Despite the poor weather and its impact on harvest and holidays there is still heat stress about. Although we are having quite a lot of rain the underlying seasonal temperatures keep many units on the boundary or heat stress or just into low risk. A sunny afternoon or a warm band of air from the continent can push the herd into heat stress. Glos had a very warm spell on Thursday afternoon and several other farms were experienced heat stress over Friday and Saturday.
The wetter weather has made the housed conditions hotter than the grazing conditions where evaporation of the rain has aided cooling of the cows and environment. All of the housed monitors recorded an average over the week of low levels of heat stress with this building towards the latter part. Predicted milk yield losses were 0.5 l/cow/day and were higher in the southerly located farms.
