The Moos Room™

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[cow moos]
Joe Armstrong: Welcome everybody to The Moos Room. The OG three are here, and today's episode is all about Dr. Bradley J. Heins. He was at a conference recently and we got to pick his brain about what he learned. The American Dairy Science Association Discover Conference is where Bradley was, and this year was all about calves and there's a lot of stuff that was right up Brad's alley. So today is all about Brad. Is that okay, Emily?
Emily Krekelberg: I guess I'll be fine.
Joe: Okay. Good deal. One day we'll continue, we'll go get back to normal and have all our episodes be about Emily instead.
Emily: Yes. The way God intended. I can give the spotlight to Bradley for one episode at least.
Joe: Makes sense.
Bradley Heins: Okay. Well, Jersey is the correct answer. What are the new totals now?
Joe: Yes, Jersey. Correct answer.
Emily: Bradley, you're not a guest.
Joe: Whatever. I'll still add it to the total later. We'll secretly update the totals next episode.
Emily: Okay. Cheating.
Joe: That's fine.
Emily: Pollution.
Joe: Quickly, just so everyone's on the same page. What is this conference about? Why is it fun to go and what goes on there?
Emily: Yes, what's set up?
Bradley: It's actually researchers like myself and a lot of industry people. I think 60% of the people there were industry, nutrition industry, genetics, all of that. We all get together and can share research about what's happening that people are doing with calves. Sometimes it's sharing just new minted results that you just got that aren't out anywhere. The biggest thing is discussion. We can have good debates about whether we all agree with each other and where's the next steps to go with all of our research or what we see in the industry. It's pretty fun.
The discussions are what make it. That really sitting and listening to a bunch of research presentations all day is sometimes not all that fun, but having discussions and then discussions afterwords over dinner is always fun too.
Emily: Well, Bradley a conference that involves built-in time to argue with people sounds like it's right up your alley.
Bradley: That's exactly. It's always fun to discuss stuff because now you know me, I'm not the guy that does the same thing that everybody else does.
Emily: Oh, we know that. My first question, Bradley is, did you have any research that you presented at this conference? If so, what kind of feedback did you get on it?
Bradley: You want me to talk the whole podcast, sure.
Emily: No, give us a three-minute version.
Bradley: We did have research there. Me and two other of my grad students presented some research on our raising calves on cows and our raising calves in different housing systems. Then the other one was on alternatives to pain for disbudding of dairy calves. There's actually a lot of interest in all of our studies, so we're at the forefront doing things a little bit differently than what some of the other people are doing. So there was some interest, especially from the animal behavior people that were there.
Joe: Housing has been a huge topic lately and a lot of attention in the media and there's a lot of studies going on between paired housing versus single housing versus group housing. Is that what you guys were talking about at the conference?
Bradley: Yes, that was one of the aspects. I think that was like the second day that we had a housing discussion and it was quite interesting and there was pretty diverse opinions. Some that wanted to say, our individual housing system is just fine and we don't have any problems, so we're not going to change and we don't want to change to something else. Then others including myself, were like, "Well, we probably should be exploring lots of other options, group housing, either pair housing."
I brought up raising calves on cows, that's a whole different topic for another day. How we need to move forward with housing situations because it's going to become an issue for the dairy industry. One aspect, a lot of things start in Europe before we get here, and there are some European countries and processors that don't allow individual calf housing. Some of you know we ship our milk with Organic Valley and in, I believe, 2023 we will not be allowed to-- or Organic Valley dairy producers will not be allowed to house calves individually anymore after a few days old. They will have to be housed, at least pair, everything is moving towards group housing.
I think it's coming and we need to figure out what's going to happen and how to do that. We all think about-- even some of the larger dairies that we work with that is going to take a lot of capital and a lot of change to move to group housing from individual. It will change the industry big time.
Emily: I'm not all in on the happenings in the dairy industry related to calves these days. I'm just curious, Bradley and Joe, what are the arguments? Why are these companies in that asking for calves to not be individual? Is it for consumer-based concerns, behavior, and social concerns for the animals? Some mix of that. Give me just a brief overview of why we seem to be moving in this direction.
Bradley: Well, a lot of it is socialization, so calves socializing with each other and bonding with other calves or cows, things like that. There's been some studies that have been done that looked at what consumers thought and they just prefer a group situation. That group is sort of whatever it might be. It could be two calves. It could be five calves. It could be 20 calves. They just view that as a little more humane because calves can socialize with each other and that's what's really driving a lot of it.
Emily: I think that that is a valid argument, just that socialization piece and how that relates to animal behavior. I'm like the health person. I'm just like, "Yes, it's good for us, it's good for them." I know that that has always been a concern of consumers of calves being by themselves and not with their cow and all of that. I do think it's the right move and looking at it bigger level and I don't know Bradley if they discussed this from management standpoint. It can be a little bit easier, potentially less labor if you're not walking to individual pens and doing all of that.
I'm curious too, did they really focus on with group housing what feeding strategies they would use, or maybe what are the best? When I think group pens and calves, I think automatic calf feeders. Then I also think of at the Morris Dairy, you have those mob feeders. Is there any consensus right now on what direction we should be going with feeding calves in group housing?
Bradley: No, not at all. There's definitely not a consensus. Some people think automatic calf feeders are going to be perfect for group housing, which they have their pluses and minuses. They're expensive and they do raise nice calves, but there's lots of other aspects that come with it. Ventilation, you name it. I don't know if automatic calf feeders are the necessarily way to go from a group standpoint. A lot of people right now are on this pair house bandwagon, putting two calves together and treating them the same as individual because there's possible less disease transmission, all those factors.
We're doing some pair housing here in Morris, but I'm on the, let's put as many calves in a pen as we can. I've brought up at the meeting, why can't we be like New Zealand? Some of these New Zealand herds are feeding 50 calves in one pen, they just put this huge milk tank with some nipples on it and have at it, and they do just fine. There's really not a good consensus out there how we should be group-feeding calves and how much do you feed them. When do you wean them? How do you wean them? There's so many unknowns that people need to just do a lot more studies and exploring of it.
Joe: I'm a big fan of more tools. We all know that the cattle industry is not cookie-cutter. Each operation is different. Some of these tools are going to work perfect for some operations and some of them just aren't going to work for certain logistics or labor or whatever the situation is. The more tools, the more option. I'm all for it. Whatever we can do to get more of the options out there and have more information about what they do I'd love to see it. The big thing I hear from producers when we talk about pair housing is, well, one of the big problems I hear about is cross sucking. Is that a real thing? Are we debating it? Is it proven to be an issue or not?
Bradley: I think it's a concern that people have. I'm concerned about it a little bit. The problem is we never see it happen, or sometimes we see it happen. If we see it once, then we think it happens in all the animals. We group house and pair house out here in Morris and we see it happen. I'll admit, it does happen and it has happened even in group housing. It happens with the calves that we're raising. On cows, we see it afterwards. We see it in individual calves. Once they get wean, they find a buddy and there is some cross-sucking.
It's an issue, but I don't know if it's as big of issue that we seem to think that it is. We can put the weaners in their noses, things like that, to help alleviate that problem. We have a few of those now at Morris where we've done that to help that issue. I think it goes in cycles. Sometimes we see some of it, and then the next time it's like, "Whoa, we have four or five. That's maybe a little too many." We're not quite sure why calves are doing that. Are they bored? Are they not being fed enough? Did they find a new socialization friend that they do that with? I don't know. I don't think we really know why they do it and what's going on.
Joe: What I see with cross-sucking a lot of the times is most people are going to start to look at, are you feeding with a nipple or not? Are you feeding out of buckets and that calf doesn't have a chance to suck at all and that might be causing it. I don't think we know if that's the case or not. Feeding enough also common culprit that's blamed. If they're not getting enough to eat, they're just going to be chewing on everything, looking for more.
That makes sense to me, but like Brad said, I don't think we know any of that stuff. The danger is that when that behavior sticks around longer. Post-weaning is when we really start to worry about it. That's where I hear in the industry people get in trouble and they get singled out at the heifer raiser. If they have a group heifer raiser and they have enough calves that come from their farm that are causing an issue cross-sucking at the heifer raiser that can be a big deal because it can cost you your heifer raiser. They won't invite you back, because that calf could be causing issues for all the other clients that are there as well. I don't know if we have an answer for it yet, but overall I just don't see it. I don't see it super often, especially in calves that are healthy and get fed enough.
Bradley: If there is animals that are cross-sucking you probably need to take care of it right away because I'll admit our dairy is not perfect here in Morris and sometimes we will see cows, you get two cows that are fresh and milkers are going, "Well, these cows got no milk. What's going on?" You go out to the pen and go, "Ooh, now I know why you don't have any milk. You are sucking on each other and it can be a problem. I shouldn't say it's not a lot, but over the years that I've been here I had a couple of cows that have done that. Unfortunately, the only way to get rid of it is to call them, because it's almost too late by then. It's too late.
Joe: All right. We talked a lot about housing now. We talked about Brad's goals of feeding 50, 60 calves on nipples all at once in one big pen. I think that is possible and we should try it if we could find the calf numbers.
Bradley: Don't worry, I'll do it one day.
Joe: Yes, absolutely.
Bradley: I'll put sensors in all of them.
Joe: Of course. Yes, so you can see what's going on. What else did you find super interesting and what else did you get a chance to argue with people about?
Bradley: Well, one thing is colostrum, that's always a hot topic. Colostrum is important as what we know, and so there's always ways. How do we get colostrum in calves faster? How do we prevent low IGG levels? One discussion that, of course, I got involved one was, we have a serum protein level, so a measure of passive transfer in calves, and everybody wants to set it like 5.5 or something like that. I argue that probably is maybe a little too high. We did some research with calves at Waseca that maybe said if it's below five it's bad, and if you're above five you're probably doing just fine, and it didn't affect production later in life. The calves that didn't get enough antibodies they're going to have some issues, but it's maybe not-- We probably don't need to set this artificial limit so high. At least that's my opinion.
Joe: Yes, I see that number. It's all over the board, especially in the last five years I think there's been a lot of arguments about where should that number be. I've seen people suggest as high as six. 5.5 I think is more reasonable than six for sure. Five might be practical for most farmers out there especially when we're talking about timing of colostrum and how that all affects that number.
The best answer honestly is to get a baseline for your farm and make sure that you work with your veterinarian to figure out what works for you and your farm and creates healthy calves, and if your number ends up being 5.2 or 5.3 and that's where you feel comfortable or five, I don't think you can go lower than five. I don't think that's right, but yes it's different for each farm, and hydration status plays a part in that as well, so that number gets argued about a lot. Talk with your veterinarian on that one.
Bradley: Yes. The other topic we make fun of at the beginning of our podcast, but really it was looking at Holsteins and Jerseys. Even when I was out in New York earlier a month ago or so, the thought is that for some reason Jerseys are not producing enough colostrum in the wintertime or you're seeing no colostrum, it's quite low, so there seems to be something going on with the Jerseys why they're not producing enough colostrum. They have huge seasonality effects. There might be some sire differences compared to a Holstein, so that's an interesting topic and I think there's going to be more into it.
I'm trying to work with a few researchers to find some Jersey herds that we can measure colostrum in, colostrum amount, colostrum quality because there seems to be something going on with the Jerseys and we're not really sure what it is, but there's differences in breeds that we see.
Emily: Bradley, I'm pretty sure you just admitted that Holsteins are better than Jerseys. Is that what I heard?
Bradley: I didn't hear that.
Emily: [laughs] All right. I do have a question for you and maybe what you just said is the answer to the question. Now, I know that you know everything, but I'm wondering was there anything at the conference that was brought to your eyes for the first time that was just like, oh, wow, I've never thought of that, or that's really cool. I think that Jersey colostrum thing is actually really interesting. Maybe that's it, but was there anything else that blew your mind?
Bradley: Well, the other one is we seem to be having a surplus calf problem that you never really think about anymore, and yes, we think about it, we see it. I'll admit we got too many heifers on our dairy here too, but you don't really ever think about it, but I think it's a issue. Jerseys were talked about again with that, like a Jersey bull calf is not worth a lot of money or zero in some places and that's a problem. Having too many calves and beef on dairy, is it losing its luster now? There's a lot of things that it was like, [unintelligible 00:17:39], never really thought about that with too many heifers and this Jersey bull calf thing. Well, even regular bull calves.
We need to figure something out because consumers start thinking about those aspects, that can be a big issue as well. Some of it is centered around veal production and we won't talk about veal production. I don't really know a lot about it or anything, but that was a discussion that I don't think a lot of people are thinking about and it was like, "Yes, maybe we need to be thinking about this a little bit more in the dairy world. That was eye-opening, and that was one of the last presentations that we had, so good food for thought.
Joe: I see that a lot of the presenters are from the University of Guelph, so they're Canadian. Has there been discussion about what is Canada doing that we're not specifically in that area when we're talking about excess of calves?
Bradley: Well, yes, there was some talk about what's happening in Canada as well, but I think they still have the same issues that we have here in the US. Beef on dairy, too many heifer calves, the Jersey bull calf issue, so I think it's pretty similar in Canada what's happening and everybody's trying to figure out what to do and how do you make it work. Some of us think that the beef on dairy thing is going to get larger and that might help alleviate some things in the dairy world, but I don't know. I don't really know. I don't have a good crystal ball on what's going to happen at all.
Joe: Most of the discussion I think is centered around the packer and the packer probably dictating a lot of what happens in that area, because the big gripe on the other end is, they're inconsistent, they're all sorts of different sizes. We don't know how to pay for them because we can't accurately predict packers' quality and dressing percentages and whatever else is out there, so probably unfortunately like a lot of things, the end of the line and the packer will probably dictate what happens next.
Bradley: I agree. I think we're seeing that happen already here in the Midwest and it's affecting some of my decisions. we've been breeding our dairy herd to Limousin and I'm going to switch to Angus now just because there's maybe a little more value for the Angus calf now, and maybe some feed lots are looking for that Angus animal a little bit more, but in a few years, we may go to a different breed. Whatever that might be. Hereford, I still think--
Joe: Hereford I was going to say.
Bradley: I think there's a lot of different breeds to explore. Like you said earlier it's not a one-size-fits-all mentality. I think there's enough stuff for us to do for a long time.
Joe: Again, options are good that's what we want. We want as many tools in the toolbox as possible because every operation's different. I would be super [unintelligible 00:20:57] to see a Holstein-Hereford cross just to see what happens. I would love to see that. Maybe we can just [crosstalk]--
Emily: The Moos Room is going to do a research project.
Joe: Yes. Just on two cows. We'll do a taste test live and see what they taste like too.
Emily: Yes. Perfect.
Bradley: If I can find some money I'll make it happen.
Emily: If anybody can find money is you Bradley.
Joe: Yes, we're pretty aware of that.
Emily: Get money. Get money, [unintelligible 00:21:27].
Joe: Get money.
Bradley: I think one of the other topics that we discussed that has a lot of attention in the dairy world now is ultrasounding lungs of dairy calves to look at pneumonia or respiratory problems, and it seems there's dairies that are wanting to try it and figure out should they be ultrasounding lungs to see what's happening in their herd. I've bought an ultrasound to work with some farms in the Midwest here to evaluate what's going on in farms, so that's one of the topics now. It's like, should we do it? Should we not do it? How do we use that information? Maybe the veterinarian has some thoughts on that as well.
Joe: I have definite opinions on the topic, but they'll just add their opinions. Again, it's another tool in the toolbox, so if we can add it and it can be helpful in some way I'm all for it. I'm skeptical. I think there's a big difference between what people want it to be used for and what it actually is helpful to do. In my understanding which is pretty limited, the big way that we should be using lung ultrasound is to identify a problem area in a calf-raising system, so it's wonderful to come in and ultrasound the whole barn and see where we have issues. Then we can probably point at a specific step in the calf system that says, okay, this is probably when we develop problems.
For that, I think it's great. As an overall tool to just say, "Is this heifer good to go onto the next step, and can I predict her future productivity?" I really don't think that that's the answer at all. I think that is much better done with historical treatment records, health records, average daily gain, all these other tools that we have, and there is some research out there that says that I can predict performance with those things just as well if not better than ultrasound.
I think ultrasound has a place and is a tool that we can use to identify problems within a system. I just don't see it being used as a huge predictive performance deal for long-term performance or who should go and who should stay. I just don't see it working that way. I think a lot of people want it to be that.
Emily: We've talked about it before on the podcast, and we talk about it all the time management. I try to remind people that tools are there to enhance your management not necessarily to replace parts of your management. Joe, I think you offered some good food for thought on that about how are we using this tool to find those problems. That's a way to improve your management, but if we're just going to be ultrasounding everyone's lungs and not really making any changes off of it, or if we feel like ultrasounds look good, then that means we're going to get rid of doing X, Y, or Z management practice. That's when you need to stop and be like, "Okay, why are we really doing this?" Are we replacing our management or are we enhancing it and using this as an actual tool?
Joe: I don't think there's any world that exists where ultrasound would ever replace records and health history, treatment history, all of those things, and if we are going to use ultrasound, those records only enhance the process. Again, like Emily was saying, it's the perfect way to say it, it's not replacing anything, but it's another tool that we have in the toolbox that we can use.
Bradley: A lot of people working on it and incorporating that into our research program and we're going to be doing it with herd so I guess one day we'll tell you what we found.
Joe: It's hard to do. It's not an easy thing to do either in my opinion, it takes a decent amount of time especially if you don't have a cooperative calf. There's a time and a labor aspect to this as well that might be difficult to push to the producer or have the producer pay for. Okay. We've learned a ton from Bradley like normal. I hate to admit it, but we do learn a lot from Bradley a lot of the time, and we'll be back with our regularly scheduled Emily podcast next week.
Emily: The Emily feel.
Joe: Yes. If you have comments, questions, concerns, please send those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: You can find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety, and you can find us on Instagram @umnwcrocdairy. I think I got it right this time. Sounded right.
Emily: I think you did too.
Bradley: I think so.
Joe: Weird. All right. Well, thank you everybody for listening. We'll catch you next week.
Emily: Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
Emily: I'm so much better at doing the pod than you Joe.
Joe: All right.
Emily: [crosstalk]
Joe: I'm not denying that either. You can do it every week if you want.
Bradley: I give up. There's a reason why you don't allow me to do it.
Emily: Yes, correct.
[cow moos]
[00:26:42] [END OF AUDIO]
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