  Production of strange quarks in neutron stars is investigated in this work.
Three cases, one in which the energy and neutrinos produced in the strangeness
production reactions are retained in the reaction region, second in which the
neutrinos are allowed to escape the reaction region but the energy is retained
and the third in which both the energy and neutrinos escape the reaction region
are considered. It is shown that the nonleptonic weak process dominates strange
quark production while semileptonic weak processes, which produce neutrinos,
lead to the cooling if the neutrinos escape the reaction region. It is found
that the time required for the saturation of the strangeness fraction is
between $10^{-7}$ and $10^{-5}$ sec, with the shorter time corresponding to the
first two cases. About 0.2 neutrinos/baryon are emitted during the process in
the first two cases where as the neutrino emission is somewhat suppressed in
the last case. The average energy of the neutrinos produced in all the three
cases is found to be several hundred $MeV$. We also find that a large amount of
energy is released during the strangeness production in the first two cases and
this leads to the heating of the reaction region. Implications of the neutrino
production are investigated.
