Dear readers,
According to the report entitled “Global Warming of 1.5 ºC” published in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations, global warming possibly will reach 1.5 ºC between 2030 and 2052 if the current trend continues. This situation due to human activities for industrial purposes means that extreme weather events that have been rare to date will become more frequent. In the report, it is emphasized that extremely hot weather, which is experienced once in 50 years, is now likely to occur once in a year.
This climatic change, which the IPCC reveals in its report and which we feel more and more day by day, poses a threat to all living species on earth in many aspects. For example; with increasing drought, crop yields decrease and the supply of basic food/nutritional raw materials for both humans and animals becomes more difficult. The supply of raw materials is the biggest factor in the increase in feed prices, which we have experienced very often in recent years. Added to this is the stress factor that extremely hot or extremely cold weather creates on farm animals. These stress factors, which significantly affect the animal’s feed intake and performance, disrupt farm productivity and lead to a decline in animal food production such as meat, milk and eggs. However, rapidly growing world population needs increasing production, not decreasing production.
So, what should be done? Putting aside the search for ways to limit carbon emissions we release into the atmosphere, it is useful to look at what can be done to protect the performance of animals in extremely hot and cold environments. In this month’s issue of our magazine, we focused on this topic and tried to include ways to alleviate heat stress on farm animals and maintain productivity. We hope that the articles prepared by expert industry representatives on the subject will guide the producers in this hot summer period.
In the meantime, probably due to the fact that heat stress and loss of productivity in animals have been experienced intensely because of increasing average air temperatures; we encountered a very intense content sharing from our contributors for our issue focus. That’s why we had to continue covering heat stress topic and leave some of our content to July 2022 issue.
Enjoy your reading…
