“I’ve never seen anything like that before here, and I’ve been in practice here over 50 years.”

Victorian vet Jakob Malmo may have spent a life being conditioned to the death of animals, but the sight of 80 dead cows strewn across paddocks due to heat stress left him shaken.

“I’ve seen ones and twos [die], but nothing like the devastation of last Friday.”

At the peak of the heatwave that swept through the state and far beyond, the Maffra vet made several distressing call-outs to dairy farms in the Gippsland region.

He says his reaction on arrival was one of “absolute horror".

“One of the affected farms there were a number of dead cows lying around,” he said.

“The cows had been in the water troughs and made mud everywhere.”

Such stock losses are typically viewed in economic terms, but the deaths of the cows has caused severe grief for their owners.

“You feel so sorry for the owners, because these were extremely good farmers [who] loved their cows,” said Mr Malmo.

“These people care greatly for their cows and look after them very, very well and they think, ‘gee, what have I done wrong?’.”

Keeping cows alive in the heat

“We don’t want to see a repeat of this ever again,” said Dr Malmo.

He says there are lessons to be learnt from the losses endured during the heatwave, and provided his most practical solutions for dairy farmers who encounter such conditions.

"I would suggest that any day where the temperature gets over 40 degrees, particularly for a couple of days in a row, you have to take very definite measures to mitigate the problem of heat.

"On those really hot days, the cows have got to go into paddocks with plenty of shade. If there’s not much feed there, it probably doesn’t matter because they won’t eat much in that stinking heat, they’ll eat again at night.

Dr Malmo says that if farmers can, they should milk the cows early, then put them in a paddock with good feed for an hour or two before it gets very hot, then move them into the shaded area. Leave them in the shade for the day and milk them late at night.

"On some farms, there are running creeks or dams and sometimes the cows go into them," he said.

"There may be concern about them getting mastitis in that situation, but even if that did increase the risk slightly, I would much rather treat a cow with mastitis than a heat-stressed cow or a dead cow.

"The big sign you see of heat stress is the cows with their tongue hanging out, breathing very rapidly and getting restless. If you see any of those signs, get them out of there and start wetting them down somehow."

Dr Malmo says every dairy farm in Australia should have sprays set up in the dairy yard.

"They want to let go fairly large droplets of water; you want to soak the cows through to the skin.

"If you put a mist out there, the mist can form an insulating layer on the top of the hair and actually heat the cows up.

"On these very hot days, no matter where you have the cows, you should go down and look at the cows every one to two hours to make sure they are travelling okay.



"The whole herd is losing production, so any steps you can take to minimise that is worthwhile."