The Moos Room™

00;00;13;03 - 00;00;35;25
Unknown
Welcome to the Moos Room. It's a rainy day here in western Minnesota, and spring is coming. That's good. I think the lawns are starting to grow really fast. I was getting a little worried about some of our pastures weren't growing as well, but that's kind of nice that it's raining today. It's been kind of a weird spring where it's been 30 or 40 degrees.

00;00;35;27 - 00;01;09;26
Unknown
One day it was 93 Fahrenheit. One day here in April. So really hot today, about 45 degrees. So we have this wild weather swings. Whether we're still deciding whether we want to be winter or we actually want to come into spring. But farmers are in the field. At our research center, we've got a few crops planted. We've planted oats and alfalfa in some of our fields, and we're doing some no tilling of our pastures as well.

00;01;09;27 - 00;01;30;29
Unknown
So spring is coming. The cows are hopefully going to go to grass pretty soon. I looked at the pastures the other day and the grass is at six inches already, so we're getting close. Maybe another week or ten days and cows will be out to grass, so that'll be a fun time to do that. I'll be doing some virtual fencing.

00;01;30;29 - 00;01;54;18
Unknown
That's kind of my exciting project this summer, testing out some different virtual fencing options for farms. It'll be kind of an exciting project. Another note I some of you have followed me for a while and knew that I had a Guernsey heifer I bought two years ago. Well, she carved and she's doing well, milking 50 pounds a day.

00;01;54;22 - 00;02;29;24
Unknown
She's about ten days fresh, so doing well, kind of excited, trying to establish a little Guernsey heard. Some might ask why, but I'm sure my answer is why not all breeds? There's room for all breeds. I looked on the computer and she was milking about 50 pounds, about A52 fat and A37 protein, so doing pretty good. But today I want to talk a little bit more about some dairy beef issues and environmental and biosecurity and farm management that goes wrong with dairy farms.

00;02;30;01 - 00;03;00;20
Unknown
I saw this research study just came out brand new in a journal that I don't read very often. It's in a veterinary medicine journal from a group out of the Ohio State University, and they actually were looking at Salmonella Dublin and what happens on cattle raised these beef on dairy crosses. And I know we've talked about salmonella Dublin maybe two years ago or more on this podcast.

00;03;00;22 - 00;03;28;12
Unknown
We had some outbreaks in actually our university herd, but not the one that I met in our calf facility in southern Minnesota. They've struggled sometimes with salmonella and how to control that. It's under control doing well now, but at the time they were struggling with salmonella. So what actually is Salmonella Dublin and what can it do? Well, it's adapted to cattle.

00;03;28;14 - 00;04;02;23
Unknown
It specifically it works or devastates young calves from 2 to 12 weeks with severe respiratory disease and septicemia. So it is very devastating towards young dairy calves. The death rate is 10 to 35%, so it's quite high. And so you get a lot of death in calves and sometimes human infections. With Salmonella Dublin you can have high mortality rates as well.

00;04;02;23 - 00;04;40;23
Unknown
So it's a pretty nasty one. It survives by a chronic asymptomatic carriers so infected adults can shed the pathogen and sustain in environmental conditions and be contaminated in the environment. And the complication is it's highly antimicrobial resistant. So rich really renders a lot of our standard treatments ineffective to salmonella. So it is kind of one of those things that it is difficult if you get it in your calves.

00;04;40;23 - 00;05;09;12
Unknown
And I've seen it on farms and it is very devastating. But if you think about it, we do some testing, really traditional surveillance leaves these beef on dairy operations kind of blind. So a lot of clinical diagnosis are highly reactionary. It really only identifies the animals that are exhibiting severe symptoms already, which completely misses early infections and the subclinical shutters.

00;05;09;12 - 00;05;32;03
Unknown
So if we think about the standard fecal culture it works in bovine feces. But sometimes the sensitivity is not very good. So it kind of masks the true prevalence that we see in herds. Now you can do bulk tank testing to find it as well, but only test lactating cows. So you really don't see what's going on in calves.

00;05;32;03 - 00;06;06;05
Unknown
Well, to sort of look at this, this group engineered a new multiplex PCR analysis. And to really look at these salmonella strains or environmental bacteria. So to really kind of target and figure out if it's really there. Can we see if you think about standard culture, it's very selective and you have to plate it out and you find about 6.2% of salmonella Dublin by culture, so very low.

00;06;06;07 - 00;06;37;22
Unknown
And by using this PCR detection, we find about 35% in this new way of detecting salmonella on farms. So basically it's trying to find some of these maybe invisible reservoirs where Salmonella Dublin was hiding out. So they looked at farms. They went on many different farms throughout the Midwest. Most of the farms Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, New York.

00;06;37;22 - 00;07;07;22
Unknown
So they looked at 65 dairy beef operations, really handling up to over 2000 calves annually. They actually did some environmental boot swabs. So they were swabbing the boots of people on the farms to see what was happening and if that was causing some of the spreading as well. And they also looked at sampling across three distinct time periods.

00;07;07;22 - 00;07;41;04
Unknown
So they looked at pre weaning, post weaning and then kind of this milk mixing standard. So what did they actually find in these studies when they started swabbing things. Well contamination was quite common across these different farms. But it was highly variable. So across the Midwest the probability of any single environmental swab testing positive for Salmonella Dublin was about 11%.

00;07;41;04 - 00;08;11;18
Unknown
So the threat was not really distributed evenly across all of these farms. There was a lot of difference that existed for these different farms. Some of the operations were completely clean, didn't have salmonella on the farm, while others had 63% positivity on farms. So there was huge range on farms, so it was 0 to 63. That's quite extreme.

00;08;11;20 - 00;08;39;16
Unknown
Where were they kind of finding some of these across the farm? Where was the farm contamination happening? Well, if you look at the pre weaning period, if we think about a calf barn there's alleyways. If you have calves individual inside a barn in small individual pens you have alleyways in between pens. And there was about a 10% detection rate in these alleyways.

00;08;39;16 - 00;09;11;13
Unknown
So significant background contamination, despite the individual housing which was really driven by high traffic areas. So where people are walking all the time, they found salmonella a lot. What about the mixing rooms, milk mixing rooms? You know, where we're mixing milk replacer or bottles making bottles, you name it. 7% detection in there. So it's really cross-contamination is happening in these milk mixing rooms.

00;09;11;13 - 00;09;41;01
Unknown
So it's unlikely to host active shedding. But these rooms actually serve as a focal point for human pathogen transfer during feed mixing for these calves. So the milk mixing room, the alleyways in the barns were pretty high rates of detection. What about post ween pens? So they found 13% detection in post weaning pens. So it's the highest risk area.

00;09;41;02 - 00;10;11;16
Unknown
So co-mingling of larger groups. And this fecal contamination from older calves sort of amplifies the salmonella to the younger calves. So when you're mixing a lot of animals together I, I understand trying to, you know, put more groups of calves together instead of having smaller groups or from individual pens to groups. It's causing issues in these post weaning pens because of shudders that we might not see.

00;10;11;16 - 00;10;45;20
Unknown
They might not show clinical signs, but they're shedding it for the younger calves and causing some sickness. So if we think about linking management with pathogen presence, so environmental contamination is certainly not random luck. We know that. And it's a direct reflection of management on the farm. They did an analysis that tracked three different exposure places to really see if they could find the root cause of salmonella Dublin presence say looked at calf management.

00;10;45;20 - 00;11;28;07
Unknown
So farm type calf flow breed weaning age. They also looked at calf movement. So the origin, the source origin of these calves, the frequency of new calf introductions and then looked at biosecurity and vaccination protocols. So cleaning protocols which are really important and employee movement across different farms. So if we think of this revolving door where we're bringing lots of calves in from a dairy farm into maybe a beef on dairy operation or a calf feedlot or calf ranch, well, frequent calf introductions.

00;11;28;08 - 00;12;01;27
Unknown
So new animals arriving every few weeks, at least less than four weeks, is the strongest predictor of environmental salmonella. Dublin so new calves getting introduced into pens or onto different farms is causing a lot of the issues. So frequent continuous calf introduction. So a continuous influx of naive. So calves that aren't really six transport stressed calves combined with actively shedding older calves kind of creates this perfect chain of infection.

00;12;01;27 - 00;12;35;08
Unknown
And basically the pathogen never starves for a host, it's always there, always getting introduced into new new animals. So the pest. So the salmonella really never dies, never gets under control because it's always got a new host to infect. Well, human vectors also create cross-contamination on farms. So farm employees having regular contact with outside livestock increases the detection rate by five times, which is kind of a danger zone as well.

00;12;35;08 - 00;13;11;27
Unknown
So farm employees that are having contact with the outside world with other livestock are certainly causing the issue as well. So what is the reality? Well, salmonella is highly mobile. Boots, shared equipment and movement through these milk rooms serve as a bridge for the pathogen to bypass animal to animal contact. And basically humans are spreading it amongst the calves by not having clean boots, clean equipment.

00;13;11;27 - 00;13;44;05
Unknown
And this causes and this really highlights the severe invisible gaps in personal biosecurity on farms. So biosecurity very important in kind of stopping the spread. Well what some of these management things if you think about delayed weaning. So farms raising pre weaned calves that delayed weaning until at least eight weeks saw a drastic reduction in detection. So allowing calves to develop immune resistance and establish a stable microbiome.

00;13;44;05 - 00;14;18;17
Unknown
Before and during this transition. Stress kind of acted as a biological shield in these calves, so later weaning calves tended to have least amount of problems with salmonella. Dublin Well, what about size of farms. So very large operations. We're talking greater than 1000 calves annually had lower detection rates than smaller farms. So this really indicated a more formalized, more strict management protocols and biosecurity, which can be really successful in stopping this pathogen.

00;14;18;17 - 00;14;49;19
Unknown
So Salmonella Dublin is not really random. It's very specific, reacts to a lot of different pressures in the system and interacts with a lot of vulnerable calves. So one is this constant input. So the revolving door of new calves makes highly susceptible calves. Early weaning and transport stress compromise immune systems. Humans personnel that bridge clean and dirty zones and milk mixing rooms and calf pen.

00;14;49;19 - 00;15;24;02
Unknown
So this movement across without cleaning boots on wherever the farms may go is causing some issues as well. And really, the biggest thing is the older calves become Cheddar's and they're turning post ween pens into heavy, contaminated environmental reservoirs, which are ready to infect the next cycle of calves. Because people are going into these post weaning pens and then going back to the calves and not really cleaning their boots, or cleaning their equipment or cleaning their clothes, and they're spreading it into these new cabs.

00;15;24;02 - 00;15;50;25
Unknown
So what are some imperatives to sort of biosecurity redesign on farms? We think about culturing. So culturing is good, but PCR surveillance can be much better for detecting salmonella Dublin so swabbing boots, if you're really wanting to see if you have it, you can you can do that. You can swab post weaning pens, you can swab the alleyways and use PCR to see if you have it.

00;15;50;27 - 00;16;22;12
Unknown
Kind of the second thing is restructure calf flows to eliminate this sort of revolving door. So either shifting to an all in or all out kind of breaking the chain of infection, and you can enforce downtimes between groups or having an effective cleaning protocol. And the other one is human biosecurity. So treat employee boots and equipment as primary vectors so you can have mandate strict zone separation.

00;16;22;14 - 00;16;53;23
Unknown
Isolating these milk mixing rooms from post weaned animal traffic, and make sure that employees are not going back and forth between post mean calves and new calves and alleyways and barns, because they are certainly spreading it as well. So to be proactive, obviously you want to identify those invisible reservoirs before transmission peaks and try to find ways to manage calves and have high biosecurity to help prevent salmonella.

00;16;53;23 - 00;17;16;03
Unknown
Dublin and I think if you it really all goes back to management. You know, when we've talked about management many times for security, calf movement, just being cognizant of what you're doing and what animals are sick and what animals are not, I think you'll have a much easier way to kind of stop Salmonella Dublin from happening if you've ever seen it on farms.

00;17;16;05 - 00;17;39;13
Unknown
So with that, I think we'll leave it there for today. Kind of an interesting study that I saw about salmonella. I know some farms have struggled with that and trying to figure out how to control it, and hopefully gives you an idea on some ideas. If you see salmonella on farms and how you might control it. So with that, if you have any comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the room.

00;17;39;13 - 00;17;54;02
Unknown
That's T.H. Moss. Oh, Edu. Or find me on the web. University of Minnesota Livestock Extension or you WC Rock dairy. And with that, hope you have a good week by.