The Moos Room™

[music]
[cow mooing]
Emily: Welcome everybody to The Moos Room, OG3 here, and we have a guest today. We are joined by Anthony Hanson one of our colleagues in Extension. Hi Anthony.
Anthony: Hi there, Emily. Good to be on here.
Emily: We're happy to have you. Maybe just to give people a little teaser of what you do so they can get an idea of what we're going to talk about today. Tell us what your position is within Extension and what you focus on.
Anthony: Sure. I work in integrated pest management. I'm an Extension educator for that. That's basically just the fancy term for how we use all the tools we have for pest control. Now I work in field crops with the university. I actually don't formally get into livestock too much, but that's my day job. Basically, the rest of my time is spent still on my family's farm where we have about 200 head of beef cattle. It's a cow-calf operation. That's my mix of the days is crops during the day and then cows the rest of the time pretty much.
Emily: We always appreciate somebody who moonlights as a farmer and we're really excited to have you on today. We're going to be getting a little bit more into lice in this episode and some of your management options with that. Before we get too far into it, Anthony, I don't think you were pre-warned about this, but we do have two questions that we ask every guest. I do not trust Joe or Brad to ask these questions unbiasedly, so I will ask them. Your first question is, what is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Anthony: Oh, for dairy? Well, I might go with Jersey actually.
Bradley: The correct answer.
Joe: That is wonderful to hear. Oh my goodness.
Emily: Wow.
Joe: You are one of my favorite guests already.
Anthony: I don't have too much against Holsteins, but I just like the jerseys a little better, that's all.
Emily: I know that you mentioned in a previous generation your family dairy farmed. Did they milk Jerseys or Holsteins or?
Anthony: It was all Holsteins. I've heard a little grip thing about the Holsteins. I might have a little bias just from hearing that, but otherwise, I'm pretty unbiased with the dairy. It's all pretty even for me, but just the Jerseys stick out just a little bit. I like those.
Emily: All right, Joe, do you want to give us the updated totals?
Joe: Let's give the updated totals. Unfortunately, Holsteins are still way out in front at 15. Anthony's vote put Jerseys at 10, so we're catching up. Brown Swiss at 5, Montb�liard at 3. Dutch Belted at 2. Normande at 2, and one Guernsey name Taffy at 1.
Emily: One Guernsey named Taffy. How could we forget Taffy of course? Way to go Jerseys are in the double digits now, so that's an exciting step forward for them. The second question, Anthony, you have maybe guessed and I'm sure you have your answer ready. What is your favorite breed of beef cattle?
Anthony: Now, this one I'm a little more biased on. Specifically, Red Angus. It has to be Red.
Bradley: Red Angus.
Emily: Okay. I think that's our second Red Angus-specific answer. Do you have all Red Angus is that what you and your family raise?
Anthony: Yes. Well, it's a mix but everything is mostly Red Angus. Over the years we've incorporated a bunch of other breeds in there but Red Angus is at least what our bowls are. It's usually half heard Red Angus and then we've gone through Simmental, Gelbvieh, South Devon, and a few others in the mix. It's a bit of everything but it's always back to the Red Angus for me so I got to go with that one.
Emily: With that additional Red Angus vote, what are our totals, Joe?
Joe: Black Angus at 8, Hereford at 8, Black Blady at 4, Belted Galloway at 2, Scottish Highlander at 2, Red Angus at 2, and then all with one, Stabiliser, Gelbvieh, Brahman, Chianina, Charolais, Simmental, Elora, Jersey, Normande, and Shorthorn. I'm losing my voice.
Emily: [chuckles] I am still shocked that we only have one for Charolais. I don't know, that just seems strange to me.
Joe: That's totally fine with me.
Emily: I think it's time to dive in. Like I said, we're going to really be talking about lice today and managing lice. I think we can just get some of the basics about lice out of the way first. Anthony, I'm going to let you take it away, but I am going to weave in a question here. I remember from my many, many years in dairy quiz bowl growing up in 4H there was always a question, what are the two types of lice biting and sucking? If you can maybe clarify those two differences if one's more common than the other, what we need to look for with those two different types, or if that's all just [unintelligible 00:04:57] please enlighten us.
Anthony: That's correct. There are those two types primarily that you're going to be looking at. Depending on what you need your information for, you might not care as much about whether something is biting versus sucking. I'm saying this as an entomologist, we'd like all of our insects, even lice a little bit, they can be interesting. It's really just what information do you need for your management.
With biting lice, those ones, or maybe you might not think about them as much, but they're the ones that are basically chewing on skin or hair. They're not necessarily doing what you think about with the sucking lice who are actually sucking blood instead. That's the differences there, is that you can have some that are just basically chewing on the skin, others are going straight for the blood. That can matter a bit too about what you're doing for control to potentially with say different insecticides or systemic, especially that there may be some differences in how effective some of those are. Overall, that's just going back to looking at your control methods and what's recommended for them.
Overall, those species have similar life cycles. That's maybe what's more important to think about is the life cycle of lice. You may not really think about that too much, but that can get pretty important. Like other insects, have this cycle where they start off as adults, they're laying their eggs and that's very different life stage than an adult. They can have a little bit more protection as an egg, but then once they hatch they're basically the like miniature adult again. It's not too much difference is there?
That definitely can matter in terms of development, what you might be seeing for basically how quickly a population is spreading on a cow and how high it's getting. If you have a lot of adults, it's a lot more eggs being laid and about a delay of let's say maybe about 10 to 14 days for those eggs to hatch, you have another generation coming out. It's a quick generation time for some of these insects especially. That's what it gets into where many of our pests, whether I'm talking about the crop side of it over on the cattle today, it's that quick generation time that really matters for both how much of a problem they can be and what you can do about it.
Joe: That life cycle is something that we talk about, especially when we're talking about treatment or control in any way because a lot of these products, if you read the label, especially in some of the topical products that are specific for lice, you have to come back and treat again because they aren't taking care of that egg. I think about that being probably the most important distinguishing thing for me is that you need to know that that lifecycle and that egg is much more resilient than the adult. Read the label first of all like you should on any insecticide for any use.
I think that that covers stays the same from a farm safety standpoint too with Emily's work and on the crop side as well. Read the label first and then remember that there is a reason that you have to come back and treat and it's because that egg is pretty resilient. A question I had for you Anthony, is with the biting lice and the sucking lice, the difference between the two will both cause irritation enough for cattle to rub and lose hair and do that kind of thing, be irritated by it.
Anthony: That might be also a question, I don't know if you know as much Joe about reactions to different things, but when it comes to the bloodsuckers especially, that's where there's basically more opportunity for reaction in the body to occur. At least from what I've been able to read up on, you might see something that looks actually more like bruising on the cattle if you get high enough densities on them. Whereas just the biting ones you may not see as much potentially, but that's still something that can be a skin irritant. That's just my best guess right now.
I honestly don't go looking at our own cattle to figure out, "Okay, do I have biting or sucking lights on here?" I'm not getting a microscope out there myself. Back in my grad school days, I spent pretty much my summers counting soybean aphids and I still do. I had nightmares about that. You'd be sleeping and you'd start dreaming about something and you'd think, "Wait a minute, I'm seeing green, I'm seeing soybean aphids. I don't want to do the same thing with the lice." I'll admit I am not too keen to go start counting lice too much there.
Joe: Well, I think your earlier point is perfect. It doesn't really matter. It really doesn't. When you're talking about control management of the two, it really doesn't matter. You either have lice or you don't. The quick generation time is key and numbers can build fast and you should see clinical signs with your cattle if you're watching them pretty closely.
Emily: Now, I am going to have nightmares about soybean aphids. Thank you, Anthony.
Bradley: The question about weather. How does weather affect lice populations? If I think about the cattle that we have here in Morris, we see probably more prevalence of it in the wintertime than any other time and when they're more confined or not out in open pasture. Is that something that we need to think about the more confined winter-type stuff or can we find it in all seasons of the year?
Anthony: There's a good trade-off with the weather question there. Something we see with insects in general is they're essentially cold-blooded. That means whatever the environment's temperature is, that's what their temperature's roughly going to be. That's a bit of a mix when you think about something that's living on an animal, they are basically using the heat of the animal. Then there is some exposure to the cold as well when we get into, say winter right now.
It depends what the actual temperature is, right where those lice are living. In general, the warmer the temperatures, the quicker the generation time. If you have ideal temperatures for an insect, they can go through their generations much more quickly. If it's just barely to the point, they can just squeeze out a generation every once in a while you could have slow population growth and you may not see an issue at that point.
We try to deal with that on the crop end of things a lot where if it's just a cool growing season, you may not see as much for insect issues. That part of the picture can happen over on livestock, but there's the other aspect of things where you have basically that winter coat there too, where it's a lot thicker, there's more insulation. That's partly why we can see population increases in the winter too. There's that trade-off where it's not simply just the simple question of, is it warm more insects? There not necessarily. The livestock folks probably talk more about what goes on with the hide and that coat during the winter and how that shedding process works. As we get to spring, it seems like that's when we see more issues potentially start to pop up.
Joe: I think we traditionally pour for lice or if we're going to use a topical, we traditionally see that happen in the fall-winter time trying to get ahead of things before cattle are closer together, confined, grouped up to where they could spread lice between animals very quickly. I think that that's something that we're looking at, is that the right thing to do? I don't know if we know, because what we're trying to avoid ultimately is resistance and treating when we don't have to. I used to get calls when I was in practice where we would get cattle with no hair and the immediate thought is lice. If you watch your dog shed out its summer coat and start growing in that winter coat, they're itchy and rubbing on stuff and they love it when you brush them sometimes.
Cattle do the same thing in my opinion. To me, it really comes down to how many cattle are affected and Jerseys are notorious for being goofy and that's why I love them. They also tend to rub on anything and brushes and rub all their hair off. Do I think that they have lice? No, I think that they're growing their winter coat and it's irritating and they're rubbing everything in all directions. Same thing happens in the spring I think. To me, it comes down to, "Okay, if you've got one goofy cow out there that's rubbing your hair off, I don't think you have lice." If you start to see that become a pattern with a bunch of the other animals in the herd, then okay, maybe you do have lice. I think this is where we need to get into to why Anthony joined us today because it all started with an email conversation about what was happening in his own herd. I think it's a pretty common scenario. I'll quit talking and I'll let Anthony run with that.
Anthony: Sure, Joe. Basically what we had was, or maybe not the ideal situation, but we would often do basically a scheduled treatment oftentimes ivermectin roughly about beginning of December, end of November after weaning. That previous year we had quite a bit of scratching going on. It looked like the cows were pretty irritated. We were pretty convinced that definitely needed it this year. We treated everything we thought seemed like it went well. Later about, let's say February into March especially I'd say, good quarter plus of the cows in the herd were definitely bare-skinned scratching. They look pretty irritated. We're wondering did we do something wrong with the treatment?
There are a few different things that could happen there and same thing I think about with integrated pest management is, sometimes we try something it doesn't work and that's the same whether you're doing crops or livestock. We're trying to think back to the application. I think it was about the evening after we had just a bit of drizzle or just freezing rain come down. The cattle were pretty wet. Did that mess with the efficacy? Could it have been, we had two people on the applicators, one was a pretty new person and they weren't necessarily applying right along the back line. They were just going through the boards and hitting the side instead. Was that maybe doing it or we actually had not been rotating our insecticide mode of actions? We've been using ivermectin a few times already.
We were wondering, is that resistance popping up/ Should we, one find something else we should be using and also make sure we're rotating in the future? There are a few things going on there definitely, and we didn't have any solid answers there. Maybe I'll hand it over to Joe for a second there and to see what do you think about what was going on there Potentially.
Joe: Especially with the topical and the way you're describing it, I always think about dose, dosing and how it was applied is a big issue. Cattle can even within a herd way, all sorts of different sizes. Usually, if you're not going to have a scale right there for each animal, you would be picking your biggest animal, setting the gun at that dose, and then just making sure and yes, there's going to be some that get more than they need, but at least they're getting enough.
What we want to avoid is to give them less than what they need and then we have a treatment that's not fully effective and you get a lot of lice that are exposed to that treatment, potentially develop resistance and it's not effective to begin with. You have lice leftover, which leftover lice is not a great deal. For me, I always think about dose first. How was it applied? Was it applied correctly in dry conditions and did we give enough? My question back to you would be, did you have a scale, were you adjusting it per animal or were you best guess on weights based on whatever you thought?
Speaker 2: In that case, it was just best guess on weights generally trying to go a little bit heavier, and like you said, that's the case where you don't want to underdo your dose and we see that across the board for insects. If you only give them a partial dose that is asking for resistance to occur at least. Even if you apply it on the animal or think you're applying it just straight out the gun, the correct dose, are you actually getting that on the animal the right way too? That's definitely the complicated picture there.
Joe: With the scale, I think it scales pay for themselves very quickly in a lot of different ways. This is my big plug for scales on shoots. If you're ever going to be giving antibiotics or anything like this, they pay for themselves very quickly because you don't have to overdose, you can give the correct dose. You save on a product and you're making sure the product is working because you're giving everyone the correct amount. I love scales.
With things like this, when you're guessing weights you have to recalibrate every once in a while because you drift on all over the place. I would go sit in a sail barn once a week and just before I looked at the scale, I'd guess the weight and see where I was. Sometimes, man, you're way off. Oh man, you're sitting there looking at a cow and you're like, "Yes, she probably weighs 1450." Then she hops on and you look up at the scale and it comes back almost 1800 pounds and you're like, "How was I off almost 350 pounds?"
As you sit there and you watch more and more cattle come in, you get better and better and closer and closer and closer. You got to have a references. Some way to calibrate what you're looking at. Some people use cull cow sheets to look at weights to see what their herd is. That's not super accurate either. Most of your cull cows are either really skinny and they're really old or they're really fat cause they didn't get pregnant. It's a tough thing to do. Get a scale if you can. I love scales.
Other than that, the rain could be a big issue. You want a solid eight to 12 hours of dry cow with that medication. The rain could definitely be an issue. This is something pretty common. Honestly, I prefer waiting as long as we can to treat, obviously if you see something that's a problem, you got to treat it, but you also have to make sure you treat everyone. You can't have new cattle coming in, which I don't know if you did or not. That would be another question. Did you have any new cattle coming in at any point?
Anthony: Yes. In this case, it was just all the same herd all confined there. Nothing new coming in. Just the cows from the cow-calf side of things, it's just the cows and then the feeder calves that we all have produced there. It's pretty straightforward at least from that perspective.
Joe: Yes, because the other thing I see in these cases as well is some people will put their cows in a lot and then they'll have a lot where they put in feeder cattle and they'll supplement their own cattle with bought cattle. Then you've got bought cattle coming into a situation that might be bringing lice as well. Maybe they don't go in the same pen but they share a fence. If they share a fence, the lice can certainly figure out a way to get to the cattle. If shared fence lines with untreated cattle or new cattle coming in or another big break for some of this.
If that's not the case, then we start looking at, okay, if we had gotten to a point where there was no problems with application and no new cattle coming in, dosing was all perfect, then we start looking at resistance potentially. It's real. We see it on the internal parasites constantly and we need to be looking at that. Soapbox issue for me on this is if you're going to treat for lice, I prefer you wait and treat when you see something that's a problem and know it's a problem before you treat. I don't like giving a product like ivermectin to treat for lice when we don't have a problem. If there's not a problem, then we're treating when it's not unnecessary and we're exposing that animal to then parasites or exposing the parasites in that animal to more ivermectin then is needed. Again, we're doubling down on resistance, not only for lice but for internal parasites as well. I love specific lice treatments when possible and I like people to wait as long as possible.
The cool thing is, some years in the winter you might wait and wait and wait and wait and, and never have to treat. Lice can never really become a problem. A lot of people don't know if that would be the case because we just are treating upfront.
Anthony: That's a good question is from the IPM perspective, it's always a question of risk. How much can I tolerate for whether it's my crop or my animal in terms of what's taking away resources from them? When it comes to lice, I know a lot of people, they're pretty risk-averse partly because you can't really see what's going on until it's pretty obvious symptoms. How much can the cattle tolerate? Over on the crop side of things, we can actually go and count how many insects we have and say, okay, 250 aphids, that's so pretty well-tolerated, but we need to do something soon.
Over on the cattle side, we're obviously not going to be counting our lice too much unless they're a grad student or someone in a research project, and maybe an unlucky one at that. Yes, what do we do on the cattle side for really assessing that?
Joe: Well, the first thing I would do is call Brad and see how many grad students he has available because he's the one with all the grad students if we're going to count lice for sure.
Bradley: I always have students available to count lice or count flies or something.
Joe: I think that would be my first step. In the real world, if I don't have grad students, you're right, it's a tricky deal because it can, with that short generation time, can get out of control really quickly. I started to look at it at a herd level. If you got 5% of your herd that you're seeing have an issue with scratching and itching and doing all these things-- I don't have any data for this. This is completely made up by me pulled from left field. 5%, I'm like, okay, if they're itching and they seem like everything's okay and they're still eating, okay, it's fine.
Once we hit that 10%, 10% to me is, okay, if we think about the life cycle of those lice, and I'm really oversimplifying it, so don't let your entomology side get mad at me too much, but if every two weeks, basically things are going to double. Oversimplifying, but if I got 5%, okay, that's fine. If I don't see it progress past that, fine, but I get 10% and now I'm at 20% or two weeks from pretty much half the herd having lice. I like to say at 10%, you need to be starting to think about what you're going to do and get a treatment into those cattle.
There are treatments that you don't have to come back with, so that would be my first choice because just the simplicity and compliance as far as are you actually going to come back and do the second treatment. I think that's the number that I look for is 5% of the herd, you need to start looking and making sure that you don't see more. At 10%, you need to start thinking about treatment, because if you get to 20, you're not far away from pretty much two weeks from then having half the herd have an issue.
Anthony: Yes. That's a good point thinking about some of these other products out there. I mentioned how we use ivermectin before, but you get into some of these other ones. One of our more common insecticides are the pyrethroids. That's a different group in insecticides. At least if you're rotating between those two already, you're probably a step above then what we were originally doing on the farm a couple years ago.
I also saw some other ones that there are some insect growth regulators in there. We mentioned the immatures or eventually the eggs that will hatch, they basically interfere with how the exoskeleton is built up in the insects. Some of those can help delay things and control things a little bit more, too. There are a few options out there I'm seeing. It's just you may not see them right away when you are just glancing at all the products, trade names, they can be different, but it can be the exact same active ingredients. That's really the active ingredients that matter for those choices there.
Joe: When we start combining this with our strategic deworming stuff on the internal parasites, then we start to get into little more complicated protocols trying to figure out how we're going to handle all of this. In the standard herd, we would say, okay, when you come off a pasture and you know you're not going back to grass, that would be potentially when you pour for internal parasites and just happen to be pouring for lice at the same time. That works most years, except for when we have some other issues with dosing and things like that and potential resistance or any of those other things we talked about already.
When we're talking about a strategic deworming protocol, then we got a little bit more challenge because now we're talking about pouring animals or treating for internal parasites in the spring. Then in the fall, if you need to treat lice, don't also then ruin your strategic worming protocol by treating for internal parasites. I know that can be tempting sometimes, especially with some of the guarantees and the things that the companies put out there. A couple years ago, I won't say a product name, but one of the products said, "If you have lice at any time or itchy cattle, within 30 days of putting this product on, we'll guarantee everything."
That's hard not to use that product to that point. That product was also treating for internal parasites. Now we've got resistance issues on the internal parasite side because we're so worried about external parasites. It's a tricky little deal. I think Emily probably is rolling her eyes at this point because I'm headed towards, gets complicated. You need to talk to your veterinarian about all of this to get it all worked out and on paper so that it's easy to follow and you know what's happening for the whole year and how you're going to control this in your herd.
Anthony: Yes, and that's something we noticed with basically these combination advertisements for internal, external parasites. Look at some labels, they actually don't cover some of these parasites too for the internal one. Even if it's advertised as general internal parasites or external parasites, that's not always a guarantee it will cover everything. It's species-specific sometimes. You do need to make sure to read those labels.
It can seem like a boring thing sometimes, but like you mentioned earlier, it's both an efficacy and a safety thing because you think about some of these older insecticides we used to have that were pretty common, if you spill them on yourself one, you can smell it, but some of them are basically nerve agents there. You do have to be careful with them. I think that's across the board for most of our insecticides we use for cattle is they will be taking advantage of any kind of mechanism that affects neurology and the lice. Too much of it can affect us or the cattle as well. There is a fine line with some of that toxicity, too.
Emily: That is such a beautiful lead into my statement and question here on the safety piece. I have, yes, been very happy to hear everybody continuously mentioning making sure you read the label. That is safety 101 with anything, with any sort of pesticide that you're using, read the label so that you know how to use it properly, and then do use it properly because yes, that's a really big safety piece. What we're trying to do is reduce exposure.
Anthony, I don't know if you have anything specific you want to say to this or experiences with this, just as far as all pesticides need to be treated with a certain level of safety. I'm always on the side that you can't be too safe. You should always be wearing long pants, closed-toe shoes, maybe some gloves, having some eye protection on in case something splashes up. Is there anything else you would add to that, Anthony? Or again, any experiences you've had in this realm?
Anthony: Yes, I think you covered the main one. I was going to say in general, exposed skin should not be a thing for any pesticide application. That's especially for we're talking about closer to winter this time of year. Usually, we're covered up pretty good as it is. Wear the gloves. Sometimes these applicators, they do end up leaking sometimes, too, and that can be an issue with, you need to get some kind of lubricant in there and some actually aren't compatible with the seals. I've seen some cases where the guns were just leaking left and right. Pretty much that's time just to get rid of that one, get a replacement. That's maybe the most common thing I have seen.
It's usually pretty simple, straightforward stuff, but if you're running the whole herd through, a lot of times you're in a rush, you just want to get it done. That's usually your biggest enemy right there. It's nothing much more complicated than that. We all deal with that in farming. It's you just want to get it done, get the day over with. If something happens, sometimes you try to say, well, you know what, I'll just power through it. Sometimes it is better just to stop and grab something else quick. It can save you a lot more trouble down the road compared to maybe just five or 10 minutes of inconvenience.
Emily: Couldn't have said it better myself, Anthony.
Anthony: One other thing I should mention is, so we mentioned some of these other products we can use, the pyrethroids being the one more common ones. Those only affect the adults. The eggs are pretty protected. That's just something that just goes along with those life stages again. That's one thing to keep in mind. If you just have a pure pyrethroid product, usually those end with a T-H-R-I-N, thrin at the end of the active ingredient. That will be a case where usually you'll get control of the adults and you might have to come back about two weeks later to do a second treatment.
That's the case where again, another route for exposure if you have to go two times. You have issues either with leaking or other things like that. That's also a safety issue too. It's one way if you keep in mind what you need to do for each product, then you can think about what options you have for safety as well.
Emily: All right. Anthony, I do want to get back to our case study here, of your experience, what happened next or what was the next season like? What did you learn? Did you have any big takeaways?
Anthony: I mentioned a little bit about that spring where early on in the spring or late winter a lot of the cattle were having issues. You could see a lot of bare hide, and basically into May, that was pretty obvious. At that point, that's when populations tend to decrease, just basically more exposure. They're shedding out their hide less protection for those lice there. We weren't as worried at that point, but we were wondering what's going to happen next year. I'll admit at that point we weren't thinking about rotations for insecticides that much yet. We put Ivermectin on again in the fall about November, basically after Thanksgiving at that point. We didn't have issues that winter.
Now the question is, was that because it actually worked at that point and we didn't have resistance in the herd, or were the lice just not going to be an issue that year anyways? We didn't have any control group is what we like to call it. I don't have a nice clean answer for what happened there. We just know that the next year things seem like they worked out okay, but we don't really know what was going on behind the scenes quite yet. That's one of those that gave us that early warning or maybe it was a late warning that maybe we should change things up a little bit. That's what we're trying to do now. It's the mixture between we can use ivermectin for one year and then the next year we can go to these pyrethroids and try to mix it up a little bit.
Like Joe mentioned too, we're still trying to figure out a bit about where we're comfortable with just waiting to see when we have an issue or not. It is tough to figure it out with schedules too, because for us right after weaning we can do all the calves and the cows at once and they're good for the winter. That's a pressure we're dealing with. Is it really worth it to be treating every year because that costs a bit there too? That's basically what we're wrestling with right now and where we are. It's not problem solved, but problem found and got some ideas for it. That's pretty much what happens a lot in farming, whether we're talking about our cattle or getting into other areas too.
Emily: Yes, I also agree. That's the way farming goes. That's the way science is, finding the problem and coming up with some ideas for it and you're right. There are a lot of moving parts to this and figuring out do we need to do it every year and do we need to be rotating the products we're using and all of that. It's a big puzzle that I think farmers are always just trying to figure out as they go. You're right, it changes based on a ton of different factors and conditions at the time. I think that that is a great case study on this topic. There is no foregone nice clean conclusion, but you've been able to learn some things, make some potential changes, think about things for the future. Bradley or Dr. Joe, any final questions for Anthony before we wrap things up here?
Joe: I don't think so. I think Anthony brought up one of the most important pieces is that it's different from each farm. There's a time factor here as well and really what you need to do is weigh, okay, I watch my cattle really, really closely and I do have time to treat them if it's a problem. If you can figure out those two things and how they balance. If you have time to watch your cattle and you can watch them close and you would have time to treat them, then maybe you should wait and not treat.
If you know you're not going to be able to watch your cattle super close and there's potential that you wouldn't have time to treat them in the winter because you're super busy doing something else, then maybe you got to do it upfront and just hope that it works all winter. Reliable logistics to figure out here too and just things that aren't happening on the farm that matter to this decision. Again, we talked a lot about that on this podcast that everything comes into play when you're talking about farming. It's what are the kids doing? Are they in sports? What else is happening in the lives of those farmers? Just something to think about as you weigh all those different options.
Anthony: Something we do in extension is we're not sitting in the ivory tower pronouncing, you must do this on your farm. It's more, here are the tools we have available to us, here's how you can use them, here's how they might get burnt out if they get used the wrong way. Really just trying to guide folks and what they can do specifically for their own situations.
Emily: Definitely a matter of finding what works. Since Joe didn't say it, I'll say it for him. It's also a great idea to be connected with your vet and asking them what they see, what they think. If you need help figuring out dosages or different things, they can help you with that. Making sure that you're really using all of your resources as you decide which tool is best for you.
With that, I think it is time to wrap this episode. We have had a great time talking with Anthony Hanson, who is an integrated pest management, Extension educator, the University of Minnesota Extension. Anthony, thank you so much for being here with us today. If you have any questions, concerns, or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: You can find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety. You can also find everything about The Moos Room, cattle production, integrated pest management on Extension's website extension.umn.edu. Anthony, do you have any social media you want to plug?
Anthony: Great. I don't have much social media myself, but we also do have the IPM Podcast for field crops. I will plug that a little bit and that's just something you can Google yourself. IPM Podcasts, University of Minnesota, and that'll pop up for you. That's something if folks are interested in the field crop side of things I deal with alfalfa especially is one of my favorite crops on that side. That's our livestock connection right there. We'll have info on things like that as well as all your other field crops there.
Emily: Yes. Be sure to check out that podcast from the IPM team. Absolutely. We will see you all next time. Bye.
Joe: Bye. My voice is shot.
[00:36:51] [END OF AUDIO]

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