The Moos Room™

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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG three are here. We are trying out some new stuff. Bradley's got a new microphone, all-new setup, new headphones. Yes, there's a lot going on. Hopefully, everything goes well today and you get to hear this episode. I guess if you're listening now, you're hearing it and everything went okay.
Emily: They are hearing it, yes. We're recording on a new platform. It's very exciting, but we can make no guarantees that this is going to go flawlessly.
Joe: No, not at all.
Bradley: Hartford, Jersey. Can you get that? It still works?
Joe: Yes, I got it. That's such a good take for sure.
Bradley: The answers are still correct.
Joe: Yes, still correct regardless of the new equipment, new platform, everything.
Emily: Anyways, let's get rolling with this.
Joe: Yes. It's been a while since we really had a Bradley-focused episode where he gets to talk about Bradley, so we decided that it's time. It's time to hear what's going on up at Morris besides just the grass stuff, which we seem to be talking about a lot. There's a lot going on up there. I joke with Bradley that he just grows things in the shade and somehow gets paid to do it, but there's a lot going on up at the WCROC Dairy and so much that we need to hear about. There's a laundry list of things.
I think one of the things that I've been asked about since we released an episode quite a while ago is what does this all-electric tractor look like, which I think was scheduled to show up this spring. I'm not really sure. Can we get an electric tractor update, Bradley?
Bradley: Sure. Yes. The hope is to get it by June. I think that's what we've been told. It's a Monarch tractor. That's the name of the company. It's coming out of Lemoore, California, so it's-- What is that? East of San Francisco, kind of in the Northern Valley. They're actually used a lot in vineyards out there. It's a smaller tractor. It can be used for spraying in vineyards, things like that, but we are going to test it out and see what happens. You maybe do some small things with it, mow our pastures, maybe some light work. This is not the kind of tractor that you go out and drop a seven-bottom plow on. That's not what it's supposed to do.
Yes, it's still in production, and we hope to have it by June. We're having some field days for those of you in Minnesota, Upper Midwest. We have a big event in the summer called Farmfest in August, and we hope to have our electric tractor there. Our research center has its own booth. We went off on our own and are showcasing our own activities this year. If you're coming to Farmfest, we'll be there.
Emily: Well, and if you come to Farmfest, you also need to come to the UMASH Farm Safety and Health Pavilion because I also have my own separate booth there. Joe, I think you need to get a separate Moos Room booth there as well.
Joe: Apparently, I need to get my game together.
Bradley: Well, Joe could come to our booth, we got plenty of space.
Joe: Yes, I'll piggyback. I don't mind. I don't mind being the leech, that's for sure. Not a problem at all.
Emily: We can record an episode there.
Joe: That sounds great. I'll be there. Bradley's going to be there obviously and we'll be there. I know Tom Rothman will be there, so maybe we can have him on, talk to a couple of different people down there. There's plenty of people to talk to down there, that's for sure. All right, so Bradley, we've got the tractor update. That thing looks pretty sweet. I think one of the other things that we talked about last time, trying to figure out what's going on, is your dehorning study. If you don't remember, Bradley's doing a dehorning study, and part of that study is leaving a pretty large group with horns. They're not going to be dehorned at all. How is that going, Brad?
Bradley: Well, so this spring calving season, we'll have 10 heifers that are going to calve with horns. I just went down to the out-wintering lot, checked them out yesterday, and everybody's horns look a lot different. Some are nice and curved up, and some are small pointy ones yet. Everybody's going to look different, but we will have that and we're going to look at their behavior in the milking parlor and different aspects related to whether they have horns or whether they don't have horns. We actually started calving today, March 16th, our first baby was born today, so we will start off strong.
One thing with horns that we've been-- It's going to be a challenge, and I figured this out. I was trying to put some sensors on these cows, collars, pedometers, and they don't go in the chute very well. I'm just a little gun-shy when it comes to working with them in the chute because they want to get their horns in there and I don't dare reach in without their head restrained. It's not going to be easy. That's probably the biggest thing that we found so far with our horned cows is our cattle chutes aren't really built for horned animals. We'll see what happens.
There's been some probably three or four cows here in the past that have had horns here. It was kind of, "Oops, forgot to dehorn that one." It got late in the season and then it's like, "Well, just let it grow, otherwise, it'll be too painful to take their horns off." We've let them grow, and they haven't really been much of a problem with the other cows or anything. It's just that the cattle chute is not meant for cows with horns.
Joe: Yes. Working with horns in the chute is a tricky deal. A hydraulic helps as far as catching them, but then you got to worry about them. You got to be really cautious of where their horns are in relation to some of your hoses and stuff like that around the hydraulics, especially with dairy cattle. With beef cattle, you can count on them to come barrel in through the chute and you just got to figure out how to be fast enough to catch them.
Dairy cattle, some of those tricks may not work, like narrowing up the bottom of the chute to get them to slow down. It's a lot different. I've never worked with a large group of dairy cattle that have horns, so I can't really give you much advice on this one, Brad. You're going to have to tell us what you figure out on this.
Bradley: Yes, we're in uncharted territory. I know there's a few listeners that have horns on their animals, so maybe they can give us some insights about their horned issues, but we'll experience that. I have a graduate student working on it to look at behavior and all of that related to the horn, so we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens.
Joe: One of the other big projects we talked about last time, Brad, was growing different plots under solar panels. Is that work project continuing? Are you doing that again this growing season?
Bradley: Yes, we're going to continue that. We've got one more year to grow crops under the solar panels, different grasses, forages, corn, soybeans, wheat, and oats. We're doing that here, but actually-- We'll do that again, starting whenever it stops snowing. We're also extending it into producers. so we're working with some farmers in southern Minnesota that are putting some solar panels up in there. I think they're going to start with soybeans first. We're going to monitor yields, soil conditions. We're working with a local FFA chapter that's going to actually go out and take measurements for us during the summer, so we don't have to drive two hours every time we want to do some measurements.
It'll be a good thing to do that. We got a call from this farmer that said, "Hey, we're doing this. You want to work with us and get some more information and see what we can do?" That's good. I guess they know that we're doing that kind of research, and they reached out to us to see if we wanted to get some more info. Yes, it's quite an interesting farm that's going to do this. We'll see what happens.
Joe: It's exciting that you get to continue that, get another year of data, and yes, it's hard to say no to more data and having someone else help you with the work. I can't imagine saying no to that very often.
Bradley: Exactly. The farmers are really good to work with, and it'll be fun seeing what comes of their operation as well. They're going to run a combine under them, so they're going to put the panels up in the air and drive their big John Deere combine underneath. We're going to see what happens.
Joe: That sounds like a good thing for someone else to try first and see how much damage it has cost before you go for it.
Bradley: I agree. I don't know. We've run our small tractors under there, and our electric tractor will probably go underneath panels, but I don't know. I'm a little weary about driving big machinery. These farmers are pretty innovative and it's their turn. They can try it.
Emily: Well, the safety person in me is a little concerned, but I mean, this sounds like such a cool project and I'm really excited to see what this farm finds out. Who knows, maybe we can get this farmer on a future episode of the show.
Bradley: Yes, possibly.
Emily: I have a question, Bradley. What has been going on with your studies around calf housing? I think you finished your calves and cows project. I know we touched on calves with the dehorning, but I feel like you always have a million things going on with the calves. What's the other update there?
Bradley: We did finish our calf housing project, looking at individuals, pairs, calves, and cows in groups. We're kind of crunching the numbers. We just weaned the last calves in early February, so we just ended that maybe a month ago. We're crunching the final numbers now to see what we did. I've looked at it a little bit and it's kind of followed what we've seen in the past. The calves and the cows, they grow the best. We don't really have any health problems with any of the groups.
One thing that you'll probably hear, maybe we'll have to talk about that in the future, is this whole colostrum thing and taking calves away from cows right away and whether people-- We take away a calf right away because we need to get colostrum in it, but our data is showing you might not need to do that. The calf will actually get adequate colostrum from the dam if they're allowed to suckle on the dam. There's lots of implications behind that, Johne's disease that we just don't know enough about yet.
That's one thing that we're finding out that everybody thinks that we need to give colostrum to get good antibodies in the calves. Well, I think the calf and the dam do quite well. Obviously, it's not everybody and you don't get it right on if the calves are raised, say, individually. Some of the calves don't have adequate antibodies as well, but on average, they do well. That's one thing we're looking at and that's a future debate and whether-- I have farms doing that, thinking about that, going, "Well, maybe I should leave the cow and the calf for a couple of days and then I don't have to feed it colostrum or don't have to--"
I know there's lots of good debates and lots of questions we can have about that. If anybody wants to give their opinion, you certainly can. I talked about that at a seminar that I gave and some farmers looked at me and go-- but then afterwards, they go, "Well, maybe, yes. Maybe that's--" It gets them thinking. I'm the guy that crashes normal thinking, I guess, and maybe challenges the status quo. There's lots of things that go around. You got to have good management, like we've talked about before, to make that happen.
Joe: If you had asked me that question in school when I was a little baby veterinarian, I would have told you absolutely not, that makes no sense at all because of disease and biosecurity and all this stuff. Then now, which I feel like I'm not a baby veterinarian anymore and I've seen the real world in a different light, I'd be much easier to be convinced on something like that, especially considering the labor considerations when we're talking about just leaving them together.
The thing that I would be most interested in is, not just the effects on the calf, but does it do any good for mom? Because I feel like maybe it does. I have no idea, but maybe it does. The calf is drinking more often than we're milking her. Maybe it actually improves peak milk by doing that for a couple of days. I have no idea, but I'd be really interested in that side of things as well.
Bradley: I think it maybe gives us an idea that maybe that what we call transition milk or the second or third colostrum milk, there might be some value in that because that calf is getting that milk from the cow that we might not be giving to ones that we're raising not on the cow. There might be something to that that says maybe the second and third colostrum is pretty important, so I think we need to look more at that.
Joe: I think we talked about this last time too, Bradley. There was a project where you were going to have to start traveling to a lot of other different farms, and it had to do with calf health as well. Is that still going to happen as well?
Bradley: Yes. We're going to a whole bunch of different farms and monitoring health on their farms, kind of get a benchmark of what's going on other farms as far as housing systems and what their calf health is and calf welfare is. We're going to start that this spring, make about 40 farm visits, and just see what's happening on farms so we can get a better handle of what's going on.
Joe: Okay, big question. That's a lot. How many students do you have to cover all of this stuff? Do you have like 10 students working for you right now or what?
Bradley: Well, I have five grad students plus a research technician. Three months ago, I had seven graduate students, so I finished some up. Yes, I have lots of students, and I run all over the place and maybe looking for some more students.
Joe: Emily?
Bradley: Sure.
Joe: Emily's going to go back to school again.
Bradley: Always looking for good students. Without them, none of this stuff would happen, so I could never-- You can't do it alone. It takes a lot of work and lots of effort by a lot of different people to make all this stuff work.
Emily: Bradley always seems to luck out and get incredible students too. Attracting high quality there. Yes, many moons ago, Brad and I discussed me getting a master's with him. We'll see.
Bradley: You never know. You never know what might happen.
Emily: Exactly.
Bradley: I wasn't going to become a professor either, so you never know where life may lead you.
Emily: Yes, but then you ended up being in school for like 16 years.
Bradley: [chuckles] Exactly.
Emily: You became a professor.
Bradley: It took me longer than a couple of years to do my master's degree.
Joe: All right. Well, that's quite a big update. Brad, is there anything we missed? You got anything else you specifically want to talk about that you're going to do this summer?
Bradley: Oh, yes, I got lots of stuff. The big one is I just got a methane sniffer today. It arrived. We'll be able to measure methane emissions in our cows and see what happens. Me and another faculty member got a grant to start some initial work on looking at methane emissions in Holsteins, crossbreeds, you name it.
We're going to be exploring that this summer and see where it leads us and what might happen. Yes, I got one, and we're going to test it out. Who knows what it might do, but we're going to see.
Joe: You better quit there because we've had quite an update so far, but I think it's important for everyone to know what Bradley's up to. We joke that he gets to play with cows all day and we don't know what he's doing, but there's a lot going on as you see. Honestly, it's a little intimidating to me thinking about trying to get all that done, but having good students definitely would be the key. I don't know how you get it all done without them because having basically another six people working on it is the only way it's going to get done.
Emily: All right. Well, and I think once the methane sniffer is going and the electric tractor arrives, we'll have to go, maybe do a little video tour of the WCROC so that people can watch it on YouTube. We will wrap it up there. This was a very exciting first time recording on our new platform, and it wasn't a total disaster. Good job, everyone. If you as a listener have any questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, or if you have a question that you would like answered on a future mailbag episode of The Moos Room, you can send us an email at themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
You can also call and leave us a voicemail at 612-624-3610. Find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety. Find us on Instagram @umnwcrocdairy and visit us on the web at extension.umn.edu. Bye.
Joe: Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
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