The Moos Room™

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Joe: Welcome to the newsroom, everybody. We were supposed to have the OG three here, but it's just Bradley and I. We are again in a situation where we're not sure where our third co-host is. Before it was Bradley and now we're missing Emily. We will keep you updated on what's going on. Again, I really don't want this to turn into a True Crime podcast, but it's a possibility. If we can't find her we'll let you know and shift gears.
Bradley: I'm sure she's busy today. It's summertime and fairs and all kinds of field days and stuff. Who knows where-- We're all running all over the place.
Joe: Extension in the summer is just-- It's fairs, it's field days, there's so much going on. Lots of travel, lots of running around the state. Yes, she could be anywhere. Emily is not here, but we do have another student of Bradley's, Kathryn Bosley is here today to talk about all sorts of things. Mostly her project, but we'll get into a couple other things as well. Thank you for being here, Kathryn, how are you doing today?
Kathryn Bosley: Good. Thank you for inviting me guys.
Joe: It's just fun to hear firsthand how it is dealing with Bradley. We like to bring his students on just to see if we can make sure-- We want to check on you, make sure you're not doing a bunch of hand weeding in 99-degree weather while Brad sips tea on the gator or whatever. A check in but also get to hear some stories about Bradley, which is nice.
Bradley: I'm always good to my students. We're done weeding now. We're above and beyond that, so we're moving fast. Kathryn's been doing some good stuff. She can tell you all the fun stuff we're doing. Maybe two weeks from now it might not be so fun getting up at 4:00 AM or 3:00 AM.
Joe: That always makes it a little difficult when you're getting up early. We'll get into why she has to get up so early here in just a second. Before we get into the meat of the episode, we got two super secret questions that may not be secret anymore that we need to ask. Up first, Kathryn, what is your favorite breed of beef animal?
Kathryn: My favorite breed of beef animal is actually the American British White Park.
Joe: Oh, you're going with the White Park. That is not on our list yet.
Bradley: Oh, that's a new one.
Joe: That is a new one. I have some experience in practice with that. I got to say, it's definitely a polarizing breed. You either love them or you're way on the other end of everything. Why is that your answer?
Kathryn: My grandpa actually has a small herd of White Park. I've always helped him quite a bit growing up. Got to show him I'm 4-H too, so they've got a special place in my heart.
Joe: I had some really good herds with White Parks. I know I actually have a friend who has some leftover White Park genetics in his herd. He's got mostly Black Angus but because they had Parks at some point, there will be 80 to 100 that come out black, and then there will be 1 white. It's really fun to see that one mixed in every year. Let's run down those totals.
Black Angus at 14, Herefords at 8, Black Baldy at 4, Scottish Highlander at 4, Red Angus at 3, Belted Galloway at 2, Shorthorn at 2. Then all with one, Stabilizer, Gelbvieh, Brahman, Chianina, Charolais, Simmental, Nelore, Jersey, Normande, Belgian Blue, Brangus, Piedmontese, and now White Park with one. As you know, and the next question is, what is your favorite dairy breed?
Kathryn: Oh, easy. Jersey.
Bradley: Exactly. There is only one answer.
Joe: I'm so happy that that came to your mind right away. There was no hesitation at all, and that is the correct way that you should answer Jersey.
Bradley: Exactly. That is only the correct answer. Sorry Emily, you are not here today, so there's one correct answer.
Joe: That makes me very happy. We did not advance the Holstein lead at all. We're gaining on it just a little bit at a time here. We're going to hopefully continue to do that as we have some very select guests on. Let's run down the totals. Holstein's at 20, Jersey is now at 14, Brown Swiss at 7, Montb�liarde at 3, Dutch Belted at 3, Normande at 2, Milking Shorthorn at 1, Ayrshire with 1, and 1 Guernsey named Taffy. Do you have any background on that choice? Is it Brad's influence or is there a different reason?
Kathryn: Oh, no, I have my own reasons. My parents have a small dairy farm, entirely registered Jerseys, so I grew up showing registered Jerseys since I was two years old. I've always been real involved with Jerseys. I was a junior member of the Jersey Association, did Jersey Youth Academy, Jersey Queen contests, all the fun stuff.
Joe: That's awesome to hear. These Jerseys, your home farm is not in Minnesota, where are you from Kathryn?
Kathryn: I'm from Northern New York originally.
Joe: Are there lots of Jerseys there? I don't feel like I hear of lots of Jerseys in Northern New York, but I've never been.
Kathryn: There's a decent amount of Jerseys in New York.
Joe: It's a potential place that Brad and I could move and be happy. I mean, that's what we're looking for, it's okay.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: Concentrated areas of Jersey around the country.
Bradley: Kathryn's herd is shown at many different places where you show in New York, you've shown at a national Jersey show in Louisville. Kathryn's family's got some pretty nice-looking Jerseys, high-type Jerseys. As opposed to Brad milking my fat jersey at home, Kathryn's got some pretty nice ones.
Kathryn: Yes, we definitely focus more on the show type, but as well as all-around good animal too.
Joe: You can't go wrong with Jerseys, it doesn't matter what form they're in. Even the one that Brad insists on milking at home, fortunately she'll dry off here soon. I think that's still the plan, right, Brad?
Bradley: That is the plan, yes. This week she's going to go dry.
Joe: Let's get into the meat of this. Kathryn gets the opportunity to work with Bradley, we'll call it that, and is working on a project. I don't really have my head wrapped around it yet, to be honest, so I need to hear more. Kathryn, can you give us an overview of what you're working on?
Kathryn: The main thing we're looking at is milk fatty acid profiles between Holstein and ProCROSS cattle. The ProCROSS is the three-breed rotation of Holstein, Montb�liarde and VikingRed. We're interested to see if there's any difference looking at the individual fatty acids for each of them. Currently there might be some interest in health-related fatty acids like omega-3's or CLA. We're curious to see what difference, if there is any there. We're working with couple different herds across the state to see how that comes out, especially on the genetics end, which is my particular interest, also as well as the production end as well.
Joe: When I think about this, you're sampling cows to figure out their fatty acid profile, and focusing on a couple things. Oh, and before we move on, just so everyone's on the same page, can you explain what CLA's are?
Kathryn: CLA's are Conjugated Linoleic Acids. There has been quite a bit of research on their anti-carcinogenic, so reducing causing cancer, different things like that. I think there's a little bit on heart disease as well, prevention on that. It's been a really huge interest on the human health end. We can figure out strategies, especially on the breed end too, as well as diet as well, and other production factors for increasing that. That could be of huge interest for consumers and processors.
Joe: When you're sampling on these different farms, you're talking about comparing Holsteins versus ProCROSS. I have a couple of questions around that. How are you comparing Holsteins to ProCROSS when usually, when we're talking on one farm, there's either one or the other? Are you being able to find farms that have both purebred Holstein still and ProCROSS on the same place, or how are you working that?
Kathryn: We're specifically looking at farms that have enough of both within similar age groups and such to make sure that we have life to life to compare.
Joe: That makes sense. That's cool and I'm sure that makes it a little harder to find a farm, but hopefully, there's enough of those out there. My other question around that, especially since you said you're really big on the genetic side, are you looking at all the different variations as we get to a full ProCROSS animal? Are you looking at the three different breeds that go into that ProCROSS animal and being able to break them out in some way and compare them?
Kathryn: Yes, we'll be able to look at sire breed as well, considering that in the analysis.
Joe: Now I got to ask, of those three that go into the ProCROSS, is there any background or suspicion as to which one might be pushing things in a certain direction?
Kathryn: I don't know. It's up in the air at this point. What do you think, Brad?
Bradley: To give you a little background, I started this on my own a little bit with our herd here in Morris, utilizing some of the fatty acid stuff you can get from DHIA. Through milk testing, you can-- Minnesota DHIA has been providing fatty acid data from our herd. Now, it's not specific fatty acids, it's all combined together so you can use it for nutritional aspects, but there's been some indication that our ProCROSS cows are a little bit higher for CLA than the Holsteins are.
Our other breed that we have here at Morris are Jersey, Normande are maybe a little bit higher than a Holstein as well for CLAs and omega-3. That's where it led me to work with some of these other herds here in Minnesota that have them so we can see if we see it outside of maybe the research farm here in Morris. Kathryn's collecting the data here in Morris too to try and find-- to see if what we see here from a pooled standpoint holds true.
Joe: That brings us back to why Kathryn has to get up so early some days, because she's got to be there during milking, I assume. That means early mornings and driving to where you need to get to. It's fun in some ways, having someone else in the parlor, because it breaks up the monotony, but it makes it harder to do your job. It always does. I've been in the parlor working on stuff during milking and I always feel like I'm in the way. How have farmers been handling that?
Kathryn: So far it's been really good. We've gotten the same time as they already have the milk tester out for DHIA. There's a lot of people in the parlor, but at least we're concentrating it all at the same time, so we're not interrupting a bunch of milkings in a row.
Joe: I always feel like I'm intruding when I'm in the parlor. Maybe that's because I have the green coveralls on and they just don't want me in there. Kathryn's nodding her head. Yes, that's definitely it. I always feel like I'm just in the way.
Bradley: I think the farmers have been great to work with. One day we were south of the Twin Cities collecting the samples, and it was what, Kathryn, we were there four, five hours collecting milk samples on, oh, just a little less than 400 cows. We were just going all day and didn't have much time to sit down and think. It was good. It was fun being on farm and collecting samples and seeing cows. Oh, I think they have been pretty receptive to working with us, so it's good.
Kathryn: Another thing that particularly interests me is that we're going to be able to see if there's any gene interactions going on here as far as what we're looking at for individual fatty acids. Especially since the Morris herd is genotype. We'll be able to hopefully elucidate a few interesting things from that, which I'm excited for.
Bradley: I think we'll be able to look at some of these cows on farm. We'll collect production data. We're collecting feed samples on farm, so we'll know how nutrition affects fatty acid profiles in their herds. Ours are the grazing herd, but the other ones are confinement herds too, so we can get an idea of what's going on in both a pasture-based situation and then in confinement too. There will be lots of different things that we can get from information to try and figure out what's happening on farm.
Joe: Do you think that this is a big enough niche that, that this could be marketed separately and become a premium product?
Kathryn: I think there's definitely a place for it because consumers are definitely really interested on the health aspects of what they're consuming and what they're eating. I really think that especially if we can figure it out on the research and more and keep pushing boundaries on what we know about that, that I think there will be a place in the industry coming up on this.
Joe: There's a lot going on, there's a lot of work happening, but it's pretty straightforward. Is there a difference between Holsteins and everything else?
Bradley: We just started it this summer, so we don't have any results yet. Maybe a year from now we'll probably have some interesting stuff. Kathryn's going to have to process all these samples too, so there's going to be lots of work processing this stuff. It'll be good and we will certainly keep you updated to see where we're going.
Joe: Great. We've got to talk about Kathryn's Instagram and Facebook accounts mostly because I love the name. You can find her, if you want to check it out @cow_nerd. That is a great, great follow on Instagram. Tell me about the goal of your page there, Kathryn.
Kathryn: My main focus is towards the general public and talking about the dairy industry, particularly talking about cow care as well as environmental topics, general farm life type things, as well as I've thrown a few personal anecdotes here and there. Touch a little bit on nutrition as well. The main idea is to connect consumers with farming, specifically focusing on dairy as the main one but I occasionally dabble a little bit in beef here and there for a little bit of fun. it's something I'm really passionate about on the connecting and relationship end of that. Both Facebook and Instagram, I hit my three-year anniversary in June, so it's been a fun ride.
Joe: Managing different social media accounts, it's not a small amount of work. It's plenty of work. I'm happy to look through and see that there's just so much Jersey content. It makes me really happy. There's an occasional Holstein, which is just fine, but there's a lot of Jerseys going through here and I love to see that.
Bradley: I think the occasional Holstein, some of those have been from our dairy herd here in Morris, so we'll let it slide. It's good that we have young people willing to share about agriculture and share with others in the world about some ag opportunities. I think that's always good. Whatever issue it might be there's lots of other people out there, but I think the more certainly the better in trying to show us what agriculture does and promote our industry.
Kathryn: I think there's definitely a place for a lot of people that are involved in agriculture to talk about it. We shouldn't just be relying on the one or two people that have really huge platforms, because a lot of it comes down to the smaller interactions. A fair amount of my fan base per se would be in New York, but there's people I've met, like in California and stuff when we were at ADSA meeting actually, I met up with someone that knew me from Instagram, which was pretty cool.
Joe: It's a great way to share your story and to keep everything really positive, which I really like, and I appreciate you about your Instagram is that it's all very positive. There's no bashing of other industries, especially other ag industries. I love that we stay positive and educational, and that's the key. You grew up in New York, you moved to Minnesota, they're very similar in a lot of ways. Do you see that or are there things about Minnesota that are better than New York? I might say there's nothing worse, I know that, but anything that you're really fond in love with once you got to Minnesota?
Kathryn: There's a lot of similarities, especially where I grew up as far as weather-wise, it's pretty similar, luckily, because I moved here in January and everyone thought I was completely nuts for moving to Minnesota in the heart of winter. I think deep fried cheese curd. There are cheese curds back home. Just deep frying is not really common thing to do to cheese curd, but it's wonderful.
Bradley: That sounds good right now. We talked about all the county fairs going on in this summer, man, deep fried cheese curds that makes my mouth water right now.
Joe: I'm in the same boat. It's hands down my go-to at the state fair, which is not all that far away, and I'm already thinking about them. I'm always on the hunt for the best cheese curds, not during the state fair time around the Twin Cities. It's a staple to order it wherever I go just to make sure, I know where the best ones are. I'm glad that's what you've focused on. Here's the thing we've been doing lately, is letting all the students turn it back around and ask questions of us. If you have any questions, now's the time, especially questions for Bradley.
Kathryn: Brad, what do you really like about being a professor?
Bradley: Oh, what do I like about being a professor? That's a good question. I like doing the research. I like finding out questions or finding answers to questions that farmers have actually. I've worked in applied research for a long time, and I just like finding things out. I get to do a lot of different aspects in my job. I, like Kathryn, am a trained geneticist, but now I get to work with calves and grazing, and renewable energy, and sensors. You name it. That's what I like about it. It's not the same thing every day. I do enjoy getting to work in the dairy industry and finding out solutions to problems or challenges that farmers are having.
Kathryn: Cool. I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do post my masters and beyond that. It's always cool to hear firsthand about different career options.
Bradley: When I get to work in extension too like Joe, we're extension, so we're working with farmers and working on a daily basis. I like working with farmers too. I don't necessarily just sit and do research. I don't do a lot of teaching. Mostly it's working with farmers, and that's a good part of the job that I like too. I like getting out on the farm and doing that kind of stuff.
Joe: Any other questions, Kathryn?
Kathryn: I know why Brad really likes Jerseys. Why do you like Jerseys, Joe?
Joe: It is purely selfish, the reason I like Jerseys. First of all, they're cute. They're much cuter than Holsteins, I'll give them that. The size is just much better. Being a vet and being a relatively short vet, the Jerseys are just easier on my shoulder. They're easier to do a DA surgery on. Purely selfish. They've got better calving ease, I got more room to work. It's purely selfish from a veterinary standpoint.
Bradley: There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that at all. There's lots of good reasons. Small body size, we'll take it.
Joe: The other piece of it is that, as we all know, they're just goofy and I love it. They're real goofy. It's one of those things where I tell anyone who has Holsteins, and when we're talking about ketosis and what do cows do when they get ketosis, I tell anyone who doesn't have Jerseys, I say, when they're ketotic you'll know, because they'll start acting like a Jersey because they do weird stuff.
They bang on gates, they lick everything. They just get goofy. With a Jersey, it's a lot harder to tell because it's just always goofy. Licking the fiberglass gates over and over again and getting the weird splinters in their tongue. Clearly it feels weird and they just go back to it again. Stuff like that makes me fall in love with Jerseys, in addition to all the other selfish reasons.
Kathryn: There's a lot of reasons to love Jerseys. I joke that the people that don't like Jerseys don't like them because the Jerseys are smarter than they are.
Joe: We will make sure we tell Emily that. Hopefully she'll listen to this and catch that.
Bradley: When I was younger, people always used to, if you go to a farm and they have a couple Holsteins, and it was usually to wash the pipeline out after the Jerseys were done milking. Oh, man. Now we're picking on Holsteins, but that's okay. Emily's not here to calm us, to watch us today, so that's her fault.
Joe: We shouldn't let that spiral out of control, I guess.
Bradley: No, we won't. We'll end there.
Joe: Any other questions, Kathryn?
Kathryn: No. I really enjoyed both of your answers. [chuckles]
Joe: Oh, good. Thank you for being on today. We really appreciate it.
Kathryn: Thank you for having me.
Joe: All right. You guys know the drill. If you have comments, questions, scathing rebuttals, those can be emailed to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. If you would like to call us and ask a question that we will play on the podcast, you can call 612-624-3610. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you can follow us @UMNmoosroom, and @UMNFarmSafety. If you want to check out Bradley's Instagram, you can go to @umnwcrocdairy. Of course while you're there, check out Kathryn's page @cow_nerd. I think that's plenty of plugs. Honestly, I'm pushing my luck because I haven't screwed anything up yet so we're going to end it right there. Thank you for listening. Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
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