06/02/2026
The summer heat is already getting brutal. I let the cows out for a few hours today to go graze & explore. When they came back up to their pens, Queenie & Penny had pretty notable heat stress.
The other cows were fine & are pretty heat tolerant. Queenie is 20 years old so she exerts a lot of energy keeping up with the herd. Then Penny lost a lot of lung function when she got stuck in the water trough & drowned a little over a year ago. Cows rely heavily on respiration to cool themselves, so both have a lower tolerance. I will have to change to turning them out in the early mornings/late evenings until fall.
I hosed both of them off until they cooled down & their respiration rate lowered. At the end of the video you can see Queenie yawn. Much like horses, cows will yawn when their stress response is transitioning to the parasympathetic (rest/relaxed) state 🐮
The horses are far more heat tolerant, sweat more effectively, have larger lung capacities & don’t have a rumen acting as a furnace inside them, so they are all handling this hot day with ease!