The Moos Room™

00;00;11;03 - 00;00;43;21
Brad
Up! Welcome to the Moose Room. Brad Hines here. Just myself today. It is the last episode of 2024. It's hard to imagine that we've made it through another year and everything is winding down, but we continue to move on. This is episode 275. That's a lot. We have been recording this quite faithfully for the last almost five years.

00;00;43;23 - 00;01;06;20
Brad
Our first episode came out on April 6th of 2020. It was sort of a vision that Joe Armstrong, myself and Emily had way back in 2019 when we started this. It's gone really well, really well. So we want to thank all of the listeners, and we appreciate you listening every week. And we're going to continue to do this.

00;01;06;22 - 00;01;44;21
Brad
We are not quitting or forging ahead. There's lots of things going to happen in the new year, and we'll be right here to provide lots of information for you on research. What's happening with myself, what's happening with mental health and farm safety with Emily, and any new hot topic that comes up. We'll have quite a few guests, but I kind of wanted to run down, kind of give you an overview of what we've all done, some of the research working on here.

00;01;44;24 - 00;02;11;23
Brad
What's going to happen in the future? And then I have outtakes. There's always good outtakes from recording this. Most of them are from when Brad, Joe and Emily were on, and we'll play them at the end. There's about 3 or 4 of them. They're quite funny, at least from my perspective on a lot of the razzing that made this popular podcast do so well was the three of us.

00;02;11;28 - 00;02;43;18
Brad
We should review most of obviously 2024 centered around H5n1 and everything that happened with that over the early spring through the summer, and it still continues to ravage a lot of states. Obviously, many states are implementing mandatory milk testing, so that's going to go on. Obviously here in Minnesota where we're we're based out of it hasn't happened yet, but I suspect that it probably will into the future.

00;02;43;21 - 00;03;07;16
Brad
But there's just a lot of unknowns that are happening with that. We have provided a lot of information on H5n1 throughout 2024, and that's always constantly changing. So obviously there's so many updates and we tried to provide those in a timely fashion here. So keep listening to all of those wonderful H5n1 updates that we provide once in a while.

00;03;07;16 - 00;03;41;11
Brad
Obviously, they're not as frequent anymore because we know a lot what's happening in the H5n1 world, but when there's new updates, will certainly be prepared to provide those. Interesting topics that we've talked about in the last year, obviously, probably one of the more popular ones are beef and dairy crosses. That was in episode 240, where we talked with Gail Carpenter from Iowa State University and some of her beef on Dairy Crossing work that she did with Angus.

00;03;41;14 - 00;04;20;27
Brad
And those animals have went to slaughter and will hopefully get Gail on again here to figure out what happened to those animals. But really sort of an update. I have beef on dairy crosses that are going to market in January, so I'm quite excited. We're sending 40 of them. And if you remember, these were animals that were sired by Simmental, Angus, Sharley, Limousin and Herford and we have been feeding them out for the last year and a half and some of them are going to go to market.

00;04;20;27 - 00;04;44;12
Brad
So they're going to go to Tyson Foods, in Dakota City, Nebraska, and we're going to go down there and collect a lot of the information, carcass data. We're going to collect back fat. We're going to collect fat samples. We're actually going to be on the, fabrication floor and grab some strip loin so we can do some meat testing with those beef on Dairy Cross.

00;04;44;17 - 00;05;10;16
Brad
So probably in February or March, we'll have a huge episode. And I might have to go too, because there will be so much information with that. But a little snippet on those, the scarlet crosses did quite well from a growth standpoint. They are the fastest growing now. We'll see what happens to them in the carcass. Will they marble or not?

00;05;10;19 - 00;05;35;01
Brad
Obviously, the slowest growing. I shouldn't say slowest growing, but they just have less carcass. They're a smaller animal. Tend to be the Angus and the Herford, which is what we suspect. But I think they're going to surprise us. And of course, I hope that the Herford does. Well, that was my ploy. And I still breed to Herford here at our dairy.

00;05;35;03 - 00;06;01;07
Brad
But we're going to see what happens. So I'm quite excited. January 16th and those are going to go to Tyson Foods. And so we'll hopefully have some information there. I continue to breed our dairy herd here to beef and dairy. And right now I'm using Angus Herford. I still use Herford. There's excellent fertility in the Herford sires and I'm using Simmental.

00;06;01;09 - 00;06;27;06
Brad
Those are the three that I've been using this breeding season. I also have about 30 wagyu pregnancies, so we're going to see what happens to those. I hopefully will be able to find some funding to continue feeding out some Wagyu, comparing them to Angus and Simmental. But we'll see. Even if I can't, I'm going to keep one Wagyu cross just to see what happens.

00;06;27;06 - 00;06;52;04
Brad
I'm curious, just just to know what happens. I know Wagyu, a lot of people have used Wagyu and it's kind of on again, off again. But that will be interesting to see what happens there. So there's lots of stuff happening in the beef and dairy world and it's going to continue to grow, no doubt about it. There's a lot of interest in beef on dairy genetics.

00;06;52;06 - 00;07;18;29
Brad
Obviously everybody has their different takes on it. Some look at it from a carcass standpoint, some are looking at it from a feeding standpoint. But being a geneticist, obviously I like the genetics, I like a diversity of breed. So we're going to continue looking at diversity of different breeds, other topics that have been hot and are continuing to grow as agar voltaic.

00;07;19;02 - 00;07;44;22
Brad
Some of you might not know what that is. It's the co-location of solar and agriculture. We've been working on it here at our research center for almost 7 to 8 years. We've been grazing cows underneath solar panels. Obviously, it's very contentious in the solar world. Obviously, I am quite open about saying I don't like solar panels on the land that are just there.

00;07;44;24 - 00;08;12;29
Brad
They're taking up valuable land. I like to see dual use, whether it's cattle, obviously being the cattle guy, I'm in favor of putting cows there, but sheep work. Other people are using pollinators. I've been working with farmers that are growing corn and soybeans underneath solar panels, but we'll continue to work that. We've actually built our own agro voltaic portable system here and will be deployed this summer.

00;08;12;29 - 00;08;40;15
Brad
We just finished it last August, September, and here over the winter. Kind of got all of the tweaks figured out, but it's a portable 20 kilowatt system that we can pull around the pasture. It has battery storage, so we could use it for powering fences or irrigation or you name it. So we're going to be looking at that this summer of 2025, looking at shade of cows.

00;08;40;15 - 00;09;10;15
Brad
Obviously, shade is an important thing from our pasture based dairy. So looking at how we can incorporate agro voltaic and portable solar systems, I also recently got funded from a new project from the LCM Environmental Natural Resources Trust Fund here in Minnesota to fund another agro voltaic project, where we're going to look at vertical bifacial panels in pastures and on the land.

00;09;10;17 - 00;09;40;13
Brad
I also have plans to venture out and grow some different vegetable crops or high value crops. I'm going to look at strawberries, raspberries. I'll probably put some peppers and tomatoes in there to help with the vegetables, but I think there's other opportunities from a solar energy standpoint in what we can do with solar on the land. But obviously, being the cow guy, I'm always going to put cows there.

00;09;40;15 - 00;10;05;24
Brad
This year we have just finished our project looking at different forages and crops grown underneath solar panels, so we'll probably do a future episode on that. On what grows. Well, obviously we have found that orchard grass, meadow fescue and red clover tend to do the best growing underneath our solar panels, so that's been really a nice hot topic.

00;10;05;24 - 00;10;41;15
Brad
One thing that I never expected I would get into in this research world, but it's been really fun to see. And obviously how I can incorporate agriculture in cows into solar energy curves have also been another hot topic here. Obviously, there's a lot of interest in calves and how to deal with that. Recently, I just had a sensor episode on where I put our sensors or cow manager on calves and see how I can correlate that with drinking behavior and drinking speed in our automatic calf feeder.

00;10;41;17 - 00;11;10;17
Brad
So we'll be exploring that. It sort of has really sparked my interest now in putting sensors on calves and seeing how we can incorporate that into a dairy farm for improving the health and well-being of of calves. We're also going to be exploring some heifer feed efficiency at our Southern Research Center in Waseca, Doctor Isaac Hagan in Saint Paul, and myself.

00;11;10;19 - 00;11;41;19
Brad
We have a graduate student working on a heifer feed efficiency project where we're going to be looking at RFI or residual feed intake in dairy heifers and Holstein dairy heifers. We have a lot of heifer data, obviously, at our Waseca research center, we've raised well over ten, maybe 15,000, 20,000 calves over the last 20 years, and we have a lot of feed intake data from day one until weaning and after weaning.

00;11;41;19 - 00;12;08;02
Brad
So we're going to be exploring that. We're going to be looking at how efficient heifers are at converting feed into growth. We're also going to be looking at methane emissions. So do these heifers that are more feed efficient. Do they have less methane or more methane. So we're going to be exploring that. So that project will start the summer looking at heifer feed efficiency.

00;12;08;03 - 00;12;31;09
Brad
And we continue to obviously have some health challenges. So I'm going to talk about probably in the next few episodes, kind of a case study on a calf that we had here at our research center that died. Unfortunately, it does happen. We had some issues with with the calf for a while, and it it did pass away and we've necropsy it.

00;12;31;09 - 00;12;58;20
Brad
And I just got the vet results back the other day. So I need to be able to digest those kind of come up with a plan and really talk about what happened to this calf and what we can do in the future about trying to prevent, the health issues that these calves had. Obviously, from a methane standpoint, as many of you know, I've been working on methane and, emissions of cows.

00;12;58;20 - 00;13;30;03
Brad
I've done some work with c graze. It's, seaweed, red seaweed from the coast of Hawaii and have found that that can reduce methane emissions by over 40% with no loss of production. All of the aspects that come around with that. We've just been finishing a lot of the analysis. We've looked at really some microbiome stuff at a student in Saint Paul, look at the microbiome and really look at how the seaweed inhibits methane production.

00;13;30;08 - 00;13;53;27
Brad
That's one thing that we'll probably talk about once I've got it all together, we'll review our methane studies. And also I've been actually feeding algal and I just started this last week. Eglin is probably one of the more hot things in the in the dairy world and beef world. Right now, it's a plant based feed alternative that's released some essential oils.

00;13;53;27 - 00;14;18;29
Brad
It's fed to a lot of animals around the world. And so we just started feeling Hagelin at our dairy to see what would happen. Obviously, there's benefits in methane reduction, probably not as much as the seaweed, but you get some methane reduction. But there's also an intrinsic value of the more efficient cows. And I hope a little bit more milk production.

00;14;19;01 - 00;14;48;23
Brad
That's the goal. Obviously. We'll see if that happens. There's anecdotal evidence that there is a 2 or 3 pound increase in milk production by using Eglin. And we'll talk about that. I'm speaking about that at a Minnesota organic conference in January, where I'll be talking about some of our C grades and our Eagle and stuff. So if you're into the organic world and want to hear about some of our methane work, feel free to pop on by obviously being a geneticist.

00;14;48;23 - 00;15;16;14
Brad
I still like to focus on some genetics, and we're just wrapping up some fatty acid work. We've been analyzing fatty acid profiles on three dairy farms. Two dairy farms in Minnesota here, one about 250 cows, and the other one is 800 cows. And we've been looking at the fatty acid profiles across the time, as well as the different breeds that they have in their herds.

00;15;16;14 - 00;15;53;18
Brad
And it's quite interesting. We're probably not finding as much difference in the breed groups that we might have expected, but we're certainly finding differences in nutritional factors, feed factors and season. So that's interesting aspect as well. We've also been looking at fatty acid profiles in our two university herds here. And it's quite interesting. Obviously the pasture based herd, you can see the fatty acid profiles are quite different during the grazing season compared to when they're on full TMR.

00;15;53;20 - 00;16;19;06
Brad
And we'll be discussing all of those. If a graduate student finishing up that work and we'll we'll talk about that. As far as the fatty acid profiles, I did review a little bit of that in episode 269, where Amy Laskey and I talked about that from a Dei perspective. We're also going to be exploring some genomics of parasites in animals.

00;16;19;09 - 00;16;47;27
Brad
So we're going to collect data from 10 or 15 farms here in the Midwest looking at parasites in cattle, and see if we can find a genetic component to that. And how does genetics play a role in parasite reduction in animals? So that will be kind of interesting to see as that all focus is out. We're collecting some genomic samples now and we'll be collecting some data over the summer.

00;16;47;27 - 00;17;16;08
Brad
So that will be an interesting project as we move forward into the genetics world. Obviously milk quality is an important one. Will be focusing a little bit on that kind of wrapping up some projects, kind of some in in progress projects, working on milk, quality monitoring data on farms, looking at how teat cleanliness, teat end scores, a lot of milking procedures relates to somatic cell count and mastitis in dairy herds.

00;17;16;10 - 00;17;40;18
Brad
So hopefully we'll have an update on that over the summer as well. And obviously we focus a lot on mental health on this podcast. Mental health farm safety has been a very important part of our podcast. Some of the more very important episodes that we've done have focused on end of life, obviously mental health and how to deal with that.

00;17;40;20 - 00;18;06;24
Brad
Obviously, some has dealt with even myself in my Lyme's disease and co-infections diagnosis, and we'll probably talk about some of that coming up in May when we have mental Health Month as well as Lyme Disease Month. No doubt about it. I'm doing much better than what I was a year and a half ago, but it still has taken its toll on me and we'll, talk more about that into the future.

00;18;06;26 - 00;18;29;02
Brad
Obviously, we like to do those and maybe not focus so much on cows every single episode. So we like to venture out and talk about some of those aspects that I think is really important to the agricultural world, and it doesn't get talked about enough. And that's why we like to talk about that. There's been lots of things happening at our our dairy here in Morris.

00;18;29;07 - 00;18;53;29
Brad
Obviously, I like to talk about the dairy. It's very important to me. It's where I do all a lot of my research have been helping to manage the dairy well here. So I intrinsically get involved in a lot of different aspects. Some days I'm involved maybe too much in those decisions, but we've actually been working on some environmental mitigation projects that we're doing here.

00;18;54;01 - 00;19;19;29
Brad
There's been some lagoons from the 1950s that we've had to fill in and redo. So we've been actually upgrading some of our facilities here to have a better environmental footprint and provide for a future of, of this dairy here in Morris. Obviously, one thing that is important to me in my graduate career, was my advisor, Doctor Les Hansen.

00;19;19;29 - 00;19;44;19
Brad
He is actually retiring from the department of Animal Science here at the University of Minnesota on December 31st. So we will certainly miss him in his aspects. He's been a wonderful geneticist, a wonderful mentor, and a wonderful person for the producers of Minnesota and dairy producers around the world. So there's a lot going on, a lot coming in the future.

00;19;44;22 - 00;20;09;21
Brad
We've got some guests coming up. We've got a lot of, topics to discuss, and we'll still keep putting these out once a week. That's our our goal to be able to do that. So we can provide timely information to everybody. And if you ever want to be on the podcast, just let us know. I'm sure we can find something to talk about that's interesting to people.

00;20;09;24 - 00;20;48;03
Brad
It's always good to hear about producers and other people's stories, whatever that might be. So now the outtakes, there's always some outtakes that we cut out of the podcast that you might not hear. Some of it is when Brad and Joe would razz Emily about technology or other things, but this first one talks about, Emily and how she is the glue of this podcast, and probably an ego deflator, but all three of us were important aspects of this.

00;20;48;03 - 00;20;52;18
Brad
So here is a funny outtake when Emily is talking about all three of us.

00;20;52;20 - 00;21;11;24
Emily
Also a quick funny story. I spoke at a Cattle Women event on Saturday, and one of the women came up to me and she was like, oh, are you on the Moose Room? Like, yes, like, yeah, I recognize your voice. And then she's like, so it's funny to me. She's like, so like, Brad's more dairy and like Joe's more beef and your.

00;21;11;24 - 00;21;13;26
Emily
And I'm like, I'm there.

00;21;13;29 - 00;21;16;14
Joe
You know, I'm there.

00;21;16;16 - 00;21;18;05
Emily
I'm I'm there.

00;21;18;07 - 00;21;24;21
Joe
But it's funny that that's the perception because it's like, yeah, I do both. Brad can talk about beef.

00;21;24;21 - 00;21;31;10
Emily
I know, but the perception is Brad is dairy, you are beef and I am here.

00;21;31;12 - 00;21;42;12
Joe
That's our dude. That's our new, t shirt. Yeah, well designed a t shirt that says Brad dairy. Joe beef. Emily. Here.

00;21;42;15 - 00;21;52;23
Emily
Emily's here. But I thought. Yeah, that was just, like, funny how, like, she kind of asked it, you know, I think she was like, what do you bring to this? You know.

00;21;52;26 - 00;21;53;27
Joe
Why are you there.

00;21;53;29 - 00;21;56;23
Emily
Like I do? Safety and health. We talk about that too.

00;21;56;24 - 00;21;58;26
Joe
You are the glue, Emily.

00;21;58;28 - 00;22;00;19
Emily
I am the glue.

00;22;00;22 - 00;22;01;19
Joe
Keep us together.

00;22;01;27 - 00;22;03;29
Emily
I'm the ego deflator.

00;22;04;01 - 00;22;04;25
Joe
Yeah.

00;22;04;27 - 00;22;09;06
Emily
Yeah, well, I'm glad we got that on recording.

00;22;09;09 - 00;22;11;08
Joe
You have an excellent time yet.

00;22;11;11 - 00;22;13;22
Brad
You haven't deflated mine yet, so.

00;22;13;24 - 00;22;16;06
Emily
Well, it's not for lack of trying, Bradley.

00;22;16;08 - 00;22;17;19
Brad
Mine's too big for you.

00;22;17;20 - 00;22;22;03
Emily
Exactly. I'm surprised you can fit it in that office.

00;22;22;05 - 00;23;02;20
Brad
Obviously, there's always technology issues. The three of us never podcast it in the same room once in a while, maybe once or twice a year. We would. But there's always technology issues when dealing with the internet. Sometimes our internet's just shut off and we disappear for a while. And but it always comes back to Emily having technology issues and Brad and Joe, what I always, probably myself, more than any, would probably raise Emily more about her technology problems.

00;23;02;23 - 00;23;30;23
Brad
So as we wrap up, we'll listen to the last few outtakes of technology blunders that Emily has had. And really, as we end here, we thank you for listening to our podcast, and we really appreciate the support that you've given us over these last four years. So here's the outtakes of Emily. See you next year.

00;23;30;25 - 00;23;36;06
Joe
I think we're going to have to stop recording because we lost Emily. Oh my gosh, what the.

00;23;36;08 - 00;23;40;28
Brad
I live with the biggest techie guy in the planet and it just works.

00;23;41;00 - 00;23;42;08
Joe
Down my internet.

00;23;42;08 - 00;23;47;09
Brad
Oh, yeah, I live with the techie guy and it works. I it's it's all work and.

00;23;47;15 - 00;23;50;21
Joe
I've never updated it.

00;23;50;23 - 00;23;55;13
Emily
Yeah. So Rob just said, oh. Did I do something? Yes, you might have. Did I do.

00;23;55;13 - 00;24;01;01
Joe
That? Oh, that's there he goes. All right, here we go.

00;24;01;04 - 00;24;07;16
Brad
Yeah. The techie guy can't figure out why it doesn't crash all the freaking time.

00;24;07;19 - 00;24;08;28
Joe
I'm Emily.

00;24;09;00 - 00;24;12;14
Brad
Here we are. Oh, am I getting sassy today? Already? This morning?

00;24;12;17 - 00;24;17;23
Emily
You are? Really? This is all right. My fuze is short today.

00;24;17;25 - 00;24;19;12
Joe
This is what.

00;24;19;14 - 00;24;25;14
Brad
This is what happens when. This is what happens when Brad sleeps, okay? And doesn't get here till nine. Yeah.

00;24;25;16 - 00;24;30;15
Emily
We get. Yeah. You're on raise or thin ice.

00;24;30;17 - 00;24;35;10
Joe
All right, let's just pick it up. From where I think we were.

00;24;35;12 - 00;24;37;12
Brad
It's good to see. I can see you on video now.

00;24;37;16 - 00;24;38;03
Joe
Yes.

00;24;38;03 - 00;24;39;12
Brad
Very nice. You're not frozen.

00;24;39;18 - 00;24;42;11
Emily
Now. Well, I'm wondering if I should turn my video off. Just, you.

00;24;42;12 - 00;24;43;06
Joe
Know, right now.

00;24;43;10 - 00;24;44;12
Emily
I think I'm just going to do that.

00;24;44;12 - 00;24;46;27
Joe
We want to feel the heat through the screen.

00;24;46;29 - 00;24;49;10
Emily
You want to see it spewing from my eyes?

00;24;49;10 - 00;24;51;19
Joe
I just need the eyes. It gives us fuel.

00;24;51;21 - 00;25;25;19
Emily
Tomorrow and Thursday is tractor safety. And somebody. Friday morning I fly to Texas and I'm in Texas until the following Saturday. That Sunday I drive up to Crookston. That Monday and Tuesday is tractor safety up there. I'm back for a day and then I'm at the Rock County Fair Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then August 30th and third. Excuse me, July 30th and 31st is tractor safety in Houston County.

00;25;25;21 - 00;25;30;01
Emily
And then I'm back for a few days. And then it's Farm Fest week.

00;25;30;03 - 00;25;35;06
Brad
You you can't podcast while you travel.

00;25;35;09 - 00;25;37;19
Joe
Yeah. Brad's in Chicago. I'm in.

00;25;37;19 - 00;25;39;28
Brad
Chicago looking out the runway of O'Hare.

00;25;39;28 - 00;25;44;10
Emily
Airport. I can't podcast while I'm teaching a bunch of kids at Tractor Safety.

00;25;44;10 - 00;25;50;03
Brad
No sure can. Wow. Just be like, hold on a second, I gotta go.

00;25;50;06 - 00;25;55;25
Emily
No, and I can't podcast for my conference because I'm presenting. We're doing the full ambiguous loss training.

00;25;55;29 - 00;25;57;06
Joe
You don't want to see, too. I'm a.

00;25;57;06 - 00;25;58;19
Brad
Featured speaker.

00;25;58;21 - 00;26;02;13
Joe
Featured speaker, tenured professor.

00;26;02;15 - 00;26;08;27
Emily
Yeah. They're they're letting you do a four hour super seminar training.

00;26;09;00 - 00;26;14;24
Brad
I'll give it six hours. Awesome. I'll just talk all day long. I talk all day long.

00;26;14;27 - 00;26;19;24
Emily
I hate you so much.

00;26;19;26 - 00;26;20;18
Joe
Yeah.

00;26;20;20 - 00;26;24;06
Brad
You really don't. But I appreciate that.

00;26;24;08 - 00;26;27;23
Emily
I don't, but in this moment, I, I do.

00;26;27;25 - 00;26;32;27
Joe
There's there's times specific. Specific folks. It's probably a good thing that.

00;26;32;29 - 00;26;38;17
Brad
That we are like on video because you can't reach through the camera and.

00;26;38;17 - 00;26;43;05
Emily
Right and strangle you. Don't worry. I'm doing it in my mind.

00;26;43;07 - 00;26;48;28
Joe
Oh yeah. Thanks everybody. We'll catch you next episode.

00;26;49;01 - 00;27;07;28
Emily
Rummaging through the room and venturing across the atomism. Probing through the reticulum, meandering about the amazing, moving through the mouth and getting through the esophagus.