August is coming and it's supposed to be the dog days of summer- so hot you want to lay around like a dog and just sleep and stay cool. July was hot for us in increments. Those increments were enough to cause real problems.
I have an outside job (a/k/a off farm job) at a factory about thirty miles from home. As metal buildings do, when the temperature outside reached into the nineties and the humidity made it feel like it was above one-hundred, I got sick. There didn't seem to be enough to drink, even though I was drinking plenty. I sweat until I stopped and I got nauseated and a headache. Those are signs of heat exhaustion. I've had it before and it is no fun at all. In the days that followed my stomach was upset more often than not and I was so tired I could barely do the chores, but of course they had to be done.
Now, my cows don't seem to be all that bright. During all this heat, the bugs (flies, gnats, mosquitoes, etc) really did a number on those big beasts, but would they go under the back rub with the insecticide that would have kept them bug free? No. They went around it and even broke the fence several times to prove they weren't going under it. They had several pastures available with lots of trees to get shade out of the hot sun. They chose instead to stay out in the field under the sun. We have a cow water fountain that every time one cow takes a drink, it refills with cold (ours gets really cold too) water, but they didn't drink as often as they should have. This puts tremendous stress on animals even when they do stay in the shade and drink that life-giving water. By the time we got them to come up to the barn yard where we could do a good inspection (the barn is where the water is) they were pitiful and in only a couple of days. Since I was down and out, too sick to do much more than lay on the couch, my husband and his brother got the cows in the barn where they could be fed grain (it was time to worm them anyway), get a good dose of that insecticide sprayed directly on them ( they didn't like that) and get plenty of water, and of course there is a big fan in there. One of my prized heifers just keeled over dead. I had just seen her a few days earlier and she was fine, so it hits really fast when it hits. We had a few that had pneumonia over the last winter and the stress caused it to come back on them. The rest of the cows were turned back out after a couple of hours and those sickly ones were left in the barn. They had dropped half their weight already. We nursed them back to health and are giving them lots of hay and grain and the fans are always running to keep them cool. The rest are doing very well out in the pasture since it cooled down a bit, but those others are staying right where they are for now.
I once had a dog that wouldn't let us cut his hair or brush it (not speaking dog- no really, I don't- I have no idea why). One week it was extremely hot like this year. He had a heat related event and wandered off. It rained and cooled things down, but he was gone for about four days before someone got him caught and figured out who he belonged to (thanks to his dog license!). They came to see us and we went to get him. He barely recognized us and weighed under fifty pounds, about a ten pound loss for him. We got some protein into him and a lot of water and eventually he snapped out of it, sort of. That was when his health did a down turn and he started losing his hearing and sight. Every change in the weather seemed to do something bad to him. He got arthritis and found it difficult to walk at times. Before he finally passed away, he was nearly completely deaf and blind, but somehow he recognized me whenever I petted him or gave him a hug.
The bottom line is, in the extreme heat, you need to check on everyone, young or old, usually healthy or not, and keep an eye on your animals. You may not be able to tell until it's too late that they are suffering; just assume that they are. Me? I bought a rain bird water for a garden and I will put it on a post so that when it gets really hot my cows can get wet a little bit and maybe cool off. It isn't practical to put fans out in the field, and they really don't want back in the barn; they're more comfortable outside. At least now they are going into the trees like they're supposed to.
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