermal environment. In this article I intend to describe heat stress monitoring, in individual and herd basis, making use of thermal indices, ...
Article published the March 16, 2023
Heat stress (HS) is well known to negatively influence dairy cow’s wellbeing, health and productivity. Heat stress is a multi-billion-dollar global problem. It impairs cow’s performance during summer when cows are exposed to high ambient temperatures, direct and indirect solar radiations, and high humidity. While significant developments have been achieved over the last few decades to ...
Article published the January 11, 2023
According to the Italian website CLALIT, in 2021 the Italian dairy sector accounted for almost 10% of the total EU milk production and 6% of EU milk exports. Italy exports nearly 35% of its milk production, mostly cheese, with high added value to the milk. Italian dairy herd consists of 1.6 million dairy cows, most of them in farms located in the Po valley region, in the north of the country. Milk ...
Article published the January 2, 2023
Heat stress is considered one of the main causes of performance and economic losses in the world dairy sector. These losses are proportional to the degree of heat stress cows are subjected to (days or hours per year, cows are exposed to THI above threshold), as well as to the level of production and some nutritional and managerial practices. Do we really know to quantify the total losses? The answ ...
Article published the December 14, 2022
Israel is located in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea and is characterized by a subtropical climate. Summer lasts from June to October and is characterized in most regions of the country by high temperatures and humidity at all hours of the day, but no rain at all.The Israeli dairy industry has about 120,000 cows that produce close to 1.5 billion liters per year. The annual milk yield pe ...