Special Edition: Are You Ready for Summer?

 In this episode, Mike Donaldson discusses the critical issue of heat stress in dairy cows with expert Don Sanders. They explore the signs of heat stress, effective cooling strategies, and the importance of adjusting rations to ensure cow health and productivity during the hot summer months. The conversation emphasizes the long-term impacts of heat stress on dairy cows and their offspring, highlighting the need for proactive management to maintain animal welfare and farm profitability.

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Transcript

Chris Radke (00:01)
Welcome to AK Podcasts, where we explore science and nutrition behind livestock care and management with the best of the brightest in the business. I'm your host, Chris Radke, part of the sales department here at Agri-King. And with me today, as usual, is the Director of Field Services and a Member of the Sales Management Team, Mr. Mike Donaldson. Mike, how you doing, buddy?

Mike Donaldson (00:20)
Outstanding, Chris, how's everything going in your world?

Chris Radke (00:23)
⁓ pretty good, pretty good. It is spring, which is what I think becoming one of my favorites. So yeah, love it.

Mike Donaldson (00:30)
Good deal.

Chris Radke (00:31)
Hey Mike, who's with us and what are we talking about today?

Mike Donaldson (00:34)
Well, we have a repeat guest with us today, Chris. Don Sanders, the director of dairy for Agri-King is joining us. And ⁓ in case some of you maybe didn't catch Don in his earlier episodes, would you please give us a rundown of your background on sort of how you got where you are?

Don Sanders (00:54)
Hi everyone, I'm Don. Hey, it's been a long trip and a journey for me and Agri-King, but grew up in central Pennsylvania on a 60 to 70 cow dairy herd. Got familiar with Agri-King because we were on the nutrition program and our local area rep was retiring and they wanted a replacement and they asked me several times and I kept saying no.

In reality, I finally said, yeah, I'll try it part time. And that was 41 years ago. So I say I'm still part time, but you know, this is a full time job. Of course it is. And I've enjoyed the challenges and meeting people and taking care of cows. And I always be right up front and say my two passions in life are helping people and helping cows. When I say helping, that means getting the goals and find out.

where they want to go and try to help them on that journey of life.

So I could go on further, but you know, let's talk about other things.

Mike Donaldson (01:58)
Well, perfect.

Now

you go as far as you want. ⁓ Maybe some more will come out as we talk about the topic. With the coming, you know, we move into later part of spring and we're staring down summer. ⁓ we thought this would be a very timely topic. Talk. We want to talk about heat stress, things we can do to help a dairy cow handle heat stress and

Don Sanders (02:11)
Yeah, I probably will.

Mike Donaldson (02:31)
Maybe some of this is a review and maybe there'll be a few new things along the way. I think one of the aspects that a lot of people don't understand, Don, ⁓ when does a dairy cow start to suffer from heat stress? When does she start to feel off like maybe we do at 85 or 90 degrees?

Don Sanders (02:52)
she starts to fill off at 65 degrees and 45 % humidity. That sounds a little bit crazy, but they already have a higher heat temperature than we do. Their normal temperature's 101 and a half. So if that gets above 103, things aren't going well for the cow. And actually that starts, and you gotta count both temperature and humidity. The higher humidity, the lower the temperature will be in the heat stress deal. There's all kinds of charts out there.

Some are very colorful to help you understand when that heat stress thing starts and how bad it becomes. So it goes from little heat stress all the way up to severe. And the symptoms from cows become more and more apparent, of course, if you're observing them, what happens to these cows on heat stress. But the real thing you want to do is combat it right from the beginning so it never gets.

to raising that cow's core temperature by that, say, that five degrees when she is really going to be off because it's almost equating to, okay, you got a cow that can't take heat stress because she has a fever. She has a fever because her elevated body temperature because she cannot get rid of it as she would normally. So we have to come along with some helpful amenities for her to help her control her body temperature.

Mike Donaldson (04:17)
Okay. Well, I think one of the, maybe even a cruel twist of fate, if you are daring, and we certainly put this out, knowing that there's going to be people in the Southwest, Southeast, Midwest, you know, we have a wide audience. If you are daring in Arizona, I think people are pretty understanding they're going to deal with heat. But.

Don Sanders (04:30)
right?

Mike Donaldson (04:45)
in the East and the Midwest when barely three months ago we were trying to keep things from freezing. I don't think people are quite as ⁓ quick to embrace the idea that at 65 degrees, I should be doing something to help my cows be more comfortable. ⁓ Like it's like, can't, can't you give me a break? First, first it all freezes. Now they're dying because of the heat. If you go on to a farm, Don,

What are some of the things that you would watch in a cow to tell you, for her to tell you that she's under some stress?

Don Sanders (05:23)
her respiration rate is gonna be more rapid. So if you observe cows, there's gonna be differences in side by side cows, I get that. But if you wanna know if one cow is more rapidly breathing than the other, you just have to observe and see if one actually is that. ⁓ Now with our new technologies, you have systems that actually do that for you. Heavy breathing can be tracked, body temperature can be tracked, activities can be checked.

from beginning to the end, but it all gets bound to what are you doing, what are you implementing, or if it's just your eyes of what's happening with that cow. So you understand and how you can get to the heat abatement. And there's lots of things we can do and we're going to get to that part stuff. But what would you do? One, two, three, four, so to speak. But there's many choices of how to help this cow through the heat stress.

Mike Donaldson (06:23)
Continue to focus on that aspect of, know, yeah, it's hot. I'm hot. She's hot. I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars. So my cows aren't hot for three weeks in July is such a short sighted view of the problem. When you start looking at how long those effects can really be felt, take taking something like breeding.

Don Sanders (06:43)
Yeah.

Mike Donaldson (06:52)
If a cow goes into extreme heat stress during the summer months, how long could it be before she really gets back on track after that when things do cool down in August or September?

Don Sanders (07:04)
probably be three months from the time that she got if she got severely heat stress and if she was pregnant then she may have had early embryonic death occur because of that then she's set back further yet but body functions that under heat stress just don't function as normal of course we know that but it's but one of the things that happens is that

breeding success goes down, whatever you want to measure that service per conception or success, preg rate and that kind of thing. But it's a challenge when the cows are under heat stress.

Mike Donaldson (07:41)
Now, I want to insert here, I am certainly not an expert on fan placement and CFUs. I'm not presenting Don as one of the industry leading people nationally about how many fans and other aspects. But when you've been in the field, as long as Don has, you know what you see, you can kind of point people in some general directions. ⁓

What I guess where I wanted to go to then is.

What are some of the things you come to my farm and I am not really doing hardly anything. Where would, give me a prioritized list of where you'd like me to make my investment in making my cows more comfortable. What's the first place to get a great return on? And for this example, we're in a free stall barn holding area parlor farm.

Don Sanders (08:45)
Okay, good. I'm glad you gave me the way of farm layout is because that may change the answer I give you. So the first place I would want to do is anything is in the holding area because it probably may not be adequate motion of air there. Even if you have some fans, you may, but you need to get some water on those cows to maximize the air velocity that you want to get on those cows. And you want to make sure, and this doesn't matter if it's the holding area or along the feed line,

Mike Donaldson (08:48)
Okay

Don Sanders (09:15)
You want to make sure it's not too fine of droplets that are blowing away with the fans you have in place. You want them large enough that they soak her. You don't want that to be, you want it to be on a timer and you don't want it to last more than two minutes because you want it to drop off the body sides and you don't want it to get down on the other. So you want that to be intermittent and keep her wet but not drenched. And of course then you get

Mike Donaldson (09:36)
Okay.

Don Sanders (09:45)
a lot better result from just moving warm air and over cooling. Like most of us have been in a swimming pool and got out and the air was blowing. It makes a significant difference in our body while we feel and it does the same darn thing with a cow. So if you're wet, you're going to feel that even the warm air is warm, but it cools you really quick. So that's the same darn thing we're after for the cow. And if you want to move core temperature of a cow,

And it's probably rising as she is in that. I've seen a lot of overcrowded cows in holding areas and it also depends how long they're in there. I see that as probably one of the places that get neglected more than other places. And of course you can put fans on the feed line in sprinklers and you can also put fans above the stalls and tilt them.

And you need a couple, you know, you can get people come in and help you figure all that out and how much velocity you need. But you should be at a four to six mile an hour winds in there. You can get one of those little wind meters and hold it up and see what's going on.

Another thing that's very popular now in the Midwest is cross-vet barns. And some of those cross-vet barns have now put air, not air, water-cooled cells on the side where they're drawing that air in and they can drop the temperature by ⁓ seven to 12 degrees by that. And those things all started in the poultry and hog industry with the, I call it water cell walls.

Mike Donaldson (11:20)
Okay.

Don Sanders (11:20)
and

they're pulling out. It's like a radiator type deal on an engine. That's how it works. that's some of the newest things that have been around. if you want to look at return on investment, course, said, well, like you already said, maybe three weeks you're going to get a little hot. Well, I'm going to say in central Pennsylvania, it'll last more than three weeks, more like three months.

Mike Donaldson (11:46)
Mm-hmm.

Don Sanders (11:47)
If you lose six pounds of milk per cow, which is not unheard of, it could be twice that, but let's talk about six and if milk is worth $20. And say you have 100 cows, that's, I gotta look at my math. So that's $11,000 in those 90 days. So if you would want to at least put some couple fans up or a sprinkler system, you gotta look at, check that out and see if you get.

And some of that, I mean, I'm giving you examples because you're going to always want to say if you have to go to the bank and ask them, they're going to ask you what's the return on investment here. if you, and it's not only milk, and I want to bring this up so everybody get, University of Florida has done a tremendous amount of studies on heat stress because they're Florida and it's humid. So.

Mike Donaldson (12:26)
Sure.

Don Sanders (12:44)
Not only does the dam or the cow you're looking at suffer, if she's pregnant with any kind of, I was going to say last trimester, but is more affected than that, that calf is going to also be affected and that calf will never be able to reach the genetic potential the calf has if an unborn calf is under heat stress. And now they've gone even a step further.

Mike Donaldson (13:08)
Really?

Don Sanders (13:13)
Even when that calf grows up to have her own calf, that granddaughter of the dam was under heat stress will also not reach her genetic potential. So you can count pounds of milk loss, but I think the biggest loss that you never see is the next generation. And now they're saying the generation after that. It's a tremendous effect in uterine that

Mike Donaldson (13:35)
Wow.

Don Sanders (13:40)
Yeah, you can't see it, but it happens and you wonder why that heifer doesn't milk like I thought she would. Well, I'm giving you a reason and it's factual. It's stress. Stress brings a lot of people, a lot of cows under stress, changes the microbiome or the gut wall. And some of you probably have heard of leaky gut.

Mike Donaldson (14:01)
Huh?

Don Sanders (14:05)
So the higher the stress level, the leakier the gut gets. The leakier gut means there's bacterial coming out of the gut wall that usually stays in the gut or the intestine, but it becomes leaky. That bacteria gets into the bloodstream and gets circulated through the cow, bringing more stress. And you get oxidative stress, what I just described to you, and oxidative stress is a real...

Mike Donaldson (14:05)
Sure.

Don Sanders (14:33)
Real deal you're trying to get, you gotta cool the cowl so you don't get that to happen.

Mike Donaldson (14:39)
Well, going back and you talked about, you know, in a, in a free stall situation, water in the holding area on a timer, water at the feed bunk. We typically aren't going to put water on a cow in a free stall, but how important that is to soak them at the top line, but it doesn't soak their utter part way down their frame that water is dissipated.

I remember being told one time, all you do is mist, like you said, you don't want to find mist. And it's the same as if you spit on your fingers and then put out a candle. Well, you don't burn yourself because that moisture barrier kept you, insulated you. And if you were to do that to a cow and you get a mist, you get moisture at the tips of her hair, you've almost put a jacket on her.

that's just going to hold that heat in on her. There are a lot, especially out in Pennsylvania, New York, Wisconsin, a lot of outstanding dairies that are in tie stalls. What are some, and the reason I talk about the moisture, I do know there's some people who will sprinkle cows in the tie stall. They stand in with a slightly different approach than soaking them. They don't want that much water, but what, what are you, what's your advice?

Don Sanders (16:05)
Yep.

Mike Donaldson (16:08)
I'm sending you now to my brother who has an 80 cow tie stall barn and he's never done anything for heat. So what's your recommendations to him going to be?

Don Sanders (16:13)
Yep.

First thing you do is make sure your velocity of the air moving in that barn is probably seven miles an hour. Because the increase that air velocity, you're going to move the air and you're going to keep them a little bit cooler. Of course, then if you, that doesn't happen. And instead of trying to control the wetness in that,

stall or on that cow. I'm not saying I've seen it. It can be done, but it's a little, it takes management level to make sure you don't overdo it to get any kind of moisture on the stall bed. So I would say if you want to put the next step to that is actually the cooling cells on the wall where the air intake comes in. So you've, you can cool that by five to 10 degrees, just with what I said. If you, if

Again, it all comes down to return on investment and what kind of cows you have and where you're at and what your goals are as how much you would invest to cool the cow and what she can give you in return because it's not always about milk. We already talked about calves and next generations and ⁓ the opportunity for genetic advancement.

Mike Donaldson (17:27)
So let's take the next step. I'm ⁓ your client. I've worked with you for 10, 15, 20 years. And we've piece by piece put some of these things together. We first readdressed the holding area. Then we did back in a free stall. Then we were at the bunk doing some different things, something over the stalls, except now it is

April, May, what are the things, what are the maintenance things I need to be sure I'm on top of? Because all of a sudden it's that, ⁓ I, okay, personally, I apparently I'm really bad at planning that it's eventually going to get warm here in Michigan. And it's always one really hot, uncomfortable night before I remember to put the air conditioner in the bedroom window. But, and, and.

Hopefully I put it away in good enough shape that I just slap it in and we're good to go. But expand that situation to my free stall barn. What are the maintenance things I need to be on top of so things are ready to go when I need them?

Don Sanders (18:41)
The first thing you're going to do is make sure the fan blades are clean. That means you get your high pressure washer out and clean the fan blades because you don't want any contamination. If you have any louvers on your fan at the end of the barn where intake or exit, you want to make sure all the dusts off those louvers because you can maximize the air. ⁓

and we didn't talk about this, but you certainly want to make sure there's a lot of water space in each pen and it's adequately flow is there and it can keep up because great demand sometimes, and I've been on dairies that have to make a choice. When they have a really slow level of water and then it's a drought comes along and then you have heat stress on your cows.

Where do I allocate the water? Because she has to drink some, I want to put some on her back. Well, you better make sure she has enough to drink before you put anything on her back. And that's a tough decision to make, but I've been in those situations where, but you need to maintain the maintenance of whatever you have.

The other thing is if it's a belt driven, you make sure the belts are tight so you're not slipping and you thought you had air velocity but you don't because the belt is already wore out and you don't. mean if you look at all that stuff from a distance you may not even know that's occurring. But you're paying for electricity to move the air and it's not being moved.

Mike Donaldson (20:04)
Yeah, it is sort of funny is, and Don is a big part of a lot of the on-farm training we do at Agri-King along with just being on client farms. And it is not uncommon to go to really good farms and overall things are okay, but there's three fans over here that aren't running at all. And I mean, the...

belts just gone, the blades are spinning in the wind, they're not actually moving any air and you see sometimes that depending on what they've got as far as tips on the sprinklers over the cows, well some of them are obviously blocked, the pieces are there but they're not working correctly.

Well, we could probably do an entire episode on the ration tweaks that can be good to make in, in summer's heat. ⁓ I don't want to, and that would probably be a, if we did that as a call in show, we'd probably have a 24 hour show. Cause every, everything that, everything that I've, learned early on, if I say this won't work, someone will tell me five ways it does. So.

Don Sanders (21:12)
Yeah, he probably would.

Yep.

Mike Donaldson (21:22)
It's a pretty wide spread of being correct. But what are some of the things that you like to see in your rations that you adjust with the, and I'm going to say with the coming of heat, you don't wait till it's miserable. With the coming of summer, what are some of the things you watch in your diets?

Don Sanders (21:27)
Yeah.

Well, the first things I wanted to say went ⁓ not changing the ration at all, but changing the time of day that gets laid in front of your cows. And when it really gets hot, they're going to eat more at night than they would during the day. So you may change a percentage instead of, say, you were at 50-50 before feeding twice a day. Or if you're feeding once a day, when you're going to push it up and all that. it ⁓ is an issue almost in every dairy and heat stress of you've got to change.

Mike Donaldson (22:01)
Mm-hmm.

Don Sanders (22:11)
to what the cow will tell you what she wants to do. And she will eat more of course at night when it cools off. So that's when you gotta have it. So you gotta change the way you do things in there. If you have choices of feeding lower fiber feeds.

It doesn't matter if it's corn silage, haylage or a small grain. That's when to do it when the heat is at the highest because when cows break down fiber that takes energy, energy produces the heat. So you're going to have a higher increment of heat in the rumen when you put higher fiber in it because she has to work harder to get that nutrition out of it.

Mike Donaldson (22:50)
Okay.

Don Sanders (22:53)
you some would say I'm just using this as an example some will save BMR corn silage to be fed during the hottest summer months because that is notoriously lower in fiber and it's a helpful tool but you can also do that with almost every forage if you have the segregation to do it and keep track of it that's the other thing but

You want to make sure you don't dip in energy because they're going to eat less. So if they're going to eat less, you want to make sure you got the calories in it. And you want to make sure the calories are, I call it, safe. And that's with every ration. You want to make sure that you're not overdoing the starch value just because your energy or you don't want to make sure you're not overfeeding.

the fat and the kinds of fat you feed even though you could get more calories on the paper it says in the actuality it may do a reversal on you if you're doing the wrong types of things. I guess that's about enough on rations. There's other things out there that will help cool a cow.

in different products and make sure you have the electrolyte balance right, which is a lot to do with the potassium and other minerals. And you can do that without a purchase of other products. products have them in, but it's a different way of management. But one of the last things it can do is when you have a well-run rumen,

They produce a lot of B vitamins on their own, but if you have a heat stressed rumen, that B vitamin that was being manufactured by the rumen now is very small. So if you want your liver to keep functioning and you don't have B vitamins to make sure that works, you should be adding the stress pack that you can get in them by the way, that'd be Bovine Replete for us and get them into there to maintain the level of ⁓ liver function that you want.

Mike Donaldson (24:35)
you

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Don Sanders (24:44)
And liver, of course, if you don't have a good function of liver, that cow's not going to do so well.

Mike Donaldson (24:50)
I think back and feel free to correct me. You've got about 10 years on me and experience at Agri-King. It somewhat coincided when we started working over in the United Kingdom and Ireland and we became more aware of electrolyte balancing across our whole company. And I remember thinking, well, there's been people make a fortune selling Gatorade and other types of sports drinks.

Don Sanders (25:05)
Yep.

Yeah, we did.

Mike Donaldson (25:20)
and really emphasizing electrolytes and we've worried about that. We've addressed that in scouring calves almost forever that this is there. They need those electrolytes there. They're going to be dehydrated. They're going to be benefiting from having an electrolytes address. And all of a sudden we were talking about it and doing it in rations with relatively simple balancing things, but it

Don Sanders (25:30)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Donaldson (25:47)
I don't think a lot of people understand the difference that that can make, just having that electrolyte right.

Don Sanders (25:51)
mix

that's correct that balance is very key and if you want when you're dealing with cows and you want them to reach their genetic potential it's almost like I don't care if it's a it's a fine-tuned athlete I don't care if he's a long-distance runner or sprinter or plays football basketball whatever

where Gatorade was born was when they couldn't keep away from muscle cramps years and years ago at the University of Florida. And it's the same, if you want your athlete, your cow, I would say, somebody told me this a long time ago, it's like, give it 100 pounds of milk, she's like doing 100 pushups every day. So, in a human world. it was just.

Mike Donaldson (26:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Don Sanders (26:40)
Fine tune, fine tune, fine tune, fine tune because it all gets back to muscle and muscles will not work at their highest level if they are shorted on electrolytes under heat stress. It's a big, big deal.

Mike Donaldson (26:54)
I think

this whole topic is another good example where a lot of the non-farm world wants to vilify farmers as people who don't care for their animals and just use their animals. And the reality is 180 degrees opposite that. The better we do, the easier we make that animal's life. The more profitable she is, and it's not only the right thing to do,

but it's the smart business decision to keep them comfortable, to feed them in a way that helps them handle the heat. it's just sometimes you, and I think you and me and Chris, we live in the real world. I've got more non-farm friends than I do farm friends, because we've got such a small percentage of the population that farms. And you you sometimes just...

Don Sanders (27:29)
Yep, sure.

Mike Donaldson (27:51)
And I sometimes have interrupted someone and go, you don't understand what you're talking about. This is what really happens. And I mean, you go to one of these farms that you've helped set up correctly to handle summer heat. It's standing in that cow barn is probably the most comfortable place on the farm on a 90 degree day. And, and, ⁓ and that, and if you go and you're absolutely right on the cross vent barns with the

Don Sanders (28:13)
That's right.

Mike Donaldson (28:21)
water baffle walls, that could almost call for a sweatshirt. ⁓ I mean, they get it down so nice. So that's great. Any final thoughts on, I mean, I love summer, it's probably my favorite season, but if we're gonna help farmers be more profitable in the heat, any closing thoughts on some things to be on top of?

Don Sanders (28:44)
just say just make sure that ⁓ and I work with a few that are really fine-tuned I'm going to say they have it there that they're on thermostats, humidistats, they'll control the velocity of the fan I mean how fast fans going to run and how fast you're going to put water on cows so it's again you can go as far as you want to go to take care of these animals if you wish to and

Again, you will get the payback just because you have a more comfortable situation for that cow. It's very short and cliche, but if you take care her, the cow, she will take care of you.

Mike Donaldson (29:22)
Don, I'm not even gonna muddy that up with any other comments. That's beautiful. Thank you for being with us. Chris, what'd you learn today?

Chris Radke (29:30)
My big takeaway is what Don was talking about. ⁓ Basically, if you prepare for the heat, you'll be better off as opposed to waiting until the heat's already. Kind of Mike's analogy of his air conditioner. ⁓ I was just fascinated with that research you're talking about how it could affect not that cow, not that future cow, but then the future, like two generations down because you decided to wait to put your air conditioning in basically. ⁓

It's just fascinating like we should be pro-acting as opposed to reacting to things so good stuff. If you like what you heard you can find us on any of your socials, leave us a review and spread the word. We're also now on our videos will be on agriking.com our website and if you have any questions or follow-up thoughts or concerns please email us at podcast @agriking.com. Don.

And Mike, thank you very much.

Mike Donaldson (30:25)
Thank you guys. Appreciate it, Don.

Don Sanders (30:26)
Thank you, Chris.