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Comparing Dairy Farm Performance And Heat Stress Abatment Strategies In The United States Using Summer To Winter Ratios, Jenna M. Guinn

Theses and Dissertations--Animal and Food Sciences

Heat stress abatement is a challenge for producers in the United States, especially in the southern states. Dairy producers could benefit by having a simply metric to measure heat stress abatement strategies with the goal of motivating improvement in heat stress management. Managing heat stress is key to ameliorating the effects on dairy cow performance. A study was performed to explore the use of a heat stress metric called the Summer to Winter performance ratio (S:W ratio), to quantify and compare farm performance variables among regions of the United States. Summer to Winter ratios were closest to 1.0 in the …