Pigs and cows find hotness hard to bear
Print Edition
The prolonged hot spell since July has taken its toll on dairy and pig farms in Jiading District. About one 10th of the 730 cows at Chaohua Dairy Farm produced less milk despite electric fans and cold water cooling them down. The farm suffers losses every summer as cows produce less milk, but this year the continuous heat wave has become a major headache for head of the farm Zhang Qinfa.
Each of Zhang’s cows are producing an average of 17 kilograms of milk a day, about half of the previous production volume.
“The cows are large in body and they rely on their nose and tongue to dissipate heat, so some cows suffered heat stroke and just lay on the ground,” Zhang said.
The farm installed eight powerful electric fans in the cowshed, and the living space for each cow was expanded to three square meters. Drinkable water is supplied 24 hours a day.
“This summer 10 cows have been found to suffer from sunstroke, rising 80 percent year-on-year, and the abortion rate soared 200 percent from the same period last year,” a veterinarian at the farm said. “For the cows suffering from sunstroke, we stop milking and help them to recover with fluid infusions.”
It’s the same situation in some pig farms in Jiading where sows lay on the ground, panting despite wet-air coolers blowing water vapor from wells making the room temperate controlled lower than 35 degrees. Some sows had crushed their piglets when they collapsed.
“We have experienced unprecedented difficulties this year since we opened the farm 10 years ago. Up till now, four sows died of heat, and the mortality rate of piglets jumped 25 percent year-on-year this week alone, causing a financial loss of 50,000 yuan (US$8,000),” Gu Xinzhong, from Xuhang No. 2 Animal Farm, said.
The district plans to build two modern pig farms this year to minimize the impact of bad weather and increase productivity as extreme weather conditions require advanced technology to maintain milk and meat production.
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