The Moos Room™

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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. Unfortunately, Bradley Heins cannot be with us yet again. Something to do with jury duty, trying to be a good citizen, all of that.
Emily: Stupid.
Joe: I know.
Emily: No, just kidding. We really encourage good citizenship and civic engagement here at The Moos Room.
Joe: Please do that. Bradley is a great example. Following in his footsteps. That means you're stuck with no guests, just the gruesome twosome. It hasn't happened for a while, don't think.
Emily: No.
Joe: A while ago. I think it was a blizzard, and it's sunny now, so it's been a while.
Emily: If memory serves, the last gruesome twosome episode was quite successful.
Joe: Oh, yes. People loved it, and mostly because you talked a lot. That's probably what makes most of the time here.
Emily: You just shut up.
Joe: That's about right.
Emily: I think this will be a fun podcast today because I feel like we're pretty evenly matched on this one, which doesn't happen often. I think that's what makes the podcast so fun.
Joe: I know. I'm always out of class.
Emily: You're a doctor. Bradley's a doctor.
Joe: Dr. Bradley J. Heins.
Emily: Anyways, titles aside, last time we did an episode together was winter, and now it is spring. You know what that means?
Joe: It's spring-cleaning time.
Emily: Yes. Do you do spring cleaning, Joe?
Joe: There's the basics, like around the yard, I think of more spring-cleaning, like making sure you get all the leaves that you were too lazy to rake in the fall. All those things. That's more of what I think of. I also love the fish, so spring cleaning to me means getting the boat ready, making sure the boat's ready to go. That stuff, that's what I think of when I think of spring cleaning. On the farm, spring is a busy time of year. We talked about that in our safety episode. There's a lot going on, a lot of moving pieces, but it does feel good to get some things clean that we haven't been thinking about for a while, especially when you can be outside and spray things down and not freeze.
Emily: I feel like just having a tidier space makes for a better work environment, as silly as it sounds. Really, I also see it as part of that cleanliness piece and that management piece that we always talk about every episode. There's a reason we talk about it, because it all works together in the system. I think that making cleanliness a priority and making the environment in which you're working orderly helps save sanity, definitely can help save time. I didn't have a third one. I really thought I would, but I got nothing.
Joe: The rule of three failed you. [chuckles]
Emily: I know.
Joe: It's okay, because I think the big thing that today we want to focus on is this one thing because spring cleaning is a huge thing, huge something you should be doing. People are getting ready to plant. When you have that day, when you're looking for something to do, you're ready to plant, but it's not time yet, you want to keep yourself from getting in trouble, getting the tractor stuck because the field is not quite ready, all of that. Really, what we want to see is to talk about spring cleaning the vet cabinet. All the medications on the farm, vaccines, everything. We all know-
Emily: You all know you have them. Guessing there's a good amount of people listening right now that are thinking, "It's not all just in one cabinet." [chuckles] "We have this here and that's over there, and those are in that cabinet."
Joe: Some of that's good, and some of that's not so good. Also, there's a lot of things to think about. There's a lot of stuff that's around that probably shouldn't be anymore. Quick story time before we get going on the rest of the topic. The big thing for me is the milk inspector is going to show up at some point. Sometimes you get a warning from the neighbor that they're in the area or whatever. You have an idea, but I've been on farm when the milk inspector shows up. One of my favorite times is I was sitting on the tailgate, we were talking about something with one of the owners there, milk inspector pulls in the driveway, and they say, "Oh, shoot," and they take off running for the milkhouse.
That's probably not the reaction you want to have when the milk inspector shows up. You want to be ahead of the game and be ready to go before the milk inspector shows up.
Emily: Absolutely. The milk inspector probably sees you sprinting full board into the milkhouse. That may not bode well for the people involved. I am somebody too that it's like, you shouldn't have to have that moment. I've worked with plenty of farms that they say, 'We want to be inspection ready at all times. Yes, things get a little messy, whatever. Generally speaking, things are where they need to be. Things are happening the way they're supposed to be. Things are clean, all of that."
Joe: Everyone knows that spring is full of mud, and your farm is going to have days where no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, it's just not going to look very good just because of this time of year. That's fine, but you do have control a lot of what's in the vent cabinet or cabinets or fridge and what should be there, what should have gotten out of there years ago sometimes, and how things are stored and how things are working. That's something you do have control of.
Especially, we get some days where it's raining, and you can't do much outside. This is a perfect activity for some of those days to try to get into those cabinets, get into the fridge, clean everything out, figure out what's in there that shouldn't be, and reorganize so that you're not sprinting to the milk house when the milk inspector shows up.
Emily: I didn't think that we could hype up cleaning the vet cabinet that much, but I feel like we've done that effectively. Let's get in. Gruesome-twosome. Let's get into the brass tags of what are the major categories, perhaps, that we need to be aware of when we're cleaning out that cabinet or the various areas on the farm where we keep that supplies.
Joe: There's a bunch of big categories, but you've got vaccines. Then basically I think of vaccines and then not-vaccines. Those are the two things I think of. We can talk about those separately. The big thing is looking for expiration dates. If you're getting close and short-dated on some of those, talking to the manufacturer, especially if you've been with them a long time, you have a good relationship, seeing if you can get that replaced, and they can move it in some other way. Working with your veterinarian to do some of the same thing if you can. Then looking and seeing, if it is out of date, you really shouldn't be using it. It's no longer effective at the given dose, usually once we get past the date. That's important.
The vaccines, the first thing to do is to make sure that everything's in date, or if it's short-dated, try to figure out how you can move it in a different way. That's really most of vaccines. I think the only other thing I think about with vaccines is storage and how they're stored and what fridge they're in. This is something I think we've even talked about on this podcast before. I've heard Emily say it too, check your fridge to make sure it's working. That fridge usually started its life somewhere else, right?
Emily: Yes. The fridge is usually on its third or fourth shot at life, and so that's really important. That's super simple. Just grab a thermometer, put it in there, and see if it's at the right temperature, if it's where it needs to be for that storage. Just keep an eye on it because I've heard the stories where people, their barn fridge goes out, and they didn't know until it was too late. They had frozen colostrum in the freezer, and they had vaccines and other things in there.
Joe: I just get really frustrated because if it wasn't good enough to store food anymore, why is it good enough to store thousands of dollars worth of product? Just be really careful when you take it out of the house, or it's going somewhere. Make sure it's working. Even most shops on the farm are going to have some temperature gun. That's easy enough. Point it at something in the fridge that's been in there for a while and check the different spots in the fridge. They will have cold spots, hot spots, all those different things, and make sure that you're okay storing your vaccines in there. I think that's all there really is to talk about vaccines for right now. We'll get back into them in equipment when we talk about that.
Emily: One other thing I would ask, though, or-- not really ask, I know this, but what about bottles that are damaged or look like they have a crack in them or the rubber stopper at the top is all icky, or you can't read the label? What do you do with those?
Joe: It depends on why they're like that, too. If it's your fault, it's your fault. It's still not worth it to try to use something that's potentially contaminated or damaged, or you can't read the expiration really well because that's something that you're counting on as insurance to protect your animals if they're exposed to something. If you give that to them, not knowing if it's going to work, to me, you might as squirt it on the ground. Just get rid of them.
If it wasn't your fault, say something right away. If it comes that way, if it's damaged, people will definitely work with you to figure that out, whether it's your veterinarian or whoever drop-shipped it. All those people will figure out how to make it right. Definitely just get rid of them if you can't read the label or if they're compromised.
Emily: Correct. All right. Vaccines done. Moving on.
Joe: Moving on.
Emily: The second category was not-vaccines.
Joe: Not-vaccines. Very specific, right?
Emily: Yes.
Joe: Figured it out. The big thing is that when the milk inspector does show up, they're looking for something pretty specific on this category of not-vaccines. That's that all your lactating drugs and your non-lactating drugs are stored very clearly and separately. Now, it doesn't necessarily need-- they can be in the same cabinet, they just need to be labeled appropriately on different shelves, and it has to be very clear to whoever's reaching into that cabinet what's lactating and what's not lactating.
Same with the fridge. I like to label drawers or label shelves and then have everything that's stored in the fridge on different levels. It's very clear what's for non-lactating animals and what's for lactating animals. That brings in the calves too. Anything we use for calves, a lot of the antibiotics that we're going to be using are not approved for lactating dairy cattle. The easiest way is to store them wherever your calves are because that makes it very easy. If you can't do that, there needs to be a defined area to store those things. That's going to make the milk inspector much more comfortable with what you're doing.
That's the big one that the milk inspector is going to get on your case about. It's also good practices in general, so you don't end up grabbing the wrong thing by accident and then having a hot tank, which no one wants to buy a tank, right?
Emily: No.
Joe: What are some of the things that you've seen, Emily, when you're talking not-vaccines, when it comes to storage and how long things are around and how long they should be around and those things?
Emily: I feel like we've leaned a little more dairy so far in this episode. I'm going to flip over to the beef side, but this is also applicable to dairy, and that's calving supplies. Ear tags, chains if you need them. All those things. Are they stored together so they're easy to grab when you need them? Are they clean, or after last calving season, did you just toss them in the office thinking, "I'll clean them later," and now they've sat for a year and are gross? That's one of the things I think about. Just all those pieces of equipment you use.
Even beyond that, moving on when you're dehorning, anything you're using for deworming, whatever. Your pour-ons and your different things that you have, how are those stored? Again, are they properly labeled? Are they clean? Are they ready to go? I see a lot of disorganization. To me, part of cleaning is not just making sure it's clean, but making sure it's organized.
Joe: I think it's a vicious cycle too, especially when we talk about beef calving. I know one of our colleagues, Troy Salzer, his recommendation for getting your calving kit ready is to have everything organized in one spot, clean, ready to go a whole month before you think you're going to need it. That's the perfect recommendation in my mind because calves are always coming earlier than you think. If it starts and you get going on it and you get busy, you're never going to get that stuff together once everything's started and rolling. It's really difficult to do that. Really having it all together way ahead of time is going to save you a lot of time as you work through, especially if there is a problem. You just know I can grab my bucket, or my two buckets and I've got everything.
Emily: Calving kit. I like that. What would that be? Is it Murphy's Law that if it's ready, you won't need it, and if it's not ready, you'll wish you had it?
Joe: I don't know if that's Murphy's-
Emily: I don't know what Murphy's Law is. I'm going to google it.
Joe: I think Murphy's is, if something bad can happen, it will happen.
Emily: Murphy's Law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whatever. We can cut that out, Joe being right.
Joe: [laughs] Just cut that out. That's fine. I don't need to be right.
Emily: What I was saying was I think having that calving kit ready is smart because it's possible that you'll get it ready a month in advance and not need it. I can guarantee, if you don't get it ready, you will need it.
Joe: Exactly. I don't know what to call that law. It's probably-
Emily: It's just a law of the universe, perhaps.
Joe: The farmer's law, maybe, we'll call. If you get it ready and you have it with you, you won't need it. That's really what it comes down to in the spring, getting all the stuff ready and ready to go. As we work into warm weather, there's all these things that we want to do and get done and hopefully, you can spend some time getting some of this stuff straight because it will help you the rest of the year.
With antibiotics, the big thing that I see, and I'm always conflicted on this, and we might cut this out because I don't know if I want to say it out loud, but-
Emily: Ooh, juicy.
Joe: -a lot of these bottles, when you read the bottle, when you read the label of an antibiotic, it says, "Once the seal is broken, you should use it within 28 days." On some of these products, that can be really hard to do, especially if you don't have too many cattle around. I'm going to leave it there. Maybe consult with the manufacturer, maybe consult with your veterinarian, decide how you should store things to maybe avoid having to throw out drugs after 28 days. I think that's probably pretty rare for people to do after they break the seal on a bottle, to actually throw it away at 28 days if it's still half full, especially considering how expensive some of these antibiotics are.
Think about, okay, what we're trying to avoid is anything growing or being contaminated in these bottles. You'd think nothing can grow in an antibiotic, but that's not true. Depending on the spectrum of that antibiotic, what it does. We've cultured bacteria from iodine dips. There's certain bacteria can grow anywhere, so to slow bacteria, usually after I open a bottle, maybe it goes in the fridge just to slow everything down. Especially with things like EXCEDE. If you're not going through it very often, just toss it in the fridge, slow everything down.
Emily: Would you recommend marking on the bottle what date you opened it?
Joe: Absolutely. Have to admit, not super great about that when I was in practice, but when I did remember, it was super helpful. It was very helpful.
Emily: I bet it was.
Joe: To know when I already had the Sharpie out to do something, okay, mark down that I actually opened this bottle on this date. It gives me an idea. I was going through drugs pretty quick, so it wasn't a huge deal. If you don't have that many cows and you have just a few antibiotics on hand, start thinking about doing that. Then if you're in any doubt about whether or not the antibiotic is okay, depending on the antibiotic, just get another one. Like penicillin is cheap. It's very cheap.
Emily: When in doubt, throw it out.
Joe: Exactly. It's not worth it. You can see some horrible reactions from these animals from either contaminated vaccines or other contaminated products. You really don't want to have that happen. Let's talk more about equipment. I know we probably hammer on this through BQA and other things at Extension, but one of the things that we see not get cleaned very often is syringes, repeatable syringes, or reusable syringes. They're very convenient, and they're very nice to have around, but they do need to be cleaned just like any other piece of equipment, just so that they continue to work correctly and you don't have buildup and cross-contamination of whatever you're using them for.
I've seen some dirty syringes that I don't know what's going on inside the-- Even the glass, it's growing all sorts of gross things.
Emily: Oh gosh.
Joe: That's not okay.
Emily: Most syringes I've seen are good. I've seen some bad needles, like bent needles, rusty needles.
Joe: Agreed.
Emily: [laughs] I don't know what else to say. Don't do that.
Joe: Don't do that, please. Please don't store-- don't put the bottle back in the fridge with the needle in the bottle.
Emily: Please don't do that.
Joe: That's just a way to contaminate that bottle, for sure.
Emily: It's also a safety hazard to other people being in that fridge.
Joe: Again, relationship with your veterinarian, relationship with your distributor. If the top is wearing out for whatever reason, get a new top. Absolutely. If they make new tops for bottles, we can figure that out. All those things, but don't think you need to leave a needle in there for any reason. That's not a good idea. Let's talk about syringes. You want to clean them probably pretty quickly. It'll make your life easier when you do clean them. The big piece of that whole thing with repeatable syringes is not to use soaps or disinfectants or even alcohol. That can really affect, especially the vaccines, the modified live vaccines when you're giving them.
I know some people take it very seriously and they probably should to even separate their syringes into modified lives and they're killed and never use them for the other one.
Emily: You stole my question, Joe.
Joe: I'm sorry. I did do some of that in practice, but I also cleaned my syringes a lot, pretty much after every shoot job. I had certain syringes that stayed killed. I had a dedicated syringe for my Bangs vaccine because that's just a much different vaccine. Then my modified lives, I tried not to do anything with those except modified live vaccines. They make all sorts of cool stuff to be able to do that. They make little colored knobs on the end of the syringes and ways to mark them. The other way that I used to do it was with fingernail polish. I can mark my syringes, and that stuff is durable. It stays on for quite a while.
Emily: Growing up on our farm, we didn't have a very big herd, so we didn't have mass quantities of syringes around, but we would mark them with duct tape, like, "Oh, the ones that have duct tape are modified lives." They don't-
Joe: It doesn't have to be complicated.
Emily: I think keeping them separated and labeled is a good idea, especially if you have a lot of other people using those equipment. Farm employees or other family members that help. Even if you may explain the system 17 times, they just don't quite grasp it. We might need to cut that out. That was sassy. Anyways, I think that especially if you do have a lot of people who are accessing and using that equipment, it's best to keep them separated and well-labeled just to avoid any risk of cross-contamination. Better safe than, sorry.
Joe: Part of that also is, just a general concept that I think is good management, is thinking about if you weren't the one doing it, could someone figure it out? That's really important because hopefully, at some point, you're taking care of yourself and you're going to take a vacation. Someone else is going to have to do it. I know farmers' vacation is just a foreign concept to a lot of people, but hopefully, people are figuring out how to work that out with neighbors and family to make that happen and rotate in a way that you can actually get off the farm sometimes.
You have employees, especially some of our bigger operations, having everything so that no one would have to be there to explain it, especially using a lot of pictures so that you don't have a language barrier at all. That can be super helpful.
Emily: It's always worth taking that extra time to get that organization in place, and I like how you said that, Joe. Could somebody else come in and know what to do?
Joe: One last thing before we get out of here after this short little spring cleaning episode, your labels on your products. Very important. That's another thing that the milk inspector will get on your case for if it's not right. It's something that your veterinarian should be helping you with for any prescription products, but you also need to be helping the veterinarian out to let them know if there's something missing from a label.
There's a lot of products and there's a lot of labels to edit to get all that straight. What you're looking for is that really the name and address of your vet needs to be on all your prescription labels. The directions for use, your withhold times, meat and milk, and then any cautionary statements. If you got Micotil around, there needs to be a statement about how dangerous it is, that kind of stuff. Then the active ingredient of the drug. All that has to be on the label in some way, especially if it's prescription.
That applies to anything that's extra-label as well. If you're using penicillin at any dose other than 1ml per a hundred pounds, that's prescription, so that needs to also have a label. Then ideally you would also label that with the animal you're treating. If you're going to use the whole bottle on that animal, that's also the open date. Those things are just practical. Check your labels. When they come in, make sure all that's on there, then you can't get in trouble. If it is wrong, tell your vet, and they should be able to fix it.
Emily: One final thing I will add before we wrap this episode, and Joe, I'm going to say you're not allowed to interject because if you do, that will add at least 10 minutes to the episode. What I would say is this is also the perfect time to check out your vet log. If you don't have a vet log, start one. That can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, but something that is just where you track all the care that you provide animals. Calving date, if they were sick, what they were treated with, dates of all of that. Just keeping everything organized and written down and then having that handy, especially near where you keep your syringes or vaccines or different things since you're going to be in that area anyways, so you can just grab the book, mark it down quick, move on.
Joe: As promised, I will not elaborate too much. It's a good idea. You should do it.
Emily: Too much.
Joe: [chuckles] Too much. You should do it. Part of the reason is it protects you from if there is a meat or milk withhold issue, and something's hot, if you have adequate records and you have a history of having records, and you can show that you did the right thing, there may or may not be some leniency afforded to you. That's important. It also, records give you data, and they tell you what's working and what's not. When something's going wrong or it's not working and it's not written down, there's no history to look back at and see what could be done better. I'll quit there.
Emily: I'll say one final thing, poor man. Joe, correct me if I'm wrong. Your vet probably appreciates when you keep track of all of these things as well, and it makes their job easier and makes them better equipped to help you make different veterinary management decisions.
Joe: Hundred percent. I have nothing to add to that.
Emily: Huh, perfect. We should probably wrap it there, huh?
Joe: I think so. There's not a better spot to do it. We'll wrap it there. Comments, questions, scathing rebuttals, they go to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's t-h-e-m-o-o-s-r-o-o-m@umn.edu.
Joe: Check out our website, extension.umn.edu. We're on Facebook at UMNBeef, at UMNDairy. We're on Twitter @UMNMoosRoom and @UMNFarmSafety. We're on YouTube. We're putting up new YouTube videos. I'm catching up on editing from all the winter videos. We're putting up videos on UMN Beef and Dairy Team and UMN Extension, Farm, Safety, & Health. Got it.
Emily: Woo.
Joe: No more plugs. That's it. Thank you for listening, everybody.
Emily: Bye.
Joe: Bye. Gruesome twosome.
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