LIC CEO David Chin says a recent trip to Brazil, the world’s fourth-largest dairying industry with 16.8 million dairy cows, offered a window into how farmers there handle hot conditions.

“Probably about the first 20% of the conversations I had were all about how they manage heat,” he says.

LIC has run a heat-tolerant genetics programme for eight years, breeding the slick coat gene, which reduces a cow’s internal temperature by about a degree. Its research team was first in the world to identify the gene controlling heat in bovines.

He says heifers bred through the programme on LIC’s innovation farm record better milk production on hot days and carry a slicker coat linked to fewer ticks.

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