Assessing heat stress effects on production traits of Holsteins in a temperate region

Heat stress impaired productive, reproductive and animal behaviour. Examination of milk production loss due to heat stress was mainly evaluated in USA and few tropical countries using the temperature humidity index (THI1) developed in the 1950’s. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of six new environmental stress indices on production traits in a temperate region. These indices include solar radiation and wind speed in addition to the temperature and humidity only defining THI1. For that purpose, 530820 milk, fat, protein, and somatic cell count first-lactation test-day records (TD) collected between 2000 and 2011 in Luxembourg were used. TD records were merged with meteorological data from 14 public weather stations. Each TD was assigned to the average daily thermal index of the 3 days before. Firstly, broken-line regression models were applied to identify the threshold of heat stress (THR) for each of the thermal indices. The decline of daily production of the different traits above THR point was assessed by mixed linear models including regression on unit of each of the thermal index. Estimates of THR were specific to each thermal index and trait. Significant decrease of milk, fat and protein yields above THR was observed for all studied thermal predictors. Whereas, an increase of the somatic cell score was observed above the specific THR point. THR estimates for THI1 and THI6 were of 68 and 80 and 62 and 78 for milk and protein yields respectively. Respective rate of decline per unit were of 0.243 and 0.188 kg and 0.0045 and 0.0051 kg respectively. Results from this phenotypic analysis show that evaluating heat tolerance based on bio-meteorological indicators is promising and phenotypic and genetic implications should be investigated.