For a dairy cow, the perfect day would consist of lying down for 16 hours chewing cud.
At least that’s what dairy farmer Kyler Ohlde near Linn, Kansas, prefers to see when scanning his herd.
But the summer heat has been intense recently, driving temperatures up to 110 degrees in parts of Kansas. That’s not just hard on the state’s human residents. It can take a toll on Kansas livestock under the blazing sun.
As climate change increases the intensity and duration of heat events, dairies are having to find ways to keep their herds as comfortable and productive as possible.
Despite being known as a beef state, the dairy industry is one of the fastest growing agriculture industries in Kansas.
Ohlde has seen that rise, and he’s seen plenty of summers of heat stress. He can tell when his cattle are uncomfortable. Their tongues stick out, they stir and they will eat less.
“Every person, to varying degrees, struggles as it gets warm out. It's taxing on our bodies. It’s the same with cows but even more so,” Ohlde said.
Cattle, with their four-chambered stomachs working on digestion, create even more heat internally on top of the heat they are facing outside. A cow alone can produce enough heat to warm up an apartment.
A recent study found that heat limits the quantity of milk a cow produces. It also changes the quality, deteriorating nutritional components like fat and protein.
That ends up hurting a dairy farmer’s bottom line.
“At the end of the day, we get paid for pounds of fat and pounds of protein,” Ohlde said. “The less total pounds we produce, we really decrease the amount of fat we're selling.”
For Ohlde and other dairy farmers, managing heat stress comes down to a science.
Ohlde said dairy farmers spend the spring gearing up for the summer. He supplies his 4,500 cattle with sprinklers and then constant fans and shade to keep cool.
But there have been new innovations that change the cattle-cooling process. For example, they now have sensor collars around the cow’s neck, similar to a fitbit that monitors health and heat stress. Ohlde can see in real time how his livestock are holding up.
Ohlde also feeds his cattle vasodilators, which is a supplemental feed that widens the blood vessels and relaxes the muscles to allow cows to release more heat in the summer.
But Ohlde says things are looking up on the dairy farm despite the challenges.
Intense heat hurts reproductive cycles, leading to less dairy cattle for the next season. For Ohlde, he says one of the ways he has seen improvement in managing heat stress is looking at his pregnancy rates among the herd.
“We used to see our pregnancy rates essentially cut in half through summer months,” Ohlde said. “Now we'll see a drop, but it's substantially less than that.”
Calen Moore covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can email him at cmoore@hppr.org.
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