RumiNation is a series of conversations with key influencers in the North American dairy and cattle industries. The discussions focus on topics such as animal welfare, management, profitability, productivity, longevity, and sustainability.
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Chris Gwyn (01:54)
Can you share with the audience a bit of the evolutionary biology of the mitochondrion, how this is crucial for today's dairy cow, and why this is such an interest to you?
Dr. Nial O'Boyle
I share your fascination with it. So, on the evolutionary side, the main theory is [that] ancient cells like archaea and a type of bacteria fused together, and the bacteria was the mitochondrion, or the pre-runner for the mitochondrion, and they became what we now know as the eukaryotic cell, so the cells that we're made up of. And that gave complex life the ability to happen. So that mitochondrion, like the bacterial cell, they can produce energy through electric potential through the membranes. But once that was brought into a cell, what you were able to do is start to do more complex work. You can produce more proteins because the energy was at the site of action. So, cells could get more complex, organisms could get more complex, and the argument is we wouldn't be here if that kind of merger hadn't happened. […]
The reason why I got interested from a dairy cow point of view is that I was fortunate enough to do a master's at Michigan State with the late Professor Lorraine Sordillo. Learned a lot from her, great scientist, um, and was just really interested. She inspired me on, on that connection between immunology nutrition, fat mobilization, and just that whole immunological question. […]
To me, that became the epicenter of this connection between nutrition and immunology. Metabolism is the conversion of food into chemical energy by the body to do work. And I don't think there's anything that comes close to the dairy cow as far as being a metabolic athlete. […]
Chris Gwyn (08:02)
Can you summarize for your audience what you've learned about management, nutrition of the transition cow that maybe relates to this improved or ability to improve mitochondrial function?
Dr. Nial O'Boyle
One thing I've learned with people like Professor Lance Baumgard and others that have brought up this conversation that calcium ketosis, et cetera, and what is correlation, and what's causation. And the more I drilled into the mitochondria, I would agree, but maybe approaching it from a different angle in that they're all related. Like, you need calcium for mitochondrial function, and you need mitochondrial function for calcium regulation. So that's related. […]
Chris Gwyn (10:16)
Do we think about managing cows to improve mitochondrial efficiency or function?
Dr. Nial O'Boyle
I don't think currently we do, but the more I've learned about it, the more I think we should. […]
Chris Gwyn (19:55)
Are we wrong to say it's the 50-kilo cow that's this crazy metabolic athlete, or are cows at lower production levels going through some of the same metabolic challenges?
Dr. Nial O'Boyle
I think the genetic machinery is there for most of these modern cows to be very high producing. It's just all these things that add up to maybe they're not expressing their genetic potential through the environmental and management sides. […]
Chris Gwyn (24:08)
Give us a message from your work that you've done, your experience related to the topic you'd love producers, nutritionists, veterinarians to remember about feeding these transition cows with the concept of thinking about what the mitochondria is doing?
Dr. Nial O'Boyle
I suppose one would be reiterating that supplying fuel isn't necessarily supplying fuel for metabolism. You need different profiles, as we talked about fatty acids, different cofactors, whether it's B vitamins or other nutrients, to make sure that fuel is metabolized and used efficiently.
The Evolving Role of the Modern Dairy Nutrition Consultant
Season 7 · Episode 5
Tuesday, July 21, 2026 • Duration 35:35
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (02:00)
What drew you into dairy consulting, and how has that role evolved over the years as both the industry and your customers have changed?
Jodi Erickson
Back in the early 2000s, when I was hitting the job market, nutrition wasn't a career that I was seeking out, but there was an opportunity to work with an established team, an established feed supplier, and I was qualified for the job. It was shortly after that that I discovered my true passion for this career. […]
Over the last 15 to 20 years, my day-to-day role has had to adapt and evolve right along with the industry. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the precision that we can do things now and the data that we have access to. […]
Chris Gwyn (07:26)
What does a day look like and what does a week look like in Jodi Erickson's dairy consulting business?
Jodi Erickson
My team is a team of 4 nutritionists. So, we do pretty much work independently. We do overlap on farms, just depending on size and location to a degree. But I'm generally covering dairy farms in east-central Wisconsin into central Minnesota. Generally, I am on farms every day of the week, some fairly closer to home to allow for a little bit more office time. But then obviously there are some very long, high-mileage days that happen as well. […]
But my routine farm visits, they're still based around finding what the obstacle is on the farm. Whether that's just visually identifying we're going to have a feed change, how are we going to blend, how are we going to transition this? This is something that we do 4 to 5 times a year on every farm, but it still seems like we need to revisit the procedure every time so it gets done correctly. […]
Smart Systems Rethinking Lameness Management
Season 7 · Episode 4
Tuesday, June 30, 2026 • Duration 23:31
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (01:35)
How would you describe the current state of lameness on dairy farms, and how has it evolved over your career?
Dr. Gerard Cramer
I started working on lameness when I started my graduate work in 2003. Things have progressed, but I think it's still probably one of the major animal welfare issues in the industry. So, I'd say we probably haven't progressed as much as I'd like. […]
We're creating too many chronic cows. That's kind of hampering, holding us back. We do all these things to prevent new cases, and I think we're doing a good job in that, but we haven't really focused on what I think is the biggest issue, which is finding lame cows and preventing chronic cows. […]
Chris Gwyn (04:01)
You said identifying; you've done some work with cameras and identification. Where are we going with that technology? Does it seem to be working?
Dr. Gerard Cramer
That's my interest in the cameras because, to me the issue is the people. We need people to find lame cows. You need to have a dedicated person looking for lame cows. So, depending on your size of operation, that's a couple of hours where a person is literally standing there watching cows. So, it looks like you're paying them to do nothing. […]
When I'm thinking about the camera technology, I want to be strategic and say, “Okay, the camera is going to find the lame cows, the newly lame cows, or the cows that are getting worse”. But if she's a chronic lame cow, she's just going to go on a routine schedule, and she might come up to the chute every 3 months. […]
Chris Gwyn ()
You talked about inflammation and changes in bone growth. You want to expand a bit on that?
Managing Calf Stress from Day One to Weaning
Season 7 · Episode 3
Tuesday, June 9, 2026 • Duration 26:24
Dr. Gail Carpenter explains how early-life stress, nutrition, and management shape calf health, resilience, productivity, and profitability.
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (04:04)
Calfhood stress: what does that mean, and why is the timing of these stressors so important, in particular for the long-term health and productivity of the animal?
Dr. Gail Carpenter
It is a very stressful time in that animal's life. They don't have an immune system. They don't have the tools to really be able to thrive the way an older animal would. If we're doing our colostrum program, they've got that passive immunity, but that's about it. And there are a lot of things that happen in those first couple of months to our calves. […]
Chris Gwyn (07:59)
What are we seeing from financial or productivity loss in their first lactation or lifetime from the research that's been done more globally? But also, how is that impacting the dairy?
Dr. Gail Carpenter
I'll talk about the replacement heifers first. There's been quite a bit of research done; there's a study that gets often cited out of Mike VanAmberg's lab at Cornell showing more milk replacer. And this is where the accelerated growth programs really started, I think, taking hold was more milk replacer in early life, more milk production in the first lactation. And so, I think a lot of people have seen that research and thought, “Well, if I give more milk, I get more milk.” But there's a lot more nuance than that. […]
Chris Gwyn ()
Can you see other aspects of management and nutrition that can help to reduce the negative impact? And where do you see the biggest opportunities for farmers or nutritionists to help better support those calves?
How Wildfire Smoke Impacts Calf Growth
Season 7 · Episode 2
Tuesday, May 19, 2026 • Duration 27:19
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (02:19)
Tell us about your Rancher program and your background journey.
Dr. Juliana Ranches
Rancher is a webinar series that brings most of the day’s information to cattle producers and livestock producers around the globe. […]
I wanted it to be something unique that would highlight the work of women in this industry. So female scientists, ranchers, farmers, in the industry, faculty that work in the beef cattle industry or in the cattle industry in general, to showcase their career, to show their trajectory, and also to, you know, inspire the younger generation. […]
I actually started my research career as a dairy person, but my heart was always beef. So I got a lot of experience in the dairy industry, working as an intern in one of the largest dairy farms in Brazil. […]
Later, I moved to Florida to do my master's and PhD. And there I was trained in nutrition, ruminant nutrition, with a major focus on mineral nutrition. […]
Moving to Oregon, to the Western US, brought another set of challenges and questions that need to be addressed for our producers. And then the wildfire smoke exposure studies, that's definitely something that has been a challenge for producers. […]
That got me thinking about the smoke because we were in a situation where there were a lot of poor air quality days with very poor outside environmental conditions. […]
Chris Gwyn (09:28)
How does wildfire smoke impact cattle biology, physiology, and performance?
Dr. Juliana Ranches
In 2022, when we started doing our smoke exposure studies with natural exposure. So we had a project throughout the state, we had 3 different locations where we were monitoring cattle all over the seasons. So basically, what we tried to do was to create a good, strong baseline of data on the health and other parameters. And then we were hoping that a fire would happen. […]
And in one of those locations, we actually got a fire. Once that fire happened, calves were exposed to that natural smoke, and there was poor air quality, and we started to intensify our monitoring and sampling of those animals.
By the end of that study, we got samples and monitoring prior to smoke, during smoke exposure, and post-smoke exposure. So that was one of the initial works we did.
Turning Feed Analysis into Real Gains in Milk Production
Season 7 · Episode 1
Tuesday, April 28, 2026 • Duration 28:56
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (02:58)
How should nutritionists use lab data to confirm that what’s formulated on paper matches what cows are actually eating and performing?
Katie Raver
A lot of times when we get a feed analysis, we use those feed analysis to formulate our ration.
So we'll pull those into a model and build a ration around those. […]
But I think there's a lot of value beyond that. […]
Even testing things like commodities can help us confirm what we put into that model is what's getting fed to cows. […]
And we can even do this from testing our TMR and making sure what is coming out in the feed mixer and getting fed to cows matches what we have formulated.
Chris Gwyn (04:54)
What are the key recommendations for setting up an effective and practical feed and forage sampling program?
Katie Raver
It's definitely based on a farm-by-farm situation, and so we have to take into account a lot of factors when we set out a sampling recommendation. […]
We have to make sure that we've got someone who's capable of taking those samples, that we trust to take those samples. […]
So some of the key points… is the recommendation of sampling feeds more than we're using 4 or more pounds of. […]
We really weigh it based off of the usage and what the farm can accomplish along with farm size. […]
We've seen success sampling as much as 3 to 5 times a week for our very, very large farms, and as low as 1 every week to every 10 days or 2 weeks.
Chris Gwyn (07:53)
What tools or innovations are helping producers and nutritionists get more value from feed testing data?
Katie Raver
In terms of tools to establish a testing routine would just simply be creating a list of the feeds that we're feeding, usage rates. […]
And we've got some tools built to help producers do that. […]
I think being flexible to dairies is what's enabled us to really capture the most benefit. […]
So some new tools would be being able to trend and track this over time. So if we get a robust enough data set, we can use trend tracking tools and statistics to look at how that feed is changing over time and automatically notify the producer. […]
Unlocking the Role of B Vitamins in Receiving Cattle
Season 6 · Episode 10
Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 15:08
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (02:04) Could you share with the audience why B vitamins would be important to receiving cattle in particular? Dr. Stephanie Hansen Absolutely. If we go back and look at the NRC guidelines, we've really ignored two classes of vitamins, vitamin C and vitamin B. Cattle are able to make vitamin C from glucose in their liver. […] Not a lot of work is focused on that because the assumption has been that the animal can make it, it's fine. Similarly, they get most of their B vitamins from rumen microbial synthesis. And so, again, a lot of the requirements were largely ignored, or potential requirements, because the thought has been: Well, his bugs make it for him, so he's fine. […]
Chris Gwyn (04:19) What do they do to a feed lot receiving cattle that would be important in their overall performance, health, productivity, profitability in the end? Dr. Stephanie Hansen The way that I teach this to my nutrition students is that if you think about the macros like protein and carbohydrates and lipids, often the things that we formulate rations for initially, those are like the bricks in a wall. If you stacked those bricks on top of each other, they're pretty robust, and they're a big chunk of that wall. But you could push those bricks over with a finger because there's nothing holding them together. If you think about minerals and vitamins in water as collectively making the mortar that you could put between those to hold it together, and you let it dry, now it'd be pretty hard to push that wall over. It's a sturdy structure. I love that analogy. I stole that from one of my friends in the industry. […]
Chris Gwyn ()Can you tell us in particular, about some of the health or immune outcomes? You had mentioned immunity that you saw in a study, and what also excited you about to look in the future?Dr. Stephanie HansenThis was an eight-week trial. Basically, what we did was we had a pen-based study, so Delivering to Pens. That's what we call an experimental unit for this. This was a set of steers that came out of a ranch up in Wyoming, I think, for this. Basically, we tracked weekly feed intakes throughout those eight weeks of the trial. As expected, intakes are pretty low when cattle first arrive, and they're newly weaned, they're bawling, so they're just literally figuring out everything in life. And slowly, intakes increase over the eight weeks. And one of the things, one of our treatments was a ruminal-protected B-vitamin A combination. […]
Strategies for Healthier and More Resilient Receiving Cattle
Season 6 · Episode 9
Tuesday, October 7, 2025 • Duration 20:53
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (01:44) Before we jump right in, I'd enjoy hearing about the journey that brings you to research and teaching. Dr. Stephanie Hansen I did not grow up on a beef operation, but my grandparents had cattle, and so I spent a lot of summers there. So, I had the beef bug, so to speak, by the time I went to undergrad at Iowa State, but I was never pre-vet. I was really focused on what we could do, and eventually I realized that what that was was nutrition to actually keep animals from having to see the vet if we didn't have to. And so I found my passion for nutrition through a senior-level nutrition class, and I call that my light bulb class, and I teach that now. So I've been teaching that for over 14 years, and I think that's really a full circle moment to be at the front of the classroom for the class that gave me the passion for nutrition. […]
Chris Gwyn (03:33) I'm wondering, what have you seen as the biggest changes in cattle receiving practices that have driven some of those changes, whether it's science, economics, or consumer expectations? Dr. Stephanie Hansen I think some of the biggest things we've learned in the receiving cattle nutrition is really the importance of what happened to that animal before they came to the feed lot. Now, of course, we're a very segmented industry, so it's really difficult to control that. But we do have a lot of people who will have retained ownership and will have the opportunity to really control more of the nutrition that gets into that animal from birth all the way out through harvest. […]
Smarter Farming with Data and Technology
Season 6 · Episode 8
Tuesday, September 23, 2025 • Duration 30:15
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (00:02:56.23) Dr. Van de Pol, would you share with the listening audience your journey in AG and in data, and how this journey has brought you to establishing CATTLEytics? Dr. Shari van de Pol Similar to a lot of listeners of your show, what really resonates with me is everything tied to agriculture, being outdoors, and the biological systems. I just found it was so interesting and fascinating.[…] I actually did a minor in fine art at the time, and I ended up working for IBM and found myself at a very interesting, challenging job, but something that really didn't connect with any of the things that I really held dear. I had this moment where I decided, after a few years of spending a day a week with a large animal vet, that I was going to go back to school to become a large animal veterinarian. And that is really what kicked off this path. I always knew when I was in vet school that what I wanted to really focus on was the systems. And that's what I ended up doing. While I was at the Summer Dairy Institute down at Cornell. I met with some really interesting professors and some interesting industry experts. […] In 2014, that's when CATTLEytics was formally started. We've been in this for over 10 years, and we have a strong history now in the industry of really pairing technology and veterinary expertise. […]
Chris Gwyn (00:06:00.11) Are there areas in livestock production that we're missing out on by not either having accurate data or not being able to make timely decisions based on the analysis or accurate analysis of data?I mean, there obviously are, but we really take a person-first approach to the way that we do our business. We look at dairy farms and dairy cows like athletes. So, if you have a whole bunch of Olympic athletes, it depends on how far you want to go. If you're happy with their performance and you're getting your milk check and you don't want to do anything further than that, then, yeah, there’s a lot of potential, but you're not motivated to really dive into that potential. […]
New Tools for Understanding Stress in Transition Cows
Season 6 · Episode 7
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 • Duration 14:44
Timestamps & Summary
Chris Gwyn (02:11) At JEFO, we've been looking at stressors across species, in particular in dairy cows. I was wondering if you could give our audience an overview of this study and why it's important.
Dr. Laura Hernandez Sure. This was an ongoing collaboration with my colleague Dr. Milo Wiltbank, who's a reproductive physiologist here at the University of Wisconsin. We had a shared scientist who's now a professor at the vet school at the University of Florida, Pedro Monteiro. […] He's traditionally a reproductive physiologist. He developed this question about how this might impact return to cyclicity and timing of parturition. His main complaint was that in our projects, we could never figure out when the cows would calve, so they'd be sampling forever and ever and ever. And then finally the cow would calve earlier or late, of course. And so he was like, there's got to be a way we can figure this out. It also might be really critical to how successfully a cow comes back into cyclicity or what might happen with reproductive diseases, knowing that there are all these losses that occur that are due to a variety of problems in the first 60 days postpartum. […] We know that cortisol is a major stress regulator of all things, and it changes all the time in relation to a variety of stresses. [Dr. Monteiro] had read this paper, and I believe it was beef cattle, and they had shown that you could measure cortisol in the hair. Really, the hair cortisol is reflective that day for about two weeks prior to the actual date you took the hair sample. Because the cortisol deposits in the hair, and the hair doesn't go away. It grows, and then you shave it off, and you can do this measurement via RIA or ELISA of the cortisol. […]
Chris Gwyn (You had demonstrated that if we can just take out some of the key points: low stress, low cortisol versus high. You were able to see a production performance different, wasn't there?
Chris Gwyn (12:12)
You have a family, you have farm work, you have your dairy consulting. How do you balance all that? What's your key to success in that area?
Jodi Erickson
The key to success there might just be failure. I can reflect on my earlier years with my children, during the hard stages of life when they're not sleeping through the night. So, all that whole dynamic, and I did lose accounts. It was a hard time in my career. And I think, in hindsight, those are probably the accounts that you weren't going to have long-standing relationships with anyway. Generally, something that I see on farms more and more is women stepping up into leadership roles. And these women have all lived through that as well. And it's just becoming, I think, more accepted. […]
But it's still a challenge, I guess. And you know, just communication. Again, it goes back to communicating with my customers. They're aware of what my life looks like, and they're respectful of me and my time. And those are the people that I want to align with.
Chris Gwyn (14:51)
If you reflect back on your 20 years of dairy consulting experience, how do you see that the role has changed over that time?
Jodi Erickson
What's really neat about the market that I'm in is we still have really quite a few dairy farms that are under 100 cows. We still have a lot of tie stall farms, a lot of upright feed units, silos, harvesters, etc. But really, our larger farms are expanding, and they are expanding rapidly. So, it's really neat. What used to be having 3, 4, or 5 large 500-cow freestyle farms was a pretty significant milestone when I was young in my nutrition work. And now, that's kind of the norm. I'm on more of the freestyle herds than the tie stall herds. And a lot of these farms, they grew within. So, the owners and the management are making these developments and management changes, really right along with myself. […]
Chris Gwyn (20:04)
I'd love if you could share an example of a small management change that you introduced to a client or a client introduced to you that really unlocked real key benefits later on or at that moment.
Jodi Erickson
Probably the first thing that comes to mind when you say a small management change, it's still really focusing on some of the basics in nutrition work. And you see people maybe with the Penn State Shaker Boxes but really focusing on proper feed moisture and length. There have been several occasions where we have just focused on if we're going to be feeding straw or hay to some pre-fresh or post-fresh animals, whether that's driving off of an energy issue or a potassium issue. If cows are sorting at the bunk, they're not eating the diet that we think they are. And there have been a multitude of times that we have really focused on mixer maintenance, whether that's keeping knives sharp or throwing the pitch of regrinding a lot of this straw. Maybe that involves getting a Haybuster. […]
Chris Gwyn (32:27)
If you could leave some advice to a dairy producer working with their dairy consultant, say maybe 3 recommendations on how they could get the most value out of that working relationship with their dairy consultant, what would that be?
Jodi Erickson
I would think the first thing, honestly, is “be prepared.” […]
Another thing is to always keep in the back of your mind that when things are going wrong, it's very easy to blame a person, whether it's a nutritionist or a feeder on a farm. But at the end of the day, we are all on the same team. We're all fighting to win. […]
I would really say those are probably my two big sound pieces of advice. Have a lot of trust but also utilize everyone's time. Be prepared.
Dr. Gerard Cramer
Basically, what we're talking about is the last bone; we call that the P3. That's the last bone that's inside the hoof capsule. If we think about when a cow's walking on, she's walking on about 5 millimeters of horn, and then there's about 5 millimeters of something called the corium, and then the bone is kind of sitting on top of that. So when we get pressure on that corium, when it gets squished, basically, whether it's a sole ulcer or a white line, that creates an inflammatory process. So that inflammatory process happens in the corium. […]
Chris Gwyn (12:16)
Could you share with the audience your main findings on hoof trimming modeling and how that can be applied by hoof trimmers or producers at the farm level?
Dr. Gerard Cramer
When I first came to Minnesota, one of the first things I wanted to do was say, “Okay, there's basically one commonly taught trimming technique”, and there was a trimmer called Karl Burgi out there saying, “Okay, we have to do more modeling”. And modeling is basically taking more of the horn away from underneath the flexor tuberosity, which is what creates sole ulcers. So, we did a study where we compared doing that extra modeling- some hoof trimmers would call it excessive modeling— underneath that flexor tuberosity, but not getting into the toe triangle. The toe triangle is basically where the inside wall starts to go into the coronary band, so it’s not going too far into the toe. So, when we removed that extra horn, we had some impact on first-lactation cows where we did this at the time of drying. […]
Chris Gwyn (16:54)
So, trimming cows that are exhibiting signs of lameness is a more strategic approach?
Dr. Gerard Cramer
I get in trouble when I say this, and the hoof trimmers say, “Well, I'm doing this for comfort. Some of these cows are long.” But those are all things that we have to think about and say, “Okay, in the farms I work with, cows are walking a long distance. So, there are not many cows that have really long feet”. So, we're not trimming the cows because they have really long feet. Okay, then we're trimming them really to prevent lameness. And then we have to ask ourselves, “How much lameness are we preventing?” But if you have worked with a dairy and say, “Okay, I have a lot of long feet, these cows are walking on skis, they need to be trimmed.” So, strategic means: We look at the farm and say, “This is what the trimming program is”. And then even within the farm, we say, “Okay, for that cow, this is what her trimming program should be”. […]
Chris Gwyn (17:58)
We're talking about trimming. Is there anything we should be doing differently with pregnant heifers from a trimming perspective?
Dr. Gerard Cramer
I think it totally depends on where they're coming from. […]
Dr. Gail Carpenter
You're absolutely right that we need to be thinking ahead. You've probably heard the phrase that genetics is the ceiling and nutrition is the floor. So genetics kind of sets that upper limit, and nutrition sets that lower limit. I don't actually think that's entirely accurate. I like to say that genetics is the ceiling, nutrition is the floor, and management is the foundation. Because you can't outfeed bad management. And I like the way you phrase that about looking ahead and kind of predicting when these stressors are going to happen, because if we can proactively manage them— and dairy farmers are super creative. There's a lot of different— there's no one right way to manage every stressor that a calf is going to have. But when you talk about low-hanging fruit and things that I want producers to think about a lot, the two main stressful points in a calf's early life are going to be that first day and weaning. […]
Chris Gwyn (22:35)
So, as we wrap up our discussion today, I always like to ask for that calf manager, that producer listening to the audience, in the audience today, what would be sort of 3 or 4 key takeaways about calfhood stress that you'd like them to impart and think more effectively about, and how that's being managed and implemented at their farms?
Dr. Gail Carpenter
I would say again, that day 1 care. Make sure you have those protocols locked in. And you're making sure that you're working with your veterinarian on that. I would also say the weaning side of things. And I think a lot of that weaning comes back to getting groceries in the calf and making sure some of those groceries are coming from the starter. [...]
And then cleanliness. That's obviously a big part of that day one process, but keeping that calf kitchen clean, keeping that immune system from having to fight off more germs than it has to because you're feeding with dirty nipples… […]
Chris Gwyn (24:07)
And is there anything specific related to the dairy-beef that you would like to reemphasize with the listening audience?
Dr. Gail Carpenter
There's a lot we don't know about the beef-on-dairy side. There's a lot we're still trying to figure out. But what we do know is that those best practices for heifers are often going to be the same best practices for beef-on-dairy.
What we learned in that study is that smoke exposure led to increases in cortisol, immunoglobulins, cytokines, and an acute phase response. So, with that initial study, we are sure now that smoke from wildfires can be considered an environmental stressor. And that leads to some energy losses through the development of that immune response. […]
Chris Gwyn (11:57)
Are there morphological or lung-related changes from smoke exposure?
Dr. Juliana Ranches
For that study in particular, unfortunately, we did not do any lung ultrasounds or anything more morphological. I know some of our colleagues from the University of Idaho, who are also working in this area of smoke exposure. […]
What we are doing now on the smoke exposure is we now have developed a methodology that we can control and mimic the smoke exposure that we see from natural fires. So we can actually have a little bit more control over it. […]
What we are seeing right now with those control-type studies is that the responses are very similar to what we’ve seen in the first study in terms of immunology. […]
But we also now have the ability to measure feed intake and look at average daily gain on those calves. And what we are seeing is that calves that are exposed to smoke have delayed and slower gains. […]
Chris Gwyn (15:21)
Do the effects of smoke exposure persist after the event?
Dr. Juliana Ranches
At this point, our studies are very short. We're trying to just look at up to 3 weeks after that smoke exposure. […]
We ran this study for about 36 days. We do a week of acclimation, a week of smoke exposure, and then 3 weeks of following those calves.
In this most recent study that we did, we saw that calves that were exposed to smoke never reached the same performance or final gain as the calves that were outside. […]
What we've seen so far is that calves that were exposed to smoke never caught up to the calves that were not exposed. They were lighter at the end of this study in terms of average daily gain, final gain, and final body weight.
Chris Gwyn (16:42)
Can we extrapolate these findings to older animals or feedlot situations?
Dr. Juliana Ranches
I feel like this is a frequent problem here in the Western states of the United States. […]
So, I feel like an older animal that has been able to mature and be in the herd is unlikely to suffer so much through it. But I think what smoke might do is actually cut the productivity of that animal shorter. […]
So those animals entering the feedlot might be more susceptible. […]
I think they might be more susceptible to disease and not necessarily stay long in the herd. So far in our studies, it seems that calves exposed to smoke have the same visual signs as a calf with BRD (Bovine Respiratory Disease), but they don’t have a fever. […]
They might just look like they have BRD, but they might not have it.
Chris Gwyn (19:46)
How does wildfire smoke compare to dust exposure in feedlots?
Dr. Juliana Ranches
In smoke exposure, we tend to look at the fine particulate matter of PM2.5, which is the smallest one. That tends to be the major concern of smoke from wildfires because it's a very, very small particulate. It can actually dry the airways, and with that, it can be inhaled by the animals and get into the bloodstream through the airways. […]
And when we think about the dust and smoke from feedlots, that's probably going to be on the bigger size. It's still very small, but it's probably more of the PM10. […]
But both are very destructive and will negatively impact animals. I would say that maybe the type of response we get in both scenarios might be similar; it's just that what is causing it might be a little bit different.
Chris Gwyn (21:17)
What management strategies can help mitigate wildfire smoke impacts?
Dr. Juliana Ranches
Our first recommendation for producers is “be prepared”. […]
If you get in a situation that a fire is coming, you might have to evacuate, so keep in mind where you're going to move your animals, who's going to move them, when you're going to do it, and what feed resources you have to move with you. […]
And then for producers that are affected by the smoke itself, we always recommend not stacking stressors. […]
If you're planning any type of management like weaning, commingling, transporting, vaccination, and you know there's smoke, you might want to consider delaying that practice. […]
We also recommend always having lots of clean water for those animals. […]
We want to make sure that the airways are always moist, so we avoid giving opportunity to opportunistic diseases. And in terms of nutrition, make sure that those animals have very good, high-quality feed. If they eat a little bit, they might want to eat the best food we can possibly offer.
Chris Gwyn (24:33)
What are your key take-home messages?
Dr. Juliana Ranches
I think at this point we now know that smoke is an environmental stressor, so it should be treated as one. So, try not to stack those stressors and make sure we provide the best feed and water to those animals during that stressful period. Reduce that stressor load in that production moment.
If you are in a situation where you might be subject to evacuation, make sure you have a plan so the outcomes are more likely to be positive. So again, plan and make sure not to stack stressors. […]
Everything that we suspect would happen when those animals were exposed to smoke basically happened. So, we know it's not good, exposure is not good, and it does impact production. So more questions are coming, more research is coming. […]
Chris Gwyn (10:27)
How will artificial intelligence and machine learning impact feed analysis and decision-making?
Katie Raver
One of the challenges… is that for the grand majority of our farms, we don't have a very big dataset. […]
Feed sampling, we maybe do every other week. And so… we have about 25 data points per feed per year. […]
When we look at AI models and machine learning, typically those are able to be utilized when we get hundreds of data points. And so now with a more robust sampling program, we're able to develop this really big dataset that we can leverage these AI tools on. […]
Chris Gwyn (12:28)
What feed hygiene issues are limiting performance, and how should producers think about them?
Katie Raver
I think feed hygiene really is something that we all need to take quite seriously because it can be a production limiter. […]
One of the biggest… misconceptions… is that when we have an issue on a farm, it's one problem. […]
However, most of the time… it's often a combination of these negative things working together that are leading to these issues. So maybe it's not that one thing that we're looking to find, but it's a combination of things. […]
But as we look at the whole picture of what the cow is taking in, that's when we start to see a clearer picture. […]
Chris Gwyn (15:34)
How should feed hygiene testing be used, and what signs should producers watch for on-farm?
Katie Raver
This is a test that's done when we suspect an issue. So we're often a little bit retroactive in our testing for these feed hygiene parameters. […]
However, if we feel like we're not getting the productivity we expect, feed hygiene is definitely something to look at. […]
So, one thing that I tend to recommend people look into would be, are we seeing heating? […]
When we look at our bunk face, is it hot? Do we see evidence of spoilage? Does it smell good or are there some off smells that maybe we need to look into? […]
Chris Gwyn (19:17)
How should fecal analysis be used alongside forage and TMR testing?
Katie Raver
It gives us an insight into what the cow is actually doing with our feed. […]
So things like fecal starch and fecal fat, now we can test through NAR. And so, we have this opportunity to look at what the cow is doing with the starch that we're providing and if there's any opportunity to improve starch digestion. […]
And so it gives us opportunities to look at where we can fine-tune these nutrients and where we can potentially gain more energy from these nutrients. […]
So we can use these tools quite a bit to help benchmark within a herd… to make sure we're making improvements in the right direction. […]
Chris Gwyn (23:07)
What are best practices for sampling and submitting fecal samples?
Katie Raver
If we know that shipping a sample in the heat, we get continual degradation of the starch. So especially in summer months, we want to freeze those samples before we send them. […]
We don't want a pile that's been sitting there for, you know, 2 or 3 hours because again, that starch can be degrading. So when we do it, we want to make sure we're taking the right steps, getting fresh samples, making sure we're getting a representative sample from the pen. […]
So I think always having that baseline is good… we need that baseline to know where we're going and help us make sure we're achieving our goals.
Chris Gwyn (25:35)
What key habits should nutritionists adopt to get more value from lab analysis?
Katie Raver
So what the first one would be: test all your feeds at some routine frequency. […]
Understanding and creating a baseline for the regional area of feeds that you're sourcing, I think is really important. […]
And so just understanding what that is, where you're at, I think will really help fine-tune that ration. […]
And then number two would be looking at trends over time. […]
Tracking those changes over time will give us better insight into how our feed is changing… and that our data is representative of what we're feeding to cows.
Chris Gwyn (08:50) Was there any direct impact on immunity that you were able to measure in this study? Dr. Stephanie Hansen I think one of the things that's been really fun about some of the research that we've done at Iowa State over the last several years is some of the collaborations that we formed. […] Jodi McGill is our collaborator at our vet school. She's a bovine immunologist, and her expertise is really about things that happen in the lung, in particular. She's really interested in bovine respiratory disease complex, which is very common in receiving cattle. With Jodi, what we have done is what I would call a two-prong approach. One is we're actually able to take essentially a tube and put it in that calf's nose, flush his lungs with a little bit of saline, and then draw that saline back up. […] That fluid that we pull back up, they then isolate cells out of there. Some of these cells are going to be things like immune cells, and they're not in the lung tissue itself. They're hanging out around it. This is a snapshot of who's on the way to the lung from an immune response perspective. […]
Chris Gwyn (12:42) Are there other interesting key findings from that study that you're able to share at this point? Dr. Stephanie Hansen I think the health stuff is really the most interesting. Maybe at the end of the day, 28 days look like it might be the peak beneficial window. I think that makes sense because after 28 days, we're starting to pick up nicely on intakes. Really, the majority of our health benefits are seen there, especially, I would say, in week two and three, which fits perfectly when we typically see shipping fever break and things like that for newly arrived calves. […]
Chris Gwyn (05:39) Are there impacts of consumer expectations that have also altered what we should be doing today from what we've done in the past? Dr. Stephanie Hansen From a consumer perspective, I would say probably the biggest one, […] is that we have pretty aggressively moved away from mass treatment of animals on arrival. That's really a practice now that is restricted to animals who are at really high risk. […]
Chris Gwyn (07:48) Are there emerging strategies or even feed additives that you're particularly excited about? What are we doing differently today that we didn't do in the past? Dr. Stephanie Hansen I think now, and moving maybe into the future, too, about this idea of precision nutrition. How do we go from making pen-level decisions for 100 head or 200 head in a pen to making single animal-based decisions? There are all kinds of challenges with that. But I think with some of the wearables and different technology sensors and stuff that we have now, we're increasing our likelihood of being able to do some of those things. […]
Chris Gwyn (10:32) Do you find that, out of my naivety of knowledge, producers typically have a different diet for sick pens, or is it just fairly basic to get them back on feed and get them healthy again? Dr. Stephanie Hansen I would say that, especially in the last several years, the philosophy has really shifted to get that animal back to their home pen if at all possible. Bad things in general tend to happen if you're in the hospital pen, right?
Chris Gwyn (14:58) We're going to fast-forward five years? Well, let's say 10 years. What do you see as the modern twists that would impact the new standard in receiving cattle management or nutrition? Dr. Stephanie Hansen I think two things. I think of wearable sensors, such as ear tags or collars. […] Right now, we've got some challenges where some of them interfere with other things, so you’ve got to figure that out. [Also], labor is going to continue to be one of our biggest challenges in the beef industry. We just don't have as many people who are willing to do some of the work that's required, or that labor force just simply isn't available. How do we help somebody become a better cowboy or cowgirl in terms of their ability to identify sick animals?
Chris Gwyn (18:02) To summarize, maybe three or four key points that you'd like to emphasize to producers and veterinary nutritionists in relation to receiving cattle, management, technology, and nutrition that you'd really like to stick with them? Dr. Stephanie Hansen I think the first one would be the more you know about what you're buying, the better. […] Think about strategic supplementation, making sure that you've got some fortification of critical minerals like zinc, critical vitamins like vitamin A, and some of the other things that maybe have been less researched, like vitamin C and the B vitamins. […] Are there ancillary or additional therapies that you can offer when an animal has to get pulled for a treatment? […]
Dr. Shari van de Pol
Chris Gwyn (00:09:24.12) Tell me about the impact of farm size in those types of decision-making processes. Dr. Shari van de Pol You manage a farm differently depending on size. Part of that is due to even just staffing. Because I find people can do things when they are a solo dairy farmer and they have 50 cows, they can keep a lot in their head. They know what's going on. They can assess the situation as it goes. As soon as you start to grow beyond that, you start to involve, often family members, but additional staff. When you get to that point, then you need to start to streamline an operation. […]
Chris Gwyn (00:13:35.02) How can systems today work to enhance or utilize that data to be more predictive and more preventable? Dr. Shari van de Pol What we've seen is when I started, for instance, looking at production data, and I was looking at production data both north and south of the border here in North America, and I was finding that, for instance, there were similar environmental effects affecting milk production in given years. A lot of it could be potentially environmental as opposed to what that farmer is doing. The producer could be doing the exact same thing year after year, performing to that top level, but if the environmental effect is strong, they're going to see a worse return on their efforts. […]
Chris Gwyn (00:15:52.11) And machine learning, we hear that bounced around. What are we actually talking about here? Dr. Shari van de Pol (00:15:58.18) When we talk about machine learning, we're often talking about things like neural networks or random forests, which, again, don't give you much information. […] The classic example was looking at pictures of dogs and cats. You could look at a picture of a dog and immediately say: “Hey, that's a dog, that's a chihuahua, that's a domestic shorthair.” But computers couldn't do this. They would take this image, break it into pixels, see the dark... They just had a really hard time with problems like that. What that meant is that computer science could only go so far. It could only go up to really mathematical-specific problems. But when you start to go into those areas where it's simple for us but hard for them, they hit a wall, and they couldn't help us out with those other problems. Basically, jumping over this wall means that it opens up what computers can do. Now what happens is a computer looks at an image and it would apply something called a neural network, which means it's like a series of filters on that image. […]
Chris Gwyn (00:21:01.20) I guess bringing some of those different systems together and talking together is also important, right? Dr. Shari van de Pol Absolutely. I mean, it’s one of those things where I was down at a conference and hearing people on a panel say: “If only there was a company that would bring data streams together and do this”, and it's like, we're doing this. It is a tough problem. One of the reasons why it's a tough problem is because there's not necessarily an obvious big motivation for players in the industry to share their data other than the fact that is beneficial to the dairy farmers they are serving. […]
Chris Gwyn (00:23:43.09) I wanted to bring in the topic about data security, ownership, at he farm level. I was wondering if you could share some thoughts on that. Dr. Shari van de Pol When we talk about things like data security, it definitely goes to protecting the assets on farm, making sure that your backups aren't just set and forget. You have to test those systems out and have a plan to test them out, quarterly, for instance. You also need to work with a provider that understands what a dairy is like.
Chris Gwyn (00:28:09.09) Summarize three or four key points that you would emphasize to producers, having been there as a nutritionist in relation to collection analysis and application of data on the farm. What would you recommend? Dr. Shari van de Pol First off, if you're somebody who wants to, whether you're a business or you're a producer, if you want to get to that next level, there are resources. We will help you as a company. There are ways to get to that next level. […] The second thing is when we're talking about staffing, onboarding, training, having protocols available, being able to do that, team management, communication, that has been in the past undervalued, and that's an easy win to make your farm a great place to show up to and a place where everybody wants to be. […] And then the third thing is, artificial intelligence is something that can take away the headaches that you have, the things that you don't want to do, the filling in of forms, and all of those things. […]
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Dr. Laura Hernandez That would be from a practical standpoint that if our data continues to go in the way that it has been, that if a farm wanted us to come, that this is something that could be done by a nutritionist or nutrition groups or veterinarian groups, that if they wanted to know what it looked like, say, in the prepartum period, they could take a hair sample when they dried cows off, and then maybe, depending on what their dry off protocol was, three weeks later, get another hair sample. That could be run, and they would have a good idea of what's happening. Or if they wanted to do it in a post-fresh cow, say 10 days postpartum, they could really take a look at what some of these pen changes might look like, if they did it in a new facility, or if they were having problems, is it due to stress? What's the stress level? How might that look on a threshold if we can develop one? It would be a really easy way to do so without bleeding a cow. All you have to do is shave the tail head. It's just a regular shaving. […]
Chris Gwyn (12:43) Inherently, we may understand that certain periods of lactation or management practices have a different level of applied stress or stressors. Calving, regrouping, the whole process, mixing groups, but we don't know what costs us. Some association of a simple cortisol test with a number of studies that support milk loss or impacts on reproduction will reestablish or reinforce the need to perhaps change some management.
Dr. Laura Hernandez That's my hope. I'm a very basic scientist, but all the things I root my science in are providing information to make good decisions that work the very best for a particular farm within the means of their ability to do things. I think that's why we're here, is to help them. We try to really make our work as translational as possible.
