If you are like me, you have probably spent many a sleepless night wondering exactly how global warming could affect dairy cows.
"Has anyone explored why heat stress conditions are bad for milk production?!?!?"
I will wake up screaming this in the middle of the night, my body enveloped in a cold sweat, hands clutching my dog-eared copy of "Earth in The Balance."
(Which probably explains why my wife prefers to fall asleep on the couch.)
Okay, so that's not exactly right. I usually sleep pretty well, and if anything is going to wake me up it's going to be that frightful moment when I think I may have run out of gin.
That's ridiculous, of course. I never run out of gin.
But I digress.
Apparently, the affect global warming could have on dairy production is dire enough that researchers decided it important to annoy dairy cows for a couple of weeks to see what would happen.
Spoiler alert: Cows don't like to be annoyed.
Over the course of two weeks, half of the cows were exposed to approximately 98-degree heat, while the others were housed in neutral conditions. All of the cows were milked twice a day, and the researchers tracked everything from their vital signs to their weight, feed intake and milk yields.
In case you were thinking that this is starting to sound like the kind of experiment you'd find at a ninth-grade science fair you need to stop thinking that right now.
The research was published in the Journal of Dairy Science.
As predicted, the warm cows' milk production declined and the heat-stressed cows had higher insulin levels. They also ate and drank less.
And this, boys and girls, is the kind of research, the kind of unquenchable thirst for knowledge and human compulsion to push the very boundaries of what is known, that landed men on the moon.
Or at least, landed a sweet research grant.
This link between really uncomfortable cows and milk production has been theorized for some time.
In recent years, scientists have found links between human-caused climate change and heat stress, which can lower milk production and lead to diseases and other issues in dairy cows.
Cows eat less when they're hot — a factor researchers believe leads to a 50 percent drop in milk production.
Yes this research suggested a lesser drop, but shut up about that, they're on a roll.
But those drops in production can reach up to 70 percent in hot weather.
In totally unrelated news, milk production in the United States has been increasing for years.
As has global milk production.
But that's not what's important. What's important is that when you stuff a couple dozen cows in a really hot room for two weeks they become really uncomfortable. Think Beto O'Rourke at a gun show, or Joe Biden... anywhere.
Buried in the last two paragraphs is this bit of totally inconsequential information.
But the researchers also found a way to mitigate the cows' responses to heat. When they fed the heat-stressed animals a special mix of organic acids and pure botanicals, their guts became less permeable, they ate more and they produced more milk.
That dietary solution could help prevent some of the billions of dollars in economic losses related to heat-stressed cows, the researchers write. "This has immediate application," says study co-author Joseph McFadden, a dairy biologist at Cornell University, in a news release. The research could eventually lead to changes in feed formulations, he says.
Okay, sure, there may be relatively inexpensive ways to make cows less annoyed in the heat, and milk production has been increasing for years despite the climactic disaster the media keeps telling us is happening, but that doesn't mean you still don't need to give up your SUV, buy an $80,000 electric car, and start taking public transportation.
Oh, and pay more in taxes.
Why might an obscure study published in a trade journal weeks ago and intended to aid diary farmers find its way into The Washington Post right about now?
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
