Managing in the heat

Review and re-plan

4. What should change next hot season in terms of milking times, water troughs, paddock rotation, summer nutrition and mating management?

• Could we milk earlier/later next season?
• Which paddock rotation worked best?
• What was production like? Does the summer nutrition program need tweaking?
• How could heat detection be improved?

Over the hot season, your job as farm manager was to ensure that your cows' body temperatures were kept normal for as much of each day as possible. The key way to do this is to protect cows from direct solar radiation by providing shade, enhance evaporative cooling, and manage during hot periods in a way that doesn't add to heat loads.

Use the cool season to do what you can now to make sure that you can keep your cows cool, comfortable and profitable no matter what the next hot season and a changing climate brings.