Abstract

Animal environment is affected by climatic factors that include temperature, humidity, radiation and wind movement. Dairy animals generate heat from two sources viz. the environmental temperature and humidity, and their internal body metabolism and digestion. Within the thermo-neutral zone, the production and loss of heat from animal's body is about equal. Within this zone, animals are able to maintain a normal body temperature of 38.5-39.3°C relatively easily. When more heat accumulates than the animal can dissipate, heat stress occurs. Extreme climatic conditions can alter energy transfer between the animal and its environment and might have deleterious effect on growth, production and reproduction in dairy animals. Animals mostly suffers from heat stress condition so warm & humid climatic conditions are highly detrimental effects on animals performances. One of the major contributors of milk in India is buffalo and crossbred cattle, but they are highly susceptible to hot, humid and cold climate. To unwind the effect of climatic stress, the mechanism of thermoregulation takes place within the animal body to reduce the detrimental effects on reduced milk production, milk fat content, impaired reproductive performance and making the animal more susceptible to various health problems (Naqvi et al., 2012).8 Feeding and management interventions in terms of nutritional modification, housing arrangement may curtail the adverse effect of climate change on growth, productive & reproductive performances in dairy animals. In Indian subcontinent, heat stress is the most important climatic stress. Heat stress adversely affecting productive and reproductive performance of livestock, and hence reducing the total area where high yielding dairy cattle may be economically reared. The livestock sector which will be a sufferer of climate change is itself a large source of methane emissions contributing about 18% of total enteric methane budget.

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