The Moos Room™

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Emily: Welcome everybody to the Moor Room. Yes, this is Emily bringing us all in, but fear not. We do have the OG3 here today. Say hi, guys.
Joe: Hey.
Bradley: Hi, guys.
Emily: Oh, I knew you would do that, Bradley.
Bradley: I know. I'm that guy.
Emily: You're such a dad.
Joe: You are. You are such a dad. Oh, man. Anyways, let's just jump right into it. Also, I will confirm we are recording this episode. If you listened to our last episode about dehorning, you know that we had to talk it out twice because the first time Joe didn't hit record. We are recording.
Bradley: Wait, he's never going to live that down.
Emily: No, merch idea.
Bradley: We'll be 30 podcasts later and it's still going to be there.
Joe: There's going to be T-shirts, "Are you recording?"
Bradley: Exactly.
Emily: Remember that time Joe didn't record? In any case, let's get down to business. Here at the Moos Room, we take what we do very seriously and we always have a very thorough plan for what we're going to talk about on each podcast and have things scheduled out months in advance. We're like a well-oiled machine here. In one of these conversations, that was definitely not right before we recorded. We were thinking what we should talk about and I said, "Hey, we should do an episode on water because world's most important nutrient." Let's talk about water. For some reason, I'm the water expert here.
Joe: Oh, yes.
Bradley: Because you have written about it multiple times in the Dairy Star.
Joe: Very unique particles.
Emily: Yes, indeed. So much variety here. With water, like I said, it's essential. A cow's daily water requirement can range anywhere from 30 to 50 gallons. Also, just depends on stage of lactation, all of those things. Even if it is on that lower end, 30 or even less than that, 25 gallons, that's a lot of water. When you think about a cow's time budget for her day, she spends maybe 20, 30 minutes of her day drinking water. That's it. She's getting a lot of water in really quickly. It's important that we're really optimizing that intake and making sure that the cows are wanting to drink that water because they need so much of it.
Water basics that I always go through with people is where is your water? Can your cows access it easily enough? Is there direct access to it right after your cows are milked? Because they're going to be thirsty. Just those little details with that. Also, having enough trough space. Three and a half inches per cow, have at least two waters per pen. I feel like I'm just talking, you guys should be contributing
Bradley: You're doing just fine.
Joe: You're doing just great.
Emily: Then why are you even here? I could be recording this just by myself.
Bradley: Okay, then-
Joe: Fine. All right, we'll talk.
Bradley: -it's okay, see you later. See you.
Joe: Like Emily said, water, the most important nutrient. To me, the big things are always accessibility and availability, which I think are two different things. You've got linear trough space. Can they get to it? Is there enough room for multiple cows to drink at a time? Is it not too crowded? Is it in the spot where there's not one boss cow blocking everything and hoarding the water. That includes the winter, which we've talked about in the past. Checking water to make sure it's not frozen and it is accessible. Then availability, to me, is more of how much water is there and is there enough to accommodate a bunch of cows wanting to drink a lot of water all at the same time? That comes down to refill rates.
Emily: Refill rates, yes.
Joe: That's something that we talk about on the beef side a lot when we're talking feedlots and these cattle wanting to eat, and then drink, and then lay down, and/or drink, and then eat and lay down. They need to drink somewhere in there because all the water drives the dry matter intake. If you've got a hundred head that all want to drink at the same time, that's a lot of water that needs to be refilled.
What happens to me that I've seen at least, and maybe you've seen this on dairies too, Brad and Em, if it appears that it's short, if it's not refilling as fast as it should and cows don't feel like they can get enough, then there becomes a competition at the tank and they start to crowd it and they start to sit there all day and guard it almost. It becomes a huge social issue as well, and then it becomes a massive course around the water. Making sure it's accessible and it's available, and then, of course, we are going to add some more
Emily: I would add palatable.
Joe: Palatable and clean.
Emily: Clean. I think those go together.
Joe: Exactly.
Emily: You have to clean your waterers. I just want to throw that out there.
Joe: Just throw it out there.
Emily: I've run across too many people that have been surprised by that. Let's just get it out there.
Bradley: You can ask my graduate students what my biggest pet peeve is on the dairy and it's dirty waters. I just don't like it for calves, cows, anything, man. Would you want to drink that? It should be like you could drink out of it.
Emily: Yes.
Bradley: Yes, I agree, clean your waters. It doesn't have to be time-consuming. A simple brush and let the plug go and scrub it down quick. It doesn't have to take long.
Emily: No.
Joe: No, and it takes almost no time if you're doing it frequently, so I agree. Cleaning the water is huge. It should be on your checklist of stuff that you do regularly and making sure it's available, not frozen, all those things
Emily: Fresh.
Joe: Fresh.
Emily: Like [crosstalk]. You need to change the water and that's probably a little more of an issue I would think in the summer just with it getting hot and if it gets feed or different things in it. Also, you need to be checking it in the winter like you said, Joe. They can't drink frozen water. I know that a lot of people with pasture cattle--
Joe: Also known as ice.
Emily: Yes. A lot of people with pasture cattle will say, "Oh, well, my cattle will just eat snow. That's how they get their water, so I don't need to worry about it." Again, with beef cows and dairy cows too, you're probably not at that 30-gallon mark, but still 15 gallons of water from snow a day, are you kidding me?
Bradley: That's a lot of snow.
Emily: Yes.
Joe: Yes, and I think that's a huge point. There's a lot. Even a weaned beef calf is going to drink 10 gallons a day. That's a lot of water. Water definitely, like you'd said, Em, is the forgotten nutrient. We forget about it, but it is the most important and it drives production. If you don't have palatable water and cattle drink less water, then they eat less, and then they produce less or they eat less and they grow less. However, you want to say it, it drives production. It's in your best interest. That's what I'm trying to say. Keeping clean, palatable water that's accessible and available is money. It's money in your pocket.
Emily: One thing that I would add to that too is if you haven't, consider getting your water tested because they can check for nitrates, sulfates, minerals, dissolved solids, all of that stuff. You may think, "Oh, that's not a big deal," but I know of a farm that I worked with when I was up in central Minnesota, so they had dairy and beef cattle each at a different site. At the beef site, they had so much trouble. They wouldn't drink the water. They were cleaning their waterers on a regular basis. They looked great, they were doing that, and then they got it tested.
I forget what they were high in, but it was really high in a mineral, and so then they put a treatment system in and then they said it was just a night and day difference with how much water the cattle were drinking and suddenly they were growing more and they were healthier and all of that. I would also advise considering doing that. Bradley, have you ever tested the water at Morris?
Bradley: Yes, we do test it and it's very high in iron. I wouldn't want to drink it.
Joe: That palatability is huge and there's definitely health effects too. The one that I see the most is polio when we talk about sulfur being too high in the water. That's more of a beef cattle thing, especially when we're feeding distillers grains, but polio being, not like polio in people but polioencephalomalacia, which is where you have a thiamin deficiency and actually portions of your brain start to die. It's not good. The cattle present as, we call them stargazers. It's a very pretty term for not a great disease, but they definitely present as lateral on their side with their head cranked back looking at the sky. It doesn't look good.
It is reversible. A lot of times we can get to them closer or quickly enough to reverse it and get them back on their feet, but it's very costly and you don't want that either. That's one of the reason to test your water and make sure you know where your sulfur levels are and that can influence how much distillers you can add to your ration.
Bradley: I think about water differently from a pasture-based perspective.
Emily: Oh, of course, you do.
Bradley: Oh, yes, always. We have water on pasture. Some grazing farms have waters up by the barn and the cows drink when they come up for milking or they got to make long walks back. We chose to put water lines on all our pastures. We got miles and miles of water lines that we use and move water tanks around the pasture. There's things to think about there. On a really hot day, I wish I could figure out a way to cool the water because when it's sunny out and really hot, it heats up the water lines, it heats up the water in the tank and the cows, they don't really want to drink 90 or 100-degree water.
Emily: Bathwater.
Bradley: It can be a problem for pasture-based when it gets really hot if there's not a way to cool it or if it's in the shade or something. Water's always a constant challenge with grazing dairies just because of how you have your waters or what it might take. Even if you're pumping water a long distance like we do, sometimes you need three, four water tanks and it can't keep up. A couple of cows suck all the water out and now there's other cows that can't drink. There's lots of things to think about from a pasture-based farm versus just putting a Ritchie waterer at the end of the barn and voila, you get water all the time.
Joe: I like seeing those pasture systems because people have found very creative ways to get water out there and they have very creative ways for moving those waters too. A lot of them are built on sleds. There are all different ways to do it. I think one of the things we forget about a lot of the times is that at least in the summer, obviously, definitely a little more difficult in the winter, but in the summer, it's really easy to add water to a pen when you're talking about beef cattle on receiving in a feedlot or you're receiving in your receiving protocol, adding extra water.
Even in a lot of dairies in the pens, if it gets hot, you can add more water in the summer with just a stock tank. Whatever you want to do, that comes a way different game in the winter and it's not as possible, but they don't need as much water in the winters. I think it's something that we forget about, it's an easy, easy fix. It comes up a lot when we talk about receiving protocols for beef cattle in the feedlot. You can just add more water and it makes a huge difference. Especially for those cattle that come from out west and have never seen a Ritchie waterer in their life.
They've been drinking out of stock tanks and ponds and all sorts of things that do not look anything like that water. Being able to provide water in a little different setting and get them used to the new environment is perfect.
Bradley: What else is my mantra? Any guess?
Emily: Put a sensor in it?
Joe: Sensor.
Bradley: Put a sensor in it, yes. We can actually look at drinking behavior of our cows by we have a sensor in the rumen that we can see. On average, our cows will take six to seven big drinks per day. They go up there and they drink a lot of water. It's interesting to look at water intake and water drinking behavior based on sensor-type stuff. There may be something in the future where we can place waters at different spots or have treated water or you name it to try and increase water intake because the more water they drink, probably the more milk they're going to give.
Joe: Is it a temperature change? Is that how you know they drink? How do you know?
Bradley: Temperature change, yes. They have a temperature change. One cow I look at right now, she was averaged about 100 degrees. This is internal temperature. 102 and she went down to 87 when she drank. It drops quite significantly, probably 20 degrees when they're drinking water. Then it comes back up. Within a half hour or so, the temperature comes back up in the rumen. It's interesting to look at.
Joe: Yes, that is interesting. There's always a sensor.
Bradley: There's a sensor for everything.
Joe: If there is one, Bradley has it.
Emily: Bradley has it.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: That's what we learned when I tried to call him out whenever that was and he had that sensor too.
Bradley: It's probably the most essential nutrient, but I think it's one that is an afterthought on a lot of farms, whether it be clean waters or enough waters or cool water or you name it. I think we don't tend to think about that, but I think water is probably the most important. It's not just from cows too. There's a lot of trying to be more efficient with water use on farms outside of the cows. It's also a good thing because cows need water and we got to preserve it all.
Joe: They do use a lot of it. Milk is mostly water and they need a lot of it to grow. I still think we're pretty efficient in the dairy industry and the beef industry especially.
Bradley: I agree.
Joe: Always room for improvement. Bradley's doing some pretty creative things with water, especially hot water up at Morris.
Bradley: I don't even know what episode that is, but we're looking at different energy systems related to water.
Joe: That was a long time ago.
Bradley: A long time ago.
Joe: It might have been 30 episodes ago. All right, other things on water? Maybe we can come back to this. There is a study I was telling these guys when we took a little bit of a break, that there's a study that I want to look at that has more to do with beef, cattle, and water quality after severe weather and all these other things. We might be able to come back to water in the future, especially if we get emails or anything that tell us that people want to hear more.
Emily: Send us emails, please. I would say, just to wrap on the water episode, like we say for many things, it comes down to cleanliness, it comes down to management. Knowing what you're working with and making those different adjustments and fixes that you need to make because water's important and we need to stop forgetting about it. Justice for water. All right, am I wrapping the episode too, Joe?
Joe: You're in charge.
Emily: Oh my gosh. All right, well, who's going to spell the email address? Bradley, it's you.
Joe: There it is, she's in charge.
Emily: All right, so that's it. That's a wrap. If you have questions, comments, scathing rebuttal, you can email them to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Bradley: That's T-H-E M-O-O-R-S. Is that right?
Emily: No. [laughs] That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S R-O-O-M @umn.edu. You can also find us on Facebook at UMN Beef and UMN Dairy. Is that right, Joe?
Joe: Sure. [laughter] At UMN Beef and at UMN Dairy.
Emily: Yes, and we are also on YouTube, UMN Extension Beef and Dairy Teams and UMN Extension Farm Safety and Health. Be sure to check us out there. Am I forgetting anything, Joe?
Joe: No, you did it perfect.
Emily: Okay, cool.
Bradley: Do you need me to spell that email out again?
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Joe: No.
Emily: Brad's going to redeem himself.
Joe: He had been just taking a drink.
Bradley: T-H-E M-O-O-S R-O-O-M @umn.edu.
Emily: Oh, Bradley.
Joe: That's good.
Emily: All right, well, we will see you all next time. Bye.
Joe: Bye.
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