Vol. 11, Special Issue 3 (2022)

Author(s):
Raghavendra G, Mahadevappa D Gouri, Vivek M Patil, Basavaraj Inamdar, Umesh Mirje, Prasanna SB, Prabhu TM and Shankarappa Bhajantri

Abstract:
An experiment was conducted to compare the effectiveness of different heat stress alleviating methods for lactating dairy cattle. Twelve lactating dairy cows with similar body weight and production levels were selected and grouped into three treatments with four animals in each group. The treatments viz T₁ as control, T₂ (micro sprinklers) and T₃ (wet gunny bags). The daily variations of environmental temperatures and relative humidity were recorded both inside the shed were in the range of 18.7 and 31.5 °C and, 36.4 and 79.2 per cent, respectively. These outside the shed were 20.2 and 32.1 °C & 41.7 and 84.0 per cent respectively. The dry matter intake showed non-significant difference among all treatment groups. The statistical analysis for milk yield revealed that there was significant difference between T₁ and T₂ (P<0.013) and T₂ and T₃ (P<0.043), it was non-significant between T₁ and treatment group. The fat yield, protein yield and lactose yield were non-significant among all the treatment groups. The milk fat per cent showed significant difference (P<0.001) between T₁ and T₃ and T₂ and T₃ (P<0.001), however there was no significant difference between T₁ and T₂ groups. The SNF protein lactose percentage’s and CLR showed non-significant difference between all the treatments groups. The results of the current study revealed that there was slight variation in the productive performances in the medium producing lactating dairy cows. Therefore this indicates that there is a need to adopt proper cooling mechanisms for high yielding dairy cows for sustainable dairy farming in this region.