The Moos Room™

00;00;12;29 - 00;00;35;14
Brad
Welcome to The Moos Room. Another beautiful day here in western Minnesota. The sun is actually shining today, so that's a surprise. It's been cloudy a little bit. We're still in that. Are we winter yet or are we coming into spring here in the Midwest? It was 40 degrees for a high a couple days ago, and today it looks like going to be in the 70s.

00;00;35;15 - 00;00;55;29
Brad
So another wonderful day. The grass is still growing. Maybe it slowed down a bit. Not as fast as what it should be because of the weather. We need some rain here too to get the grass growing, but I still think we're going to pasture next week, at least on some early one's going to start some virtual fencing like I talked about last week.

00;00;55;29 - 00;01;19;24
Brad
So the cows need to go out. I can tell they want to go out, so we're going to make that happen. But today I wanted to talk about something that I've thought about before and kind of a new and hot topic here in the dairy and the beef world. So I was at some extension meetings in La Crosse, Wisconsin this week where all of us that are in dairy extension kind of get together and talk about our programs.

00;01;19;24 - 00;01;46;20
Brad
And some of us that are doing research, talking about our research that's happening. And one of the interesting things that we had talked about was fera peas. And I don't know if you've heard about fera peas, but there's a lot of people that stimulating a lot of interest in the dairy world and the beef world. And I've kind of played around with therapies a little bit just to see what it does.

00;01;46;20 - 00;02;11;09
Brad
I know some farms are using it, and so I'm going to discuss a little bit about it. Some new research just came about that showed how beneficial it is at the time of breeding and improving pregnancy rate. So let's talk a little bit about fera peas and lactating cow study. And there was another study that just came out and disputed calves or young calves that were disputed.

00;02;11;09 - 00;02;47;18
Brad
And see how they respond to stress. So first let's talk about therapies. And what what actually is it? Well, it's a synthetic analog of maternal bovine appeasing substance. So it's this big long term. It's this maternal bovine appeasing substance is naturally secreted by the sebaceous glands located in the skin of the of the utter. And it has a unique function of inducing and appeasing fact to nursing offspring.

00;02;47;18 - 00;03;13;05
Brad
But can we use it for for other things? I think the, the active ingredient are obviously this company. It's a proprietary mixture of fatty acids that include palmitic, oleic and linoleic acids and of course some other things that we don't know about. So it's fair. Appease is really designed to reduce stress in cattle by mimicking a natural calming pheromone.

00;03;13;07 - 00;03;46;27
Brad
It kind of works in the animal to help calm any perceptions of threats, which really directs stress levels. And it can be used at times of weaning. D horning, castration, branding, transportation. So if you're transporting animals to reduce their stress, could also be used at time of calving, dry off and breeding. So there's lots of different methods, at least based on feral peas and how they show that you could use that.

00;03;46;29 - 00;04;08;25
Brad
What about it? So you would use it in healthy cattle. Kind of during these high stress time periods there's no withdrawal. So you have to worry about no pre slaughter withdrawal or milk discard. So how do you apply fare appease. Well for an adult animal you put five males kind of on the back or right at the pole of the animal.

00;04;08;25 - 00;04;27;25
Brad
And then you put another five milliliters or five cc's kind of right above the muzzle. So between the nose and the eyes right on the skin. And young stocks the same but a little bit less dose. About two and a half cc's kind of right behind the pole or at the pole. And two and a half cc's just above the muzzle.

00;04;27;26 - 00;05;19;04
Brad
And it's supposed to last for 14 days. So there was a recent study that just came out in of dairy science. They're JDBC communications. So it was done by a group at Texas A&M. And they looked at administering therapies really at the time of breeding in lactating cows to see what happened. So so there's a lot of stress at the time of AI that that happens, whether it's handling restraint, taking them out of their social situations, which kind of alters their cortisol levels and causes stress in an animal, and which in turn can decrease ovulation, fertilization or reduced embryo survival.

00;05;19;04 - 00;05;45;17
Brad
So kind of the stress at artificial insemination time does reduce conception rates. And really that was what this study was trying to figure out. They did what we talked about before. They put five mills at the time of breeding above the muzzle and five and right behind the pole, and to see if they could really improve conception rates.

00;05;45;21 - 00;06;13;21
Brad
So this study was actually done with a group at Texas A&M, but they did it with two commercial dairy herds located in Argentina with Holstein dairy cows. So they had 375 Holstein cows, 178 were first lactation, and about 200 cows were second in greater lactation. So again across two, two different dairy farms, they had some differences that they looked at beforehand.

00;06;13;21 - 00;06;36;02
Brad
So milk yield didn't really you know, it was no effect on milk yield. Milk yield was the same for all of these cows days. And milk was the same. Maybe the incidence of estrus was the same as well. So no significant baseline differences in these cows. So all of the cows were kind of matched prior to AI. So about the same.

00;06;36;02 - 00;07;04;20
Brad
And they used a synchronization protocol, a timed AI basically with estradiol and prostaglandin at the time. And basically they also used tail paint as a way to or tail chalk to, to monitor estrus in, in these animals. But again, in all timed AI protocol except some of the cows got feral pigs at the time of AI and some did not.

00;07;04;21 - 00;07;39;26
Brad
So what did they find? Well, if you look at pregnancy per AI cows in the control. So the ones that didn't get anything 47.7 the cows that got fair appease 60.2. So that's a 12.5 percentage point increase in pregnancy with just administering therapies at the time of AI. So that's about a 26% relative increase in pregnancy rate for the animals that got therapies versus ones that did not at the time of first AI.

00;07;39;27 - 00;08;07;08
Brad
So this is first AI and it got huge results. Improvement in in pregnancy. Well, if you break it down between different cow groups and estrus expression. So first lactation cows it increased from 50 to 65%. So 15 percentage point increase. The older cows 45 to 55. So 10% increase in pregnancy per AI. If you look at the cows that didn't express any estrus.

00;08;07;08 - 00;08;37;08
Brad
So because these were on a timed AI protocol, you know, we just read them whether they expressed AI or not, 40% for the control, 58% for the fair apiece, one. So no estrus expression. The pregnancy rate went up by 18 percentage points. And cows that expressed estrus 55 to 62. So maybe not quite as high. But overall the lactation groups and estrus expression increased.

00;08;37;11 - 00;09;02;28
Brad
Pregnancy rate was 10 to 15 percentage points. So that's a lot. By just administering ten ccs to an animal at the time of AI. So I did some farm level economics for this. So if you look at it about it's about $3 per cow to give fair apiece to these animals. So you have a little bit of increased costs, $3 per cow.

00;09;02;29 - 00;09;38;16
Brad
We know that. But you know labor costs here were kind of negligible because all of the cows were handled for AI, whether they got fair appease or not. So you have a little bit of increase for the fair appease cows just because you're paying for the product. You got 12.5% pregnancy per AI increase. So that's 125 extra pregnancies that that they got, which if you calculate a standard $200 economic value per pregnancy, that's about a $25,000 gross benefit by using therapies to get cows pregnant.

00;09;38;16 - 00;10;16;13
Brad
And in turn, this is about a 800% return on investment. So for every dollar invested kind of yields a $8.30 economic benefit. So the economic models that they did really showed that it's highly profitable as a management tool to increase pregnancy. And really that was because you're reducing stress. So you're improving animal welfare. You're providing a non antibiotic non hormonal welfare friendly treatment to help mitigate handling stress.

00;10;16;13 - 00;10;47;28
Brad
So by reducing stress it's improving the pregnancy rate and improving the economic efficiency. So that's kind of a win win for a lot of different things. So in the end what were the take home points of this study. Well 12.5% increase in pregnancy per AI. So that's quite a bit. You see a 800% return on investment. And it's a non hormonal non antibiotic method to increase pregnancy rate.

00;10;48;00 - 00;11;11;22
Brad
Now this study was done in Texas I saw some early data from another study done in Wisconsin that kind of showed the same thing where you're increasing pregnancy by just administering ten cc's of ferret. So it's kind of interesting to see some studies just by reducing stress at the time of AI that you are going to increase pregnancy.

00;11;11;25 - 00;11;49;10
Brad
Okay. So that's a cow study. Well what about so there was a calf study done at Texas A&M that looked at giving Farrah Pease to reduce stress and improving growth performance of dairy calves after the time of disputing. So this study had 120 calves that were studied. So if you think about it, this is really popular with some of the calf raisers because not many producers like to use local analysts and they don't provide NSAIDs for reducing pain or stress in animals that are discovered.

00;11;49;10 - 00;12;17;21
Brad
So this might be a good option for reducing stress at the time of disputing. So in this study again they gave five mills which is a little bit more than what maybe they would the company would recommend at least based on their website. So they gave five milliliters just above the muzzle and five meal liters just behind the poll to help to see if they could reduce some different stress.

00;12;17;23 - 00;12;41;21
Brad
The idea with this in calves is to reduce stress, but it also has a prolonged application. So 14 days which some of these NSAIDs and other pain blocks only last 2 to 6 hours. So if you can have a prolonged effect to reduce stress for two weeks, that might be even better in animals that are disputed because it's very traumatic, very traumatic.

00;12;41;21 - 00;13;07;24
Brad
Nobody likes to de horn. That's kind of why we're looking at pull genetics from our standpoint, because it's a very stressful time. So how are these calves disputed? Well, maybe not the the way that a lot of people do it, but they use caustic paste. So after these calves came into calf facility, they were handled a lot, taken a lot of different blood samples, but they were given caustic paste at the time.

00;13;07;24 - 00;13;36;22
Brad
And they were they also had about two more times that they used to caustic paste application when these calves were were really young. So within a week or so, this therapy's tended to really reduce the cortisol spike that you see in calves that are disputed. So there was a tendency to show a lower peak serum cortisol level at 3 to 4 hours post disputing, which is quite significant.

00;13;36;22 - 00;14;07;23
Brad
I think reducing stress at the time of disputing is is very important. So they had lower hair cortisol concentrations at day 14 compared to the untreated calves, which indicated reduce stress at 14 days after disc budding in those animals at day 14. They also saw a difference in average daily gain. So those calves that got fair appease had a 20% increase in average daily gain at 14 days afterwards.

00;14;07;23 - 00;14;31;26
Brad
28 days afterwards. There was a strong tendency for calves to have a higher average daily gain as well after disputing. So really, this therapy's preserved nutrient partitioning, and the calves were able to maintain an anabolic state where they converted feed to growth rather than burning the energy because they had some sort of stress or panic at the time of disputing.

00;14;31;26 - 00;14;50;25
Brad
But in the end, if you look at it at the time of weaning, so they weaned these carbs at 85 days, so the calves that got fair appease maybe trended a little bit lower in body weights, but not much. We're talking 5 pounds, so not a lot at all, especially at weaning time, you know. Did it help really from a growth perspective?

00;14;50;28 - 00;15;13;16
Brad
Yeah. Maybe a little bit. Maybe a little bit. It probably helped more from a reducing stress incidence than it did anything. You know they didn't really find any difference in in disease, didn't really find any difference in pneumonia or bloat for calves that got fair appease. But there was a slight tendency for calves to have some increase in fever.

00;15;13;16 - 00;15;47;06
Brad
But overall, they found that the Cavs that were treated with therapies had less stress. So the less stress they had a huge increase in average daily gain at 14 days. So 20% increase in average daily gain. It had higher weaning weights in animals that got fair appease as well. So it really showed that these animals that were treated with therapies at the time of disputing improved growth rates and reduce stress, and I think that's important for a lot of dairy producers to do as well.

00;15;47;06 - 00;16;11;03
Brad
So it'll be interesting to see if more people are using therapies for reducing stress and animals how people are using it. I think I'm going to kind of do some testing. We're going to start breeding our animals here in mid-June again. And I don't know, maybe just a demonstration to see if it might work, where I can give some fair appease to some animals at the time of breeding to see how it works as well.

00;16;11;03 - 00;16;31;13
Brad
And I thought about it at the time of disputing to see if we can reduce stress, because that's a stressful time. So with that, hopefully you learned something today. I know it's a hot topic in the dairy and the beef world, and everybody's talking about fair peas, and there might be something out there to it. So you might want to test it out, see what it's like and it may or may not work.

00;16;31;13 - 00;16;56;25
Brad
I think there's more to learn about therapies in all the studies. So with that, I think we'll leave it there for today. And if you have any comments, questions or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the moves room. That's thc mos r o o m at edu or find me on the web at University of Minnesota Livestock Extension or, Crock Dairy.

00;16;56;28 - 00;17;00;02
Brad
And with that, I hope you have a good week by.