The Moos Room™

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Joe: What's up, everybody. This is Dr. Joe Armstrong. We are trying something new this year. We ran a pilot program with our Extension colleagues. We asked them to call into The Moos Room, leave a voicemail with a question and we would answer it in an episode. We're going to give you this opportunity as well. We're going to open it up, we're going to give a phone number out. You'll get my voicemail. Leave a voicemail with a question. We'll try to answer that on the show if we think that it's something that everyone else needs to know the answer to as well.
Please call. Please leave a voicemail. As always, you can email us those questions as well and we'll try to get to them, themoosroom@umn.edu. Now our phone number, 612-624-3610. 612-624-3610. You'll get my voicemail, Dr. Joe Armstrong. Leave a message with a question, say who you are, where you're from, if you want, and we'll get that on the show.
Thank you, everybody, for listening. Hope you enjoy this experimental episode.
Speaker 1: All right, Bradley, I have a question for you. My question is, is it too late to plant a cover crop for grazing?
Bradley: Oh, good question. No, it's not. It's not too late to plant cover crops right now in October. Obviously, it's going to depend on the weather situation where you're at, if it's getting cold. In Minnesota, where we're at, we planted rye and wheat about a week ago and it's starting to come up already. That's because it's been warmer out, we've gotten some rain, so it's working.
It's going to depend on the weather. If it would have been hot and dry like it was in July and August, the answer would probably be no, but the conditions today, I would say yes. You should probably want to do that within the next two weeks, but I think the weather is going to be good, and you should be able to do that, no problem.
Joe: If you get to November, Bradley, is that really the hard date where you're like, "No, don't try it"?
Bradley: When the temperature start getting low at night, that's the problem. If they're starting to be consistently below 50 degrees, then it's just not going to grow, so second to third week [crosstalk]--
Emily: What about frost seeding, though, Bradley?
Bradley: You can frost seed, sure. It just depends on those winter cover crops if they'll actually grow and grow in the springtime, so that's maybe a little more challenging. If you can get it in the ground, even if you get it into frozen ground, it should grow next spring.
Speaker 2: I was so excited to see that you had done a podcast on biosecurity, going to shows and fairs. My question, I guess, is more aimed for Joe and for Brad is, what are the biosecurity challenges on-farm? Knowing Brad, will probably come at it from the organic standpoint- hoping Brad will come at it from the organic standpoint, and what Joe sees as the best.
Joe: I always break biosecurity into two pieces: internal and external. Internal being just the basic lessons of pathogens come from older to younger animals. When possible, we work in that order- in the opposite order. You go to young stock first and then go to your older animals. If you're going to come from the older animal barn, or you're going to be doing that, you got to clean up before you go hang out with the young stock. That's internal biosecurity, number one, whether that's cleaning boots, switching coveralls. That's why if you see most vet trucks, there's like 80 pairs of coveralls in the back of the truck because you got to switch all the time. That's number one.
From there, external biosecurity, when we have animals coming on and off the farm, the quarantine is the biggest thing that I advocate for. Especially when people are building new buildings or finding new agreements to raise heifers, it's something that needs to be addressed at that time. You should think about that because most of the problem with quarantine is that there's just not space to do it. We also recommend testing, and you can get into that. It gets expensive, but you have to approach that from more of a risk management tool-insurance policy, rather than this is what it's going to cost you.
I'm perfectly happy to just use fear as a tactic for that when we're talking BVD, mycobacterium, when we were talking about mastitis. There's all sorts of things that we have that could wreck an operation. When we're talking biosecurity, fear is a great motivator. Money is the other piece of it. It's just kind of the same conversation I use for vaccines. Vaccines are, in my opinion, a biosecurity tool. You're not going to catch everything. You can't. You just can't. Having the vaccine in place is also added insurance for some of these diseases as well.
I'll be quiet now and let Bradley talk too.
Bradley: Well, thanks for stealing all my thunder, Joe. It's great. [chuckles] From an organic standpoint, Joe mentioned a lot of those things. Vaccines are important, testing animals. If you're thinking about, from our perspective, a milking cow basis, we can test a milk sample for leukosis, for Johne's. There's a lot of tests like that that are relatively cheap that you can do. You can make sure that they're all vaccinated. From a worker standpoint, keep your boots and your pants and shirts and all that stuff that you wear on-farm; it stays on-farm, and you shower, and it doesn't leave the farm and go to the local quick trips so you can pick up whatever might be on the floor there if there's livestock trailers or whatever showing up.
Some of the aspects is really being just cognizant about biosecurity. We don't necessarily think about it every day, all the time because there's so many other aspects going on, but it's just one of the things that people should probably be more thinking about in their mind when they're moving animals or bringing animals in or livestock trailers in. Livestock trailers are another big one. No livestock trailer comes on our site that isn't clean and disinfected. If it doesn't, then you have to load out on the road. A lot of trucks don't like loading from one livestock trailer to the next and all that. There's ways that farmers can require biosecurity, can say, "Well, you're not going to come pick up animals on my farm if your truck isn't clear and clean."
Emily: Yes, and I would just add that biosecurity is a safety issue. I think in farm safety, we spend a lot of time thinking about the people side of it, but farm safety practices are also there to keep the animals safe as well. Biosecurity is a huge part of that livestock safety piece. It's really important that in training employees and the different things that you're doing to really train on safety, that you emphasize biosecurity as a safety practice as well.
Speaker 3: Emily, since we are in the middle of harvest season, what is your one favorite farm safety tip to share with people during this time of the year?
Emily: Oh, that's a good one. Yes, we do farm safety day and farm safety week, but I tell people farm safety is a year-round issue or a topic that we should be talking about. My favorite piece of advice, and if you follow our account on Twitter, if you watch any of the farm safety YouTube videos we make, they all end with the same six words: slow down, think twice, be safe. I think just by following those six words and following them in earnest every day in everything that we're doing, we can very, very easily make our farms much, much safer. Slow down, think twice, be safe.
Joe: All right, everybody. We are going to wrap it there. We want to say thank you to all of our Extension colleagues who called in with a question. Hopefully, you are thinking about questions that you would like us to answer and are willing to call in as well. As always, you can definitely email us with comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals. Those go to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Now you can call us to ask questions. We will try to answer your questions live, candid, as honestly as possible. If we don't know the answer, we'll let you know that as well, and then we will get back to you when we do know the answer or what we think is the right answer to your question. 612-624-3610. That's 612-624-3610. Leave a message, say who you are, where you're from, and we'll get to it as soon as we can.
Thank you, everybody. We will catch you next episode.
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