Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of heat stress events in livestock. Adaptation strategies are both a welfare imperative and an economic necessity.
Heat stress causes acute and chronic welfare harm — reduced feed intake causes metabolic imbalance, elevated core temperature causes discomfort and physiological stress, and immune suppression increases disease susceptibility. For high-production dairy cows, heat stress is a compounding welfare problem: they generate more metabolic heat and have less physiological capacity to buffer it. As climate warming continues, heat stress adaptation is not optional — it is an ethical obligation for livestock producers. Investment in shade, cooling systems, and breeding for heat tolerance are welfare interventions with direct economic returns that remove the false choice between welfare and profitability.