Calves are the future of every operation and represent a huge investment in both time and money before they make it to the milking string. But those first two years are the foundation for the rest of their productive lives. Tonight, we get to talk all things calves. From colostrum processes to feeding protocols. We are joined by Dr. Glen Aines as this week's co-host.
Guests: Dr. Bob James, Down Home Heifer Solutions and Dr. Ed Kreykes, GPS Dairy Consulting.
Calves are the future of every operation and represent a huge investment in both time and money before they make it to the milking string. But those first two years are the foundation for the rest of their productive lives. Tonight, we get to talk all things calves. From colostrum processes to feeding protocols. We are joined by Dr. Glen Aines as this week's co-host.
Dr. Bob James discusses the importance of raising dairy calves. Since the producer doesn’t see the end result, it can be hard for them to justify the cost of gain. He referenced the beef industry’s focus on calf development and how the dairy industry can work on calf health and their productivity later in life by focusing on nutrition and development within the beginning stages of life. 8:15
Dr. Ed Kreykes jumps in to discuss the importance of colostrum, testing colostrum, and pasteurizing colostrum if certain levels are reached during testing. He agrees with Dr. James that maternity pen maintenance, as well as cow and calf care and handling, is important especially within the first hour after birth. 12:02
Dr. Bob James provides insights into his research success with automatic feeders and how mortalities and morbidities were low. He also mentions calfblog.com and how he uses the blog to educate and teach producers how to use the automatic feeding systems. The technology is great, but producers need to understand the benefits and how to use the system properly. 21:00
Both our guests discuss the importance of having a good calf manager – an employee that excels at paying attention to the calves and notices the small details within the calf herd. Dr. Kreykes also mentions the “MBWA method” aka Management By Walking Around, and how visually observing the calves will provide different information than the automatic feeder. 28:08
Finally, Dr. Bob James shares research on average daily gain during the first 45 – 60 days of life and how it had as much impact on productivity as the animal’s genetics. He also highlights the mammary gland development and how nutrition can have a potentially positive effect on a cow’s later performance. 50:00
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:08):
Good evening everyone. And welcome to the Real Science Exchange. The pub cast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Calves are the future of every operation and represent a huge investment in both time and money before they make it to the milking string. But those first two years are the foundation for the rest of their productive lives. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell, one of your hosts for the Real Science Exchange. Tonight, we get to talk all things calves from colostrum processes to feeding protocols. Our first guest is Dr. Bob James. Bob is the industry leading expert in calf feeding and management, and we called on him for a real sense webinar back in June, which was titled “Optimizing Your Calf Program: What does the future hold?”. If you'd like to watch that webinar, it can be found at balchem.com/realscience. Dr. James, welcome once again to the Real Science Exchange.
Dr. Bob James (00:01:06):
Oh, it's been a real pleasure, Scott. I I've I think that Balchem has just done a phenomenal job with this program and, and touching on very, very timely issues for, for our industry and for our producers. And it's just been a real, a real joy for me to be part of this and a real honor to be asked to be part of it.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:28):
Well, we thank you for the kind words and I'll say it, none of this could happen without the professionals that bring the knowledge to the marketplace, so we appreciate you equally. Bob, tell us what you're drinking tonight and then tell us a little bit of how you got started in calves. How'd you get focused on calves?
Dr. Bob James (00:01:47):
Well, I have a Ford Cellars, and this is a Dry Riesling. It's a from breakneck vineyards in New York. And you know, I think a lot of our, where we wind up as a matter of circumstance and I probably didn't have an interest in, I don't come from a dairy background. I had came to Virginia Tech to get my master's and PhD and, and wound up working with calves. I left there and quite frankly, after my PhD and almost became a reproductive physiologist, I went to West Virginia University and got involved with some of the early work with prostaglandin. But came back to Virginia Tech a few years later and just really kind of gravitated back to where my, my early work was with calves. I guess one of the things that I'd really like to feature is that probably in the last 10 years of my career at Virginia tech, most of my research shifted to doing on-farm work, which I think for a scientist is very humbling because you find out all the things that you really don't know, which is what should should do for us is realize how much more there is to learn.
Dr. Bob James (00:03:04):
I learned a tremendous amount from producers pretty much all over the U S and globally. I've had some great opportunities to learn from people everywhere. And especially over my last two years when I had the honor of working with GPS consulting mostly based in the Midwest. And I think that maybe serves as a lead in for our guests tonight.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:32):
Yeah. Thank you for that overview, Bob. And speaking of your guests, would you mind introducing him?
Dr. Bob James (00:03:37):
Yeah, yeah. This is Dr. Ed Krykes and who's with GPS Dairy Sonsulting. And I had the honor of working with them starting in late 2018 and Ed and I really gained a great appreciation working with some of our clients in Australia. We had the opportunity to work with, with three large dairies over there, and my focus being on the calf program two of those farms had robotic calf feeders. In fact, one of those farms now have 50 pounds of calves and about 1200 calves on automatic calf feeders, and they’re just doing a phenomenal job. And so Ed and I had the opportunity to work with that , and really continue to, to keep in touch, even though I left GPS in early 20, 20 due to the inability to travel with COVID.
Scott Sorrell (00:04:33):
Hmm. Thank you. Well Ed, welcome to the Real Science Exchange. I'll ask you the same question. What are you drinking tonight? And then I'd like to ask you what makes the calf side of your customer's operations so important to you?
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:04:45):
Well, thanks Scott. I'm drinking fireball, a cinnamon whiskey that just good to sip. So yeah, so yeah, I'm excited to be here. Like Bob said, we've worked together for a while and, and I've really developed an interest in calves over the last probably 12 to 15 years, because it seemed like that was a neglected part of many dairy enterprises. So people are always excited about the cows and then I still do a lot of repro and nutrition work in the adult herd, but the calf thing to me is so exciting just because when I see calves that are raised well and fed well and taken care of, it's amazing what they do when they come into their first and second lactations. So that's just something that I, I guess I've been extremely excited about and helping my clients work through and look at various things. And that's where Bob and I really clicked on that because that tied right in with his expertise. And I was able to have him on a couple of my client's farms and give us some input in that type of thing.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:52):
Yeah. Thanks Ed. We're really excited about having you here tonight. We have a new cohost tonight, Dr. Glenn Aines, welcome to the exchange and what's in your glass? And are you continuing Dr. Zimmerman's hard cider tradition?
Dr. Glen Aines (00:06:07):
No, Scott, I am not continuing to tradition. I have nice little margarita on the rocks, which is one of my favorite summertime drinks. It's nice and refreshing. But no, I am, I am not a hard cider guys, so..
Scott Sorrell (00:06:26):
Yeah. Well, Glenn, would you mind give us just kind of a quick overview of about yourself?
Dr. Glen Aines (00:06:30):
Sure. Happy to. So I'm actually a Virginia Tech grad- I think a little bit ahead of you probably, Bob. I did my masters and BS degrees there, left there in 1980. Went to the university of Nebraska. Actually trained as a beef nutritionist. But when I came out, I went to work for a small company called Vigortone Ag Products and was with them for a number of years in technical services. Probably spent about half my career in tech service, and the other half of it in various aspects of management and sales support. So I've been with Balchem now for about 13 years. And I love this, this topic by the way. It's one that I have believed has been, been greatly neglected over the years and the stuff that you've done, Bob has been very, very helpful for me. So what, by the way, are you drinking Scott?
Scott Sorrell (00:07:29):
Well, thanks for asking Glen. So tonight I'm drinking a Sierra Nevada torpedo. It's an IPA and I'm drinking that in honor of my new co-host tonight, right? So Glenn used to work at the corporate headquarters for Balchem in New Hampton, New York, and many times we would take off after work at the local pub and drink IPA's together. So I've got an IPA in honor view Glen where we'd sit there and we try to unravel the the riddles of the universe. I think we got pretty far along there. So Bob I'd like to kind of get things started, you know, heifer calves are extremely expensive to raise, and I kind like to know what are some things that we can do to reduce costs without compromising productivity.
Dr. Bob James (00:08:15):
So that's a wonderful lead in, and I think that one of the big challenges that we have is that dairies view the calves as a cost center. You know, they're spending all this money and they don't see the return on that unless they get sick until a couple of years down the road. And I think this is probably the most exciting thing for me is, is to see the results of some hard work by a lot of people of really treating these calves differently, and rather than looking at cost per day, you know, what's my cost per unit of gain? And I, you know, Glenn, I want to come back just a little bit, you know, you're probably had some beef cattle training, is that right? Who was your advisor at Virginia tech? Was that Dr. Fonteneau?
Dr. Glen Aines (00:09:01)
No, Denny Lamb.
Dr. Bob James (00:09:03):
Okay. Yeah. I knew Denny Lamb, yep. But anyway, if we look at the beef industry and how beef calves are raised and then how dairy calves are raised you go, oh my gosh, you know? And that's normal biology. And I think we're finally getting back to that just a little bit is getting back to what is normal biology. And it's quite frankly, it's feeding a lot more milk early on in life. I work a lot with automatic calf feeders, and that's not for everybody. I want to say that very clearly, but we have that opportunity to do some things with that, that I think make dairy calf raising a lot more biologically normal. And so we have less cost per unit of gain. And, and we really see the benefits of feeding these calves better on their health and their productivity later on in life. And that's, I think that's really exciting for me is how we treat these babies, particularly in the first month of life, the impact it has on them later on.
Scott Sorrell (00:10:13):
So let's get a little bit specific. What are some key recommendations you would have for dairy producers for getting calves started right? Give me at least top two or three.
Dr. Bob James (00:10:23):
You know where I always start on places. And this will back up a little bit. We'll let Ed come in here a little bit, but, you know, I think the herd health program is, is absolutely critical, but my big thing, and this was my PhD research that by the way, got fell into a black hole and wasn't pulled out until Dr. Sandra Godan called me one day, but that what's that experience of that calf there in the first 30 minutes of life or hour of life. One of the real hot topics of research right now is the biome. You know, what is the biome of this calf? What's populating the gut of this calf. And, and my PhD research long ago found that boy, you load them up with, with bacteria early on, either from colostrum that has too much bacteria or from a dirty environment,
Dr. Bob James (00:11:13):
and they just don't absorb colostrum. They don't gain that level of immunity. And so that first experience is really critical. The other thing to me, that's really exciting is looking at, you know, there's things other than antibodies in colostrum that are so important that we're just learning about. Some other non IGG factors that have an impact, and if we can prolong that colostrum feeding, you know, we'll see some real benefits in gut development. And I go back to beef cattle and, you know, the calf nurses the dam and gets that. And we haven't done that traditionally with the dairy calf.
Scott Sorrell (00:11:55):
Ed, what about you? What do you see on the, on the dairy operations that you're seeing and what are some of the recommendations you're providing your producers?
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:12:02):
Well, I would agree with everything Bob had said, and I would totally agree with the fact that colostrum to me is the number one preventative nutrient, you know, support and everything else. So I really, really concentrate on colostrum with my clients through the fact of testing the classroom with a Brix refractometer. And, you know, my number is 23 or higher that I use for heifer calves. I really am a believer in pasteurizing colostrum. Like Bob said, I think so often we get colostrum, that's basically seeding the intestinal track with pathogenic bacteria rather than providing a nutrient source for that. So I worked really hard on sanitation even to the point of testing colostrum collection equipment with an ATP meter and helping clients understand what real cleanliness and sanitation is for colostrum. And I find that if that part is handled right and done right, and followed through well, that really makes that first week to 10 days, even up to 30 days of calving or of the calves life so much better. And so that's my number one recommendation. The second one I agree with, Bob, is calving in a clean area, paying attention to the way maternity pens are maintained, and the way maternity cows are handled. You know, clean, dry, gentle handling. I do a lot of work within, with my herds and even with other herds that I get asked to consult on maternity crew training and fresh cow training. And that's always my main focus on how those cows are handled and how those calves are taken care of in that first hour after birth.
Scott Sorrell (00:13:54):
Interesting. I want to circle back real quick and it might be kind of a weird question, but you talked about sterilizing the colostrum and Bob talked about the importance of the microbiome. How do we- there's obviously good bacteria and the colostrum as well that I think traditionally has been used to populate the gut of the animal. How are they getting the gut populated with useful bacteria? How do we get that accomplished? And it has there been much research in that area?
Dr. Bob James (00:14:26):
We actually had a publication in animals that shows up in the most recent issue of some work that was done at Virginia tech. And it looked at the impact of the reproductive tract of the dam it looked at the colostrum, it looked at fecal bacteria and its impact upon the calf. And it it's pretty sizable that the challenge that we have is that we monitor bacteria that biome by looking at the feces of the calf. And one of my mentors once said that well, doing that's about like tuning your car by looking up the tailpipe. It's not entirely. My PhD work- I actually sacrificed some calves and I measured the bacteria, you know, in the calf that was just recently sacrificed in the lumen of the gut and then also in that intestinal epithelium. And it's very different from what shows up in the feces.
Dr. Bob James (00:15:22):
So I, you know, I'd like to say, there's a great big question mark, that we have there right now. You know, and, and my work initially was, well, can we, you know, can we feed some probiotics and good bacteria to these calves? And we can, but I think we still have a long ways to go. We've learned a great deal, but a lot of times we're using one or two different species of bacteria and, you know, are they going to have a real competitive advantage in the gut? And there's just, it it's very much in its infancy. I would say. I also looked at anaerobic bacteria, which are very different from a lot of the aerobes that we deal with. And, and so that's another challenge that we have with, with that, with understanding the biome.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:16:11):
One of the, one of the challenges I've always thought about with probiotics is that, you know, we perceive them as beneficial probiotics, but how does the animal perceive, what is it actually doing to the micro floral populations? If you suddenly inundate the animal with this good bacteria? It’s interesting.
Dr. Bob James (00:16:35):
Yeah, well, you were at Virginia tech when we had the VPI anaerobe lab, which was a world-class anaerobic microbiology lab. And the director of that was on my graduate committee. And, you know, he once said that the idea of giving one or two different bacteria to this animal and expecting it to have an impact is pretty slim. You know, it's like you're walking into a football stadium and telling everybody to go away. And it's just so much we don't know. We're learning, but it's I would still call it very much in its infancy. And we have to move in that direction. Quite frankly, I think with some of the challenges we have with antibiotics,
Scott Sorrell (00:17:16):
Bob, the title of your a webinar the was “What's for your calf operation?”. So what is next, or what does the future hold?
Dr. Bob James (00:17:27):
I want to give credit to, to GPS for this idea, because shortly before I left there, we had we had shifted almost all virtual meetings, but Ed, I think you remember one of the themes of that was, you know, kind of what's next. And one of the principles of GPS, King Hickman has talked change and, and I started reflecting on, you know, what's down the road for calves? And I had an article that appeared in Progressive Dairy. In fact, the paper edition, I just got the other day, it was online maybe a couple of weeks ago. And just to highlight a couple of key points, one is social and that has to do with calf behavior and its impact on them. And, and the other one is on consumers- how they perceive calves, because they're very much tuned into to how we raise calves. The other one is labor environment, what I call technology. And then I think some issues related to, you know, do we raise our own or, or do we have somebody custom rear our heifers? But I think those are some key issues that, that are going to have an impact on, on how we, you know, how we raise calves in the future.
Scott Sorrell (00:18:43):
Yeah. Those are some important topics there. And I'd say let's, let's pick apart some of those. Which one we did like to start with? You know, I know the consumer issues, one that, that, that, I'm not sure we understand how we need to deal with it, but I'd like to get your perspective on that.
Dr. Bob James (00:18:58):
Well, and, and I think there's a, there's a win-win situation here. There's been a big push and there's some really excellent research that's been conducted at the university of British Columbia by Dr. Nina Von Kaiser Lincoln and her associates about paired or group housing. And it has an impact on the behavior of these calves. Did we ever think, why do cows eat twice a day? Because as calves, we fed them twice a day. You know what, when we feed calves on an auto feeder situation, they are very, very different behavior. They could care less if you walk in that barn, not at all, unless the machine's not working and they're pretty upset, but very different behavior. And this is, this is some early, I'll be very honest, It's more of a feeling for me. It's, it's a personal experience, but calves who are raised on a robotic calf feeder probably adapt a whole lot better to robotic milking.
Dr. Bob James (00:20:00):
I mean, we're training a very different animal. And I think that there's some real potential. Now this happens whether we can raise calves in pairs or in groups. And we see that same response in terms of how they react to new things. They’re a lot more calm. And now the other one, and this has to do with consumers, we show the consumer you know, a whole field full of calf hutches and they go “Oh geez, there's that factory farm”, you know, and I show them a pen of calves that are jumping around in a, in a auto feeder barn with their tails up in the air. And they go, oh, isn't that neat?
Dr. Bob James (00:20:41):
But that gives you an idea. And I think that, you know, and we can also talk a little bit about about the the calf blog. You know, I have written a, developed a calf blog for Forrester technic. They make auto feeders that are sold by Lely and gia. Anyway, my findings with this is that that technology is wonderful, but the education and teaching people how to manage these types of systems has not kept pace. And anyway, that, that's my objective with the calf blog. If you're considering that system, here's what you must do. Ed made some points about, in fact, I guess I really became more passionate about this and, and that Ed and I had the chance to work with two dairies in Australia that had auto feeders and between the two of us, we had a lot of success. We had a lot of success and I mean, they, the mortalities were low, the morbidities were low. We had some challenges in the beginning, but, oh my gosh. When you do the right things, right, that Ed talked about in the beginning, and we talked about with colostrum management, we can have a lot of success. Ed mentioned about sanitation and just tremendous opportunities there for I think for success with the auto feeder, not for everybody, but I think that there's some neat opportunities there.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:22:09):
What were the challenges that you ran into?
Dr. Bob James (00:22:11):
Well, a lot of it is personnel, you know? And I think this is a real good question is that you need a very different type of person. I like to say, and we talk about it a little bit on the blog. I need a person who is a fanatic about sanitation. Maybe someone who really likes data, you know, as I had mentioned before with these auto feeders now, they're all cloud-based. So all the data goes up to the cloud and I can monitor any of my farms, any of the feeders on my farms, from my cell phone, from my computer, and which is a tremendous asset. The other one is I think you need to have a person who's passionate about calves, you know, who can see calf behavior and, and who, you know, the technology is fine, but you need a person who is, who is just, you know, who's very sensitive to animal behavior. And and I think that's is a very key issue. And I think that leads into one of the issues about labor. You know, when we look at that labor issues with raising calves, there's some big concerns there, some big concerns. About labor availability and, you know, calf hutches are wonderful. And I, I tell people who love calf hutches. I said, good. Then you go out there in January in South Dakota, or Iowa, Wisconsin at six o'clock in the morning and feed calves and tell me how you like it. And that's a challenge.
Scott Sorrell (00:24:12):
Yeah. That's a great point. I mean, if the humans don't like it, what's that mean for the calves as well, right? Yeah. So now I want to circle back with Ed. You were on that the dairy there in Australia and what were, what were some of the challenges you saw and what did you put in place to overcome those challenges? I
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:24:32):
Well I think the thing that Bob talked about was finding the right person. One of the, one of the big issues you had at the beginning was just very poor sanitation. And these robotic theaters, they're great, but if they get dirty or if they're not cleaned and sanitized properly we ended up with a lot, a lot of issues. Finding the right person that really is into that, watches calves, has an idea of what things are supposed to look and smell light and sounds kind of simple, but it's often not. We had one thing that Bob and I both worked on. There was an area that just had a terrible, terrible smell right where the calves were drinking and then, you know, get some investigating and finally found out what it was and, and corrected it, and suddenly our intakes went up. So some of those things. So sanitation on those is really a big thing.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:25:24):
And I think the other thing is that just to help people understand how calves relate to each other in, in terms of playing together, if you want to use that term. I've had a couple, I currently have no one with robotic calf feeders, but I've had a client in the past that had some, and due to various issues decided that it wasn't for them. But what we've started doing in this herd now, and we've been doing it for about two years.. thousand cows, Jerseys. We do the pair raising of calves. They're not in hutches, but they're in a calf building with a wire pen. And there's two calves in every pen. And this dairy is also a dairy that does a lot of farm tours. School kids tourists, tourism, sort of the agritourism thing. And I often get invited to be part of those tours and be one of those, one of the hosts and the speakers. And it's amazing to see people's excitement about seeing these two calves together and in one pen, and there's no division between, so they can see all their classmates so to speak. And that has really worked well in that situation, having those paired cabs. And I agree with Bob, I think those calves that are raised in a group or with in pairs definitely adapt to new situations. They just like, they're just able to get along better in anything that comes along
Scott Sorrell (00:26:58):
You know, and staying with that theme, Bob. Sorry, I was just gonna ask, you know, I remember from your presentation that you made a distinction between a calf feeder and a calf manager, and so how do you find a calf manager? You know, Ed made the, he said, he know you got to find the right person. How do you find them?
Dr. Bob James (00:27:16):
Yeah. And I think that's that, that leads us into one of the challenges I think that we have with a really good dairy farm manager. I think one of the skills that they really need to have either they do, or someone on their farm needs to be a personnel manager. And knowing how to identify people with the right traits and put them in the right place. And that's relatively new. You know, come back to GPS and say that we have a, we have an HR person that works with GPS, who is extremely talented in that regard. And that's been a big thrust of GPS I think is, is looking at training people. In fact, all of the consultants that I worked with GPS really had a skill there. And, but it's identifying those people.
Dr. Bob James (00:28:08):
And, and I think now you have an opportunity, whether it's pair fed or in a group housing situation. I also want to say that, you know, we can have calves that are mob fed and some people do very well with that, but in those situations, and they they're in an environment where they, they really- it's a whole lot more pleasant than being out on calf hutches. I think the other thing that to, to really work towards in what I was attempting to do with my work with GPS was to develop some systems where we could minimize some of the drudgery involved in feeding calves: washing buckets, washing bottles, and, and some of those things, and to automate that as much as we possibly can and enable that person to really, to really spend the time with calves and have the time to, to, to watch them.
Dr. Bob James (00:29:00):
I remember going to a farm in Wisconsin on my way back from a visiting another client, they had auto feeders and, you know, here it is three o'clock in the afternoon that young woman who was in charge of the calf barn. And, you know, she's just walking the pens at three o'clock in the afternoon. She has no other responsibility, but to walk the pens and see if she can pick up any calves that just might appear a little bit off. And then she might go back to the computer and take a look at, well, see how their feeding behavior is. And but that made a real impression upon me and this farms had auto feeders for awhile and been, been very successful with them by and large. And, but it's a challenge. It is a real challenge that we have.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:29:21):
Yeah, I'd jump in on that one, too. Bob, I would, I would totally agree. When I work with calf crews or maternity crews or whatever, I keep telling them they need to do the MBWA method: Management by Walking Around. And that's not new to me. I didn't make it up, but it sticks in their mind when you say that. Because there's a lot of things, especially maternity, fresh cow and calf crews, they just have to be visual, perceptive, pay attention to details. Every detail is important to calves and maternity pens and fresh cow crews. And I know we're on calves, and that just takes a person that what I found once working with the calf crew, usually it's pretty easy to identify the person that really wants to pay attention and looks at the details and stuff. And that's where Bob and I really think alike on that, and we were able to help develop those in those herds in Australia to excellent, excellent quality people.
Dr. Bob James (00:30:54):
Yeah. I'd like to say, and this was something that I found to be very important being a calf consultant, you know, getting, getting farms to, to pay for calf consulting was rather unique. But one of the things that I really insisted on doing, I said, I want to be there an hour before any of your people arrive because I wanted to watch, see what the animals look like before anybody showed up and then just watch what they did. And, and it really helps to identify where people should be on the farm or should not be, you know, I know I've had cases where I said, you need to get this person out of there. You know, they're just not well suited. This is not for them. And I think that is a really critical part of successful calf management, regardless of the system that you have.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:31:24):
A lot of these, a lot of these things you're talking about, right. Or, or things that need to be implemented ultimately by whoever's making the decisions. Right? So whether you use a particular type of equipment or whether you do or don't raise your own heifers, my point is how do we have the investment in a heifer over a two year time span can be quite significant. In the old days, we used to say out of sight, out of mind. And there's still, I think we've probably come a long way, but that's still a problem. You know, that they're not looking at that long long-term investment that needs to be made if he wants to deliver a heifer or have a heifer delivered to him that can optimize it's genetic potential. It has to start at the calf level, right. With colostrum, as you've pointed out. But what are you seeing? What, how do you convince a dairy producer that he needs to make that investment and monitor that performance from birth all the way to the day he gets that heifer delivered?
Dr. Bob James (00:32:37):
I'm going to let him start on that.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:33:03):
Yeah. That's always the challenge. It really is. I think the way that I've helped clients address that is I usually dig into their records, whether it's dairy comp, PC dark, bovasync, or whatever. But look at what their first lactation animals are doing currently, what they've done over the past couple of years, and then try to see if there is, if I can instill any type of correlation in their mind that say, okay, if we spend more money upfront, more or better colostrum management, more actual intake. You know, three liters instead of two liters, three times a day feeding versus two times a day feedings, all of these kinds of things. And then, you know, my thing is that I've got enough of a database, I guess, that I'm able to share with some of my producers that show on herds that have used these kinds of things and have made the investment, what their first lactation animals are doing.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:34:06):
So if I've got a herd that thinks they have really good heifers and they look okay, and they're at say 75 pounds on their week four milk. And I show the data from another herd that has really concentrated on heifer and calf raising, and now they're at 85 pounds on their week four milk, cause that's a lot of milk. And they can, and they can relate to that. I think a lot of the work that like Mike Vanamberg and those guys at Cornell have done on first and second lactation carry through from the calves are raised. Probably one of the areas right now that I'm trying to get some traction on is the whole heat stress in dry cows. And that impacts probably more than it does the cow and how that carries through for one or two lactations, I'm trying to figure out a good way to get some traction on that one.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:34:44):
But that's, that's the way that I have been able to help producers understand the investment and what you get when you're finished, rather than just, well, you know, as long as they get by, they get by, you know, but that's just not the right way to go.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:35:01)
Yeah. I mean, there's, there's such an impact, you know, of, if you have a heifer that's delivered that is not physiologically mature, we know she's going to produce less. If she, Bob, I pulled this out of your presentation that you gave you enough, they have multiple episodes of a pneumonia when they're younger, they have less likelihood that they're going to stay in the herd for a prolonged period of time, more than, you know, two or three lactations. It just seems that there are benchmarks that we could identify at various stages, doubling growth by the time from birth to weaning, for example, that could be benchmarks should be tracked if you will. And I just get a sense then, and I know for a fact that a lot of dairies just simply don't do that, right. So how do we get them?
Dr. Bob James (00:36:14):
You said a whole lot of things that we could do. A couple of things and I'm going to come back. I was a founder of the Dairy Calf and Heifer Association and right now we're in the process of updating their gold standards. And so there's some of your tracking information that we that we're putting together. Part of the problem is that we don't have records on calves. And I think that was one of my key areas of, of what I worked on with, with the clients that I had on GPS, and to understand kind of my transition in my career. I, you know, I was a university professor and, you know, we go around with blinders on, you know, because we do research and it's very focused. And we eliminate all the, the, the extraneous factors, as I said, my last 10 or 12 years, my research was all in the field.
Dr. Bob James (00:36:43):
And I said, oh, you know, and I did dairy consulting for clients. And, you know, you do a perfect ration and it would fail miserably. Or you, you know, you knew you were taking some shortcuts and be really successful. But I, I worked with a lot of dairies. And, and when I worked with GPS, you know, these were farms that got to go back to. Time and time again. And so it really reinforced what it took to raise good calves. And I want to get back to the data. One of the things, well a couple things that I really focused on, I said, one of them was a daily report. You know, when does the manager of a dairy find out, oh, we got some calf problems. Ed can probably hear this. It gets a phone call, Hey, ed, we're starting to lose a whole lot of calves.
Dr. Bob James (00:37:31):
You know, you're already got a problem. And so I developed this daily report- one page. Tell me how many calves didn't eat well this afternoon. They'll always eat well in the morning, but if they're really good, tell me how many of them drank slowly. They didn't go after that milk, like crazy. And these are not auto feeder. This is where we're hand feeding calves, how many calves didn't eat, and we just keep a little tally sheet. And so that goes to the manager every day. And he, all of a sudden, he sees, we go from two to four to 10 calves, and, oh, we got some problems we better need to address. On the veterinary side, we've developed some reporting there. How many calves got treated for respiratory, for digestive, little tick marks and who they are. This was every single day we got that.
Dr. Bob James (00:38:21):
And depending on the farm is how much we could, we could add to that daily report. And then we have some weekly and monthly reports. And again, it depends upon how many, how many calves we have on the farm to how frequently we need to do it. But I know on the farms with Australia, oh gosh, on a weekly basis, I think we got that, that dairy comp report, and I could monitor things phenomenally with dairy comp. I knew when, how many calves got sick during the first week of life during the second week of life and by month and just, just really good data. And that's probably one of the big challenges that we have in managing that calf program, because that's immediate feedback, you know, I like to say, oh, you feed them all that milk. And I said, do you want to pay me now or pay me later?
Dr. Bob James (00:39:14):
Okay. Feed them more milk now. And what's it cost to feed that calf better versus giving them a, I don't know, what a shot of Draxxin costs. Those are the things that, that you need to work with producers. And this is the one, and we haven't even touched the surface with the data that we get with the auto feeder. It's still very, very early, but in fact I'm working with Forrester on that, but to develop some reports, you know, tell me which feeders are a little bit off today. What's my average intake for this pen of calves over the last three days- has it gone up, has it gone down? Anyway, I think it's really pretty exciting to where we can do some using data predictively rather than historically. And I think that's a key thing, you know, we've known about feeding calves better for, I've worked with Mike vanAmburg and, and with with Jim directly for, oh my gosh, 25, 30 years. We've, you know, Mike did that work and we're still beating our heads against the wall with some folks about feeding calves better.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:40:19):
And what about the reporting back from the calf ranches back to dairy producers? Are they getting the kind of information they need from those organizations in order to be able to kind of benchmark how their, their heifers are doing in that particular situation?
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:40:38)
Sometimes. I say some of that depends on what what kind of data they have before they get there. When I was thinking, listening to Bob there on that talk about, and Glen mentioned, doubling birth weight and at weaning or whatever on that, the first thing to know is how much did that calf weigh when it was born. I'm just amazed how many farms I am on and you say, what was that calf? Well, 65 pounds, and I say say where is your scale? We don't have a scale. Just to have a scale to weigh newborn calves is something that I really tried to implement on my client's farms.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:41:19):
And I look at the data when I go there. If I go there once a week or every other week, I'm going to see their list of what calves weighed at birth and you know, all those kinds of things. If there's no starting point, how do we know if they double their birth weight? And so that's when I see data coming back from calf raisers, I say, well, this, you know, this, these group of calves gained 1.63 pounds per day. Okay. For what does that tell me when we don't know what they weighed when they started, you know, those kinds of things. So I think the data is only as good as the starting point.
Dr. Bob James (00:42:22):
I think there's two kinds of calf ranches we have, too, and I'm seeing a shift. There are some of the traditional ones that are low cost. And I mean, I don't see how they do it. And some of them do relatively well for what they charge. And as a, as a result, I think you see their morbidities are really higher than I would like to see, particularly on respiratory. And you're seeing now the evolution of what I would call a high value calf ranches. I've had the opportunity to work with three of those. They know the birth weight of that calf. They can tell you the weaning weight of those cows. They know exactly what their average daily gains are. They can tell you precisely what their treatment rates are on those animals. And they, they charge. And every calf is, is ear notched for BVD or blood tested for BVD.
Dr. Bob James (00:42:51):
And they get rid of those that, that come up positive. And I think we're seeing an evolution of those high value. I had a wonderful conversation two days ago with a calf ranch and the data that this individual showed me was just amazing. You know, and I mean, they probably use some of that data to say to some of their clients, I think you need to find another place to raise, to, to raise your calves because the calves coming in are not meeting their standards. And they do such a good job that they can afford to do that.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:43:29):
That’s important. That's what they get to that needs to be a, a marriage. It needs to be two teams working together, because if you deliver crappy calves, how do you expect them to raise beautiful heifers and the other way around, if you deliver them beautiful heifers and they, they screw them up, Right? So it has to be some kind of communal effort.
Dr. Bob James (00:43:54):
Coming back to Ed's talk about heat stress. This was real important because we got into a discussion about heat stress on calves. And, and the, the manager showed me the data that they had. There was no difference at all in calves, depending upon what time of the year they were born. And I think a lot of that traces back, maybe on some farms yeah it was horrible. And, but on others, oh my gosh, it was a straight line when you looked at the IGG levels on these calves and the performance of those calves. And, and I think it all goes back to what kind of data do we have. And, and that's very, very important as well.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:44:38):
We lament your comment about the calf scales. We've had some pretty interesting research come out about reassure and its effect on in utero development, whatnot, and posting the calving growth, and to try to go out and find a commercial operation that's got a calf scale that can tell you what they weighed when they were born, but it's very, very difficult for us.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:45:01)
It just seems like such a simple thing. And I can't imagine the kickback that I’ve gotten on some farms.
Dr. Bob James (00:45:08):
Of our dairies that Ed and I worked with, they had a scatterplot. And so they showed the percentage body weight of those calves. So you want 200 at weaning. And so we started out with those calves and the scatter was like this. And one of the really rewarding things is that as we went along that got a lot tighter. And I'll, you know, you could just, it gives me goose pimples just to see that, because, you know, you could really document the progress that this farm was making with their calves. And, you know, there was none of this “well, I think”, or “maybe”- we knew what was happening.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:45:48):
I think, I think another thing that Bob touched on just a little bit that I've really been working hard on, is this daily or weekly, key indicators for calves and whether it goes to someone like Bob or myself, or one of the other consultants that work on the farm, but at least the, the general manager should get a one page, clear, succinct, “this is what we saw”, “this is where we are”. It doesn't have to be long and involved, but okay, we got, you have 52 calves born. We had three cases of pneumonia, we had 10 cases of scours and 14 off feed calves. Something really simple that can just look at and digest it easily. And then, then if there is a problem, hopefully we can see it coming and be able to jump in there a little bit quicker and do some troubleshooting and go from there.
Dr. Bob James (00:46:45):
We had a walk through a report that we developed to because, you know, I was working with a GPS consultant who was, I was only on the farm, maybe, you know, two, three or four times a year versus the GPS consultant. Or it may have been a feed person selling the milk replacer, or the veterinarian, but we had a little one or two page, and here are some key things related to calf management. And some of them are subjective, but that person could fill that thing out. The other thing we could use with that is to go back to that calf program personnel and say, here's where your weak points are, and you need to take care of that. And it was standardized as well as you could do with something subjectively. But you know, we would have pictures to illustrate, you know, here's what good bedding looks like. Here's what it looks like when it's pretty bad. Here's a visual evaluation of the sanitation, you know, is there a biofilm? But anyway, we developed those reports. And again, we adjusted those depending upon what was important on the farm and, and how, I guess, how data hungry the farm was. You know, some farms you needed to scale it back to just some real minimal things and others that like data, you could pile it on a little bit more. Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:48:05)
I'd kinda like to circle back on something that Glen said, he touched on epigenetics and, and I'm wondering how much does a transgenerational nutrition play in the strategy for developing productive heifers or how much should it. You know, we, we're, we're learning that, you know, the nutrition of the dam, even preconception can have an impact two, three generations down the road. And just kind of like to have your perspective on that
Dr. Bob James (00:48:32):
Go ahead Ed, I’ll let you get started first.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:48:38):
To answer that one, I’ll dive in just a little bit out there. So I think it goes back to just nutrition in general. I think we've learned so much here with nutrition over the last 10 years, for sure. And the last five years that I think feeding, especially when you get the close-up heifers and the dry cows and the closeup dry cows, and those kinds of things. Just paying attention to their needs and not trying to I would say so things that are, you know, may sound good, but aren't really proven to be effective. I think, you know, Glen touched about like using reassure and those kind of type of products. Looking at the data that's come out and, and how that impacts not only the, the animal themselves, but also their progeny, you know, you look at what the calf is going through in that in utero development. I think the other thing is, you know, and Bob touched on this with the BVD, you know, PI carriers, making sure that their immune system is not compromised at birth. I think that it's just all part of the package. And I don't know that I have anything more specific on that, but maybe that's an opening that somebody else can jump in.
Dr. Bob James (00:50:00):
Yeah. And I would go back to some of the work that Fernando Soveron, who was one of Mike's graduate students, and Mike did. They looked at the impact of average daily gain during the first 45, 60 days of life. And that had as much impact upon productivity as genetics did. But really what we think it's doing is it's probably turning on some genes for milk production. At Virginia tech, we had- of course he retired about same time that I did- Mike Acres did a lot of work on memory development and found out that on the newborn calf, you had a memory gland that was tiny. And by the time that they were weaned, it had really quite exponential growth. And we were really formulating the, the framework for that later memory development in the calf. And so early on that nutrition can have a real potentially positive impact on, on memory development of that calf.
Dr. Bob James (00:51:03):
And I think this is another area where we're just really starting to learn the, the impact of early nutrition of that animal on her later performance. You know Ed touched on the fact of, of respiratory disease and you know, that that's huge. We treat an animal two or more times for respiratory disease, and we're going to have an impact on her longevity in the herd. And that's big, you know. I don't worry as much about the, the scours or the digestive diseases. If we recover from them very quickly, there's not a lasting impact, but we look at the impact on respiratory, on development of the respiratory system. And Terry Olivette from university of Wisconsin Vet School has really done some tremendous work at looking at assessing damage to the respiratory system of, of young calves, you know, using ultrasound. And, and I think that these are some real long-term impacts of, of how we manage calves and, and how productive they're going to be as, as older animals.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:52:07):
Yeah. So to your point, Scott, there's the whole timing of supplementation. And beef cattle, for example, you can actually change the composition, the carcass composition of animals by changing when you provide supplemental feeding during the late gestation mid-list gestation, that kind of thing. So it has an impact very difficult to measure, but it certainly can have an impact.
Scott Sorrell (00:52:37):
Yep. Got another line of questioning that a little offbeat, but we see a trend now on dairy farms where they're breeding just a small percentage of the animals to dairy animals for the replacement heifers in the rest of their breeding to beef animals. What kind of impact, if any, is that going to have on, on the calf raising programs?
Dr. Bob James (00:53:00):
What it does is it sets a priority for doing a better job with our calves, because now we're dealing with a superior genetic animal on the farm. And, and now's the time where I think we get a much greater payback by taking better care of that, of that calf. And in fact I just was charged with the responsibility of a webinar, or excuse me, of a panel discussion we're going to have on at Western Dairy Management, just to that that very system. How do farms decide on breeding beef to dairy? And I think it, it really varies tremendously from farm to farm, depending upon what their long-term goals are on the farm. But I think in an immediate factor we're dealing with having more elite animals. In the past, you know, we've always had a surplus of, of calves and heifers. And so the farm could do one or two things. Well, they could cull more heavily. And right now, that is not profitable because the rearing costs far exceed the value of a spring and heifer. And so that is not a good financial decision. But those decisions have changed a good bit over the last you know, over the last probably three or four years on the economics of, of that decision.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:54:31):
Yeah. I, I think I would totally agree with that. I think the fact that they're getting fewer heifers, but they're from their better animals. It's been easier, I think, to encourage the producers, to make the investment to say, okay, we've gotten fewer heifers, so we've got to do everything we can to make them get up to their lactation and, and do well on that. I have three of my clients herds that are doing a lot of work with embryos. Putting in embryos, you know sex embryos from not only their own herd, but from other quality animals as well. And so then there's one more step of incentive to help them do a better job of, of raising those heifer calves and getting them to their full genetic potential.
Scott Sorrell (00:55:21):
So I don't know if you guys heard it or not, but they just called last call. And I want to make sure that if there's any large issues that we haven't covered or addressed yet I'd like to hit those real quick, if we can, anything we missed.
Dr. Bob James (00:55:36):
Well, I don't think so. You know, it it's I think it's an exciting time. I'm always an optimist. Otherwise I'd probably be fully retired right now, but I enjoy what I do, and I always look about it with excitement for the future, and the things in terms of what we're learning about calf behavior, what we're learning the impact of better nutrition of the calves. The other one is, is, you know, I think looking at I'm still really excited about the automatic calf feeders because for the people who want to make that commitment, the people who are more interested in data, the people who are maybe concerned about, about the availability of their labor and the quality of that labor, and, you know, they don't want to keep looking for calf feeders, but they know they can hire somebody who's going to do a tremendous job.
Dr. Bob James (00:56:33):
And so I think that there are some real opportunities, if they understand the commitment that they need to make on that. And if they have those characteristics, and if they don't, then there are a lot of other opportunities out there to do equally as well. But I think that there's some neat opportunities, and that's one of the, I think one of my objectives, my first objective with the calf blog is if you want to consider this, here's what you must do. Otherwise, don't look at this outreach, don't look at this alternative. And I think that was my first objective with developing the calf blog.
Scott Sorrell (00:57:10):
Very well. We'll put that the address to that calf blog in the show notes. So if you want to want to find that, that you can find it there. Glen, as we close it out here, one or two things that key takeaways for you as you listen to these two gentlemen that you think we need to share with the audience, and then do you see an advancement coming down the road. What do you, what do you think that would be?
Dr. Glen Aines (00:57:34):
Put me on the spot, Scott… I'm pretty, I'm pretty much still really focused on, you know, things that we can do through research that will help the dairy producer understand the investment that really is needed to be made in these heifers so that they, they don't put them out of sight and out of mind. And if I, and I, Bob, I really appreciate the, the idea that you have these people that are starting to really look at the data and the calves, and these high quality I think you referred to them as high quality calf ranches that are giving that producer a lot of solid, good information. Maybe benchmarking them back against other herds that are using that same facility, I think is hugely important. That helps you both monitor the quality of the heifer that you're delivering.
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:58:31):
If you're seeing much higher treatment costs and things in your calves, then these other benchmark herds are doing. Maybe you're not doing things as well as you should be. But I, I really, you know, I, when I talked producers, I like to emphasize, you know, how important it is to make that investment in those heifers, because the amount of milk you lose, either through poor milk production or the amount of milk you lose because that heifer just doesn't stay in your herd very long. Those economics are pretty, pretty important. And so I'd like to see, you know, more research to help those producers understand what delivering a quality to their facility is really, really worth to them.
Scott Sorrell (00:59:20):
Yeah. Well said, Glen. Ed, any key takeaways for the audience and do you see something coming or something that needs to come in terms of advancement to help improve our calf rearing capabilities?
Dr. Ed Krykes (00:59:36):
Well, one of the things we really didn't get time to talk about, but I know Bob and I have talked about this at some length is calves going to these calf rearing facilities that are on the truck for 12, 15, 17 hours. I certainly think that that is a, I don't know what the perception that consumer perception on that is, is definitely a problem. I think there's, there's research being done on how we can help that as far as maybe some immune stimulation prior to the calves loading or whatever on that. But I just think that that's an area of needed ongoing research and maybe encouraging calf ranches to have facilities in a more strategically located area that, that they don't have to be on the truck as long. And I, and I do think the other thing, I'll put on my veterinarians hatm is that I really think when it goes back to understanding the data, especially health data, we need to know what's going on.
Dr. Ed Krykes (01:00:42):
I mean, in my mind, there's no calf that should die without a necropsy. And I trained calf crews to do necropsies to take pictures, to send me pictures, to work with their local veterinarian or whatever. And that's part of that whole health data for culling decisions, rearing decisions, whatever. So I'm, I'm a big data guy, but I want to know what's going on. And I think that's an ongoing process to get that done the way that we would all like to do it. I know Glen and I have talked about this in the past too, when we've had coffee together, it's like, how do you get people to give us the information so we can give them the help that they need?
Scott Sorrell (01:01:24):
Yeah, very well. Bob I've appreciated your insight tonight. Do you have any final words for us?
Dr. Bob James (01:01:29):
Yeah. I wanted to just touch briefly on something that Ed alluded to. When COVID hit, you know, I really limited my travel. And one of the things that I had worked upon was really establishing calf management teams. I learned this through, you know, our work in Australia and working with Ed and with the other GPS consultants. And, you know, we would have conference calls once a month to, to kind of touch bases. Ed and I would probably touch base as a whole lot more frequently, but one of the things that happened when I really couldn't travel that I really appreciated is I had some veterinarians in Wisconsin who were just, just tremendous. And, you know, we would communicate on a, at least a, every other week basis. And they were kind of my eyes on the farm. And, and I think that that was probably one of the most positive and rewarding things that, you know, that I experienced from my work with GPS and was establishing. And, and it was, it was just a real win-win situation. And I, and that's a challenge that you have with consultants. Sometimes you get into a little bit of competition and we were all pulling in the same direction, and that was personally and professionally rewarding to work with some, some really outstanding veterinarians during my practice with the GPS.
Scott Sorrell (01:02:53):
Excellent, excellent. Gentlemen, this has been very insightful and I've enjoyed talking everything calves. Every operation is looking for ways to be most efficient and the new focus on calves addresses an area that can have long-term implications on profitability. I also want to thank our loyal listeners for stopping by once again, to join us here at the Exchange. And hopefully you learn something new this time. If you like, what you heard, please remember to drop us a five star rating on your way out. Don't forget to request your Real Science Exchange T-Shirt all you need to do is either like, or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange on any of the popular platforms. Send us a screenshot along with your address and the size of your shirt to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Our real science lecture series of webinars continue with the ruminant focus topics on the first Tuesday of every month, visit Balchemanh.com/realscience to see upcoming events and past topics. I hope to see you next time here to Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour, and you're always among friends.