Resilience against heat stress in Swedish dairy cattle

Dairy cows are sensitive athletes that perform best in an optimal environment, particularly with regard to temperature, as they have difficulty dissipating excess body heat. Negative effects on their production, health, and welfare are already seen during the summer months, and with a changing climate the situation is expected to worsen, despite investments in improved cooling systems. One potential solution is to breed more robust and resilient cows that tolerate heat better and recover more quickly.

This research project will investigate the possibilities of improving heat tolerance in Swedish dairy cattle through breeding. To achieve this, we will combine several disciplines, including epidemiology, veterinary medicine, genomics, social sciences, and economics. We will exploit the variation that exists within our high-performing dairy breeds to identify successful strategies for coping with heat stress and then evaluate the feasibility of incorporating these traits into breeding programs. We will combine novel measures of heat tolerance with genomic information and estimate genetic variances and correlations for resilience to heat stress.

Ultimately, it is Swedish farmers who determine which strategies for managing heat stress and robustness they want to see in their dairy cows. We therefore need to understand their priorities and expectations regarding a heat-tolerant cow, and whether they view selective breeding as a viable way to mitigate the effects of heat stress. To address this, we will conduct in-depth interviews with farmers about robust and resilient dairy cows in general, and about resilience to heat stress in particular.

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