The extremely hot temperatures in Acadiana are causing some farmers to lose livestock from heat exhaustion.
Monica Hernandez Melancon owns T Moise Farms in Sunset.
She said she's raising six-hundred chicken right now, but her animals are struggling to survive in the heat.
"We've been losing daily," Melancon said. "Maybe two or three [chickens]. We skip a few days and we find a few, more that are dead."
Melancon said she and her husband are re-arranging shaded areas for their chickens and the rest of their farm animals, but the older chickens are dying, right before it's time to harvest them.
"Mostly the bigger chickens [are dying]," Melancon said. "Their weight and they're not used to this heat."
Geology Professor Brian Schubert at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette said the climate changes happening are primarily, human-driven.
Schubert said he is teaching his students how to examine wood to study the variability in climate, over time.
"This piece of wood dates back to the 1800s," Schubert said. "In fact, it dates back to the late 1700s and from this, we can study the tree rings and try to get a long-term climate record for Lafayette."
Schubert said prolonged, hot, temperatures like these, may inspire people to become more energy-efficient.
