The Moos Room™

00;00;11;03 - 00;00;42;28
Brad
And welcome to The Moos Room, Brad. Again today I wanted to talk about a subject today that's kind of at the forefront of my mind. With some testing this last week. That's the only disease. I don't think we've ever done a podcast on Joni's, and I wanted to talk a little bit about today some of the results that we got from testing in our herd, and what some of the other recent new studies have shown about Joni's and things that I've been thinking about related to, to Joni's.

00;00;43;05 - 00;01;11;11
Brad
So obviously, Joni's disease is an infection of the small intestine, and it affects cattle, sheep, goats and other ruminants. We probably see it more pronounced in dairy cattle because their life span tends to be a little bit longer. You get to older cows that show clinical signs of of Joni's disease. We don't see it maybe as much in feedlot cattle, obviously, because their life span is is so short.

00;01;11;11 - 00;01;37;25
Brad
So it's those animals that tend to be a little bit longer, more productive life that we see it in. You know, signs of Joni's disease rarely show up until years after the initial infection. That's probably for most cases, obviously, I'll talk about some. We have some first lactation cows that are showing up that are Joni's positive. So it's kind of scary.

00;01;38;00 - 00;02;04;20
Brad
And we'll talk about just some things that go along with that. But typically the infection is going to occur shortly after birth. And everything that happens there. And obviously over time the intestines become thick and less efficient at absorbing nutrients. So when you actually see signs in cattle, basically you see diarrhea and weight loss decreases from their normal appetite.

00;02;04;20 - 00;02;29;18
Brad
Obviously they look malnourished and weak, and sometimes these cows can go downhill really fast. We've seen it in our herd where one week they look good, and the next week we have to put them down because it is really taking its toll on them. And sometimes a stress event can bring about knees. If you have calving, you know, we see it after calving.

00;02;29;18 - 00;03;00;17
Brad
Sometimes we'll have Joni's cows calve and then that stress event will bring about clinical disease. But obviously probably the biggest thing that maybe farmers don't think about as much is production. You see a decrease in milk production in cows. We don't necessarily think about that. But I think when you have it on a whole herd basis, you can see milk production decline, early culling and poor condition at culling.

00;03;00;20 - 00;03;28;12
Brad
And we've seen this in, a previous podcast where we talked about cow culling. You know, 15% of our cows were culled for other reasons at our dairy, but a high percentage of them were clinical units, or they came back with a milk Elisa that was positive for Ione. So we have probably used culling, as a big reason for getting trying to help get our ponies under control.

00;03;28;17 - 00;03;51;26
Brad
So we had our milk test, our dry milk test this last week, actually on Monday. And I've tested the whole herd for ponies with milk. Eliza and I tend to do this every year just so I can know what's going on in the herd, how we can sort of manage it in our herd. We know that we have it, we know that we have it, and we have to be able to manage it.

00;03;51;28 - 00;04;26;25
Brad
And so that's why I have decided to do at least once a year testing for milk. Eliza for Joni's disease. So let's talk about previously. So the last time I tested was the end of May 2024, and we tested 282 cows. We had 16 show up positive. So that's 5.7% of our herd would be Joni's positive. There was another six cows that were Joni Suspect, and we could talk a little bit about obviously with with milk testing.

00;04;26;25 - 00;04;54;11
Brad
It's you have some cutoffs basically on a milk Eliza if it's less than 0.2, it's negative. If it's 0.2 to point three, it's a Joni suspect. And if it's greater than 0.3 on the milk, Eliza, it's positive. So it's quite easy to understand from a Joni standpoint how to read this. So sometimes I don't necessarily call the cows.

00;04;54;16 - 00;05;21;14
Brad
It's always tough to call good high production cows that I know are Joni's positive and they're not showing any clinical signs. So I resorted to breeding them to beef. And, you know, is that the right decision to do? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I probably should just call all of them, to try and do a better job of controlling the Joni's in, in our herd.

00;05;21;16 - 00;05;52;03
Brad
You know, we used to do some spot sampling when I first started ten plus years ago. And Morris, we probably had a lot of Joni's. I think I did some milk Eliza test early on a long time ago, and the herd, we were closer to 15% Joni's, which was really high. And so through cow culling and better management practices, we've been able to bring that number down to less than 10% and closer to 5 or 6%.

00;05;52;03 - 00;06;21;17
Brad
And we'll talk about some of the things that maybe we could be doing and what farms could be doing as well. So we tested 315 cows for Joni on a week ago. And what did the results show? So we have 95 cows in our organic herd. There were seven positives that 7.4% in our organic herd, in our conventional herd, we had 12 positives out of 222 cows.

00;06;21;23 - 00;07;09;23
Brad
That's 5.4% positive in that herd. Overall, 19 cows out of 315 were positive in our herd, which is 6%, and that's maybe slightly higher than what some of the national averages show. But it's pretty close. And we'll talk about a few of the recent studies. Towards the end, we also had six cows that were Joni Suspect. So kind of in that 0.2 to 0.3 range, decided that I should look through these cows that were Joni's positive and try and figure out, okay, we're their mothers, positive or negative, and how were they raised maybe as a calf because that has some implications.

00;07;09;26 - 00;07;30;08
Brad
With, with some of the research studies that we did. So if I look at the conventional herd where we had 12 Joni's positive cows, five of the 12 had dams that were positive for Joni's at some point in their life. You know, we've been doing this Joni's testing for a long time. So it it does show up.

00;07;30;08 - 00;07;56;20
Brad
So more than likely they got it from their dam and colostrum and we maybe haven't done a as good of job in the past about that. Sometimes it's always difficult because these cows probably don't show up as positive in first lactation. And we feed colostrum from the dam going, oh well it's Joni's negative. So we feed the calf colostrum from this cow.

00;07;56;20 - 00;08;19;24
Brad
But this cow becomes positive later on in life. More than likely she had a low level Joni's in her anyways and she spread it to her calf. Five of those 12 were from Joni's positive dams actually. Interesting fact is one of the cows is a Holstein cow, and this one's going to be difficult for me because she has scored 88 points.

00;08;19;24 - 00;08;44;03
Brad
Very good. And she's just a two year old. Well, second lactation cow 88 points that that's wonderful for our herd. But the problem is, is that her mother died from Joni's. She had a strong clinical case and, eventually died, so, I don't know, maybe that cow might be on her last leg, even though she's 88 points. So we'll have to.

00;08;44;05 - 00;09;07;16
Brad
We'll have to see. However, the interesting fact is, is that quite a few of these Joni's positive cows that we get now were from dams that had tested negative for many times, multiple times they were negative, at least from a milk Elisa test. If you look at it, how were these calves raised? Well it's interesting. It's it's always hard to garner, you know, is this cause and effect.

00;09;07;19 - 00;09;42;27
Brad
But most of the cows in our conventional herd were raised in a group housing situation. So you know I've tried to figure that out. Are we you know, was there one day we didn't get the milk pasteurized enough? Or are they spreading it? Are actually flies spreading yellowness from to to these animals? Who who really knows who really knows how we are spreading there maybe is an indication that flies can spread the disease to to other animals, but not really conclusive.

00;09;42;27 - 00;10;08;15
Brad
But it is interesting that some of these were raised it most of these were raised in groups. Groups of 5 or 6 calves. One was raised on our auto feeder and actually two of them were raised individually. So really nothing necessarily conclusive. I, I find it interesting, though, that of the 12 that were positive, a majority of their dams were negative for Joni's.

00;10;08;18 - 00;10;30;15
Brad
And this may we go back to the environment and where the cows are calving and how we're dealing with that. Now let's talk about the organic herd. So we had seven positives. Every single one of those dams tested negative for Joni's. Every single one of them. All negative. At least some at at the point of their life when we were doing milk Elisa, all of them were negative.

00;10;30;15 - 00;11;00;24
Brad
So that's interesting. However, I said, well, I need to look at how these calves were raised and something was quite alarming in what they found. Now, most of you know that we did a calf rearing study started in 2020 and went through 20 the end of 2022 into 2023 with rearing calves with in a group, in pairs, individually and then on the cow that's dam.

00;11;00;24 - 00;11;41;28
Brad
So of the seven that were positive for Joni's, six of them were raised in a dam rearing environment. So with cows on calves, calves being reared by by cows in a in a group housing situation. So what what's going on there. Well, if all of the dams were negative from these calves, maybe they were stealing milk from a known cow that was tested positive for Joni's in that group, or at some point tested positive, which I think is probably what happened.

00;11;41;28 - 00;12;21;08
Brad
So these calves at some point were stealing, stealing milk from other cows. And that cow potentially had Joni's or had tested positive for Joni's. So that has really driven the point home with me in the last few days is maybe raising calves on cows. And I don't know if you need to really watched Joni's in those herds and to see what was happening, because that was sort of a light bulb for me going, oh, now we we've really spread Joni's in by raising some calves on cows with.

00;12;21;10 - 00;12;45;04
Brad
And I'll admit, we went into that project with all cows that were tested negative for Joni's that were raising calves from a milk Elisa, but that doesn't mean that they didn't test positive. Maybe 3 or 4 years later. So that's one thing that is kind of scary in all this. And could have we, stop the spread of Joni's.

00;12;45;04 - 00;13;11;07
Brad
Yes. By by not doing that. Okay. What about the the suspect cows? The Joni suspect cows? Well, okay. We had six Joni suspect cows. Two of them were actually Joni suspect last May. So more than likely, they are probably positive. If you are Joni suspect twice, in my mind, you probably are. Joni is positive. One of them actually was.

00;13;11;09 - 00;13;36;18
Brad
Joni is positive last year and now is Joni Suspect this year. So more than likely they are positive. Five of the six Joni suspect cows. All of the dams were tested negative. All of the dams were tested negative. So it's interesting across the 19. And if I add six suspects, so 25 cows that we tested that have kind of showed up.

00;13;36;18 - 00;14;08;02
Brad
Joni's positive. Only five five of the 2,525% were from dams that tested positive. All the rest 75% dams that tested negative. That's quite interesting. So what will we do? Well, unfortunately, there's quite a few cows on this list that have recently calved because I had them bred to beef, and we're probably going to call them, they will probably get called to help control, the spread of of Joni's in, in the herd.

00;14;08;04 - 00;14;36;27
Brad
That's about all I can do. Is, is to call to help get things under control. So let's talk about a couple studies that were done, with Joni's. And this has been happening for a little while back when I was in graduate school in 2010. So 15 years ago, I worked with Tony Sikora in our Department of Animal Science, and we looked at Exley Milk, Eliza test from Minnesota dry herds.

00;14;36;27 - 00;15;04;29
Brad
We got data from Minnesota DHB. There was 26,000 records from about 20,000 Holstein cows, 282 Joni's positive herds in Minnesota from die testing. What did we find? We were trying to calculate out some, actually some genetic parameters to see if you could do any selection. Have a PTA for Joni disease to help reduce the Joni's prevalence in in these herds.

00;15;05;02 - 00;15;31;27
Brad
What did we find? Well, about 6%, of the herds or 6% of the cows and herds were Joni's, positive. So kind of about the number that I have for our herd hasn't changed much. And basically what we found and we did some heritability. So looking at the genetics, we found that it's about 8% heritable, which means you may be able to do some selection on it and make some progress.

00;15;31;27 - 00;15;59;25
Brad
But obviously it's it's kind of one of those health traits where obviously the heritability for milk production is quite high. But for some of these health traits, quite low. However, we found some negative genetic correlations with Joni's testing in net productive life and production. Basically, it said that animals that are clinical for Joni's have reduced net merit, reduce productive life, and reduced protein and fat yield.

00;15;59;27 - 00;16;30;04
Brad
And we obviously we know it. It's quite high actually. So these negative correlations indicate cows with higher genetic merit for longevity and profitability tend to have lower Joni's milk allies at test antibody levels. So they show greater resistance to Joni's disease. So if you have higher genetics for longevity, so net marriage or productive life, you may indirectly increase the genetic resistance for Joni's disease in your herd.

00;16;30;06 - 00;16;59;23
Brad
So that was 15 plus years ago where we did that study. Well, recently Wisconsin updated some herds. They had we're trying to look at genetic trends. They had about 400,000 Holstein cows from about a thousand herds from across the US. They looked at different two different milk allies at test, the incidence rate was right around 6% for Joni's prevalence in herds.

00;16;59;23 - 00;17;23;09
Brad
Kind of what we saw in our university herd here in this testing period was from 1992 to 2022. So they had 30 years of milk. Elisa tests kind of found the heritability were a little bit higher, than than what we found here in Minnesota, maybe closer to 10 to 15%. So a little bit, more heritable with more data.

00;17;23;11 - 00;18;01;17
Brad
The data showed that Joni's disease susceptibility had a significant and negative trend since 2009. And they also found these low but negative genetic correlations with milk, fat and protein, productive life, mastitis resistance and livability so that means that cows that have Joni's positive or higher antibody test from milk Elisa, tend to have lower milk production, lower productive life, increased risk for mastitis, and lower livability or lower productive life.

00;18;01;20 - 00;18;31;29
Brad
So again, their conclusion was indirect selection via net merit, maybe productive life or live livability may have already contributed to a slow but favorable reduction in Joni's disease susceptibility in herds. Obviously, more information is is needed. People are looking at Joni's disease from a genetic standpoint to see if we can do more selection on it and maybe improve the Joni's in our herd.

00;18;31;29 - 00;19;09;27
Brad
So the last things here, how do we prevent this disease? Well, there is no cure, that we know that some of the precautions you can take, are keeping a closed herd. And it's interesting because our dairy in Morris has been closed for well over 20 years. So closed herd. And we still have it. So. But obviously, if you bring replacement animals in, I would suggest that they come from either negative test herds or that those specific animals have a negative test before they come into your herds.

00;19;09;29 - 00;19;39;23
Brad
So obviously you want to buy animals from low risk herds. You want to protect the newborns and young animals from coming into contact with contaminated manure, obviously have separate birthing areas and keep them clean. Now, is this where we were picking up some Joni's in our herd? You know, we have an A group big group pen member. I said that quite a few of these majority of these animals were from negative tested dams.

00;19;39;23 - 00;20;01;06
Brad
So were they picking up in this group calving where a Joni's cow had calved and they picked up some manure from it? Possibly, possibly. Obviously you want to make sure water sources are clean, use different equipment to handle feed and move manure, and if possible, you can raise those animals in a separate area from the adult animals in their manure.

00;20;01;08 - 00;20;27;10
Brad
That all makes it difficult, especially with group calving. What about managing milk and colostrum? Obviously you want to use colostrum from Joni's negative animals and we've been doing that. So if an animal is tested positive for that we just dump the colostrum. They don't that colostrum is not used. We do not pull the colostrum. So that's helpful. But still don't really explain why we're seeing all these these positive animals.

00;20;27;10 - 00;20;50;00
Brad
And maybe it's just a coincidence that all of them are from negative tested dams, but it's something to think about. Probably coming from the environment. Obviously we're pasteurized milk and we think that that is probably helped now is it? Am I 100% sure that it's getting pasteurized every single day? No, I am not. But I think we probably need to do a better job at that.

00;20;50;00 - 00;21;11;10
Brad
Is making sure that we are pasteurized, the milk fed to our calves every single day, and we we pasteurize it even when we started our studies. Milk is to be pasteurized. And obviously, you know, it's always difficult because it's, you know, should we be feeding pooled milk or waste milk to those cows, knowing that there's the owner's in our herd?

00;21;11;12 - 00;21;35;22
Brad
We probably shouldn't. But how else do farms do it? Is is the question. There's also other different ways. Obviously it's interesting because we're grazing animals in our dairy and so could they be getting it from manure if we're on grazing land. So obviously tilling the ground and putting in new permanent pasture, because managing these infections can take time.

00;21;35;24 - 00;21;59;08
Brad
And the bacteria that causes the owners can survive in the soil for up to a year and possibly contaminating those pastures. So that's one consideration to think about. Pastures. I never thought about that. Obviously identify all the females in your herd that are is positive, and we've been doing a pretty good job about that. We enter them all into our herd management software so we know who's positive, who's not.

00;21;59;09 - 00;22;29;02
Brad
Obviously separating those or culling those animals as soon as possible. And we are going to be doing some culling for these, cows that are tested positive for Joni's. So I hope, provides a little insight into Joni's. I don't have all of the answers. It's still one of those things that always is intriguing for me. We're going to still test every year for Joni's and to help manage this, I don't.

00;22;29;05 - 00;22;55;04
Brad
Well, we'll probably never eradicate it from our herd. I urge you to test if you have animals. Even if you have a beef herd, blood test, fecal test? You know, we're doing milk tests. Obviously, that's not perfect. Fecal is probably best, but we're trying to get a handle on on what's happening. So I think we can all do a better job in testing our animals for Joni's disease to see what is happening in our herds.

00;22;55;06 - 00;23;18;02
Brad
So with that, hopefully you learned a little bit today about Joni's and maybe think about Joni's in a different perspective or some ways, that you can help prevent yours. Joni's disease. And in some of these, livestock herds. And with that, thanks for listening today. And we'll see you next week. Bye.