The Moos Room™

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Emily: Welcome to the Moos room OG 3 here today, and it is a very special day. Now, I am going to break our podcasting fourth wall. We are recording today on February 25th, and this is basically a national holiday.
Joe: Agreed.
Bradley: Agreed.
Emily: It is the birthday of one, Dr. Brad J. Heinz.
Joe: Happy birthday, sir.
Emily: I wish I had those little party things. [laughs]
Bradley: Exactly. Well, thank you.
Emily: Oh my gosh. It is the 15th anniversary of Bradley's 30th birthday. Happy birthday to you. So glad that you're spending your birthday with us.
Bradley: Yes. Well, I was chatting with my student workers that day. I am a bicentennial baby if you know what that is. We had this whole conversation for a long time about a bicentennial baby. You know what that is?
Emily: You were born on the bicentennial year?
Bradley: Bicentennial year of the US 1776 to 1976. Everybody born in 1976. Mour considered bicentennial babies.
Emily: A bicentennial baby. Otherwise, what? You're like a late Gen Xer, aren't you?
Bradley: Yes, I'm a Gen Xer. Yes. Late later Gen X.
Joe: Explains a few things.
Bradley: Call me whatever. Whatever you want.
Emily: [laughs] Can all be cool, awesome, millennials like Joseph.
Bradley: That's right.
Emily: Well, Bradley is another year older. I don't know if he's another year wiser. 30 pounds lighter. I had to throw that in there.
Bradley: That's right.
Emily: Yes. For Bradley's birthday bash, that's the title of this episode. We let Bradley pick what we were going to talk about. Do you think anybody's going to guess what it's about, guys?
Joe: I'm almost positive that everyone will know exactly what it's about.[laughs]
Emily: Everybody knows. What are we talking about, Bradley?
Bradley: We're putting a sensor in it.
Joe: Absolutely.
Emily: Put a sensor in it. Yes, sir.
Joe: Haven't talked about sensors exclusively for a long time. I think it might have been way back in the teens of episodes, so 40 episodes ago, somewhere in there. We've been neglecting it and today is the perfect day to talk about sensors since we're celebrating Dr. Bradley J. Heinz's birthday.
Emily: The king of sensors.
Joe: Yes, it's his time. Emily and I tried to come up with some questions to make this go. Since Bradley's the king of sensors, some of the things that we really want to know are where are we?
Emily: This is hard-hitting journalism.
Joe: Absolutely. Absolutely. The big question is where are we now? What is considered normal now in the dairy industry, for sensors, in terms of sensors that no one would've been thinking about 20 years ago?
Emily: Yes, I feel like a lot of sensors, their novelty has now kind of worn off and yes, they're a much more typical part of day-to-day.
Bradley: They have exploded in the last 5 to 10 years on dairy farms. Even when you think about it on, there's two farms that have sensors. One is regular dairy farm with a parlor that may have sensors for heat detection systems. Then you have robots. Whatever robot system you may have, they all have sensors. All the cows have sensors for measuring everything about a cow in a robotic system.
The robots have probably increased sensor usage by quite a lot. Even regular dairies, when we started with our sensor system in eight years ago in 2013, and there weren't as popular back then, and there were some farms that had them, but it wasn't a lot. Now it's kind of mainstream and a lot of farms have them for many different ways and things to do.
Joe: You said you started way back in 2013, which seems like a long time ago. Especially since 2020 was like 10 years long, but--
Emily: Even a part of me, I'm like, oh, 2013, that was just a couple of years ago.
Joe: Oh yes. That's definitely in my head.
Bradley: Wasn't that long ago, but--
Emily: That's the year I graduated college. My undergrad.
Joe: The goal today is not to make Bradley feel old, it's his birthday.[laughs]
Emily: But he's old.
Joe: [laughs] Okay. Back in 2013, you started with sensors. I've always wondered, Bradley, have you always been in love with sensors or was there like a danger period in there where you're like, I don't know about these? Maybe I'm not going to actually get into these.
Bradley: I have technology for a long time, so I always had to have the new computer and the new software and all that stuff. I have sensors and technology. Well, I shouldn't say actually, I had my first sensor here in 2011, and it was an old grazing monitor with this huge-- imagine a big power box on the side of a cow is really what it was. It was clumsy and it was hard to download data. I kind of gave up on it after a while because it was so difficult to use.
Emily: Quick aside, I'm picturing a cow carrying a boombox on its shoulder.
Joe: I like that. We'll have to make some work out here.
Bradley: That's about the size of it.
Emily: Oh my gosh. What was that meant to measure?
Bradley: Grazing behavior. Biting of grass, ruminations, things like that.
Emily: Activity or how far they travel?
Bradley: No, it didn't measure that. It just measured eating behavior. It was only in the mouth. Wasn't a pedometer or anything that measured walking or steps. Just eating behavior.
Emily: Interesting.
Bradley: Then it got grant money, of course.
Emily: Money grant.
Bradley: We'll say all the terms that Brad likes to talk about.
Emily: It's Brad's day.
Bradley: No, a very generous. A grant from USDA to do some organic dairy research. It really started my career really. In that, we put sensors in the system to be able to record activity and rumination of our cows on pasture. It really just come out. Well, I guess now it would be the Allflex SCR system or SCR back in the day, it was heat time, whatever you want to call it. That's the one we started with because it was the only one available in the US at the time. That was the first one on the market. That's why we started with it. We've increased our sensors over the years to many more, but that's why we started with that one in our system.
We like the rumination and the activity and we've used a lot of it for research studies and even in breeding our herd. When we first started, I was a little skeptical with it. We started it out with just a hundred cows in our 250. We didn't have it on everybody. [unintelligible 00:07:34] is trying to train workers to get them to use the sensor and trust it because we were so used to using heat patches for breeding. Now you say, "No, use the sensor." They all go, "I don't know. I don't trust this." It took us a while. It took us probably a couple of breeding seasons for the workers to actually start trusting the system fully. It's worked well and we still have that system today amongst many others, but still we utilize that same SCR system on. We have it on all of our cows now.
Joe: I feel like the next obvious step is, okay, like Emily said, the novelty of some of these systems is worn off, right? Is that something we're seeing in the industry? Sensors are steadily climbing their utilization and up and up and up and up, but now is the market gone completely the other direction? It's saturated and is it too overwhelming in the other direction now?
Bradley: Well, now there's so many sensors. Just eight years ago there was really just one in the US market. Now there's a lot of them. They're included in robotics and now they're included in milking parlor systems. It's helped increase the sensor. There's a lot of them. Are they really novel anymore? Not really. A lot of the sensors do the same thing based on what company or what sensor you choose from. They all do it a little bit differently. Some have rumination and feeding behavior, others don't, but for the most part, most people got into sensors for breeding purposes. That's why they really started with them.
Now they've advanced into a lot more. For the sensors to remain in the market, they got to be different. You just can't have the same old thing. Everybody's different now. Some are room and boluses, some do location, some there's lots of different feeding behaviors, you name it. They're all trying to distinguish themselves from each other based on certain aspects that their customers may want.
Emily: Okay. Can I ask my question, Joe.
Joe: It's a perfect time to ask it because-- [crosstalk]
Bradley: I am scared
Emily: We're just segueing into the other sensor technologies and I am really interested because the milk quality expert that I am in the inline sensors that you can put in milk lines. What say you on those, Bradley Jay?
Bradley: What say me on this? I really like them. Obviously, I want companies' researchers to work with them and to improve them. I think that's the next wave of figuring things out. We've started with activity and breeding purposes, but now it's looking at inline milk sensors, whether fat, protein, somatic cell, or conductivity is going to be a big one, if they can get those right.
There's always talk about progesterone, MUNs, NEFAs, all of that stuff, and milk to start getting a lot more data on cows. I think that's where the next generation is going. Is looking at milking systems because there's so many cows and we can collect so much data on those cows. That's what we'll talk about what we've done at [unintelligible 00:11:22] .
We started that probably a year ago. Maybe a little more than a year ago, we upgraded our milking equipment that now includes inline, fat, protein, lactose. It does conductivity, does the basics, but at some point, they may include progesterone and others. That is nice to look at, to see, we use the conductivity for trying to figure out mastitis in some of our cows. It's not perfect, but it gives a good idea.
Emily: Another tool for the toolbox.
Bradley: Another tool. That's right. That's right. You think about robotic systems. That's going to come in robots where farmer can walk into their office and look at the robot system and find out, they have conductivity in those already, but we need to get it to measure somatic cell count and pregnancy and then some of those other aspects, NEFA is at calving time to manage transition cows. There's so much information we can get from these, but sometimes it's too much information.
Joe: Yes, that's a big piece of this is that you get so much information. I'm particularly interested in inline sensors a lot because of what it means for veterinarians and preg checking. I've been trying to tell my colleagues for a long time that arming cows is going to go away. It's going to go away, or it's going to be vastly reduced from what we do now as veterinarians and everyone has to be ready for it.
If you look at how fast the sensor game happens, Bradley's talking about 10 years ago there was one system in the US and it maybe worked pretty good, but it wasn't optimized, especially for a grazing system. Then 10 years later we've got the market saturated and everything's working very, very well. I get really just a shout-out to veterinarians out there. You need to be ready to not palate cows all day and do something else.
Emily: That was a weird warning.
Joe: You just got to be ready for it.
Bradley: I agree, Joe. We've said before on this podcast that I do check some cows based on milk through DHIA and that's an advantage that they have. You can send those in when you have a DHI test. Just think when that moves from a DHI perspective, what is $6 or something for a milk pregnancy test now? I think somewhere in there. If you can move that to the farm and it's 10 cents a cow every single day, or virtually a penny a cow, it revolutionizes everything. Now you can be measuring pregnancy every single day on every single cow.
Joe: Yes, it's an amazing technology, like you said. If the industry turns their focus on that, it's going to happen very quickly. There's just too many people working on it and there's a lot of money at stake. I think it's going to happen pretty quick. I think it's a good thing. Any progress like that? Obviously, the dairy industry has had some tough years, and anyway, that can improve what's happening on the dairy, but like you said, there's so much data now you got to worry about how are you going to interpret all of that and really figure out how to deal with information overload really.
What are you guys thinking? You probably look at however many different systems every day and all the information there. How do you guys really pare it down to what you need?
Bradley: That's the question of the century. If we could figure out how to manage all this data and all these. One problem that I see right now is we have a lot of sensor systems because we're looking at them from a research perspective. Every sensor system has a computer. Even if you had a milking parlor with our milking system, Afimilk, and a different sensor system, you have to have two computers in your office because they don't talk to each other.
That's the problem I see is most farm. You come into our dairy barn office, we have five computers in there, and they're all running a separate sensor system. It can be overwhelming and which one are we checking today? On the regular farm, you have probably one system, but it's still a lot of information. How much time do you spend working through those if you are looking at rumination, and you have 10 cows pop up on the health list, do you go check them? How much time do you spend looking through all of the data?
For our milking system, we spend 15, 20 minutes just to make sure things are working well and if a cow needs attention, but we don't spend a lot of time because you could sit down and spend eight hours a day looking through all of the data that you get from these systems and still not figure out what you're trying to do with it.
We need to better centralize everything and figure out what's important for farmers from these systems and what should they look at as key measures. That's the big thing because the data will overwhelm you fast if you don't know what you're looking for. I still get overwhelmed looking at them.
Emily: Bradley Jay Hines, you are tenured and you have a PhD. How could you possibly get overwhelmed by all this?
Bradley: I am overwhelmed by looking at this data sometimes. I just--
Emily: Is it because you're old?
Bradley: Probably, it's my birthday, so yes, probably.
Joe: I think I've seen that a lot, even with one system. Farmers they'll get fed up with how much data is there and it's overwhelming and I think there's a tendency to return to what you know, which is to just go look at the cows and walk through them yourselves. I think there's a lot of value in that. I really do. Is there a danger, Bradley, in leaning on this technology too much or is there something that we can't replace with a sensor that you really need to be doing?
Bradley: You still can't replace just going out and look at the cows, and do you need an expensive sensor system to do that? I think it's a management tool. We're just throwing out the words left and right here today, it's a management tool and I think it helps distinguish those cows. Cows or heifers that may get sick or you need to check on. We've done that. I've done that myself. A cow shows up on the list and you go out and look and it's like, "Yes, she looks fine." It's another tool to help you go look at them.
Emily: I will say, I think all three of us are cow people I would say. For me, the sensors are great, but you do still need to be making an effort to do that observation because you just cannot replace what your eyes will tell you.
Bradley: That's right. Even with calves, we have some sensors on calves and you have-
Emily: Especially with calves, I feel like--
Bradley: Right, an automatic calf feeder. A lot of people think if you get an auto feeder you just walk away and the calves will do their thing and you just look at the computer and that's the wrong thing.
Emily: You should be checking the calves every day.
Bradley: Yes. Checking cows, checking calves. Since these systems just don't replace that. I think they save someone on labor. We have a different system that has solar-powered routers that can beam data back from a mile and a half away. On the summertime when we have heifers way out on pasture and we're breeding heifers, it really saves on time for our workers because now they can look at the computer and these four heifers need to be bred today and they can bring the semen down and bring what they need to.
Otherwise, before they'd have to run two miles away, check to see who's in heat, if there's any in heat, then they run back to the barn and go, "Okay, this is what we need." They run back over there again. By all the running around--
Emily: It's a whole thing.
Bradley: -it's an hour and wasted time. Particular sensor for our heifers has probably saved an hour a day at least and just being able to focus on who needs to be bred or whatever. Obviously, you could see other things, but it gives you a better idea of what's going to happen. Instead of just running haphazardly all over the place, trying to breed a bunch of heifers.
Joe: The biggest piece of it for me is efficiency. I think it does create more efficient labor and I really love a lot of these sensors because if you're paying attention to the sensors and you're combining it with what you see and you're observing yourself out in the barn, you can learn a ton, in my opinion. It makes you a better observer of cow behavior and all these other things because you start to connect the dots and what the sensor's telling you and what you're seeing in person. Then you can start to pick things up, without the computer or maybe that the computer didn't pick up, and that's really where I think some of this value is. I think it can help you become a better dairyman.
Emily: All right. Are you ready for this, Bradley? I want to know Dr. Bradley J. Hines, what is on his wishlist for sensors as far as where you'd like to see them going? What's to you, the perfect sensor, what would it be like, what modality would it take, and then what data would it record?
Bradley: Oh, boy, that's a good one.
Emily: He's thinking both.
Bradley: Well, I think you got different sensors for different animal groups. You got heifers and cows are separate. They won't do the same thing, but you might well have a sensor that's going to include it all. I want one that's going to measure activity for fertility, one that's going to measure eating behavior or health. I want some sort of sensor that's going to be able to detect body temperature, so I can look at that for cows. I want to detect eating behavior, how a cow eats, how many bites they're taking during the day, when they drink water. I also want to know the location of the animal. Can I look on my computer and figure out where cow number one is? I want to know exactly where she is right now. Right on my smartphone. I want one that's going to be able to detect health problems relatively 24 hours before something happens in a cow.
That's what or after. If you think about it from the cows, yes, I want to measure milk and fat and proteins, somatic cell count, fertility status, health status, all kinds of measures. I'm not talking about just BHBAs and milk pregnancy. I want to measure fatty acids on that milk, every single milking on the cow. I want to measure 43 fatty acids on that milk every time a cow comes through the parlor and so I know exactly what is happening in that cow from a nutritional standpoint. I want to know exactly what the cow's eating every day, how much she's eating every single day, and be able to tell that from a sensor.
Emily: Do you like an ear tag? Do you like bracelets? Do you like a bolus?
Bradley: Well, right now, I think an ear tag or some sort of internal one is preferred. Sometimes, we have pedometers on our cows now, and they take a little bit of management to understand the mud and they get caked with six inches of mud on them and so it takes maintenance for all stuff. Wherever you place the sensor, I want it to be low maintenance or no maintenance. Figure out where you want to put it so I don't have to maintain it. I can look at a computer and tell me whether it's working. That's my other key thing. I want to be able to look at the computer and tell me if that sensor's working or not, because sometimes with all of these systems, it is not easy to figure out if, a, whether a cow has a sensor on or not, and if she has one on, is it actually working correctly without trying to page through a whole bunch of stuff to figure that out. Can be a challenge.
Emily: If you have any tech startups listening, email us at the Moos room. That's T-H-E M-0-0-S R-O-O-M@umn.
Joe: Yes, I have the list. I tried to write it down as probably--
Emily: Oh, nice.
Joe: We need activity for breeding, feeding behavior, body temp, water consumption, their actual real-time location, potentially environmental conditions around the cow, health issues and really focusing on prevention of those, everything to do with milk quality. Also using that to predict mastitis, all 43 fatty acids every milking, exactly how much they're eating, how many bites they're taking, ruminations, and then all of that wrapped into a low or no maintenance sensor. That's not too bad.
Emily: I think it's doable.
Bradley: All that. I want it to be less than $100 per cow or less than $50 per cow.
Joe: Okay.
Emily: Brad wants it for free.
Joe: Complete list. Complete list. Brad will help you develop it if you give it to him for free.
Emily: Yes.
Bradley: That's right.
Emily: You have to name it after him.
Joe: Yes. It has to be not just the--
Emily: The Hines Monitor.
Joe: No, it can't be just the Hines Monitor. It has to be the Dr. Bradley J Hines monitor.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: Okay. Well, good deal.
Emily: We'll call it the tenured professor.
Joe: Oh, that is a great name.
Bradley: That's right. Exactly.
Emily: [laughs]
Joe: Awesome. Okay.
Bradley: Low maintenance. Does lots of stuff.
Joe: I might cut that out, so, no, sorry.
Emily: Yes. Oh, just like Bradley himself.
Joe: Yes. Low maintenance. Does everything.
Emily: Does everything.
Joe: Perfect. Okay. I think that we're going to wrap it there. We've got a little bit more that you know about Bradley now and what Bradley wants to see happening in the future. If you have comments about this, any other thing that Bradley left off his list, or if you just want to say Happy Birthday to Bradley, email us.
Emily: At the Moos room@umn.edu. That's T-H-E M-O-O-S R-O-O-M@umn.edu. No, Joe, I don't need you anymore. I will continue closing this episode. You can find us on Facebook at UMN Dairy and at UMN Beef. You can find us on Twitter at UMN Moos room and at UMN Farm Safety. You can also find this on YouTube, University of Minnesota, [laughs] Extension, farm Safety and Health, and UMN Extension Beef and Dairy, or something like that I think.
Joe: That was quite impressive. I will not lie. Thank you, everybody.
Emily: Maybe I should take over doing this.
Joe: That's fine. Yes. Thank you for listening everybody.
Bradley: As a reminder to everybody on my birthday Bash, Jersey and Hereford are number one yet. Thank you.
Joe: That's true. I will--
Emily: I will allow it in this episode only for Bradley's birthday Bash, but for real, Bradley, happy birthday.
Joe: Yes, happy birthday.
Emily: We love you. We are so thrilled that we got spend your birthday with you.
Joe: Absolutely.
Bradley: Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Joe: All right. Thank you ever for listening. We will catch you next week.
[singing]
Happy, happy birthday to you. Happy day, to you, happy birthday Bradley J. Hines. happy birthday to you. [laughing]
Joe: Wow. That was so patchy and distorted from all of us doing it at this.
[00:27:43] [END OF AUDIO]

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