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Wet Summer Effects on Dairy Cows

M

Married2Allis

Well-known Member
It seems like this summer has seen alot of rain in some areas --at least in parts of the eastern US. Does that cause dairy farmers problems with their cows getting sick?

Do long periods of warm wet weather cause respiratory problems from bacteria, fungus, mildew, allergies, etc.?
 
A cow with allergies... Now that's funny!

There may be such a thing but no self-respecting farmer is going to waste precious resources treating a cow's allergies long term. Cows are there to make money and treating a long term chronic medical condition like that is not profitable. If she didn't die from the allergies outright, she would be on the first truck to the sale barn as a cull.
 
It depends. If dairy cows are in a nice dry barn, it doesn't make much difference.
If they are housed on a dry lot, it can become a mud lot, and there will be a lot of mastitis, bad feet, etc.
With grazed dairy cows, it depends on how well patures drain, etc.
Heat is usually the biggest enemy to a dairy cow... they react negatively over 75 degrees.
 
Only real problem created by a wet summer for
dairy farmers is the quality of some feed that they
need to make can be lower due to protracted
harvest period. In other words , the hay gets too old
before you can get into the field to cut it. Fields can
get badly chewed up from forage equipment
traveling over the water saturated ground. Also the
lack of sunshine doesn't allow the plants to store as
much sugars,etc. so even if you get your hay, it can
have lower protein, lower Total digestible nutrients.
Doesn't effect the cows so much directly, but will cut
production potential indirectly.
 

I don't know about anyone else, but our forage is down in quality, both hay and pasture. That has an effect.
 
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