The Moos Room™

Brad
Welcome to The Moos Room. It's a wonderful spring day. Hopefully, I think winter is still trying to roar its ugly head here in Minnesota. We seem to be cold again. One day it was 85°F, the next day 35 degrees. So I'm not sure what's going to happen, but I can tell the cows are getting restless being in the barn and they really want to get to pasture.

00;00;38;20 - 00;01;25;18
Brad
So spring is coming and hopefully, hopefully it will soon. And we'll have the cows out and doing lots of fun research this summer. But recently been in some meetings with some graduate students talking about all of our projects that our students are working on, from flies and parasite, resistance to feed, efficiency of heifers, and one talking about lameness and the lameness one really has caught my eye because they're scoring a lot of lameness in dairy herds and actually looking at data that the tremors are reporting back on all kinds of different hoof disorders and trying to establish some genetic parameters.

00;01;25;18 - 00;01;48;17
Brad
So heritability and, you know, is impossibly can we solve lameness by selecting for it genetically? Kind of caught my eye. And I've been down this road before and it really I keep going back to health costs. You know we there's trim data and it says okay well this cow had a lesion whatever it might be white line disease or digital dermatitis.

00;01;48;17 - 00;02;17;07
Brad
But for me it always goes back. What is the cost of that problem in a cow and how much does it cost? I think we debate this, and a lot of our genetic evaluations for health traits are based off of incidence rates. Rather, a cow had a certain disease or not. We think about it from mastitis. Cow could have mastitis and you could do a lot of treatments during a lactation, but it's only recorded as that cow had mastitis.

00;02;17;07 - 00;02;48;12
Brad
And I keep going back to we should be analyzing in looking at the health cost of it. Because to me the cost of the disease is way more important and whether they had it or not. So I kind of wanted to relive a study that we did a few years ago, and we had a graduate student, Mike Donnelly, shout out to Mike, and he worked on some landmark cost and economic impact of health treatments in Holstein cows in the US.

00;02;48;14 - 00;03;12;17
Brad
So what what did we do? We were we looked at data from eight Minnesota dairy herds, and this was over 2000 Holstein cows and 5000 lactation. So we had a pretty large data set to look at for health costs. Now we look at health costs. And I'll also talk about the genetics of it and what we found from a genetic standpoint too.

00;03;12;19 - 00;03;43;11
Brad
But basically we collected a lot of data from these farms. They were standardized as far as health treatments across turds entered into dairy comp records or PC dart or or other herd management software. And that's a big undertaking in itself to get farmers to be consistent with recording health data into software programs. I can't stress that enough. It's really important to do that and to get farmers to record that data.

00;03;43;11 - 00;04;14;08
Brad
But sometimes it can be difficult, especially when it comes to consistency. So basically, we wanted to standardize health treatments across farms. And we did that. And then we assigned individual health treatment costs for multiple diseases. Some in example, you know we had days were $275. And this included a veterinary cost and a labor cost. A hoof treatment was about $30.

00;04;14;08 - 00;04;49;28
Brad
So 21 bucks for a vet cost nine for labor mattress about 117. Milk fever really inexpensive 38. Other miscellaneous reproduction close to 200 retained placentas $80. So it kind of had a wide range of total treatment costs across these herds. So we assigned all of these treatment costs. So if a cow had mastitis and a treatment, she may rack up a lot of treatment costs across the lactation.

00;04;49;28 - 00;05;17;04
Brad
If she is a chronic cow that needs to be treated all the time. So what did we find when we kind of broke all this data down, looked at all the health treatment across. So across five lactation. So we looked at five lactation. Obviously the health costs most of them occur within the first 30 days of lactation. And that's where we find the significant amount of problems.

00;05;17;04 - 00;05;43;22
Brad
And a vast majority of metabolic and infectious disorders really occurred due to severe negative energy balance created by the sudden demand for high milk production. So you get, you know, cow that calves she goes into negative energy balance, but she's supposed to milk 100 pounds a day. And now we've created a big problem with some health costs. So it's kind of the danger zone.

00;05;43;23 - 00;06;12;02
Brad
The first 30 days are the most expensive period in any cows. Lactation and first lactation. The cost is quite low, around $23 during that first 30 days, and a fifth lactation cow almost $40 of health cost during the first 30 days of lactation. Repro was probably the biggest driver to these 30 day costs, and that was really mattress.

00;06;12;05 - 00;06;40;09
Brad
Mattress was the most demanding of any repro disorder in the first 30 days. Metabolic was kind of driven by Das and ketosis. We know all this stuff obviously happening in the first 30 days. Mastitis, we had days. Obviously days are happening at the same time as well. There was just a lot of things that can happen to these cows in the first 30 days, and they can really rack up the cost during that time period.

00;06;40;10 - 00;07;07;15
Brad
But what about the other periods of lactation? So kind of routine maintenance kind of drives this mid to late lactation cost in a Holstein cow. So we think about lameness. So costs really don't peak at calving. Instead they're pretty distinct in mid to late lactation. And that's really reflective of routine hoof trimming and finding other problems. Like I said white line ulcers, hairy warts.

00;07;07;15 - 00;07;28;29
Brad
We find most of this in kind of 90 to 150 days in milk. And then of course, closer to dry off 270 days, because that's when farms are routinely trimming cows at dry off. And we included those. We included those costs. That's a real a real cost to a cow, even if it's just a routine and we don't find anything.

00;07;29;00 - 00;07;57;21
Brad
Now. Mastitis was the big one. So mastitis peaked early in first lactation cows, but it was really pretty even distributed across the entire lactation period, maybe spiked a little bit closer to dry off due to some culturing of cows that farmers were doing and looking at preventative screening of mastitis. So there was some increase there because of some routine maintenance things.

00;07;57;21 - 00;08;26;29
Brad
But really mastitis kind of was pretty flat across the whole lactation. Well, if you look at total health costs. So total health cost more than doubled over a cows productive lifetime. So if we look at first lactation cows, their average health cost was $54.73. So that's adding everything that could possibly happen to a cow. And that's on average a Holstein cow, $55 of health cost and first lactation.

00;08;26;29 - 00;09;00;15
Brad
In third lactation, we're closer to $100. So $94.43 in health cost. Fifth lactation cows. Now we're over $100 per cow in fifth lactation, $122 in health cost on average for a cow in fifth lactation. So really it kind of compounds this wear and immune fatigue that older cows face. But still, I think $55 in first lactation is still a lot of money to be spending in health costs for a Holstein cow kind of day.

00;09;00;16 - 00;09;30;23
Brad
Was kind of this a big problem. And really third lactation, we saw that there was this massive spike in Das and kind of in the third lactation. As cows get older, we start having a few more issues. And really, most of the cost in kind of third lactation is driven by Da surgeries. Metabolic costs kind of drop in fourth and fifth lactation because most of the time if a cow has a day, they're going to be cold.

00;09;30;23 - 00;09;59;19
Brad
And routinely as the cows get older, it becomes a problem. And they they just get cold. But really, if you think about it, genetics dictate when cows get sick, but management really dictates how much it cost. And there was huge differences in health costs for some herds. One herd had an aggressive treatment protocol and had really high milk production, but it compounded the cost.

00;09;59;20 - 00;10;32;02
Brad
One particular herd had $40 in first lactation, but by about fourth and fifth lactation cow $175 per cow in health treatment cost. So it's kind of crazy. Another herd less than $30 in total cost. So probably focused more on nutritional aspects and kind of a transition cow protocols. So they kept total costs flat across all lactation around 20 to $30 per cow.

00;10;32;02 - 00;10;52;27
Brad
So management plays a big role in this as well. But really with this first study the data is kind of clear. The first 30 days are kind of the danger zone for cows. And that's where we see most of the health costs happening. The biggest thing is we need to standardize our system. So we need to adopt uniform data entry.

00;10;53;02 - 00;11;11;27
Brad
And because you really can't select genetically for these health traits if you're not recording it in PC or dairy comp or whatever software program that you use, or if the entries are kind of fragmented, you know, you're kind of here and there and they're not really accurate or they're kind of sporadic, but we really need to to look at that.

00;11;11;27 - 00;11;32;07
Brad
And that's kind of where we went in with the second study of mikes. We looked at genetic selection for reduced health costs. So can we make genetic progress by selecting for some of these costs. So we were looking at total economic cost and how that relates genetically. So we kind of had we had a few more cows here.

00;11;32;07 - 00;12;04;26
Brad
This time we got close to 5000 cows in eight herds here in Minnesota. Again we had vet cost treatments, treatment of the drugs, the cost of the drugs. We had labor included in all of the treatments. And we kind of defined things as mastitis, repro, lameness, metabolic and miscellaneous. And then we had a total health care cause. So in this study where we had 5000 cows, 28% of the total health cost is from repro.

00;12;04;26 - 00;12;41;16
Brad
And that's more than likely mastitis. And that's more than likely from mattress lameness, about 23% of the total cost, mastitis 20% metabolic. So ketosis those type things 15% and miscellaneous is 15%. But we had and we calculated heritability on these health traits. And while repro kind of drives the highest cost, it has a low heritability of 0.04. So 4% quite low which makes direct selection kind of difficult.

00;12;41;17 - 00;13;13;07
Brad
However mastitis and metabolic had a stronger genetic control. So heritability of 0.12 and 0.13. So we might be able to make more genetic selection with mastitis and metabolic problems. But if we kind of dive into some of these categories and look at the sort of top financial offenders here, we look at repro metrics $10 per cow, which is 18% of the total health cost across all diseases.

00;13;13;12 - 00;13;38;11
Brad
Retained placenta really low, about $2.12 on average cost for a Holstein cow. But it has a really high heritability 0.12 days for 91 average cost. So this is average cost across all of the cows. And it counts for about 9% of the total health costs. But only about 2% of the herd gets days. So it's quite low in ketosis.

00;13;38;12 - 00;14;06;17
Brad
Average cost about $0.60. But it's really highly heritable. So .18. So kind of some insights here is you have this big severe issues and a low frequency event like days. They kind of drain profits rapidly. However there's a strong genetic correlation between ketosis and Das, which means that breeding one kind of helping to control genetically for one helps with the other one as well.

00;14;06;17 - 00;14;36;08
Brad
But we kind of added all of these things up, kind of was looking at a total cost. Remember, I wanted to go back to a total health cost and not really look at incidence of these diseases and see what we can find. So what what is the breakthrough is that total health cost is highly heritable, kind of contrary to previous studies that used kind of this binary, you know, whether she, this cow had a disease or not, which has low heritability is less than 0.1.

00;14;36;08 - 00;15;00;07
Brad
If you determine the cumulative cost, total health cost, it has a heritability of 0.25, which is really close to milk production or right around what milk production is close to fat and protein production. So total health cost is heritable and that's is as heritable and in some cases more heritable than some of the milk production traits. And it has high reliability.

00;15;00;07 - 00;15;26;13
Brad
And so it's really a target for dairy breeding programs. And we need to start calculating things on a total health cost basis and not do it on a binary, whether the cow had a disease or not, total health cost is going to get us faster genetic selection. So if we select if we want to select for lowering total health costs, how might that look at.

00;15;26;14 - 00;15;55;06
Brad
Well there's a correlation with fluid milk production. So milk volume of 0.44. So if we select a lot for high milk production it kind of increases our health costs. So we see that time and again higher milk producing cows have higher health costs. It's the same for fat and protein. So selecting for milk solids fat and protein is kind of you still have a genetic correlation.

00;15;55;06 - 00;16;21;02
Brad
But it's probably less than selecting for fluid milk. Now there's some synergistic things with somatic cell count. So kind of a near-perfect correlation 0.93. So selecting for lower somatic cell count directly reduces total health costs. So if we can select for somatic cell count. And hopefully farmers are putting lots of emphasis on somatic cell count in their breeding programs.

00;16;21;04 - 00;16;53;04
Brad
I tried to select for lower somatic cell count bulls. It will really help lower the health cost of these animals. So what about confirmation? How does confirmation kind of connect to all of these health issues? Well, in these farms, all cows were scored from a mating program. So we had evaluators go out and score lots of different traits on these cows, from stature and dairy form and utter depth and, you know, front teeth placement, body depth, you name it.

00;16;53;05 - 00;17;21;16
Brad
We scored all of those traits, and we tried to correlate some of those with total health costs. And there were three that kind of stood out. One is stature. So taller cows have a phenotypic correlation with increased mastitis lameness and metabolic specifically Das. So the taller cows higher stature have increased total health cost and increased problems in multiple different problems.

00;17;21;16 - 00;17;50;15
Brad
Dairy forms. So that's angularity. So higher dairy form cows, ones that are lacking body condition correlate with a higher repro cost and an overall higher total health cost. And that's really driven by this negative energy balance in depressed immune function, namely in the first 30 days of lactation. So selecting for higher dairy form, you're going to have more health cost in your cows.

00;17;50;17 - 00;18;21;01
Brad
What about utter depth? Well, the correlation of utter depth and total health cost was -0.6. So that tells us that bulls that transmit shallower utters will have lower health costs in their daughters. So shallower utters correlate with reduced mastitis -0.84 and lower repro cost -0.65. So cows with deeper udders tend to have a few more health costs, namely with mastitis and some repro.

00;18;21;01 - 00;19;00;21
Brad
So we still have this kind of cost of aging cows. As cows get older, they tend to have higher health costs. If you look at total health cost in first lactation $57.91. Again, highly heritable .25. Second lactation $73. Almost $74. Heritability of about one six. Third. Lactation cows $88 in health costs again high heritability .17. So heritability drops slightly after first lactation because cows with the highest early health costs are naturally culled from the herd.

00;19;00;21 - 00;19;26;14
Brad
So if you have a cow that has high health costs and first lactation, more than likely your farmers are going to call them or the cows going to get called themselves or die. So naturally the heritability is going to go less. But health costs really compound rapidly as a cow ages. So breeding for lower first lactation, total health costs will extend productive and a profitable herd life.

00;19;26;14 - 00;19;59;10
Brad
So if we think about it from a sire selection standpoint. So in this study we tracked 53 sires of these animals. We looked at estimated breeding values for total health cost. And it's actually a highly accurate predictor of daughter health costs. So if you think about a sire, a who's a high risk bull transmits $67 positive in added health costs per daughter, and you have a say a sire be who is a high health bull.

00;19;59;13 - 00;20;30;24
Brad
And he transmits -$49 in reduced health costs per daughter. So the bottom line is, a single sire may create over $100 swing in total health costs. So if you think about this from a 400 cow commercial herd, selecting for a bull with higher health or reduced health costs per daughter can save almost $50,000 in a single generation. And that's just selecting for health costs, total health costs.

00;20;30;24 - 00;21;02;16
Brad
So in the end. What what did we really learn through all this studies? Well, here's some recommendations for our herds. We need to standardize health recording and standardized cost recording to make sure that we're recording this data. So we need to move beyond this binary sick versus not sick. Check the box. So we need to configure herd management software to log all of these comprehensive events.

00;21;02;16 - 00;21;32;16
Brad
So we ensure enough days elapse to distinguish new events from ongoing treatments. And we need to calculate the full burden of the cost for these cows. So genetic evaluations need to account for the entire economic period. Veterinary cost, pharmaceuticals, labor. We need to include all of that in a cost. And we need to update sire selection criteria. So we need to integrate total health cost into genetic advisory protocols.

00;21;32;16 - 00;22;02;06
Brad
So we need to prioritize bulls that transmit shallower utters, lower somatic cell count and negative EVs for health costs. We want to select for lower health cost bulls. So really to conclude, kind of the genetic selection for reducing total health cost is really not just a financial imperative, but it will help improve farm profitability and increase animal welfare.

00;22;02;07 - 00;22;31;01
Brad
Kind of protect will protect the bottom line through reduce veterinary and labor costs, extend productive life, and kind of lowers this involuntary culling that we see happening. And of course, it will help public perception by reducing the need for antibiotics in in cows. So really I think we can use genetics to transform cows and create more profit by selecting for total health costs and tracking all of these health diseases in our cows.

00;22;31;01 - 00;22;48;08
Brad
So with that, I hopefully you learned a little bit about our study and tracking health costs. And of course, I get on my soapbox when I talk about health costs. And I think we should really look at health costs and not really look at whether a cow was sick or not sick or had this problem or not. So with that, I think we'll leave before today.

00;22;48;08 - 00;23;07;28
Brad
And if you have any comments, questions or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the room. That's THG MOOC at UMaine Edu. Find us on the web at University of Minnesota Livestock Extension or U-M, WC Rock dairy. And with that, hope you have a good week by.