With extreme heat settling in Illinois, farmers need to make their livestock as cool and comfortable as possible. Travis Meteer, University of Illinois Beef Extension Educator, shares that not only do farmers need to make sure cattle have access to shade and water, but that they are not adding to the animal’s stress levels.
“We want to make sure that we do that very early in the morning and making sure that we’re not confounding any stress on those cattle, especially in the heat of the day. We want to make sure that we’ve got good fly control and just trying to reduce other stressors that may be present here in the season,” says Meteer. “If we’ve got pastures that have endophyte-infected Kentucky 31 we know that that can be a feedstock that creates vasoconstriction. And so if you’re paying attention to your pastures and making sure that they’ve got plenty of good, palatable feed in front of them to not confound those heat stress factors.”
Some signs of stress for cattle include increased respiration, increased standing time, increased drooling, and decreased feed intake. When animals experience heat stress, it can have a negative impact on production, which for beef cattle, says Meteer, impacts reproduction.
“For many of our spring calving herds, this heat coincides with breeding season, so trying to reduce the impacts of heat stress is also something that’s going to correlate to our success with the breeding season,” says Meteer. “If we’ve got cattle that are really heat stressed, we could see loss of pregnant, and we could see reduced fertility in the cow and the bull as well.”
Meteer adds for finished beef producers, it’s important to also monitor cattle to ensure they are consuming enough calories to keep the gain and finish process and not lose weight.
