The Moos Room™

[music]
[cow mooing]
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 is here. No guests again, but we're going to try something new today. We're going to work on doing something-- It's just different. We haven't really talked about visiting farms and when we get calls to come out and help. All three of us get calls to come out and help at farms and we're going to go over our approach to that and we're going to do that by going through an actual case study of a farm that I visited that was having an issue and just walk through it and walk you through what we're thinking about as we're getting information and how things played out, how things have improved and so we'll kind of key you into all of that.
Emily: It's like a mix between a day in the life episode and then science deep dive case study, but also kind of a day in the life too because we do case studies all the time for things.
Joe: For sure.
Brad: A day in the life for me because it's like every day trying to run a dairy farm.
Emily: A research dairy farm.
Brad: Still real world.
Joe: Oh, yes. Brad's running down problems every day trying to figure out what's going on. [crosstalk]
Brad: I'm just a firefighter out here. That's all I am.
Emily: [laughs]
Joe: The first thing to do is go over how we approach being on farm. For me, I think that the biggest thing that you learn right away is that you have to listen. There's no other way around it. The first thing you got to do is get as much information as you can before you really open your mouth about any recommendations or anything else or any observations that you're making. You just got to get as much information as possible. That includes for me information about what's going on in the family's life and anything else that could be working into some of the logistical problems that might happen that stem from some of these problems that we have on farms.
If you don't know those things, if you don't know the logistics of how things work, if there's any labor issues on the farm or anything like that, then your recommendations can't be relevant. For me, when I get on a farm, the first thing I want to do is learn as much as possible about what's going on. Honestly, the way that I've been taught, and this comes back all the way to physical exams for cows. If a farmer calls and says, "My cow has an LVA." Okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to look at that cow and I'm going to look at everything about that cow except the LVA first because I don't want to get my blinders on and miss something.
I'm going to go do everything else and I'll come to the LVA last and that's just how I've worked. A lot of times it's how I work on these farm things too. If someone calls and says, I've got an issue with whatever they have an issue with, I'm going to tell them right away, I'm not ignoring that problem, but I need to know so much more about the rest of your farm to get this in context and make sure I don't miss anything that's contributing to this problem and then go to that problem last. That's just how I approach it when I get on a farm. I don't know if you do anything else different, Emily or Brad.
Emily: Well, the first thing I do is ask if there's a bull on the premises.
Joe: Good call.
Emily: [laughs] Yes, then I think it's really similar. The farmer usually wants to dive right into the problem. I also want to get the overview of things and look at the other things. You want to follow the trail. The cause to effect. We know what the effect is, but it takes really thorough observation to get to the actual cause. We can have ideas and maybe a list of possibilities, but if you're really digging down and getting all the information and observing everything you can, it's more likely that you're going to have an accurate cause.
Brad: I think for me, it's exploring all of the aspects of the farm, because sometimes the issue that may be happening on the farm like if it's a calf issue, maybe it's partially calves, but maybe it's dry cows or somewhere else. You want to be able to explore all of the aspects. I know that takes time and everybody wants an answer quick, but sometimes the answer is not as easy as what we might think it to be. I don't think it's ever as easy. It's maybe not one specific thing usually. It's a combination of different things.
Joe: Yes, there's always so many variables. I think that the thing that it does is that there's some time up front, but the next time that someone needs help with something, we're ahead. I already know so much about that farm and a lot of things that I would need to know for any other issue that comes up. I think there's still value in that because it does take time and that can be frustrating and expensive.
Enough talking about all these other things in our general philosophy on life. Let's get into this case study itself. This was a call I got. A manager on this beef operation at a farm was having issues with calf mortality. This is a beef farm cow calf. They needed someone to come up and just look at the whole operation, take a peek at what's going on, and see if there was something they were missing or fix for what was happening on this operation.
That's sometimes all I get for information, and that's fine. I don't mind that. Everyone has different expectations for what success is, what failure is, all these things. To me, I like to get into the numbers right away. Is there actually an issue? That comes up a lot, especially in feedlots with mortalities and people that used to be dairy farmers that are not used to losing cows very often and having the correct expectations determines what success is and what failure is.
I like to find out, is there actually an issue here or is this something where this person is actually doing an excellent job and we're just trying to look to be a little bit better and they just need to know that they already are doing an excellent job.
Emily: Some of the background on this farm, it appears to be very clean and well taken care of. There's a lot of pride evident. Everything is well taken care of. It's organized. Everything is in its place. In addition, the owner and manager of this farm is a nutritionist. They definitely know about the requirements of the cows. The cows get fed a TMR when they're not on pasture with incorporated mineral. In addition, they actually source some of their hay from a dairy farm. These cows are getting fed low-quality dairy hay. Still high quality on the beef side.
Joe: It's one of the things that I noticed about Morris and I don't want Brad to get too big of a head here, but when you drive on the farm, any farm, you can tell right away how well-organized things are, how clean they are, where things are set up and it starts in the yard. That happens right away. When I drive in the yard in Morris, it's clean and everything is in its spot. There's no junk laying around everywhere. That is a sense of pride that you can feel on that farm as soon as you drive on. Maybe Brad looks at it a little bit more and he sees all those things, but I can tell that someone really cares about that place.
Brad: We hide it well. We hide it well.
Emily: I would actually agree with Joe on this and pay Bradley a compliment. The farm is always well maintained and I don't go there super often, but when I do, I know where things are because they're always in the same place.
Brad: Well, thank you.
Emily: Oh, Bradley's all flattered.
Joe: It is something that you notice right away and it tells you something about the farm right out of the gate. You can't judge everything on that, that's for sure. There's a lot of stuff going on in everyone's life. The weather plays a huge factor in all of that, the time of year, all of those kind of things. You can generally tell when you get on a farm if it's well maintained if there's a lot of pride in that operation right away. This farm definitely had it right out of the gate. Em, let's get into the numbers and tell us what's going on with the 2020 calving season is what we'll start with and then see what we had going for the next year.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. In the 2020 calving season, this farm had 184 cows exposed at breeding. 11 of them were open, so 173 cows calved. From that 178 calves were born. We did have some multiples. Of the 178, 29 of those calves were lost. 18 of them died before three days of age and 11 of them died after three days of age. When we look at calves weaned per cow exposed, we get 81%. Honestly, Joe, I don't know what a good number for that is. Maybe can you enlighten me really quick?
Joe: Yes. There's a couple of things that we look at on the beef side that are important metrics. Weaning percentage or calves weaned per cow exposed is one of those. We do want that to be, obviously, we want it to be as high as possible. Achieving that at 100% is oftentimes unrealistic if you have any number of cattle because there's just fluke things that happen and that's the way it works when you have cows. Above 90% is great. Above 85% is good. Anything below 85% and I'm really looking for making some changes, potentially big changes on the farm to improve that number.
This is a pretty common trend in Minnesota. If we look at the numbers historically, this is what we see. We're pretty good at getting cows pregnant in Minnesota on the beachside. In fact, we're really good, but keeping calves alive until weaning is where we struggle. Some of that's weather, can't deny that. We have just bad weather for some of this, but there are some management things that can be changed to fix some of these things and try to get this straight.
The other number that I look at, but we didn't have access to on this farm is pounds of calf weaned per cow exposed. That gives us a performance number in there as well. Not only are we looking at reproductive performance and reproductive efficiency, but then I also basically get to a window into how fast those calves grow. That's probably the overall metric that I like the most to assess farms.
Also, we can establish with that number a break-even for the cost of production basically by being able to say, well, we're going to wean on average this pounds of calf per cow in the system. That's a very valuable number on this. On this farm the weaning percentage at 81%. This is too low, and that's why we're here. We're here to try to figure out how we get that number to be better.
Emily: Should we jump into some of the 2021 [unintelligible 00:11:35]?
Joe: Yes, let's look at the next year. That was what we had already and now I'm here before the 2021 calving season or just as it's starting. That's some context for when I was on the farm, but Let's get into what's different about the next calving season.
Emily: First thing, the herd was cut down, so they went from 184 cows to 150. They were really looking for a 60-day calving window, but the actual calving window just with stragglers, and everything was closer to 90 days. The replacement heifers were kept separate, but all of the other ages are mixed and the cows are out wintered on the cornfield with bottomless bunks. There are five bunks and in total, we have 12 inches of bunk space per cow. There's also water available at all times.
Joe: The big thing to note is that the herd was cut and I think that was just a necessity. We had open cows, we had calves that died, cows that weren't working for us. Cutting that down. I think part of this is also that the owner recognized some of the issues that were going on and realized that one of the fixes was to have less cows. That's a super viable option a lot of times. I wish I could convince most bunkers that sometimes less cows is the answer. It's hard. It's a hard thing to do because cow numbers are important for that. I maybe Brad has a comment on that because it's really not all that different for the dairy side.
Brad: Didn't most farmers want to keep as many animals as possible? I think it's in everybody's nature. It's like we we're hoarders of cows and calves and everybody wants to give younger animals an opportunity. We just keep animals around that we probably shouldn't just because I guess we can. Sometimes that works.
Emily: That sounds like a very Bradley answer because we can.
Joe: It's true.
Emily: I want to jump into another number here that's the bunk space for the TMR. 12 inches per cow. What's say you, Dr. Joe?
Joe: I think it is not all that different when we talk about dairy and beef cows. In general, adult dairy cows are not all that different sized than an adult beef cow. There's definitely some confirmation differences, but when it comes to size and the space they need to eat, it's not all that different. 12 inches is not enough. We need at least two feet per herd. Double what we have now. That's one of the things I noticed right away. If you notice, we're talking about calving season and I'm talking about the bunk space and the out-wintering lot.
This comes back to full circle what we were talking about in the beginning, that you got to get information on the whole farm, the whole system because it's all connected. The bunk space in your out-wintering lot is going to affect your calving success and your weaning rates or your pounds of calf wean per cow exposed because it affects body condition on these cows, which affects colostrum, which affects how much milk they can give. All these other things. There's so much that happens just because I'm looking at the bunk space and the out-wintering lot and it's not adequate. That's one of the things we identified right away that potentially needed to change.
Mixing age groups just makes that even more important. I've got mixed age groups except for my replacement heifers. My second calf heifers are mixed in with the cows. We all know the cows are in charge and they're going to kick those second calf heifers off of feed if there's not enough space. Then we get into a situation where the animals that need feed the most, which are still growing and trying to grow a calf, are getting pushed off of feed.
We didn't have the opportunity to go through records on this farm and really dig into, okay, what is our re-breeding success on our second calf heifers? I would bet quite a bit of money that it isn't adequate or it's much below average because of the mixing of the age groups and those animals being pushed off of feed all the time.
Emily: All right. I think we're going to proceed with more information. Joe, I'm loving all of your passion. I can tell you're really getting into this, but I don't want this episode to be an hour long, so we're going to keep her moving. Two weeks prior to calving season, the cows are moved to the calving lot. Prior to calving season, that lot is used to house feedlot animals. It is cleaned as much as possible before the cows are introduced.
There are 200 feet of fence line bunk available and they have a tile floor, so there we're at 16 inches per cow of bunk space. There's a loafing shed available and there are two bedded packs established. One in the loafing shed and one on the south side of the fence. The loafing shed is about 1500 square feet and the south fence pack is approximately 13,000 square feet. That gives us 96 square feet per cow of pack space, and we usually look to be at about 100 there.
Corn stocks are used for the bedded pack, but there is no base established prior. There is half of heated water available, 40 linear inches of space, which computes to a quarter inch per cow. Maybe just right off the bat, Joe, what should we be looking at for water space?
Joe: Water space, it's an argument. A constant argument because water's expensive, and it just is. Getting a water set up, it's expensive. There are a lot of management as we learned from Bradley last week that in Minnesota water freezes a lot. [chuckles] We have to keep that in mind as we think about all the water space. It is a challenge. Now I would love to see two linear inches per cow. Is that really realistic in most cases, especially in a calving lot that you're probably only going to use for 60 days a year? Probably not, probably not. I'll admit that.
I like to try to figure out some way to supplement this if we can, but I want to see one inch per cow at the minimum. A quarter inch per cow is definitely something that catches my eye. I still don't think it's the biggest problem, so we're not going to really bang our heads against the wall on this because it isn't an expensive fix, so not too big a deal. I love that the bedded pack space is more than adequate. That's awesome.
Basically, being right at 100 square feet per cow is wonderful. I ignored that, and I'd love to see a base go down so that we have a nice soft place to lay right away. Again, on this farm, I looked at the cows and the cows tell you what's going on. Cows are clean, the cows are dry. Again, not a huge deal, especially since there's so much space. Then the bunk space again, we want to have more bunk space than that if we can.
Again, in this situation, in the calving yard, I don't know if it's as big a deal as in the out-wintering lot because everything's on a leg. This is going to affect probably what you feed now, the condition of your cows, body condition in the calving lot might affect your reproduction but it's probably not going to affect calf health as much. We're looking at this as saying, "Okay, this is definitely an area for improvement and it's important, but if we're already establishing, what's the hierarchy of problems here?"
That's what I'm looking for really as we're in the back of my mind as we walk through the farm, is here's all these issues, but what's really important and what's most important, because there's limited time, there's limited money and you got to pick something to work on.
Emily: All right. Now we'll move along to what happens after the calves hit the ground. Cow flow. Cows that have calved are moved to a holding pen one where there's water and a round bale feeder available, and there's access to the barn available which is better with corn stalks. There's usually no more than 10 animals allowed in pen one, and they can stay in pen one anywhere from two days to two weeks. After the pen one, cows are moved to a holding pen two until there are enough cows to justify the work of feeding and establishing a pack and the out-wintering field. Once there are enough cows, cows are moved from holding pen one to the overwintering field where a water, a pack, and TMR bunks are available.
Joe: When we're talking audio and I know that everyone is listening to us right now, without any other context to this which makes it really difficult to talk about cow flow. I'm lucky, especially now at the university that I have a drone. I always keep the drone up in the air when I get a chance and I can see everything from up top and then I can talk through these things with a map basically to show where cows are moving. I think that's my favorite way to do it. I think we've talked about that on this show before.
I think Brad and I have actually given a presentation together to talk about mapping pastures and how to do that and how important it is to have a visual so that everyone's on the same page. Really what it comes down to when I'm talking about cow flow, we're trying to limit the mixing of age groups of calves and try to keep them separate so that older calves aren't giving younger calves pathogens that lead to scours. We're trying to basically maximize the space that calves have if we are going to mix age groups.
We can't avoid mixing age groups here just because we're not going to split things in the pastures, there's just not enough labor to do that. What we're trying to do is to streamline things when we talk about cow flow. Get them to as much space as possible as quickly as possible without having this bottleneck where every single cow sees this tiny space where pathogens can accumulate. That's what we're looking for with cow flow, it's so hard to do just talking about it. I think we should move on. That can be a subject if people want to hear more about it, maybe we'll do something on YouTube to talk about cow flow.
Emily: Yes. The drone footage is always very, very cool. It's a really unique perspective to take to really dive into these issues. Anyways, we're going to move on now to some of the observations from this visit. As Joe already mentioned, the cows were very clean, they seemed receptive to people, even strangers. My favorite, the cows are identified clearly with ear tags that include their birth year. That's good as Joe was talking about ages of animals and things like that.
Joe also took some body condition scores, and there was quite a range there. Remember, the body condition scoring for beef cattle is on a scale of nine. The lowest body condition observed was 4.5, the highest was 7.5. The majority of cows fell between five and seven. The majority of second calf heifers fall between five and six. Joe, let's make some sense of these numbers on body condition scores. That seems to be quite the range there.
Joe: The range is what's most concerning. It speaks to the bunk space. When we limit bunk space, our fat cows get fatter, or skinny cows stay skinny and or get skinnier. It's not surprising if we're going to limit bunk space and not have that two feet per head of linear bunk space, we're going to have a wide range because big fat cows, boss cows push small skinny cows off feed and we end up with this big range. To me, a body condition in this point is confirming that the bunk space matters.
I like doing body condition scores with the farmer right there so that we can say, "This is why it matters." It really does matter. Body condition scores important but more as a tool to show that there's very important things that we can do to change it and make our nutrition more targeted. This is a common thread for me with nutrition when we talk anything nutrition related. The end, and what's happening with the cows tells you what's going on.
You can formulate on paper all you want. The cows tell you what's actually going on. I think Brad can speak to that too. Anytime you're messing-- Even when we're talking pasture, you can test that pasture left and right, but the cows tell you what's up.
Brad: Yes, you always got to watch the cows. That's the probably first rule of thumb, that cows will figure out what's happening probably a lot faster than what we can figure out ourselves. Definitely. I haven't said this in a while, you can use a sensor. We can figure stuff out with sensors but obviously, the farm that we're talking about today probably doesn't have that. Emily is giving me a dirty look as always but it does happen. Sometimes those sensors are picking stuff up before we know it. That's a subject for another day.
Joe: Put a sensor in it is Brad's answer. Yes, to work it in, and it is a viable answer. On most beef operations, we're not going to see sensors but really, I think it's just my gripe when we talk about this is where I think the biggest opportunity is for veterinarians and nutritionists to work together is that a lot of times the vet is there looking at those animals has a chance to be there, the veterinarian can concentrate on what's happening with the animals in what they can see on the physical nutrition side.
The nutritionist can come in and help and be there when there's a problem and be notified. That communication can go back and forth, that is super valuable. Yes, it doesn't just all happen on paper, you got to be there in person for that. Body condition is one of the things. Manure scores are another, cud chewing is another thing, you can look at, shaker boxes to make sure that TMR is being mixed correctly in the right order and we're not sorting all those things. I think there's a lot more to nutrition than just what's being formulated on paper.
Emily: All right. Before we get into Dr. Joe's official recommendations, let's round out a little bit more information about this farm. We haven't mentioned the replacement heifers yet. There are 26 animals in the group, they have two bunks with 30 feet of space each so more than enough bunks for those replacement heifers. Good to see. The body condition scores here are very uniform, mostly six out of nine, a little bit of variability. The smaller younger animals still show really good condition.
The lowest body condition observed was 5.5 and the highest was six. Replacement heifers seem to really be well taken care of, well maintained. I love to see that uniformity there and size as well, and plenty of bunk space. Just some other information on the farm here quick. They do have a vaccination protocol in place. There was a cow in the 2020 season identified as nursing colostrum from the closeup cows, and she was removed from the herd immediately.
Remember, 2020 was really where we saw that high mortality. Thinking lack of passive transfer and some of those pieces there, but I know Joe will get into that a little bit more. They also do have a warming box that is used sparingly. It is made of wood, and it's 15 years old so probably for the best that it's used as little as possible.
Joe: When we're looking at these things, this is the perfect scenario. When I was on the farm, we looked at the cows first. We went out to the outwintering lot and looked at the bunk space there and then we went to the replacement heifers. We had just finished doing body condition scores and looking at the cows in the yard which had had 12 inches of bunk space for quite a while. We saw that huge range and body condition.
Then to go to the replacement heifers and unbeknownst to me, they had had the perfect amount of bunk space. They were in a uniform group and it looked perfect. It was really nice to see that, I had something on the farm that proved my theory and it was sitting there waiting for me. I just didn't know if this was a happy accident. It really showed and I think it drove home the importance of that because when you really look at them side by side, and you saw how uniform those replacement heifers were, any nutrition decision you make is going to apply to the whole group,
Didn't matter if they were really young or really old, they were all really uniform in body condition. Any nutrition decision was going to matter for the whole group which is perfect. That's what you want to see. You can be really targeted and it's more efficient. All of that. Love to see that. The vaccine protocol, we didn't really get into it because that's something that's between them and their veterinarian. They felt it was working well. We didn't talk about it because I think there's plenty of other opportunities for improvement here to get into instead. The nursing off of the colostrum cows is certainly an issue. I think Brad talked about at one point that he had a cow doing that for a while too.
Brad: Yes, that can be pretty frustrating.
Emily: Oh my god, he's speechless.
Joe: That's how frustrating it is. [laughs]
Brad: Exactly. I don't know how to--
Joe: It's bad and it does rob colostrum from those calves which we know colostrum being the most important thing we can do for them. If they don't get it, that becomes part of our issue. The warming box, I look for choke points. Sometimes it's a warming box. Sometimes it's the trailer at the dairy that they use to move calves from the dairy to the calf facility. That thing, if it's made of wood, you better just burn it right now. That thing has everything in it, and it's a choke point where every calf's going to pick up every scour's disease known to man, just have a bonfire, have a beer around it. That thing needs to go.
Most of the time with these wood-warming boxes, I feel the same. This one was, even though 15 years old, very clean. I still don't like it. I still think it should be part of that bonfire and a beer, but you need them sometimes. Sometimes you just need them, and I'd rather that calf was warm and exposed to some scour pathogens, and we focused on colostrum, and we got a live calf out of the deal than not using it at all, so didn't really focus on that much.
Emily: When you're having that warming box bonfire, you can, of course, invite the three of us to join you.
Joe: We'll drive for that one for sure. Absolutely.
Emily: All right. Dr. Joe, we've gone through a ton of information, a lot of observations that you made, but I'm curious when you first drive off of the farm, and all three of us have been there, your head is just spinning with all sorts of things like, "I should have asked that," or just thinking about all the things you saw and some of your initial thoughts and ideas. Why don't you run us through just a little bit some of your in-the-car windshield thought time?
Joe: Every time you leave the farm, you start running through all the things, and then about five minutes down the road, you're like, "I forgot to ask this, and this, and this," and so you end up on the phone quite a bit, either while you're driving home, asking those follow-up questions that you forgot, or the next day, figuring out if you can get ahold of the farmer to ask those questions.
For me, what I really wanted to know was, where did these calf mortalities occur in the calving window? We knew when the calves died and how old they were when they died, but when did they happen? Were they all at the front end of the calving window in the first 21 days, in the second 21 days, or are they way at the end? That can tell you some information about what's going on with pathogens and accumulation of pathogens in the calving lot, or in these choke points that we talked about, like the holding pen, the first holding pen, all those things.
Those are the kind of things that you think about afterwards, and you just got to call and ask, because it's valuable information to know, and it really leads you into what's most important. I start building the hierarchy right away as I leave the farm, and those follow-up questions are usually brought on by, "Okay, how do I decide what's more important when we recommend what should happen next?"
In this farm, when we talked about the calving window and the mortality and when did those things occur, they were all over the place. They were not concentrated in any one part of the window. If they had been concentrated toward the end, I would have said, "Okay, we've got a cow flow issue, and absolutely cow flow needs to be improved because we're accumulating pathogens, and those calves that are born late are hurting because of it." They just see more pathogens than the calves born early and all of that.
That wasn't the case on this farm. I know that we didn't have to improve cow flow right off the bat. That could be beneficial, absolutely, but we can kick that to the bottom of the list, and then focus on the other things that are more important. Those are the things that come up, and really it's about building that hierarchy of what is most important.
Brad: Obviously, we like to get back to farmers, and when we go out and visit and try to figure out what's going on, we want to be able to help them. What are Dr. Joe's recommendations for these farms, and what do we do to help them with some of the issues that they've been having?
Joe: With this farm specifically, again, it comes back to ordering things in importance, and I always do that. It's not fair to me to just list a bunch of things and expect the farmer to just do them all. It's not going to happen. If it does happen, it's going to take some time. It's not going to happen all at once. It's going to maybe take years to get some of these things done. I like to establish this hierarchy right away, and I always list my recommendations, and this is the most important thing you can do, and what you should focus on first. Sometimes the hierarchy of what you should do first is based on how easy it is to do.
If there's a really simple fix, it's not going to change labor, it's not going to have an increased cost to anything, not going to cost any more time to that farmer, that might be the number one recommendation. Even if it's going to make a small change or a small benefit, it might be the number one recommendation, because it's so easy to do and it can be done right away. With this farm specifically, we looked at bunk space, and I think we've hammered that home that this is something that we needed to fix on this farm. I recommended this farm that we change the out-wintering bunk space first.
That is the most important to me for the health of the calves, because we need a uniform body condition across the board for these cows, and they need to be at the correct body condition, getting all their mineral, all those things consistently so that we can produce good colostrum, and then also produce enough milk for these calves to grow and have the groceries, and a more viable calf even just when it hits the ground, when all those things are taken care of.
Two feet of linear bunk space in the out-wintering lot, which is perfect. The husband at this place built the bunks himself, and they were awesome, beautiful bunks. He just was like, "Well, I needed a project anyway this winter for the shop." He got the built-in bunks right away, problem solved. Wonderful that that was an option.
Now increasing the bunk space in the calving lot was recommendation number two. A little more difficult, just because of the space and the way the road was set up, and because they're feeding a TMR, a little bit more difficult to do. Now they figured out how to do it, but that was not as important as the out-wintering lot. After that, they actually have the well that they weren't using that was in the barn that the cows in the calving lot had access to. All they were going to do is set up a supplemental tank and figure out how to get that water increased, and that worked perfectly as well.
Then we ended up with about one linear inch of water space per cow. Perfect fix. We talk about all these other management decisions that came out of this. Having the stragglers that kick the calving window out to 90 days, like Brad said, we become hoarders sometimes of cows, and it's hard to get rid of those stragglers. The peace of mind when you do is amazing. If you cut your window at 60 days and you know I'm done at that 60 day, and if anybody's left, too bad. That's perfect. You can even do that at PregCheck or with breeding dates if you have AI dates. You can cut all of that down before you have to actually look at a pregnant animal that hasn't calved yet, get rid of them.
That's obviously the recommendation to do that instead of beating them all winter when you're not even going to calve them out. That would be the next recommendation for this herd is getting that hard calving window, make the cut, do it early in the fall when you PregCheck, and just don't deal with those stragglers because they're not worth your time.
Then the rest of the recommendations were, we talked about bedded pack and building a base, but they were kind of nitpicky in my mind. Not really a big deal.
We can improve calf flow or cow flow in this situation, but again, hard to talk about on a podcast and a minor fix, really, really minor fix because we already shown that that probably wasn't an issue with pathogen accumulation. In my mind, fixing the bunk space at this farm and making sure that that was correct would probably solve almost all the issues, and you'll see a gradual return to do better numbers in their previous performance.
Brad: They obviously made some changes. Where are we sitting with this farm, have they seen improvements or are we still getting to that goal for 2022 calving season, which is actually not too far away?
Joe: Yes, they're going to start calving here pretty soon. We'll see how they do this year. In 2021, and I put this in my report to the farm saying that just the fact that we have less cows is going to make it so much better. There's two ways to make more bunk space, right? You can make more bunks or you can get rid of cows. I'd much rather have less cows and have better success with calves and end up with the same number of calves at the end of the day anyway and avoid the stress of having calves die. That's something we haven't talked about yet, but it's a huge stressor to have all this morbidity, mortality going on with the calves and losing calves.
It's a mental drain and it affects your mental health to have to deal with that day in and day out. I'd have less cows as one way to make more bunk space and that's absolutely a viable option. We'll see. Maybe we'll provide an update after this calving season and see how things go. If I can get in touch with them and they're willing to share, we'll see how this calving season goes but it already did go better in 2021. It went much better, but some of the changes we made were really to affect 2022's calving season in the end of it. We'll see what happens this year.
Brad: Yes. I think a lot of these recommendations that you gave, Joe are ones we can see and make a change right away and hopefully, that will fix it. I think there could be others and there could be more that maybe if we have an update and see how this farm is doing, maybe there's other things that we need to go back. Maybe these did help change and improve things but maybe there's other tangible things that certainly we can look at and go from there.
Joe: The best part is we've got a head start. If this farm needs help with something else, we already know all these things about the farm so you're not jumping into it blind. You're coming into it with some history, knowing what's going on, and that's the best part. That's why you need to have a relationship with your veterinarian and your nutritionist and anybody else that comes to your farm because a lot of things that matter that you can't just find out in a day and expect to know everything about that farm.
Emily: I think that that is a great place to wrap this episode. We all hope that you liked this kind of different format, we're doing a case study. If you do want to follow up on the farm we discussed today, and if you would be interested in more case study episodes, and if you have questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals, you can email all of that to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: You can find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety and brand new way to reach us, we now have a voicemail for listener questions. What could possibly go wrong? If you would like to call in with your question, you can call 612-624-3610. Just give us your name, where you're from, and what your question is and you will get to hear your answer on a future episode of The Moos Room. Again that number is 612-624-3610. It will also be in the episode notes. That's all we got.
Joe: Bye.
Emily: Bye.
Brad: Bye-bye.
Joe: That was a nice silence.
Emily: Jesus you guys.
Brad: I was going to say something, but--
Emily: Yes, we saw that. Why didn't you say anything? Oh my god, no, no, no, you're done. Mute your mic. Mute your mic.
[music]
[cow mooing]
[00:42:35] [END OF AUDIO]

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