With above-average June temperatures, Kentucky’s livestock are dealing with heat stress conditions earlier than usual. Tom Priddy, extension agricultural meteorologist and University of Kentucky (UK) Ag Weather Center director, said high temperatures were averaging about 90 degrees across the state during the early part of June.

"These high temperatures were about 10 degrees warmer than the previous week’s highs," he said. "Combined with the moist air from the Gulf of Mexico Kentucky has been experiencing this spring, the end result has been hot and muggy conditions. This has caused livestock heat stress to reach the danger category earlier in the year than normal."

As of early June, the state had yet to get into an emergency level of livestock heat stress on a wide scale; however, some isolated areas in the West, where the heat has been the greatest, have come close.

Priddy said hotter conditions this early in summer are not unheard of–even last year the state experienced abnormally warm temperatures to end May and then had an above-normal June