The Moos Room™

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Joe Armstrong: Welcome to the Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 is here, myself, Bradley, and Emily. Feels like it's been a while, and we're happy to be here. It took us a while to get going. To be honest, we've been laughing and making fun of each other for way too long now. We're happy to finally be recording and talking about what we're supposed to be talking about today.
Emily Krekelberg: We had to catch up, it was just the holiday weekend, we had to get all that out of our system, and we haven't recorded together in quite some time.
Bradley Heins: Yes, a long time.
Emily: It's exciting. The OG3 rides again.
Joe: Today, we're going to keep it pretty short. We've got a topic that Brad's been working on, wrote up an article for Progressive Dairy.
Bradley: Progressive Dairy, yes.
Joe: Yes. He wrote an article for Progressive Dairy on this topic, and we just want to go through it here on the podcast, and we're talking about hoof trimming and regularly scheduled hoof trimming, which is super important for cattle health, and it's often missed. I'll turn it over to Brad to introduce what we're talking about.
Bradley: Hoof trimming seems to be the topic that always is the last resort on a dairy, you're just dealing with cows that are problems, or if they got hairy warts or some other issue. We don't really ever think about how to prevent it. That's where we're going today is talking about routine trimming so you don't have a lot of problems like we did here in Morris a few years ago.
Joe: Routine trimming for me, usually, when we say routine, I'm talking every six months. Is that what you're talking about, Brad?
Bradley: Yes, at least every six months try to do every single cow, every six months. I think a lot of us, it's hoof trimming always happens, "Oh, the cows are going dry. Let's trim dry cows." A lot of people do that, but we are not talking about trimming a dry off. We are just doing every single cow every six months, and you just do everybody whether they're dry or lactating.
Emily: Bradley, do maybe want to briefly run through what you were doing before? Were you just trimming as needed, or was it scheduled but not followed up on super well? Where did you start and where did you finish?
Bradley: It was very haphazard. [chuckles] We were trimming cows that just needed it. It was like, oh, well, she's got long hooves or she's got a corkscrew, or she's got hairy warts, we need to get a hoof trimmer in. We still probably trimmed every six months maybe, and we probably did 50 cows every six months, so we did 100 cows per year. We're 300 milking cows, so we were doing about a third of the herd every year, and that was it. We did the really problem cows and avoided the other ones.
Joe: That's definitely not uncommon when you're just trying to skate by and you're looking at what are you doing, especially when margins are tight, the temptation is to say, all right, let's just do the calves that need it, but in reality, every cow needs it as a form of preventative maintenance on those hooves. It saves you time in the long run and money in the long run if we just do everyone. Tough thing to do when you have to foot the bill upfront. Like the pun? Foot the bill.
Emily: Ha ha ha ha.
Joe: Ha, but it is worth it, and it does pay off in the long run in terms of time and labor, and money overall.
Bradley: That's what we were doing when we had a disaster. It was one spring, it was wet, and our conventional cows, we went through a lot of excenel and you name it to fix a lot of hoof problems trying to avoid issues and had some hairy warts, but mostly, it was across the board, you name it, we had it. We were using lots of drugs and antibiotics and probably losing milk production that we don't normally see. It was after that disaster in the spring of 2019, it was like, well, we need to change direction here and figure out a better plan.
Emily: Well, and it sounds like-- and I think this is what a lot of farms they fall somewhere in this divide, and that is hoof trimming for treatment, the cow has a problem so now we have to trim her hooves, versus hoof trimming as a prevention strategy. Just like you give vaccinations or whatever else, you're doing that to avoid those larger problems. Hoof trimming can absolutely be used as a treatment when there are certain issues we have to take care of. That's what I'm hearing from you, Brad, is you started thinking of that more as a prevention strategy than a treatment strategy.
Bradley: I agree, we decided to start trimming everything to prevent the problems because everybody knows we have half the herd here is organic, and you just can't use antibiotics. There's a lot of things that you can and can't use, so that becomes even more challenging with an organic herd when you have lots of issues. That's why we've decided to go more towards the preventative route to prevent problems from happening, and it's really worked out well for us.
Joe: Bradley, before you started doing this on a regular basis, how many cattle were lame, either percentage-wise or numbers, how many cattle were lame regularly that you had to deal with?
Bradley: Oh, there was always lame animals. I don't even have a number. When we first did our first hoof trimming, we probably had-- there was like, what, 16%, 15% of the cows had some sort of issue. We didn't really record good information before that to see who had warts or something like that, it was always tough to know. Because we just did the problem cows, there could have been a lot of other cows that were a little bit lame, but it was like, "Oh, well, I guess she's good enough for now. We'll let her go till next time." There was probably a lot of other issues going on that we just didn't notice or just didn't do because we were just trimming the problems. After our disaster in the spring of 2019, we decided that we were going to make a change. I contacted a hoof trimmer, and our hoof trimmer, we wrote this article in Progressive Dairy, Willie Coyne is a good University of Minnesota grad. He's been hoof trimming here now every six months, so we've been really working well with him. The first time that we trimmed, we had 16% of the cows had some sort of issues. Most of them were thin soles, white line disease, which is a lot of the things that you see in a grazing dairy herd. We had a few hairy warts, probably less than the average dairy, we tend not to have a lot of those, we have some, but not a lot. When 16% of the cows have got some sort of problem out of 237, that's a lot of cows with issues. We just didn't expect it.
We've been recording the information now, our lameness, we record all the hoof trimmings now, so we have a better handle on what's going with these cows. If a cow still has repeat problems, they might be a good candidate for a cull if they have repeat hoof issues. After doing routine hoof trimming, you know what? It was probably 8% six months later, then we're down to 4% to 5% of the cows had some sort of issues. We ticked up a little bit in December, whatever issue that might have been, maybe a wet fall, we had maybe a little bit more hairy warts than normal, but less than 10% of the cows had problems. Now we're about 2% of the cows with some sort of hoof issues. We don't have many hairy warts, that's still pretty low. We still see thin soles and white line, that's our main issue, and that's basically grazing animals, you see that a lot in grazing animals, but really, we just don't have the issues anymore that we used to. Once in a while, we'll get some lame cows in the offseason, but not like we used to.
Joe: That was basically three years, and you dropped everything by a significant amount in terms of total problems, and that's trimming every six months. That's not that many trims on the whole herd to really reduce your issues and the time involved in finding all those cows. I mean, you said 16% of the 240ish, I mean, that's almost 40 cows that had issues, and that's a lot of cows.
Bradley: Right.
Joe: That's a huge improvement. It's probably impossible to track all of the different things that that helped in terms of the secondary effects that that had of helping those lame cows in terms of mastitis, metritis, pregnancies, everything that goes along with that, milk production. There's so much there that could be improved. It's hard to put a number on, but I know that number's big.
Bradley: Right. Just loss culls. We probably culled a lot in the past for lameness or those issues. We don't really cull much on lameness anymore. We've sort of eliminated those lameness culls. That certainly helped us as well. We've just helped with longevity welfare of animals and probably increased milk production because of it.
Emily: Was hoof trimming the only change you made, or is there anything else with hoof health? Are you doing foot baths or anything, or is it really just the trimming that's been helping keeping things under control?
Bradley: Good question. I think it's really just been the trimming. We don't run a foot bath. We never really have run a foot bath here. Copper sulfate is approved in organic animals, so you can run a foot bath if you want, but we've never really run a foot bath here. I think in the 12 years that I've been here, we've run a foot bath once or twice, but we just don't do it. We just don't have that many issues anymore. When we were running foot baths, it was five, six, eight years ago when we were having problems. Now, we don't do it. I think it's really been the trimming that has helped. Obviously, there's lots of other factors that I might not know of. We got good mineral health. Good minerals for cows is always helpful. We've talked about mud before on this podcast many times. Trying to keep them out of mud, that's really difficult. We try, but it's not always easy to do. Mud is probably the worst thing for hoof health, so we try to keep them out, but I think just that routine trimming has really helped.
Joe: One of the things that I wanted to make sure we say is that Brad admitted that he wasn't handling records on lameness before he started trimming regularly and didn't really have a handle on what the big problem was. It really points out that it's never too late to start recording that information and see what you got going on and see if things are improving because if you just start hoof trimming and you don't keep track of that data that Brad had, you wouldn't be able to tell. You would have probably some subjective, "I think it's doing something," but if you don't have those numbers, you can't really, really see that it's worth it to continue with this practice. Now, my question, Brad, moving forward is the temptation is my problem's gone. Can I back down? Can I do it once a year now? Can I do it once every 18 months, or are you convinced that you just need to do it every six months and that's the way to go?
Bradley: I'm convinced that you need to do it every six months because I think if you back down, you start seeing some issues again. Everybody knows this winter was pretty tough and lots of ice and stuff. We got a little lax on our hoof trimming just because our cows are outdoors and we just didn't want cows slipping on the ice and falling and stuff. We've probably seen a few more issues because we held off a little bit longer than what we wanted to just because of the weather.
That has convinced me as well that it's like, "Well, probably shouldn't have skipped that, but what can we do with the winter weather?" I see some issues, and the hoof trim is coming soon again, so we'll be able to get back on that routine every six months schedule, but we got off a couple months because of the weather. There's been some cows that have kind of went, "Oh man." I see it, and there's some lameness issues.
Joe: I totally agree. I'm glad that we're on the same page. The temptation is, "Okay, everything's good. Let's cut back on the cost," but this really is a preventive thing, and the six months is really the time point that I look for and I think works the best.
Emily: I just am going to play captain obvious for a second here, but just a reminder, hooves are made of keratin, same as our fingernails. Hooves keep growing. It's like if you pause your trimming or don't do it as often, you're not going to keep up as much. It sounds silly, but think of how often you clip your fingernails and think of how uncomfortable you are when your fingernails are too long. I know, for me, I can't type on my keyboard. You can apply that here too in that it's part of, again, just this regular maintenance piece, these regular things we do to get ahead of these problems. It's part of management. This whole conversation today has been about management strategies, decisions, et cetera. I think it's also really thinking of it as a management choice. Brad manages his dairy that way to keep hoof health better to avoid the problems he has had in the past.
Bradley: That's why we do it. I just don't like having cows with problems. It's demoralizing. It's depressing to have just issues all the time with cows. It's not fun. We're trying to do this as a preventative to make sure our cows are healthy and productive and employees are healthy because it's not fun to keep treating cows all the time.
Emily: One thing I was curious about, Bradley, you mentioned your hoof trimmer, Willie, who is a college classmate of mine, and I know he's one of the best out there, but I'm curious, could you maybe just speak briefly to when you were first starting that relationship? What sort of things should people think about of like, "This is what I need to ask my hoof trimmer about or talk to them about. These are my main concerns."? What is that piece like, that communication with the hoof trimmer as well? Because he's trimming on other farms, has other things he's doing, so what do you do to keep that relationship going and make sure things are getting done in a way that both of you are happy with?
Bradley: Well, I think it's really just communication with the hoof trimmer. When we first started, I can't even remember where we got on the conversation or where I saw him, probably at a University of Minnesota event or Gopher Dairy Club something or other. We were talking about hoof trimming and grazing herds. He can tell you what he sees in conventional herds. He's done some trimming and grazing herds, not a lot, but you talk about all the different issues that you see. He was really intrigued about what we were doing and how he could help us maintain hoof health. A lot of that is just working with the hoof trimmer. After he's done, we get a report so we can see exactly what cows had what issues, so then we can really come up with a plan. If it's like, "Oh, well, we had a lot of thin soles this time. What can we do to prevent it?" I think a lot of that is communication with the hoof trimmer on a regular basis and keeping records so you know what's going on, like we did, so we can go back and look at those and look at our progress or see what changes we need to make to keep our hoof health going. I think the hoof trimmer is there to help. Obviously, they see a lot of good things and a lot of bad things on farms and know what to look for and how to make those changes. Certainly, a great resource to help with improving hoof health.
Joe: I would echo that 100%. Your veterinarian is a good resource when we talk about the systems idea of what's going on overall that could be contributing to hoof health issues, whether that's ventilation or nutrition, any of that. When it comes to actual trimming, if your veterinarian's not willing to admit that the hoof trimmer is better at trimming feet, they're lying. I'm perfectly comfortable saying that. A hoof trimmer's doing that all day every day, and they're better at it every time.
Yes, a veterinarian can dig around and get something done and and can do a good job, but they're going to be slower at it and they're not going to have as good of equipment. There's a lot of things that go into it. Having a hoof trimmer available is huge. They're a great resource for all the reasons that Brad said. I think it's very valuable for producers to have some basic knowledge about how feet should be trimmed so that you can recognize when a good job is being done and when maybe a subpar job is being done with your cow's feet. That's all I'll say on that. I think the word if you're going to Google something is functional hoof trimming. That's what you want to look for. There's a very systematic way to get that done that doesn't take too much hoof off, leaves everything balanced, and takes pressure off of certain pieces of the anatomy. That's what you're looking for. Functional hoof trimming is the thing to look up if you're looking for something, and that's how you're going to know if you can tell if things are being done correctly. That's the biggest piece to know.
Then, you can talk to your veterinarian about that as well.
Again, the hoof trimmer is the best person to be trimming the feet. I don't like trimming feet as a vet. Mostly because I don't have the right tools, I'm not as good as the other person doing it, so why would I? It's a huge piece of your team that you need. You got to have a hoof trimmer on your team.
Bradley: When you were in practice, you probably got called for the problem cows or it was like, "Holy smokes, this cow really needs help," so you were dealing with just maybe some disasters.
Joe: Exactly. I'm there to help with the disasters. I'm there to be a part of the team of hoof care with the hoof trimmer. I talk to the hoof trimmers a lot and we go back and forth and say, "Hey, what about this case? What do you think? Is it time for surgery or not?" Then, that's where I step in to perform a procedure like that. If we're going to take a claw off or do an amputation or that kind of thing or something more complicated on the medicine side, totally fine being there. Pain management is a huge piece of all this. I think there's a role for a veterinarian here, but your first contact is your hoof trimmer, and you got to trust them. They're a huge piece of the team. Like Brad said, he's got a good one and it's worked wonders. I'm not saying anything bad against veterinarians, but saying that a hoof trimer does it every day and they're really good at it. Let them do their job, make sure they're the person that's trimming feet.
Bradley: The hoof trimmer knows best. They see these cows, they're probably out on these farms in a more routine basis, so they see the situation a lot on these farms, so I agree.
Joe: There's a rare case where there's a veterinarian who is a hoof trimmer or owned a hoof trimming business. We happen to have one at the University of Minnesota. If you wanted to Google another name, Gerard Kramer is another name to Google. All right. I think we are plenty far into this thing. We've got plenty of things for you to think about. Regular hoof trimming every six months. Endorsed by The Moos Room, endorsed by Bradley, endorsed by Emily and her new cat that keeps jumping on the screen. All right, Em. Wrap us up.
Emily: If you have questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, you can email those to 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. Again, that's 612-624-3610. You can find us on the web at extension.umn.edu. Find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom at UMN Farm Safety, and find Bradley on Instagram @UMNWCROCDairy. That is a wrap. Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
Joe: Bye.
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