Animal factors associated with core body temperature of nonlactating dairy cows during summer

The primary objectives of the current study were to investigate animal factors associated with core body temperature (CBT) and to determine the time of the day in which CBT assessment best describes the magnitude of hyperthermia throughout the day of heat-stressed dry cows. The secondary objective was to develop a predictive model for CBT of dry cows. Nonlactating Holstein cows (n = 105) with 250 to 260 d of gestation from 2 commercial dairies were enrolled in the study during summer. During 4 consecutive days, CBT from all cows was recorded in 5-min intervals and average CBT was calculated for each cow. In addition, mean, maximum, minimum, and standard deviation of daily CBT were calculated and using these measures cows were categorized as having high temperature (HT) or low temperature (LT) based on the median values. Cows carrying twins had greater (P < 0.01) CBT than cows bearing singletons (39.07 ± 0.07 vs. 38.84 ± 0.03 °C). Average CBT decreased (P < 0.01) 0.015 ± 0.004 °C for each 1-d increase in gestation length. Cows in Dairy A tended (P = 0.09) to have lower CBT than cows in Dairy B (38.91 ± 0.04 vs. 39.00 ± 0.06 °C). Season of birth, lactation number, body condition score category, previous projected 305-d mature equivalent milk yield, days in milk at dry-off, days after dry-off at enrollment, days of gestation at enrollment, and calf sex were not associated (P > 0.12) with CBT. Principal component analyses showed that 71% of the variance of CBT was explained by the first principal component alone, which was correlated with mean CBT (r = 0.99). Among all time points assessed, CBT recorded at 2215 h had the highest correlation with the first principal component (r = 0.93). The best agreement for classifying cows as HT or LT was between mean daily CBT and assessment at 2215 h (k = 0.73). The model that resulted in best predictivity (0.56) of average CBT included the following variables: dairy, gestation length, and twinning. In conclusion, findings from the present study suggest that CBT assessed between 250 and 260 d of gestation is negatively associated with gestation length and cows bearing twins have greater CBT than singletons. Our results indicate that the best time of the day to evaluate severity of heat stress in dry cows is 2215 h. Predictive models for CBT of dry cows should include dairy, twinning, and gestation length.