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Showerheads effectively cool cows

Jennifer Van Os
Aug 8, 2019
Aug 8, 2019

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In warm weather, cows receive brief high-volume showers while they are milked in the parlor at Rosy-Lane Holsteins.

Contributed

An infrared photograph of a cow following soaking from a shower shows green and blue regions, which indicate cooler temperatures. The yellow and red regions indicate warmer areas.

Contributed

Regular, left, and infrared photos show a cow’s udder after she was soaked with a shower during milking. Her legs became wet, as shown by the purple, cooler regions, but her udder remained dry.

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Jennifer Van Os

Dairy cows in almost every region of the world deal with heat stress at some point. At Rosy-Lane Holsteins near Watertown, Wisconsin, the farm has made improvements throughout the years to help the cows beat the heat.

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Jennifer Van Os is an assistant professor and University of Wisconsin-Division of Extension specialist in animal welfare in the department of dairy science at UW-Madison. Email jvanos@wisc.edu to reach her.