Guests: Dr. Ian Lean, Scibus; Dr. Todd Duffield, University of Guelph; Dr. Stephen LeBlanc, University of Guelph Co-host: Dr. Pete Morrow, Animal Health Specialist Gathering around the pub to discuss body condition, productivity, and the impact older cows have on herds are Dr. Ian Lean, Dr. Todd Duffield and Dr. Stephen LeBlanc.
Guests: Dr. Ian Lean, Scibus; Dr. Todd Duffield, University of Guelph; Dr. Stephen LeBlanc, University of Guelph
Co-host: Dr. Pete Morrow, Animal Health Specialist
Gathering around the pub to discuss body condition, productivity and the impact older cows have on herds are Dr. Ian Lean, Dr. Todd Duffield and Dr. Stephen LeBlanc.
Dr. Ian Lean, Scibus Founder and Manager Director and leading authority in dairy cattle medicine, kicked off the conversation to discuss his data set research around cow removal and reproduction. 9:11
Ian noted those involved with the older cow research looked at the disease, reproduction and metabolic data differently than most people. Sharing the impact of various diseases in older cows. 11:03
What is the relationship between production and reproduction? Dr. Stephen LeBlanc, a veterinarian professor at the University of Guelph, added this is the common question he receives. Sharing the challenge as dairy scientists, Stephen said the importance of figuring out how to support a cow’s lifespan by choice instead of failing to stay healthy, fertile and productive. 15:20
Dr. Todd Duffield, a professor at the University of Guelph, believes there are misconceptions about older cow production and reproduction. He suggests that instead of wanting cows to live forever, profitability or not, he adds that it’s all really about limiting or reducing the farmers' decisions and optimizing the cows' health and performance. 20:29
Stephen discusses a win-win approach for the producer, herd and cow itself - optimization and economic longevity. But how do you create farm conditions to know when the optimum time to cull is, Stephen added. 27:04
Does a different feeding program matter, asked Ian. From the first webinar, he added that the older cows you could leave on 28 days and still have increased milk production and solids. He suggested when formulating diets for the average cow; he calculates eight pounds more and about three to five kilos more milk than the average cow. 33:18
Stephen added cows are both ketotic and have low blood glucose ultimately show varying production outcomes. Suggesting early lactation studies, tough calving and blood BHB all having different risk categories for each animal, said Stephen. 48:57
Rounding out the conversation, Stephen closed by suggesting there is an opportunity to possibly rethink some nutritional paradigms in terms of protein and bone metabolism. 1:00:38
Additionally, Todd mentioned the direct difference between heifers and older cows. Adding the importance in studying management and feeding qualities for both production and reproduction optimization. 1:04:39
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:08):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podcast we're leading, scientists and professionals feed over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorell, one of your hosts here tonight at Real Science Exchange. In tonight's conversation, we'll be discussing what's causing our cows to exit the herd as they age, and the impact that has on the dairy producer's profitability. Joining us at the pub tonight is a decorated group of experts ready to share an in-depth look at the impact of cow longevity. Dr. Ian Lean, let's start with you. You recently shared a popular webinar on the subject of Cal Longevity during the Real Science Lecture series. We're excited to welcome you and your guest to the Exchange tonight.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:00:53):
Well, thanks, Scott. Yeah, it was a pretty interesting webinar and had some terrific questions, but, I'm really tough to have both my old friend Todd Duffel and Steven Lan, who is also an old friend along with us to kind of chat about what we did
Scott Sorrell (00:01:13):
Very well. Why don't you go ahead and, and introduce your guest to us and how did you guys meet? And I know that at least one of 'em had a sabbatical with you. Maybe talk a little bit about that.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:01:25):
Oh gosh. I think maybe Todd can remember, but his professor at Guelph and so Steven, so they're both highly decorated a scientist there, at Guelph in Canada. So we've sort of got, a Commonwealth of Nations type talk at the moment, and we'll see if shows manage to crash, crash the show. But we've met I think in Red Deer, Alberta, Todd at a meeting back, No, wasn't Red Deer.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:02:00):
It was, Well, you did say I was old. It, it was, it was before that meeting, I think Ian, go way back to when a DSA was in Guelph.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:02:12):
You know, back before we were having, you know, the big conferences in, you know, where they have big convention centers. So one of the last meetings, maybe the last meeting that they had at a university was held in Guelph. And that was the year I finished my D VSC which was in 97. And we both spoke at there was a, a special separate con in conjunction with d a day. There was a symposium and you and I were both speaking on the program. And that's the first time, I met you. I had read all of your papers you know, because they were relevant to, my thesis work. And so I was quite excited to meet you and we were both on the same program. So, we met then, and then
Dr. Ian Lean (00:02:58):
That's right.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:02:59):
Continue to meet at ADSA meetings. And, as Scott said, you know, I had the pleasure of spending eight months in Australia as part of study leave, and Ian and I collaborated on some great meta-analysis work. And so it's been a, it's been a long friendship, but it started quite a while ago.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:17):
Yeah, Super.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:03:18):
One of the real joys has been watching Todd's kids grow up. It's just been fantastic. It's you know, they're such great guys and you know, they, they, they were a lot of fun when they were down. And, you know, similarly, actually, Lee Joza did a, a sabbatical with us, and that's been just fantastic watching his kids grow up too. So it's one of the joys of how having those sorts of long-term relationships. And then, and also at that same meeting, Todd that was where I kind of continued a friendship with Bill Chalo. And Bill, Bill spoke also at that meeting. And you know, I still miss Bill and he has mentioned the other day and the Mike Van Amberg thing, and it kind of was very cool that you know, Bill got a, a call out there. But, but Steven, Steven and I, I don't know, when we first met Steven, I, we had a lovely time in Chile wrapping, and I think I got into trouble cause I delivered a plenary and, and I was kind of out of the room when I got called out and, and yeah, I was chatting to you, but I think that was better than, you know, a pat on the back. So
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:04:28):
That was, Yeah, I, that's, that's right. So that would've been 2010 probably at, at the Bariatrics Congress. But yeah, you know, I, I mean, you, you'd mentioned two old friends. I, I, I just wanna make sure that, that everyone understands that I'm a little bit less old than Todd, so that, that's the first important point
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:05:31):
Steven, I'm so old. I'm old enough to be your graduate co-supervisor.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:05:37):
That's true. That's true. Now, you know, just for the record, Todd was, was only 14 when, when Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:46):
Gentlemen this is great fun already. One, one of the things we like to do at the beginning here is right too, to kinda live up to, our pub theme. So I'll ask you, each of you to tell us what's in your glass tonight. Ian, let's start with you. Now, I have a feeling this might be a little different.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:06:03):
Well, I'm, I'm gonna tell you because I've shared many, a good one with, with Todd and Jo that I, by preference have, a nice Hunter Valley Shera in my glass. But, truthfully, it's 7:00 AM here. I've got, I've had a coffee
Scott Sorrell (00:06:20):
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:06:43):
So it, the sun is over the yard arm herein, in Guelph. And so I'm having a Wera of McAllen Scotch.
Scott Sorrell (00:06:53):
Yeah. What year?
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:06:55):
I don't know what year it was distilled, but it's, it was 12 years old when it went into the bottle. Yeah, Yeah. Okay.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:01):
Yeah.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:07:05):
Cheers. I'm enjoying a Hazy Day IPA brewed at the Cowbell Brewery in Blythe, Ontario. And a favorite spot of mine is when my son and I go fly fishing between Blithe and Godrich for smallmouth bass in the summer.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:24):
Excellent.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:07:25):
But being also in addition to a faculty member, a chair of the department, it has been a hazy day. And so much enjoying this beverage.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:34):
Yeah. Awesome. Very well we have one other gentleman that we have not introduced yet here to the pub. My co-host for tonight is Dr. Peter Morrow. Pete's quickly becoming an expert at the exchange as he's co-hosted several of these for us now. Pete, thanks for jumping in for us and helping us behind a computer. So what's in your glass tonight, Pete?
Dr. Peter Morrow (00:07:56):
I'm having a vodka lemonade.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:58):
Oh, very nice. Very, very nice. Very tasty. Sounds refreshing to me. When Steven said he was doing a McAllen, I had just a little bit left in my cabinet. I've got a lot of rye going on in my cabinet right now, but I did have a little bit of scotch and I decided I'm gonna share a McAllen with you. So cheers. To Dr. Lean, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Sure.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:08:23):
As well.
Speaker 5 (00:08:24):
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Dr. Ian Lean (00:08:46):
Cheers.
Scott Sorrell (00:08:47):
All right, and to kinda get us started here this all sprung from a presentation you gave at the recent ADSA meeting, and I think it was a culmination of some from a meta-analysis that you'd done and worked on with the gentleman that's on the call with this. Can you give us a little bit of background and some of the key findings of the research that you shared there at the ADSA?
Dr. Ian Lean (00:09:11):
Yeah, sure. I guess this sort of, the genesis came from some work that Dr. Golder and I were doing over in in, in the US and then also some studies in Australia where we started looking at herd structure and being pretty, pretty surprised that, you know, we had a lot of heifers there and relatively few older cows and thought, Well, you know, let's have a look at that because these cows seem to be disappearing a bit faster than they should. So I contacted you know, Steven and Todd and Jose and said, Hey, you know, what do you think? Let's pull some of these big data sets we've done over time. And, and, and let's have a look at some serious questions here because, you know, it's, it's hard to find really good quality data sets, particularly around cow removal and reproduction.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:10:05):
So because there's been an interest in some of our other studies, I knew that we'd all have pretty good data in that area, and that's where we went. So, you know, the major thing we found was that the older cows were disappearing much faster in terms of removal. They had much higher rates of risk of disease. I mean, some of the risks are quite extraordinary. You know, if you take parody two cows versus, you know, those of parody five and greater, you know, they're 20 and 30 times more likely to be removed for hypocalcemia. You know, if you look at some of those things like lameness, for example, parody one versus parody five and greater is six times. That the diseases weren't necessarily absolutely always that the older cows were at risk. There were some disorders that the younger cows were at risk of, you know, like you know, dystopia.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:11:03):
But then the really interesting stuff, and I'll probably that's Steven, talk more about the reproduction because, you know, the reproduction's interesting. We've, we've looked at the data in a different way than most people. And, I think in doing that, we've found some cool insights. But the thing that kind of nailed this to the wall for me in terms of really giving me a deep feeling, for where the problems lie is in the metabolic data. So we had the disease data, we had the reproduction data, and then the metabolic data showed that these cows were just different from the younger cows. So even though we've got a lot of cows that are left the herd, right, we're looking at the survivors. So there's a real bias in the sort of data we're looking at, but when we kind of look at that, we say, Hey, these are not able to maintain their blood calcium.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:12:00):
They've got higher ketos, they've got higher fatty acids. And, and then that's kind of anomalous because you've got those animals that as they age, you go from being much more likely to be in a high body condition score, low body weight as heer, and then by the time she hits that older parody, she's gone to an animal that's high body weight, no surprise, but she's low body condition score. So what is going on with these older cows and how do we start the drill down on it? So that's kind of the findings. And you know, that's, that's, that's it in a nutshell. Steve, do you kind of wanna comment on the repro, because you'd done that really elegant study a few years ago and this sort of beautifully compliments the stuff you've done with it, Is that the right way to say the name? Back in about 2018, I think.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:12:56):
Yeah, that's, I mean, that, that's been kind of a recurring question or interest for, for me, is this relationship between production and reproduction. You know, we often get the question about, you know, is, are higher producing cows inherently harder to get pregnant? Do they, you know, do you have to at some point trade-off between production and fertility? And you know, my, I don't know, my bias since, since we're in the pub, I can just go straight to my bias as opposed to, you know, being completely scientifically objective for, or at least trying to hang onto that for the first part of the conversation. But was that that, you know, that wasn't necessarily the case and, and, and, and the, you know, the data sets are, are a bit few and far between and, and, and there's, there's plenty of nuances and it depends, but, but I guess that the bottom line is it's not necessarily the case that there's you know, that it's harder to get higher producing cows pregnant.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:13:54):
But, but I think coming back to what, what, what we've shown or what Ian, you know, and, and Helen have teased out of this, these data you know, production and age get confounded to a point. But for example, in the work from this pool data that Ian's been talking about it, the relationship's not linear between production fertility. There, there seems to be a little bit of a sweet spot. And that's been shown somewhat in some other data sets. And, fundamentally, I think what it comes back to what, whether you swap in older cows and or higher producing cows the challenge in the really interesting part is how do we support those cows? You know, people talk about the analogy of the metabolic athlete or the, you know, the high-producing cows like the race car, not like the Toyota.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:14:46):
And, so their, their needs to be supported to do that elite level of performance and maybe to keep doing it for multiple lactations are greater. And so, our challenge as dairy scientists and managers and farmers is to figure out how to support those animals so that whatever their lifespan is ideally the sort of determined by economics, it's supported in such a way that, that when cows leave home, it's because we as managers decide for that. Not that they, so, you know, so to speak, call themselves or that we just can't, can't find a way to support them anymore such that they stay healthy, stay fertile and stay productive.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:15:32):
Steven and Ian, do, do you think that you know, given, I mean this is a big data set we've assembled from all over the place, but for the most part, it's one year, of data in these studies and, you know, we're not able to follow cows from parody one to pardy six or seven or whatever. And so I, I guess I'm just sitting here wondering if it's actually because of culling bias, maybe it's an underestimate of the profound impact that, you know, the lack of metabolic adaptation has on, on reproduction on cow health, on, on performance.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:16:12):
Yeah. Look, I, I think that's the case, Todd, and the, the studies we're just going into with David Cheaty, who's one of the co-authors on, you know, the body condition score paper. So, Dave, Dave attacked the revision of that that we did of that, which was great. But you know, then you know, I, I still don't get a waffle graph, Sorry, but you know, you know, he's, he's done this waffle graph and insisted it was better than the, you know, the straight bar graph. But anyway, we can deal with
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:16:43):
That. You have to put maple syrup on it to make it appetizing. Yeah,
Dr. Ian Lean (00:16:47):
Yeah. It wasn't sweet for me anyway, but I, I decided that you've gotta, you've gotta concede, you know, you just gotta let 'em have their head. But anyway, the bottom line is that you know, we're, we are setting up 30 herds, 15 intensive, 15 at pasture, and we're gonna kind of look at survival and performance and metabolomics in those herds and, and try to do, investigate that, that in a prospective sense, Todd, we won't, obviously, for Dave's Ph.D. we can't go out, you know, more than probably two, three years at the most. But, you know, we're gonna have to look at that and you know, hopefully, a post can take on a longer, a longer interval. But, you know, we are prospectively looking at it and we're looking at cohorts going forward where we're gonna look at their metabolomic profiles and see, you know, see who, who disappears basically. We wanna see who's going and why type thing. So yeah, it's, it's a pivotal question and nobody's asked it, but it just seems damned obvious.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:17:52):
Well, that's the thing, right? We all, you know, we're all, all of us here Ian and Todd, myself, you know, I guess we first got trained as veterinarians and second got trained as epidemiologists and, you know, along the way with nutrition and health and repro and, and a bunch of other things cuz we're sort of intellectually promiscuous. But, you know, one of the first like, you know, kind of first or second month of epidemiology is, is survivor bias, right? You have these, these data sets, whether they're, they're humans and or, or, or cows as you, you follow animals over time, whether it's with, you know, repeated slices like we have or following the same individual over many years is literally survivor bias. Those who stick around for a long time are not the same as those who leave early. And, in the dairy world it's, it gets even more confounded because sometimes it's because they're, you know, forced out, so to speak.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:18:51):
If they get, you know, tough Calvin go lame, have mastitis that they just don't recover from, you know, you could say, well, right, that's, that's the genetic selection and, and they should be removed from the population and yeah, okay, maybe but, but you know, if that was an animal that genetically or otherwise could have been a productive animal, but she got mastitis cuz we didn't man manage her environment well or she became lame or didn't get pregnant because of a, of a human failing or a management failing, that, that gets confounded. But at the end of the day, it's, it's sort of baked into our data sets because we're, you know, we're not gonna, I don't think we're gonna find the farmer to do the natural experiment of saying, Right, keep a whole bunch of your low producing cows, keep a bunch of your lame and metastatic cows, hang onto a bunch of chronically open cows cuz we'd like to study them for a few years. I mean, I, I, yeah, I haven't, I haven't found a herd to volunteer for that study yet. But, but all lot to say that, yeah, if, if anything, when we've built in, we've got baked in survivor bias when we try to make sense of who stays, who goes, or, or what's the nature of the needs of an older cow. Yeah, we're, we're, we're probably only getting the tip of the iceberg there.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:20:18):
And I just to follow up on that, just from a, like thinking about culling, I, I, I think there, there's a misconception in a way, like we don't necessarily want cows to live forever because they're not necessarily gonna be profitable if they stay in the herd. Yeah. That's not really what we're talking about. What we are talking about is that there's, there seems to be a lot of waste here because these cows are getting the metabolic disease and, and crashing, and then the farmer is forced to call them. We presume not deciding that this heifer is gonna be more profitable than this cow. Right. So I think it's, it's really about trying to limit or reduce the force calls and trying to optimize the health and the performance, of the cows that we have, right? So it's not, it's not like let's have cows live to seven or eight lactations. That's not it, it's trying to, it's
Dr. Ian Lean (00:21:11):
Just shifting the curve a little to the right, you know, when I did some modeling around this to see what the impacts were, you know, it's not hard for us to get 16% more milk with a, with a subtle shift to the right and, you know, the greenhouse gas implant impacts of, of keeping those cows just marginally longer and, you know, not having to rare quite as many heifers take 'em into a dairy beef strategy or, you know, you've got a lot of different strategies now that that open up efficiencies around sex semen and, you know, the the, the whole bit. So if we can just get those cows to go that, that little bit longer, I mean, that was the thing that really, really shocked me was, you know, we were only talking about 9% getting through to that fifth or greater lactation. That's, that's incredibly low.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:22:05):
Yeah. Again, and the other, the other part of it, and you just made me think of with the dairy beef is the, is the cocal value. So if, you know, if even, even if these cows still go like, like we do change somehow our approach and, and they're better metabolically, but maybe that heifer that's gonna calve is still gonna be better because of genetic improvements and whatever, we can still make money on deciding to get rid of these cows that are in good shape. But I, and we don't know it from our own data, but the, my presumption is that a lot of these cows are wrecked when they leave, right? They're thin that maybe that they're, they're salvage value cows rather than having some kind of reasonable meat value to them. So I, I think there, there is definitely economics in trying to impact these older cows.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:22:57):
Yeah. And you know, I think Ian, you, you hit the word is optimized, right? And, and that's, and, and that there, there's, there's a win-win win here that, that's kind of elusive. But, but what I think we're all after, which is that, you know, that economic optimization of cows longevity, which isn't like Todd said, I don't think is inherently that we just want, you know, older, older, older is somehow better because we depreciate the cow over a longer time, et cetera. It, it truly is about optimization and you know, for some cows that may be a shorter productive life and for some it may be longer, but, but I think for a lot of herds, you know what, what Todd was saying, cows are called not, we're not necessarily culling healthy cows on, on a purely selective and elective basis. We get rid of the cows that, you know, kind of have to, or, or at least are, are, you know, the low hanging fruit in the sense that they're, they're, you know, they're lame or they've had disease or they, we can't get 'em pregnant.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:24:01):
But, you know, oftentimes that's, that's more so a, a failing of the two-legged animal than of the four-legged animal. And so there's plenty of room to, to seek that optimum. And I think, yeah, from every standpoint, from economics, from animal health from welfare standpoint, yeah, we should be culling healthy cows, you know, that there's, there's enough that we're making those decisions on genetic merit, economic optimization, you know, optimization or herd structures and so on, as opposed to, well shoot, we just, you know, we just can't bear to keep her anymore. And, and so off she goes and, and, and the rest just follows from there. I think that's where we've got lots of upside opportunity to find that that optimum, that's a win-win for the, for the producer, for the herd, for the, for the cow itself.
Scott Sorrell (00:24:55):
So how do you find that optimum? Where, where does the dot go on the graph?
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:25:01):
Well, well, you know, I said we had training in veterinary medicine, epidemiology, some nutrition we gotta add a side order of pretty hardcore economic modeling here. I mean, no, so I'm being serious, but jokey at the same time, like not many, but, but a number of people over the last, you know, couple of academic generations have, have done that around trying to optimize her structures, optimize you know, Wendy, a call a cow. And, and even, you know, some of those are implemented in, in herd software to do estimates around that. It's not completely an academic exercise. But it, but it does get complicated really quickly. But, you know, I think that the principle of it is a cow should stay in the herd until, and unless you could replace her with an animal whose net present value, whose future worth over a reasonable expected lifetime is greater than the one you have today.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:26:03):
I mean that, so that's, that's kind of cold at economical. But but, but I think ultimately that's it. How do we get there? That's the, that that's the intriguing but really tough challenge because that requires management and feeding and genetic selection and a whole bunch of stuff that, you know, we're all working on every day. But that's kind of the elusive holy grail, is how do you actually create the conditions on a farm so that cows can, can actually be called at that optimum time, Which, you know, for some cows that, that are, you know,
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:27:04):
And so they're candidates that maybe they ought to be replaced. And, and as things get better and pregnancy rates shift up and productivity shifts up, there's still always somebody, some cow who's below the average. And so tho those ought to be our candidates, but we gotta create those conditions so that we could actually call on that basis as opposed to, well, gee, this cow could have, should have stayed, but we can't get her pregnant. This cow could have, should have stayed for one or two or more extra lactations, but she's laying or she's too thin or she's what, you know, whatever else.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:27:45):
Yeah. So Steven, I I, I think this is running into the Prairie Home Companion model where, you know, all the kids are above average. So you know, Yeah, I think that's, I think that's kind of the right model, isn't it? Yeah. But, but you know, the points you make are, are really cool and, and profound and, and, and, you know, the, the thing that Todd and I are kind of peripherally working on at the moment, which is, you know, how do we make that cow cow a better cow? You know, the beef market, you know, people forget just what a contribution the dairy cow makes to our beef supply chain. And if we can get that cow in the better order as she leaves the herd, you know, that's gonna be a big difference in terms of, you know, value of beef and quality of beef.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:28:32):
And, you know, you know, I'm lucky enough to be involved with some pretty interesting meat science research, which I kind of fell into and never expected to be doing, but you know, the, the, the, the measures there are is the consumer always consistently happy with the stake and, you know, we are gonna make that consumer more consistently happy with whatever we produce out of a better cold dairy cow. So, you know, it comes right back through that whole supply chain to where we we're, you know, influencing every aspect of that from those sort of social license aspects to the kind of, you know, optimization for the farmer, the optimization for the cow, because help, we all want really happy cows. I mean, you know, there's, there's one thing that we would all, you know, compellingly agree on us, that our goal is to make happy cows and those happy cows should make happy farmers.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:29:29):
Yeah. Well, you know, and Todd can maybe speak to us in a second. He's got some cool work going on exactly in the line you're talking about, but I think that's exactly it. If we can get to this sort of elusive but desirable thing of, of kind of a controlled, managed, selective, optimized culling paradigm that then opens up some, you know, room to not be like, Wow, this cow's, you know, she's really gotta go and she's kind of gotta go, you know, today, tomorrow, or this week, as opposed to saying, Right, you know, we can really do this in an orderly planned, methodical kind of way. And, you know, so her, her cull day could be next week or next month or in two months, and you know, Yeah. And that optimizes the quality of the animal who's leaving. And, and again, there's, it's a real win-win. I think if, if we can get there,
Dr. Peter Morrow (00:30:21):
Was there anything in the data that would show us, you know, what direction we need to go to chin know change these cows outcome
Dr. Ian Lean (00:30:30):
Maybe should speak, but I, I, I think there's, you know, I think the metabolic data to me is the stuff that gives me the heads up. So
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:30:39):
That's what I say too. And I, and I think, so I, I was gonna ask you this, Ian, it it, well, like, so heifers are different, That's pretty clear from, from the data and they have different problems too. And, and we should talk about that maybe. And, and then it seems like second lactation cows get a free pass. Like, like they just don't have a high level of incidents. And I, I've seen that over and over in our, in our smaller data sets that, that there's sort of a u-shaped curve where heifers get some disease, second cabs don't hardly get anything, and then, and then it goes up after that. So I'm, But then you also have to make this practical for the farm. Like they can't have 12 different diets. So, you know, do we, do we feed heifers and second cavers in the same cohort maybe And, and then we target a, a different program somehow to deal with this metabolic challenge that these third plus cal cows have. I, I, I'm just throwing that out. I mean, I don't know what the answer is, but I, but I wonder if we need to rethink it a little bit.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:31:49):
There's a couple of couple of things that come out of that, and one of the things was the question out of the first out of the webinar we did and, and that was, you know, should we be feeding these cows differently? So, you know, I took out data and drilled down a bit on it guys, and I've sent you a little bit of that stuff and maybe we can, you know, get that sent around via the, via the team at
Scott Sorrell (00:32:22):
In the show notes in if you'd like to, you know, put that someplace where it's accessible.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:32:27):
Yeah, that'd be cool. But you know, the thing that was really interesting about that was that, you know, the, the later parody cows, and I had to cut it at four, I think they responded to the transition diet all the time on transition diet profoundly, you know, they, they were bumping up, you know, I think it was 0.3 of a kilo of solids or, you know let's think of how many pounds of milk it was. It was basically about 15, 16 pounds of milk, I think. And so, you know, they, the longer they spent on transition, the greater the, the productivity and that response was greater across those different parities. And if you left a heifer on too long, it was detrimental. So, you know, you don't wanna leave heifers on transition diets too long because it really, it really does mess with them.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:33:18):
Whereas, you know, the older cow you could leave on 28 days and, you know, it'll, it'll do a really nice job for you in terms of increasing the milk production and the milk solids, so it's not just, you know, water. So there's that. And I think, I think you're right, Todd. I, I mean, one of the things that I do practically when I'm formulating diets as I formulate ahead of the average cow, so I formulate for the cow that's doing, you know, about eight pound more you know, about that three to four, five kilos more of milk than the average cow. And I do that so that I, I feel like I should be trying to feed those higher producers and probably older cows better. And that's a deliberate strategy. And I know that that's a little unusual, but that's, that's what I've done over time. And you know, I dunno how you guys feel about that, but that's, you know, one of my, that's one of my things.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:34:20):
Yeah, I mean that, that makes to me a lot of sense. And, and you know, it's, it's interesting cuz you know, in our world, at least by US standards, our, our dairies are, are fairly small and, and so there's this opportunity as we figure out some of the science of the nutrition or other aspects of management around this there'll be opportunities to implement this more for farms that are at larger scale. I mean, if they've gotta have several close up pens anyhow, just to make things work on the scale of the farm. I mean, ultimately that could come down to small to medium size dairies too. If, if, if, you know, if we solidify the science and that changes some of our thinking around how to design transition facilities with, you know, with the ability to, to do that kind of tailoring, even if you're not milking 10,000 cows.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:35:11):
But, you know, for now that is one of the challenges, but I think that's gonna be, you know, people call it precision feeding, whatever that, that usually means more the individual then, but, but I think we could, there there's, there's opportunities there. Yeah. Even thinking about dividing things out by parody to meet nutritional needs, but but also social and, and other things. So, you know, like thinking about time on the, in the closeup that that's not even necessarily with a different diet, although that, that would probably take it a step further if we could do both.
Dr. Peter Morrow (00:35:45):
How about needs that surrounding you know, stall size or stocking density based on bigger older cows? You know, we may just need to have different standards, you know, for that third and greater lactation co.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:36:02):
Yeah, it's an interesting point because, you know, in Australia we don't have a huge number of intensive herds. And I think what we are doing is we're heading very much towards some loose bond type, you know, compost pack bonds. And I think that gives you the, the cows a lot more flexibility about how they lie and where they lie. And, you know, we haven't got 'em quite perfect yet, but we're moving, you know, really quickly on trying to get that right. And I think we're gonna jump a technology on the, on, on, you know, sort of the us you know, I know Canada's had some pretty interesting loose bond designs over time as well. So, you know, they've, they've done those sort of deep straw pack bands. And you know, I always thought the cows look really comfortable there and certainly we seem to have very happy cows. And I think that, I think that's one area that takes a pressure off. I'm, you know, I've gotta be honest, I'm not a great free store fan. I mean, well done, done. They're, they're fantastic and love them, but you know, they're, they're a hard, they're, they're a difficult bond to, to keep in order. And you know, that that precision, not every farm can achieve that precision. So it does place pressure on, you know, hawk injury and all those sorts of things that, you know, you're kind of alluding to
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:37:24):
Peter. I think just to follow up on Y's comments, I think you made an excellent point because we,
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:38:26):
I mean it's, that's not science, that's just observation. Just the other thing I, I, I think that's really important that we haven't really investigated very closely. And I, I've got a, a paper under review and another one that is just published on some work we did on the transition cow assessment tool from Canadian dairy herds that, you know, Lanco has this tool and yeah, it's survey data and it's cross sectional, but the one thing that really out in that and, and is out in both pieces of work is water, water access. Like, I, I don't know if we have enough water access for these cows and, and maybe that's even more important for the, you know, the mature older Holsteins than it is for like, I'm sure it's important for everybody, but I just throw that in as well. That's another thought.
Dr. Peter Morrow (00:39:18):
Yeah. Are there certain herds or certain localities that are able to support older cows that we could learn from study from and say, what is different about this dairy or this location in the world that allows them to have older cows? I, I can't think of one myself, but you know, that's just my limited United States experience.
Scott Sorrell (00:39:39):
Well, Todd was mentioning Israel, I was in Israel two weeks ago and we were at a dairy and with a group of, of folks from, from Europe and they were asking the dairy farmer, you know, what's your average lactation link? And he said, you know, four to five years. And one of the Europeans piped up and said, Well, why so short? And so I, I think at least their expectations, at least from that one gentleman, that one data point is that perhaps they've got older cows within their herds. I don't know, just an anecdotal story there to share. Yeah, I don't know what to do with that either.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:40:24):
Well, I think at the, and, and again, this is, so since we've descended into anecdote here, so what the heck? But no, I, I, I think, you know, you know, anecdotally, but perhaps also correctly, I think, you know, most of us and people in the field would say, you know, the herds that are able to perhaps get closer to that optimization of herd structure and have cows live as long as they could or should from a, not as long as they could possibly live, but as long as they could, you know, be productive members of their society, they're herd and, and, and not be forced out. It, it's, it's a lot to do around that, that cow comfort and transition management, cuz that's where things sort of make it or don't make it, right? It, what, what, what trips things up is if we can't safely get cows through the, the calving period and or they, you know, succumb to smoldering accumulated issues around lameness or, or that kind of thing. And so tho those herds, like Todd said, generally are given those cows abundant space for feeding and lying because that really creates a buffer for other variables. And they've, they've achieved by different means, but they've achieved a high level of how comfort, right? So they, whether that's a pack barn or a freestyle barn with well designed, well betted stalls, I, it it comes back to that simple stuff, but not necessarily easy stuff.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:41:57):
Yeah, I I think that emphasis on the transition is, is so right because, you know, when we look at the removals, you know, I think it's about 4% of the removals occur in that immediate per urian period. And then, you know, you can probably look out to about 70 days and say, you know, another significant percentage you're going then. So, you know, if you look at that stuff that Jill and I did on the you know, the meta lyses around the impacts of negative bcat diets, I mean that, that's pretty profound in terms of improvement. And, you know, again, the, the stuff I was kinda looking at you know, and that data's not perfect, but this isn't, you know, a perfect data show, right? Around those, that time on transition, you know, the time on transition, you know, even, even the body weights seem to be better with, you know more time on transition.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:42:53):
So, you know, it was basically around a, a, you know, a kilo a day benefit for those older cows. So I think, I think, you know, that that needs to be a, a really intent focus. And I guess from the, from the additive or the, the fiddle side of nutrition, you know, this is where you can justify putting in some extra dollars. And you know, that, that to me is, you know, a no brainer if we can bring down that, that percentage of cows removed, if we can increase the fertility, you know, things like fats, you know, there's, there's really good evidence and, you know, some of the, you know, some of the support for the methyl donor type areas you know, that that stuff, you know, the colons and the, you know, the better quality protein meals that are used in Decats, they're all tools that I think give us, give us good directions forward around that, that transition cow. So, and particularly, you know, what seems to be very evident from that data is that those older cows are going to pay you back for that additional support. So, you know, I think there's pretty compelling evidence around that as an intervention that makes a difference. But hey, I, I, I thought I'd love a hand grenade in today. And, and, and because I know both of you know this area intently, I I, I'm gonna ask a question that I think somewhat provocative, but, but do we think that subclinical ketosis matters? If
Dr. Ian Lean (00:44:32):
If, if what we've got is a really profound confounding with older cows? And I, I'm just wondering about that because that was one of the questions that sort of came outta looking at the metabolic data is, Oh, I wonder if what we've been looking at is the older cow predominantly and not some impact of subclinical ketosis. And, you know, it just sort of really was in my face, so I thought I'd ask the question. I know. And both
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:45:05):
Won't take my gloves off. It's okay. Don't worry.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:45:10):
So the answer is yes, I think it's important. I, I, and, and we haven't done maybe a perfect job with it, but most studies have attempted to deal with parody, albeit, you know, parody one or parody one and greater, or I think in the case of our work as parity one, two, and three in, in some of our, in some of our work. So we have tried to address parody in those models and, and we've tested for interactions on health outcomes. And I would say for the most part, we haven't found interactions. So I, so I still think, so here's, here's the way I would explain it. If you're a parody six animal, you're far more likely to get ketotic and probably hypocalcemic and get a DA and everything else. And if you're a parody one animal, you're not very likely to get it. But if you get it, it doesn't really matter.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:46:04):
You're parody, you're still more likely to get metritis in DA and whatever else. And so I, yes, I do think it's important. You know, but given what we know, at least on some farms, I wouldn't say all farms, but on some farms, if you were wanting to do a monitoring program for ketosis, let's say, you know, perhaps you could for the most part ignore parody one animals. Now I wouldn't say that's true on every farm because there are some forms have, you know, massive problems in heifers, but that's likely nutritional and management factors related to heifer rearing. Anyway, that, so that's my stab at trying to answer your question. Go ahead Steven. You can,
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:46:48):
Yeah. You know, I, I would, you know, we, we've, well, Todd knows cuz I, I invited or coerced him into, into debating this at least once publicly in the past. But, you know, is ketosis a disease and you know, okay, if you wanna split a hair, maybe it's, it's a risk factor or a risk category. And you know, the epidemiologic evidence is pretty solid that, you know, depending on the threshold, et cetera, there, there is definitely an, an association that as cows have higher blood or milk PHBs, they, they start kicking up into a higher risk category for undesirable stuff, other clinical diseases not getting pregnant, ultimately making less milk than they probably could have or would have otherwise. It's not their fate, you know, it's not that every cow above X threshold is, you know, going to have badness in Sue.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:47:51):
And the other thing too is that, that I think we're getting a little more sophisticated about it. So to a point, ketosis is adaptive, but at a certain point it's not adaptive anymore. And, and it becomes a if not an inherent causal mechanistic problem, it's, it's a, it's a state of risk and an indicator directly or indirectly of some metabolic processes that aren't adaptive anymore. They're, they're going into it an undesirable state, you know. But the other thing is, there's some work, I mean, you know, we'd shown this at the royal we, some of our grad students and so on, but, and others are shown this as well, we can get more, we can put nuances on it, we can get a little more precise, a little more subtle. So for example if we look not only at ketosis based on a blood test, but also blood glucose levels at the same time, that looks to be a, a useful additional nuance to put on things.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:48:57):
So cows that are both ketotic and have low blood glucose at the time really do look to be a different sort of animal. They don't respond as well. They're, their outcomes are worse and so on and so forth. You know, there's some interesting work coming outta Minnesota right now or recently around looking at early lactation milk and ketosis and, and you know, that really is a bit of a chicken and egg like cows that are both low producing in week one and have ketosis have worse outcomes than cows that are higher producing yet, or, and ketotic in week one. But you know, before we talked about the confounding of, of, you know, survivor bias in older cows, well, I think there's an analogy there, like, are they lower producing because they're ketotic? Are they ketotic? You know, because they have a series of other things in their life, a tough calving, et cetera, cetera, that cause them to be both low producing and ketotic. Conversely, you know, can, can we find the cow that is, has a blood BHB above X yet makes tons of milk? Absolutely. but again, we're, we're looking for things that are useful in the field, not necessarily completely predictive or deterministic at the individual animal, nor are they necessarily speaking to very direct causal pathways. We're talking about categories of risk that are useful in the field. I think that's an important distinction.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:50:36):
Yeah, just, and just to pick up on that a little bit, like the evidence, like, so confounding issues and, and you know, time ordering issues aside, I, I, I, and again, now I'm speculating a little bit because the data is weaker, but I, I would suggest it might matter when the cow is ketotic that the, that there's data out there in a bunch of different studies where you see different effects depending on the days in milk when that cow is identified as being ketotic. So I I I do think it matters. Yeah. I think earlier in lactation is worse. Yeah, generally. And, and we're seeing the same thing out of some of the Cornell work with hypocalcemia. It matters when that goes, was hypocalcemia, what, what happens to her and
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:51:23):
For how long, Right? And, and
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:51:24):
How long. And, and those are the kind of nuances that we, we didn't have the luxury of being able to evaluate in this data set because it just, we just don't have that level of detail. But you know, so that's work to come, I guess down the road.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:51:39):
I guess, I guess some of that leads into this issue around inflammation versus hypocalcemia, and I don't see 'em as being mutually exclusive at all. And, and, and we make that point in the papers. And, and, and, you know, I think that's, that's really important though to, to just look at the profound if, you know, associations with high, with the hypocalcemia in this data, and you'd start to go, Wow, this thing is really, really important. So the question I've got is, you know, what is that process that's taking that cow into a less responsive space as it's older? And, you know, one of the things I think we're gonna have to look really, really hard at is, is re appreciation and, and, and getting calcium and balanced back. Because if I look at, you know, the difference between the heifer and the cow, you know, one of the things is that the heffers had two years tore calcium and get bone structure, right?
Dr. Ian Lean (00:52:34):
And this whole axis between energy, protein, and bone, it, it, it's really important. And the more we drill down into that area that, you know, the, the more important that looks. And I'm hoping that Megan Connolly, who's, you know, we're working with, with Laura Hernandez you know, I'm hoping that, you know, some of the stuff we're going to get out of that in the time series stuff that we're working on is gonna help us understand who's on first and what's on second, you know, because, you know, we, we, you know, we've got that whole thing around you know, serotonin. We got the, the stuff around you know, calcium metabolism. We got the stuff around energy metabolism. It's all very dynamic. But we need to know who's moving first to give us an idea of the, the priorities as to where we set and, and, and really tweak our transition.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:53:30):
And, and, you know, to me, I, I, I think that really starts back at, at at peak lactation because that reoc appreciation of body tissues is, is pivotal to what happens in the next carving. And you know, if we look at, if we look at this in a, in a cyclic way, as you guys were saying earlier, and what look longer, truly what is happening to those tissue pools and, and bone, you know, being an important tissue pool, much more important than when I kind of graduated. Like when I graduated, I just thought bone was like wood would pegs, you know, which probably shows why, you know, I, I never became an orthopedic person.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:54:20):
Because, you know, I think there was earlier work that said, you know, they don't rere bone until, you know, sort of day 230 a lactation. Well, you know, I'm not sure that that's true anymore. You know, we're talking about cows doing, you know 10,000 pound more than when those studies were done. And, you know that's a lot more calcium going out. And, you know, I've looked at some diets, you know, one of the herds that had high rates of removal for some reason had a, had a 0.7% calcium on, you know, cows that are doing, you know, 50 liters you know, as a, as a sort of a big fresh string average. So, you know, they're what, 120 pound, you know, in a very, very big herd. But, you know, like there the, you know, for some reason then their dietary calcium was 0.7%. Well, I don't think that's gonna cook it. You know, it's not gonna get there. So I think that whole area around, you know, bone bone management needs to go up and notch in terms of our focuses, nutritional advisors.
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:55:30):
I mean, I mean, it's interesting, Ian, because, you know, like when I first started in this area, we were talking nutritionally about close up diets, you know, and, and then, you know, broccoli's work predominantly led us to think about, you know, not giving too much energy in the early part of the dry period in particular. And so now all of a sudden we're thinking about preparing that cow for lactation at dry off. But what you're proposing is that, well, wait a second, we should really be preparing that cow for dry off when she becomes pregnant, which to me is a completely different thought process. Like, like we traditionally think about getting milk out of those cows. We're not thinking about how they're gonna do in the next lactation, right? And, and maybe that's the shift that we need to, to have in our thinking.
Dr. Ian Lean (00:56:18):
There's some stuff that that, that I wish I had another lifetime
Dr. Ian Lean (00:57:23):
But now that's, that's a little difficult to do. So you know, that whole area though, we don't understand, like there is an abject lack of data around that per peak period and the REOC curation phase, and you know, and extend. I mean, the big players, we don't understand, you know, so we don't understand the energy and we don't understand the protein react region. But what we also don't understand is that roll a bone. And so, you know, we got the, we got the big three sitting there that we just, we've, we've got a bit of a blank space and we're kind of saying, Well, she'll be right. But these older cows, clearly it ain't right. You know, they're, they're not regaining that body condition that we need for those to perform. And, you know, they're, they're under more pressure than they should be because we're not just getting that right. And again, putting on a dirty clinician's hat, you know, when I look at those older cows, you kind of look at 'em and you go, That body condition just ain't right. You know, it's, it's lacking muscular definition. It's lacking that fill between the hooks and the pins and, you know, I hate to say it, but across the thrills
Dr. Todd Duffield (00:58:53):
Yeah. So Ian, how, how much of that because here's, here's another observation from the data for me is that you know, not only are those older cows lower body condition, but they're also getting higher in lameness. And, and, and I know it, it's not necessarily causal, but it sure is an intriguing observation. You, you have to wonder how much role that lack of digital cushion, presumably in less conditioned cows is playing in the, in the outcomes that we see in lameness in these cows.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (00:59:32):
Yeah. No, you know, I mean, I, I think it's, it's worth mentioning here that, you know, this level of physiologic philosophy coming from someone who's only at seven in the morning and, and, and only drinking coffee while the rest of us are trying to fuel our creativity other ways. I mean, this, this is why we admire Ian and, and seek opportunities to work with him. But, but, you know, to be somewhat serious no, I, I think that's exactly, you know, when, when you think about, you know, the level of sophistication we think we have when in, in thinking about dairy cow's diets and how to support their lactations and maybe their fertility and their health and so on. But yeah, I, I think there's an opportunity here to kind of come back to, to yeah, rethinking some of those paradigms. Exactly like he saying, I mean, you know, speaking as a person who's only you know, 29 with a few years of experience, you know, obviously, you know, we, we, we could all relate to the ravages of age here a little bit.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (01:00:38):
But you know, yeah, thinking about how, how we could change that paradigm a little bit back to the notion of how do we support cows to stick around in a healthy, productive fertil towel way until such time as their economic time or their herd structure, time is up. And I think, like what i's pointed out here is there's some opportunities to maybe rethink some of our nutritional paradigms in terms of supporting rere of protein, bone metabolism and so on, that, you know, we maybe just haven't thought about that or thought about things in, in that way. And again, it's, it's like we've talked about a few chickens and eggs here. But, but that might be another one is, you know, I'm not saying cows get osteoporosis the way old people do, but you know, it's the chicken and the egg was a bit of like, well, we don't really have to concern ourselves with that too much cause cows just don't live that long. Well, if we don't concern ourselves with that at all, perhaps they won't live that long. So, you know, I'm exaggerating to make a point, but but I do think there's a real opportunity there. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (01:01:46):
Yeah. Steven, I think that's a, Yeah, go ahead, Ian.
Dr. Ian Lean (01:01:51):
Oh, I was just gonna say, Todd, you know, with those cal cows, I think you've got a really good opportunity to, to have a look at those digital pads too when you're
Scott Sorrell (01:02:14):
Yeah. Gentlemen, I don't know if you noticed, but they just flicker the lights. That means it is last call. So I'm, I'm gonna order another another scotch wonder. We just got a whole round for everybody else. But with that, what I'd like to do is ask each of you to kind of give us one or two key takeaways from the discussion that we've had this afternoon.
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Scott Sorrell (01:02:50):
And Todd, why don't we start with you?
Dr. Todd Duffield (01:02:54):
Sure. I, I guess the, the, the data that we've been talking about to me shows there's all kinds of things to talk about, but it, it definitely shows that there's a big difference between heifers and, and older cows. And, and I think we need to really rethink what that means in terms of both the management of those cows and the, and the feeding of those cows moving forward to try to improve their health and welfare. I, I guess that's my big take home. I don't know if there, there's all kinds of second things. I, I, I, I suppose the other thing, given I'm doing the col cal research that Ian just alluded to, is that I think the value might be not only in perhaps being able to retain these cows and herd a bit longer if, if they're productive and it's economical to do so, but also having better value call cows at the end of the day, that also improves welfare, improves consumer acceptability of, of the industry potentially. And has consumer value in terms of meat quality
Scott Sorrell (01:04:01):
Very well. Peter, let's say you,
Dr. Peter Morrow (01:04:05):
I think there's some opportunity here to obviously to look at these things and see if we can't you know, make a change. I think that, you know, we, the numbers are profound and, and the economic value is profound and, and we can't be lost upon the effect that what this could have upon our, you know, our markets, our consumer. So I look forward to what these folks can come up with and, and what direction we should be heading to you know, try to make this impact on the, on the industry.
Scott Sorrell (01:04:34):
All right. Thanks, Pete. And Steven, what kind of final words do you have for us?
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (01:04:39):
Yeah, I guess two. One, one is on the, on the cow side of things. And, and that is, you know, again, I'll, I'll, I'll kind of reiterate or double down on, We're not inherently just trying to have old cows around, but, but I think our challenge is to find ways to support cows so that, you know, every cow eventually becomes a call cow, but, but that she should have a as you said before, a happy life and a healthy life right up to and including the end. And that, that one of our challenges, both from management nutrition, is to find ways to support that so that cows leave. Yeah. I, I don't, I don't think there's any, we don't need to shy away from saying at an economically optimized time, but that they're, that they stay healthy and productive up to and including that point.
Dr. Stephen LeBlanc (01:05:29):
And I think that's our challenge, and there's some, some really cool deep physiology around that, but there's also some very pragmatic management that that's for today as opposed to over the horizon. And the second part, I guess I'll just kind of go back to the two-legged animals, but the ones that are gathered in the virtual pub here today and say that, you know, that this to me is some of the beauty and, and the fun of, of being in this that that's somebody responding to a heart attack for an old dairy cow researcher who may not be with us anymore. But you know, this is the fun of our world and, and, and our work, I think is, is meeting and, and forming friendships with with people who are like-minded and share a passion for cows and might enjoy a drink together occasionally when we get the opportunity. And, and that, that to me is one of the really fun parts about this. There's, there's cows all over the world and really interesting people all over the world to talk about them with. So thanks for the opportunity tonight. Yeah,
Scott Sorrell (01:06:30):
Very welcome. Dr. Lean give you the final word.
Dr. Ian Lean (01:06:34):
Yeah. Well, Steve, Steve stole one of my points, which is just, you know, grateful for, you know, all my co-authors and you know, Todd, Steven, Jose, Helen, and Dave. You know, they've all just been, you know, fantastic collaborators. It's, there's been a joy to do this, this thing, you know, was I, I gotta confess, there was a times where we were dealing with some fairly difficult stats where I, I must admit, I was probably belting my head against a brick wall, just getting gently through those those, those, those fairly complex moments. But gee, you know, it's been rewarding. You know, I, I think for me, the take home is we kind of knew these older cows were in trouble, right? You know, we had evidence, particularly around the repro and, you know, we, we, we've sort of been looking at it and, you know, inherently we've known about, you know, the difference in hypocalcemia over time.
Dr. Ian Lean (01:07:29):
But I think for me it was the quantification of it. And just to see those numbers necess so in your face that, that, you know, we know we've gotta do something and we know it's actually genuine research. And we've, you know, we're going into areas that we just don't know. And one of the things we've given, I think the producers and, you know, the consultants and the, the people who are listening who, you know, make differences on farms, you know, a few things to go with. But you know, to be honest we've reinforced the value of transition. We've reinforced, we've reinforced the value of cow comfort. But there's things that, you know, are sitting there that are questions, I've got got, you know, how young can we possibly carve something? How can we feed it better so that that trajectory starts at peak lactation?
Dr. Ian Lean (01:08:24):
And we've, we we're targeting ideal body condition score and, and more because body condition scores are fairly ab juice measure, you know, it just doesn't really get to the hub of what we need in terms of those, those mobilizable nutrients. And we need to understand those mobilizable nutrients as pools that are available for that next lactation to make that animal safe and sound and happy. So, you know, we've given people a few heads up that there's a hell of a lot more work to do, and I guess that's, that's, that's exciting for all the young scientists watching. And, you know, I think the lesson that they could take home is that, you know, collaboration's wonderful. You know, you can have some good ideas, but, you know, if you've got good colleagues, it's even better. So, you know, that's, that's probably my thoughts for the day. And sorry, Joza couldn't make it because I know he'd have added real value and Helen's also having a few days off, so, you know, we didn't have her in. So, you know, just appreciate those colleagues work.
Scott Sorrell (01:09:28):
Yeah, thank you for those words. Ian. You know, this is a, a subject I've been wanting to, to cover for a while. And so it was fortuitous that I bumped into you at actually was at Jose's party in the pub there and at the a dsa. So I appreciated that and I'm glad we made the connection. This has been very interesting. You brought a couple great guests with you today. This has been a very engaging conversation. I hope the audience is, is enjoying it as much as I do. Gentlemen, you've been great. Look forward to having you guys back to the pub at any time. You're welcome, anytime. And as always, I wanna thank our, our loyal listeners. You know, hope you learned something. I hope you had fun and hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (01:10:11):
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