A comparison of the effects of 2 cattle-cooling systems on dairy cows in a desert environment

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of operation time and size of Korral Kool (KK; Korral Kool Inc., Mesa, AZ) systems on core body temperature (CBT) of dairy cows. Two KK systems were compared: a system with 1.29-m-diameter, 3-hp fans spaced 6 m apart (referred to as small) and a system with 1.52-m-diameter, 5-hp fans spaced 8 m apart (referred to as big). Forty-eight multiparous Holstein cows were assigned randomly to 8 pens (4 big, 4 small), and pens were assigned randomly to a sequence of treatments (KK operated for 21 or 24 h/d) in a switchback design. A complementary calorimetric analysis was developed to investigate the cooling area under the KK units of the big and small systems. Twenty-five sensors distributed equally under the KK units measured ambient temperature at 5-min intervals for 2 h. Average ambient temperature was 35.0±0.6°C and relative humidity was 45±8%. There were significant treatment effects on mean CBT: cows on the small 24-h treatment had a lower mean CBT than cows on the small 21-h treatment (39.22 vs. 39.36±0.14°C), and cows on the big 24-h treatment had a lower mean CBT than cows on the big 21-h treatment (38.95 vs. 39.09±0.13°C). A significant treatment by time interaction was observed. The greatest difference between systems occurred at 0100 h; treatment means at this time were 39.05, 39.01, 39.72, and 39.89±0.16°C for the big 24-h, big 21-h, small 24-h, and small 21-h treatments, respectively. At certain times of day, the big system reduced CBT more than the small system. These results show that CBT of multiparous cows decreased when KK system operational time was increased from 21 to 24 h regardless of the size of the KK cooling system used. The calorimetric analysis showed that even though the big system resulted in lower mean ambient temperatures than the small system, the distance between units in the big system should be decreased to reduce the variation in temperature under the big units.