Combat heat stress in your cows this summer with these top feeding practices. Discover actionable tips to keep your herd cool and maintain productivity. Ready to learn more?
Heat stress harms lactating cows, dry cows, and their unborn calves. Pioneering research from the University of Florida highlights that heat stress during the dry period can harm in-utero offspring, resulting in marked weight loss compared to their peers. This evidence powerfully underscores the imperative of a comprehensive approach to mitigate heat stress, ensuring optimal health and productivity across the entire herd. This article delves deep into managing heat stress in dairy cows through strategic nutritional adjustments and feeding practices.
Crucial Strategies for Managing Heat Stress
Proper nutrition and feeding practices can prepare cows for heat stress, improve their body’s response, and help your herd be more successful this summer.
- Importance of Water Availability
Always offer fresh, clean drinking water. This is the single most important nutritional strategy. Cows lose body heat through panting and sweating, requiring substantial water. Cows need water to release heat and control their body temperature. Although cows do not seem to prefer water temperature, drinking cooler water reduces respiration rate and body temperature faster than warmer water. - Effects of Water Temperature and Quality
Testing the water for minerals, hardness, and cleanliness can offer producers insight and opportunities for improving water. Ultimately, increasing water intake positively correlates with feed intake and, in turn, improved health and production. - Adjusting Feeding Schedules
Nutrition is about what to feed and when to feed. Cows will spend less time eating to control body temperature during the summer months. They will avoid eating during the hottest hours of the day. - Feeding at Night to Optimize Intake
- Cows can consume two-thirds of their diet during cooler nighttime temperatures. If feeding once daily, feed at night. If feeding cows twice or more daily, feed 70-80% of their daily allowance at night.
- Offer fresh feed: Warmer outside temperatures can cause fresh feed to deteriorate more quickly.
- Include organic acids: Certain organic acids can work as TMR (total mixed ration) stabilizers, extending the bunk life of fresh feed.
Diet Reformulation: Avoiding Overfeeding Nutrients
- In heat stress, one fundamental principle involves adjusting nutrient concentrations to align with reduced feed intakes. Employing a strategy of overfeeding nutrients to alleviate heat stress proves financially and biologically counterproductive. Research demonstrates that merely increasing energy or protein levels does not result in improved energy-corrected milk production. Instead, a more astute approach ensures that diets precisely meet nutrient requirements, grounded in accurate nutrient concentrations.
- Cautious Starch Management: Risks of Ruminal Acidosis
During heat stress, cattle exhibit erratic feeding patterns, sometimes engaging in slug feeding, which can exacerbate fluctuations in rumen pH. High starch levels elevate the risk of ruminal and lower gut acidosis. This highlights the need for balanced starch inclusion within the diet, taking advantage of other dietary fatty acids that support milkfat levels while reducing the ruminal load. - Fiber Management: Effective Fiber vs. Digestible Fiber
Adequate fiber stimulates chewing activity, enhancing salivary buffering and promoting healthy rumen function. During heat stress, maintaining an intake of adequate fiber from forage sources like hays and silages is critical to ensure proper rumination and mitigate drops in rumen pH. In contrast, highly digestible fiber sources, including soyhulls and corn gluten feed, improve diet energy content and minimize fermentation heat, thereby favoring milkfat precursors’ production. - Rumen-Undegradable Protein Sources: Improving Nitrogen Efficiency
Heat stress impairs rumen function and nitrogen efficiency. While increasing dietary protein may not recover milk losses, shifting protein digestion from the rumen to the intestine via rumen-undegradable protein (RUP) ingredients can enhance feed intake and maintain milk yield. Utilizing RUP sources like blood and treated soybean meal, alongside specific rumen modifiers, optimizes protein utilization and bolsters milk production. - Minerals and Vitamins: Electrolytes During Heat Stress
Cows expend significant electrolytes such as potassium and sodium during heat stress, which can compromise hydration. Supplementing these minerals can lessen the effects of heat stress, particularly in lactating cows. Nonetheless, it is essential to balance this strategy with the understanding that excessive potassium and sodium in dry cow diets may precipitate metabolic disorders like milk fever. Additionally, elevated levels of Vitamin E support cows under stress.
Role of Feed Additives: Optimizing Nutrition Year-Round and During Heat Stress
Feed additives are crucial in maintaining and improving cow health, both under normal conditions and during periods of heat stress. Understanding which additives to use and when to use them can significantly impact herd performance and overall well-being.
Year-Round Additives
Several additives are beneficial regardless of the season and can provide continuous support to cows:
- Yeast Cell Culture Extracts: These additives enhance immune function, which is particularly important as cows face various stressors throughout the year.
- Chromium: Essential for optimizing glucose metabolism, chromium helps cows efficiently utilize energy, which can enhance milk production and overall health.
- Biotin: Known to promote hoof health, biotin is especially beneficial during heat stress when cows spend more time standing due to discomfort.
- Mycotoxin Binders: With an increased risk of mold and mycotoxin contamination in feed during warmer months, mycotoxin binders help mitigate potential adverse effects on productivity and health.
Additives for Heat Stress Periods
Certain additives are specifically advantageous during heat stress, providing targeted relief and improving cow resilience:
- Vasodilators (Niacin, Capsicum): These organic compounds enhance blood flow to the skin, facilitating more efficient heat dissipation and helping maintain average body temperature during heat events.
- Osmolytes: Found naturally in various organisms, osmolytes attract water molecules, maintaining cell volume and hydration at a cellular level. Unlike electrolytes, osmolytes can be incorporated into dry cow diets and used proactively to preemptively mitigate heat stress.
The Bottom Line
Effective heat stress management in dairy cows necessitates a comprehensive approach that synergizes nutritional adjustments with environmental modifications. Producers can significantly alleviate the detrimental impacts of high temperatures by prioritizing the availability of fresh water, optimizing feeding schedules to align with cooler temperatures, and diligently reformulating diets to meet precise nutrient requirements. Furthermore, the judicious incorporation of specific feed additives and meticulous calibration of micronutrient intake can bolster cows’ resilience during periods of heat stress. While the challenges of heat stress are considerable, proactive measures and an in-depth understanding of bovine physiology can lead to improved health outcomes and sustained milk production. Commitment to these multifaceted strategies ensures not only the welfare of the animals but also the economic viability of the dairy industry during the sweltering summer months.
Proper preparation of cows for heat stress through nutritional and feeding practices can significantly enhance their ability to cope with high temperatures, ensuring a more successful herd during summer. Here are the key takeaways:
- Provide continuous access to fresh, clean drinking water to help cows regulate their body temperature.
- Adjust feeding schedules to cooler parts of the day, notably at night, to increase feed intake.
- Include organic acids in feed to maintain its freshness and prevent deterioration.
- Reformulate diets to meet nutrient requirements without overfeeding, thereby avoiding unnecessary financial and biological costs.
- Ensure a balanced intake of effective fiber to promote healthy rumen function and consistent feed intake.
- Consider incorporating highly digestible fiber and high-quality rumen-undegradable protein to support energy levels and milk production.
- Fine-tune the mineral and vitamin content of diets, particularly focusing on electrolytes, to sustain hydration and health.
- Utilize feed additives year-round, and during heat stress periods, to support immune function, glucose utilization, hoof health, and mitigate mycotoxins.
