Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of heat stress events in livestock globally. Heat stress causes significant animal welfare harms, reproductive failure, and production losses, and adaptation strategies are urgently needed across the industry.
Heat stress in livestock causes genuine and significant suffering. When environmental heat exceeds the animal's ability to dissipate body heat, core temperature rises, breathing rate escalates, appetite drops, and the animal enters a physiological emergency. For dairy cows, this emergency state is sustained across prolonged hot periods, causing not just production losses but immune suppression, metabolic disease, and reproductive failure. For broiler chickens in densely stocked sheds, heat stress can cause mass mortality events. The welfare dimension of climate adaptation in livestock farming is underappreciated: hotter summers are not just a productivity problem for farmers but a sustained welfare emergency for the animals they raise. Shade, ventilation, and cooling system investment is simultaneously welfare improvement and business resilience.