A list of past articles on handling heat stress in high-producing animals
The proliferation of webinars during the past couple of months have brought a plethora of webinars on heat stress.
Heat stress is nothing new; we used to write articles about it every summer, but few paid much attention. The advent of phytogenics and the appreciation of antioxidative nutrition has coincided nicely with this old topic.
A quick search among different nutrition suppliers will reveal many webinars on heat stress, especially for broilers, but also for pigs and dairy cows – all species profoundly affected by increased temperatures. It is, after all, high performance that causes such animals to consume high quantities of feed that yield excessive metabolic heat, which in turn increases body temperature.
Measures to control the damage in performance caused by heat stress are few, and not all of them effective at the same farm. So, for most places, it remains a case of trial and error. The following articles offer some insights.
How to adjust sow feeds for summer heat stress
Six feed additives for pigs, poultry under heat stress
Summer heat stress and the role of antioxidants
Feeding heat-stressed broilers
Fighting livestock heat stress begins before feed additives
In addition to the above, I have noticed this year much noise regarding the role of yeast in reducing heat stress. This is an exciting development worth watching, especially in the case of dairy cows.
