Water 

• Cows require 100L of water each per day in summer and can drink at a rate of 20L per minute! Make sure your water troughs can keep up with demand – both the flow rate to refill troughs and the size of troughs matter for this.

• Clean water troughs to keep palatability of water up. 

Cooling 

• Wet down the yard surface prior to cows coming in to cool it down. 

• Water sprinklers over the yard are a good idea, however they need to spray enough water to wet cows through to the skin, as a mist will just increase humidity and can make heat stress worse. 

Shade 

• Planting trees on northern and western edges of paddocks will help provide shade and shelter. Ideally there should be more than 5m2 of shade per cow to minimise competition. Shade cloth can be used, but it needs to be thick enough to block more than 80% of light. 

• Deciduous trees planted along lanes are a great long-term idea to provide shade during the long, hot walk to and from the shed.