Guests: Dr. Gavin Staley, Diamon V and Dr. Al Kertz, ANDHIL LLC Today’s episode is focused on one of our most important resources: calves. Calves set the trajectory of our herd and represent our future productivity and profitability. In this Real Science Exchange episode, we will show how appropriate investment in young stock will pay off big in later years.
Today’s episode is focused on one of our most important resources: calves. Calves set the trajectory of our herd and represent our future productivity and profitability. In this Real Science Exchange episode, we will show how appropriate investment in young stock will pay off big in later years.
Dr. Staley noticed in data there is a correlation between 10-week milk and the average annual herd of the whole dairy. (12:25)
Dr. Kertz spoke on the importance of height in addition to the weight of a calf. Height is the best indicator of the frame that weight will be deposited on and there are some consequences to heifers and cows with too much weight. (20:10)
Dr. Staley said it is worth the time to measure your dairy animals, somewhere in mid-lactation, to establish the genetic makeup and the genetic body condition score to know what you are aiming for. (31:46)
Dr. Kertz closed by saying it’s important to measure birth weights, weaning weights and heights periodically. By looking at those numbers a few times a year, you’ll have a good idea of where your dairy is at and what may need to be fixed. (56:47)
If you’d like to find Dr. Al Kertz’s book, you can find it here: https://outskirtspress.com/dairycalfandheiferfeedingandmanagement
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This podcast is sponsored by Balchem Animal Nutrition and Health. This podcast is sponsored by Balchem. All views expressed by the guests are the opinions of those individuals and are not the views of the Balchem, its affiliates or employees.
Scott Sorrell (00:00:07):
Good evening everyone. And welcome to the real science exchange. In the podcasts, we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Cavs are one of our most important resources as they set a trajectory for our entire herd and represent our future productivity and profitability. Getting them to the milking stream can be expensive, but the investment made in growing them correctly, and getting them to maturity on time will pay off in the end. Hi, I'm Scotts Rell your host here at the real science exchange. Every operation is looking for ways to be the most efficient. Sometimes cutting back around the young stock is considered an option tonight. We'll take a look at this topic and show how appropriate investment in your young stock will pay off big. In later years. First I'd like to welcome Dr. Gavin Staley veterinarian and the technical service specialist with diamond V. I'd like to welcome you to the real science exchange. Gavin. Good to see you here tonight. Thank you,
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:01:04):
Scott.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:06):
In keeping with tradition at the exchange watch your glass tonight. And is there a story behind how you chose that?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:01:12):
Oh, absolutely. Scott's this is, I'm a rule cream Laure, which comes from my home continent. It is made from the berries of the Murillo plant, which is a wild-growing tree. And in fact, the animals know about it. And when these fruits get fermented, they are known to get quite tipsy. There are YouTube videos out there of elephants going around after consuming Mer fruit. So it is a very distinct taste and I thought it very appropriate for my south African heritage today.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:51):
Yeah, very nice. I was gonna ask you to kind of touch on that, the kind you're from, and, and then how did you find your way into dairy science?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:02:00):
So African raised and born and educated, I guess graduated back in 84 as a veterinarian. So it's amazing how quickly the years go by had various experiences. We all went to the military back then. So I spent two years running around the kingdom of Zululand in brown fatigues. And then I went back to university and studied for a master's degree while being on staff as a senior lecturer in reproduction. And then I joined a large theory practice back in my hometown for several years, about six years. And then for various reasons the opportunities in South Africa seem to be somewhat written on the wall and my wife and I left back 22 years ago, joined the practice in Wisconsin, had a, I had four winters and that was enough and was after their position with Monsanto tech service in California back then. And stepped off the plane and said this a lot, like home, and never left. So I've been in the central valley now for oh 18 years. I'd be right. In proximity to, as you know, a lot of cows, and it's been a wonderful experience. I've
Scott Sorrell (00:03:36):
Yeah. Great to hear that. I see you brought a guest with you tonight. Would you mind introducing him?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:03:42):
Yeah, I, I just wanna thank Al you know, very gracious of you to come on. Thank you so much for being part of this. Al has a great deal of experience in this field. A lot of practical experience with calves and heifers knows way more than I do about these the practicalities of it. And so I'm very honored that he's, he's part of this today, so thank you, Al.
Scott Sorrell (00:04:05):
Yeah.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:04:06):
Well, you're welcome, Gavin. I appreciated your presentation and I'm, and I'd like to talk more about it as we get into this program.
Scott Sorrell (00:04:14):
Yeah. Great. Al tells us a little bit about yourself and then and keeping with the theme what's in.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:04:21):
Okay. I like beer, a lot of the craft beers this time of the year until Easter, I do the non-alcoholic beer and this is a German one it's cloud style. And it has, I think the best real beer taste without the alcohol. So that's how I selected it.
Scott Sorrell (00:04:41):
Very nice.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:04:43):
I grew up about an hour south here on a small dairy farm, went to the University of Missouri, and then I had a coup I did a bachelor's master's there in dairy science that time it was called dairy husbandry. Then I had two years in the army obligation like Gavin, I had spent one year in a native laboratory in the Boston area, and the second year in food supply and Thailand during the Vietnam war, then I did Ph.D. at Cornell University and that turned out to be a significant project we were involved in cuz it was in growth and development of cattle. And that's the base of so much of my interest in growing calves and heifers. And also the metabolic changes that occur in the body composition of cows. I went to work for the Purina companies and that lasted until the year 2000.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:05:38):
And I went to work for what had been an international company. Then only last a year and a half until we were bought and kind of closed out. So I started doing my own consulting business with a lot of writing and speaking and on the farm consulting a lot of that international I say, there's no difference in the cows, in other countries, it's the people and the economic and social situation that, that differs. And then that, that resulted in my putting together a book that I probably it'll be two years ago, not, yeah, it'll be three years ago. This summer's available. If you Google me on Amazon or Barnes and noble. And so it's, it's a good reference for me because it's a compilation of a lot of the columns I've written in feedstuffs over about 20 years. People kept bugging me about writing a book and I said, I'm thinking of an academic book. And I thought I can't do that. I don't know how to do that. And it's too much work and so on. And then finally I realized I've written it in pieces and I just need to piece it together in a better format. And so I use it a lot for reference myself easier than going through my computer and digging out the vials.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:00):
Oh, very nice. We'll have to put the link to that in our show notes. You had mentioned that you'd gone to Cornell. Were you there when Dr. Vans was there?
Dr. Al Kertz (00:07:09):
I was. I can contribute some good stories about him. He was a remarkable man like many, you know, he just died last year. He was a very, Selfe facing very humble man, very bright homeless, eccentric, and he would talk to anybody about anything and he knew a lot about anything. And in, in a laboratory though, he was like an elephant. He was kind of dangerous. And, and one day when one of them, one of the classic stories is there were about a half a dozen of us taking his laboratory analysis course, PDF and ADF. And he was starting from scratch, showing how you make the detergents, the neutral detergent, the acid detergent. So he had a box of sodium Laurel sulfate detergent. And it was it's very hydrostatic. So he opened the cardboard box and he opened the plastic lining and he's digging in there. And then he turns around and when he turns around, we all broke out laughing because he looked like Santa Claus, the stuff had stuck to his beard. And, you know, at first he, he looked kind of Agh, like what's wrong, what's wrong. And then he realized what it was, and then he laughed as much as anybody that was the thing about him. He was so self-effacing. He was a very humble, man, very bright would talk to anybody, and just gained a lot from my experience, working with him there.
Scott Sorrell (00:08:40):
Yeah. We recorded a podcast you know, in honor of him a few weeks ago we had Mike van Amberg Mary Beth Hall, and Dave MES. Yeah. Yeah. Dave Mertons and boy was that enjoyable? I, I think we could probably do a series of podcasts. Oh yeah, yeah. With how many stories are out there about him. So anyway, I wanted to bring that up. So thank you for that. On that tonight co-host Dr. Glenn AINS, once again, Glen's a technical service manager here for B Kim Glen, you be in at the pub a lot lately. Should we be concerned?
Dr. Glen Aines (00:09:18):
No,
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:09:18):
No, no,
Dr. Glen Aines (00:09:20):
But I enjoy being there so you can invite me back anytime. Scott
Scott Sorrell (00:09:24):
You're great, you're a great co-host so you're welcome. Anytime. Glen, what are you drinking tonight?
Dr. Glen Aines (00:09:31):
Well, I'm drinking a product of beer as you, you will know, I'm, I'm quite fond of beer. Yeah. And IPA kinda becomes an IPA guy. Oh. And this is called high five IPA. It's a manufactured brew just right across the river in Fort Myers, Florida. And it's a good one. So it's nice to have it. It's easy to access.
Scott Sorrell (00:09:52):
Yeah. Good. It's good to have, a co-host without a side once in a while. So that's, that's good.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:09:57):
Yeah. I don't, I don't do the sliders. Scott don't
Scott Sorrell (00:09:59):
Do the sliders.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:10:00):
Right.
Scott Sorrell (00:10:01):
All right. Gavin, to get us started tonight, you were part of the real science lecture series. And you started us off herein, in 2022 in your presentation. You mentioned that Heer Heer set the production ceiling for the entire herd. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:10:20):
Yeah, certainly. Scott, so one thing I do a lot of look at records. I, I'm not a statistician I'm more of a practitioner and so I stay fairly close to the dairies, but over the years, you can imagine being in the central valley, software became the language. You have to understand it pretty well if you stay here. And so I accumulated a lot of backups and the background to this particular story was I was sitting in a dairyman's office in January 2016, looking at records in me, a management meeting. And it came up the discussion with the nutrition, oh, you know, my, the PO lacks not working you know, I, I feed these two dairies, they get 92 pounds and the ones on PO and the other one isn't. And, and anyway, long story short, I went through the records back and forth, and the only thing I could figure out was that this dairyman who was on plac was breeding his heifers about six weeks earlier than the other dairy.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:11:27):
And that got me thinking because by golly, you know, PO's not cheap. And if it's just a case of raising heifers for another six weeks, that's a big deal. And as we'll probably go into that some more, but that led to this whole uncovering in the way of what had gone on in the heifer world out here. But while I was looking at these records, I noticed that the one dairy that had well, call it more mature heifers. There were two dairies that I compared initially it was a 92-pound herd. And guess what? The heifers were 92 pounds at about 10 to 14 weeks. And my guess is one's trained as a veterinarian to be observant. And I looked at it and I thought, man, is that coincidental or what? And I started digging into more and more herds.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:12:25):
Eventually, I had several hundred that I looked at and there was a remarkable correlation between 10-week milk and the average annual herd of the whole, the whole dairy. So I'll just say that again, 10-week mill, 10, 12, somewhere there is. And, I did a rough correlation with about 150 herds. It was a 92% correlation. So if you think about that for a second and flip it around, if you wanna be a hundred-pound herd, you have to have a hundred-pound heifers in 10 weeks. So anyway, you look at it you, you can't, you can't outrun these heifers. If they set the bar at 75 pounds, 75 pounds is what you'll be. You can, can't call your way there. You can't reap our way, your way there, you can't feed your way there. They, they are the ceiling. And I'm 100% convinced of that. That is true. And therefore we must doa slam dunk job of getting them to where we want them to be. So Scott that's the sort of the background that started in the dairyman's office and led, to one of several observations. But that was the, I think most important one.
Scott Sorrell (00:13:49):
Hmm. It leads kind of to a two-part question I've got in mind is first is, you know, during your investigation where did you find that most of the dairymen were in terms of refreshing their heifers during the most? I, I guess 24 months looked like from your presentation where most of 'em should be. And where were most dairymen and then two, how much have you been able to move the needle in, in the time that you've been sharing this?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:14:18):
Yeah. You know Scott thinking back to 1982, whenever I did animal husbandry back at the University of Victoria, I still remember to this day, they drummed it into us 24 months. That's when these animals needed to have, you know, so what's that nearly 40 years ago, right. 20 format. And anyway and to a larger extent, that was probably what was going on. Just almost by accident. I guess, the guys were raising their heifers and breeding them at 14 months to get them in somewhere around two years. And then, of course, hard times come. And then the spotlight is focused on areas to save. And, as you mentioned earlier, heifers often come under that, right. With seen as that they are such an expensive part of them, the operation it's, there is some reason to do that.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:15:18):
The problem is, and I use this, you know, it's, it's somewhat tongue in cheek. Of course, as I say, two, two emails went out, right. The first email said, Hey, good news. You can read heifers earlier, maybe two months instead of 24 to bring them in at that. But the second email said you can't do things the same way you used to. And that one, as I joke, I say it goes, went straight to spam. So a lot of dairymen got the message, oh, breed, early breed earlier, you know, a year or 11 months. And there's this guy kind of catch-up feeling, oh, well, you know, they'll compensate. It'll all be good. It'll wash out. Well, the truth of the matter is it never does wash out. It costs a very long shadow. And so what I had seen was guys creeping down to you know, 21, 22 months, but the average daily gains were not in sync at all.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:16:15):
They were, they were six weeks to two months out. And so you had this disparity, this disconnect, if you like between management and biology and that's, that caused the tension, which I saw in the records now, to your second part of your question, I've had a great deal of fun with this particular topic and more so than I thought I would because when a dairyman sees the records, his records on his computer, the production graphs by agent freshening and sees that that rainbow display is of lost milk for not just lactation one, but lactation two, I've had dairymen pick up the phone in the office and call their breeders and say, as of today, you are breeding at this sta stage because it's incredibly powerful when you can couple that, to this first statement, which is 10 milk is your final milk. And then you show the difference in, in, by age freshening. So that has resulted in several theories. And it's, it's been a very pleasant outcome seeing theories. Now, six years later, five years later that have done this and pushed back you know, more towards the 23 months and then watch the milk production going up. But your heifers are just the secret to a lot of good things on the dairy.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:17:44):
So are most of those dairies, are they just pushing back the breeding date or are they going back to Calvin and, you know, early nutrition, to try and get those calves up to that physiological maturity faster?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:18:01):
Yeah, Glen. So there are two options. There are only two options. And that's why I'm very glad that ELs is in on this too because he has a great deal of experience with the early calves and so forth here, here's the deal. You either up the ag or you delay breeding, those are the only two options. And frankly, in many setups where you've got you to know, heifer raising facilities where there are several different philosophies possibly represented it's a per diem situation. It's, it's easier to delay the breeding at the ADG than it is and achieve maturity that way it's to get the ADG up to where it needs to be to bring an animal that 21 months is quite a task. I mean, we talking over two pounds and no wobbles and good lung scores. But it does go right back to day one.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:19:09):
And, and, you know, I'll say this too. I think we've had the wrong approach with heifers to a large extent, somewhat of survival of the fittest. You know, they like the old far-off cows, you know, people just kind of almost forgot about them. And then suddenly we realized they were important while heifers, it turns out are super, super important. And we need to be paying attention from, from day one and not just till day out of the house and through the, into the round pens and then forgotten and fed whatever. We need to be monitoring this process right through if the product is gonna be accepted in the end,
Scott Sorrell (00:19:53):
It seems to me like there might be a bit of a difference between like weight and maturity. They're related, but there are differences, right? I mean, weight can be a body condition. And so maybe I'd like to ask Al you know, Al where, where do you find the balance? What, what do you see on around that? Well,
Dr. Al Kertz (00:20:10):
I would like to go and kind of establish a framework here. We're starting with a calf. When a whole scene calf is born, a heifer calf, it's gonna be about 90 pounds, and a dairy calf. And the association says the gold standard is double the calf's body weight by end of two months. So you go from 90 to 180, and then if you do the arithmetic that you want a 24 month O Heer, it says, you need to average about 1.8 pound gain. After that. Now a lot of people understand that but what they don't understand and don't measure is height. And the height is the best indicator of the frame that weight is gonna be deposited on. And the height I found was quite different, published this in the late nineties in the journal dairy science. So if a 90 pound Cal is 30 inches high in the weather as a first calf, Heer, it'll be about 24 inches higher in two years.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:21:25):
Now that's not year through during those two years, it, half of that occurs in the first six months and that's, what's staggering. And then only 25% in the next six months. And then only 25% in the last year before they have the first Cal. So if you don't make the height increase, when it's biologically controlled, typically by growth hormone, you can't make it up later. And then to Gavin's point, if, if you're looking only at the daily gain and you don't have the height develop to the genetic potential, it doesn't mean we should get taller efforts. That's not the story at all. If, if you don't have the height and you put on the weight, you're gonna start dating them. And there are studies in beef and dairy that show that when you get up to about a kilo, a deal of gain, so that's about 2.2 pounds.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:22:24):
That's a maximum amount of protein deposition. So, if you push that higher, it's all gonna be fat. And we know that when you have fat heifers or fat cows, they have Calvin difficulties because the birth canal is where the fat is internally deposited. And once you have a caving difficulty, you have a compromised calf and the cow is whether first calf or later. So we have to kind of keep that in mind. And then that, the problem is, as Gavin has pointed out most operations don't measure their calves and heifers. They don't know how tall they are at various points and may not even know their weight, but most likely not their height. And it's easier often if you're gonna do height to measure hip height instead of weather height, well, you can take a weather height curve and add two inches to it.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:23:27):
And that's hip height. If you wanna do hip pipes, that's fine. You just add two inches to that. Now there are gonna be genetic differences spending on the, you know, the herd and all that sort of thing. And that's why you'll have some variation in the average age of the first Calvin. So if you have an average of 24 months, and, and that's what we had when I was with Purina, you'd find some down to 20 months and some up to 26, but to make either one of those, a pattern is a problem because it's like the biology and a chronology, he works best for 24 months. So that's why I was interested in Gavin's work because he's got field data that shows what happens if you push that far, further down now, okay, you push it further down. After all, if it costs you $30 more a month to raise half, or you want to save that, but in the process of saving that you lose milk or you create body condition problems, then you're worse off than you were not doing that.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:24:38):
So that's kind of the framework. I, I often think about this when I look at these situations. And so I remember one and being on an operation in Southeast on a, on a pasture and he said, well, what do you think of our heifers? And they look pretty good heifers. And I said, before, I can tell you what I think of them. Tell me how old they are. Well, they were about three months older than they should have been. And so they looked good for that, but they weren't. And, and then another problem is that if you don't get the calves off to a good start, they don't do as well. And that's been shown by some of Mike van Amber's work that the rate of gain in the first two months directly relates to milk production in the first, second and third lactation.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:25:34):
And one of the problems is that we don't do a good enough job, weaning cabs. We, I call that a, a transition period two weeks before, and two weeks after weaning, if you don't get an adequate starter in intake and preferably a texturized, cuz you get better room development, adequate starter intake, when you wear them, that's too big a change. And they struggle for at least two weeks and sometimes a month. And this is shown by the most recent nos data from 2018 that was published in a journal, dairy science, but I had to pull the data out. They were there, but they didn't recognize it. And the average daily gain before weaning was 1.6 pounds. Now that's good cuz that'll double your body weight in two months. But after weaning was 1.3 pounds. So it went backward. Yep. And that's because there's too big a change there's just too many changes and often that sort of thing.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:26:38):
And the other factor is that when calves at that age have that much of a change, they get stressed. They, their immunity drops and they're more likely to have respiratory problems. Now maybe the instance of a respiratory problem isn't that great that you see it as a clinical case, but there are some field data from Cornell that showed in the nineties that when it calf had a respiratory problem, based on the farm's records, not based on a clinical diagnosis of pneumonia, when they tracked that calf through the herd, they found they were six months older when they had the first calf, they were called sooner. And so you should have gotten rid of them early on, but they don't notice it because they don't follow their records. I had that shown clear to me one time in China when I was on a dairy farm that was being served by us veterinarian.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:27:36):
And he had dairy com 3 0 5 records. And I told him about this. So he pulled up his herd or you his heifers. And he had the, you know, the age and he had to wait and you drew a straight line, went through most of the population, but here were some of these points on the lower end, and everyone he clicked on had had a respiratory problem. So it's there. We just don't often think of it because we feel like, oh, we treated AAF and it recovered, but it's damaged. And we just haven't monitored enough to notice that. And so when it gets into lactation, doesn't perform well, it gets called well then you've, you've cost yourself a lot of money and you cost yourself some time and facilities and all that sort of thing.
Scott Sorrell (00:28:28):
Hmm. You know, you mentioned getting 'em started right well, getting 'em started right doesn't just start at birth. Right. I mean, one of the things that we're interested in that at Bache is transit generational nutrition, right? So it starts not just with the mu other, perhaps, you know, even the mother's mother in terms of the nutrition that they got is going to have a bearing on how well that animal performs once they're born and then into, to the milking string, I find that fascinating. Do you guys have any experience or comments on that?
Dr. Al Kertz (00:29:01):
Well, I've seen your data and, and the research trials from Florida and he, you know, they're showing the same thing with heat stress that those CALS aren't as large, they aren't, aren't, don't complete their gestation. And so they struggle and then their next-generation struggles as well. So now you have data from a nutritional standpoint and a developmental standpoint that both show the same thing. What you're saying is they're in Ute development is very critical. Yeah. Just to add to
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:29:40):
That you know, RT winter is also a terrible time for us and you would think it's heat stress, but when you look at the AGS, winter is, is by far the worst time. And, and, you know, the problem is, so let's take heat stress her, well, when do most cows care to have in the heat-stressed herd it's in the summer. So now we've got transgenerational heat stress in a lot more animals. I mean, talk about setting yourself up for failure, right? This is just forever. I I've said to, to many dairymen, you can hardly spend enough money cooling your else.
Scott Sorrell (00:30:23):
Yeah. We had a, we had lecture doctor, Israel, and Flaman BA from Israel talked about the importance of keeping those animals. Cool. He, even indicated that he thinks he can do away totally with, heat stress, with proper cooling, and fans. So found that quite interesting if you haven't listened to that, one would encourage you to go back and, and listen to that. Real quick question maybe for Dr. Sta talking about mature heifers, what's the biology behind heifers that, that, that reach maturity at first Cav, what's, what's biology that allows them to do that. Is it just, the reproductive machinery, the productive machinery, just more mature and, and, and able to produce more milk?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:31:13):
So I, I think there's a little bit of a disconnect between puberty, repro, and maturity, because you can, you can certainly get animals pregnant way too early. So they are ready to tango reproductively, but not long-term maturity-wise. And so I just wanna bring up this, this next point, because it begs the question. So what is mature and very few theories know what they are pure body weighers.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:31:46):
And I'll say that again, very few dairies know what the mature body weight is. And if we think that this is the denominator for a lot of things, including the nutrition program on a dairy, it, really, really begs the question. Why don't we, for example, when we bought a scale five years ago too, validate all this, I bought a scale and had it delivered during weighed a lot of animals. And it was amazing the difference between what dairymen thought the animals weighed and what they weighed. And so you can have an animal a dairy that the mature body is 1700 pounds. And the dairyman's under the illusion that it's 15, 80, or 16. Well, that's a huge difference in what your goal is for those heifers. Right? So to keep everything honest, I think what you already gotta do is take the time to weigh those third and fourth lactation animals somewhere in mid-lactation to establish, okay, what is the genetic makeup? What's the genetic body condition score composite for this group of animals that I've read all these years because then I know what I'm aiming for. Otherwise, we are shooting in the dock, I believe.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:33:01):
Yeah. You know, as you were saying that, you know, everybody will say, well, you know, I don't have scales on my operation, right. But I go back to what Al was saying a little bit ago about hip height or weather height, you know, that is a relatively easy measurement, basically need a fence or, or a stick or whatever. Why would they not necessarily be better off looking at weather height or, or hip height when they get into that target breeding age, if you will? So you can either breed on age, that's easy, that's universal, right. But what weight can be misleading, right? But the hip hype, if you can figure out what your mature hip hype ought to be, wouldn't that be a better target or a better tool as opposed to just doing it on weight.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:33:54):
So, let me comment on that. Cuz I had that exact, I was faced with that conundrum. So
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:34:01):
You're looking for relatively a small increment, in height at that timeframe. And Dr. Kurtz will be able to tell us, but you're looking at about an inch a month. If you're lucky. I think it's somewhere around about there versus about 60 pounds. So in, in a pin of 300 heifers and you know, what those, those feed lanes look like with manure, all sorts of, you know, up and down, it's, it's quite hard, I think, to easily get in there and do a height. So what typically happens is a tape, you know, they put to tape the, on the headlocks when, when an animal reaches that tape, it's ready to breed it. It's not very easy to pick up one inch of hairy, hairy coated animal in, in a pin at six in the morning, I've, I've been very facetious and said, I'll tell you what 42 inches looks like she's in heat. And she he's in the breeding pit.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:35:05):
You've hit on a couple of good points. I'd like to elaborate a little bit about the height is difficult to measure. It's you gotta have 'em in headlocks or some way of doing that. And then in their second year, when they're in that breeding group and have been head, they're only gonna increase six inches in height. So it's very difficult to pick up height differences. At that point, you're better off looking at it at the end of six months when they should have picked up 12 inches from birth and then maybe at 12 months because then you've got the biggest increase in height, just in general, it's difficult for dairies in calf and Heer operations to weigh or measure height. There's an Israeli group that's developed a 3d am system and I've written about it in and hor dairyman. Unfortunately, nobody commercialized it.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:36:05):
I think that would be really a good system and could readily be incorporated, into operations where maybe you could have heifers at certain ages and calves. At least past two months, you could take 'em by that or through an area where that's measured, and then it's calculated. And then back to the mature height or the mature weight and height. What we found was that you know, there you've gotta be in your third or fourth lactation. And by that time there aren't that many cows left in the herd because of calling. So it's difficult to establish what the mature weight is or height without, oh, course you can spot check some and you can, you can get an idea about at that. Now when, when a cow is a heifer calf, they lose 11% of their body weight right then, and then heifers will make another 11% growth in their first lactation. And then about two more inches of height till they become mature. But if you don't have any measurements of that, you don't know what the situation is. And I'm like, Gavin, you know, when people say, well, what do you think the weight is here? I'm not willing usually to guess, because I know it's, it's gonna be a kind of a potluck thing to figure out the weight and the eat.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:37:41):
That just seems like, yeah, just seems like it's such a critical issue, getting them bred at the, at the right size and age.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:37:51):
Yeah. That's, you know at one point I wish I'd had some kind of commission from this particular scale group we could there was one scale that crossed the Sierra and the Nevadas and that was the one I bought. Well, after, within two or three years, there were a lot of scales that came out. Yeah. Because it's not that expensive. It was like 3,500. You don't need bells and whistles. Yeah. And you just set it up in the alleyway and there, they're fantastic. As soon as you got four pressure points, it gives you the weights and what, what sun dairymen are doing is they're weighing their animals around about 12 months. And then they're using that as a differential a kind of a, a sorting gate, if you like in that, okay. So the animals that are on target will be eligible. And those that aren't based on two pounds a day will become eligible at such and such a time. And that way they're trying to bring together, a confluence of maturity if you like by actually using a weight. And I will just say to that point earlier, one cannot make butter balls. The caveat is, do not over the condition. These animals wait on their own as the deadly cause we can make fat HES very quickly.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:39:10):
There's a large calf heifer ranch in Spain, and I've worked with, and they raised about 6,000 a year and from 130 different da. So they have good records and keep a lot of data that most operations don't. That was, there's a good publication in the ARPU journal recently by Alex Bach and, and the manager or JIDO and myself about that because it's one of the few places that they have good data. And of them, one of the problems that you have to be concerned about in any operation is grouping. So if you group too many, just, we calve of course all have established social order and the lower end that social order won't do as well. Now, what are you gonna do next? Are you going to just keep moving them forward? Well, they experimented there and when they found out they're better off holding those back.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:40:14):
So let, 'em pick up a better growth rate where they can compete better. And so it, it's one of those situations where you, you have to have some good philosophy on grouping and after calves or ween, if they've not been grouped before their ween, well, the, then you should only have about maybe about 12 in a group for a month because that month after winning is, is another transition period. And if you throw 'em all, you put 24, 48, or 50 in that group, they're gonna likely struggle on the lower end, cuz they will establish the social order and the bottom end won't do as well. And then if you move them forward, you have the problem. Is, is this a genetic issue, or is this just because we've crowded them too much? And their social orders dictated that some of 'em are gonna be on the bottom
Scott Sorrell (00:41:16):
If you want to kind of change direct into here is what impact does having the heifers mature at first Calvin? What impact does that have on longevity? Going back to a comment that that ad made earlier about you know, the distribution of, of lactations within the, so can we improve it by making sure those heifers are mature when they first cap,
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:41:40):
Could I first crack up that? Sure,
Dr. Al Kertz (00:41:42):
Absolutely.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:41:43):
So this is, this is very close and near and dear to my heart. I'm working on a, a presentation as we speak on this exact thing, productive life and setting these heifers up at the beginning adequately, I call them platinum of heifers, call 'em, whatever you like, you know but a philosophy of the best possible genetic expression of these animals as Al was saying, you know, in the run pens and all the rest, but we bring in just the right number of these high-value heifers, that transition well they're produced well, we will be able to cut our CU down involuntary cus I'm convinced of that. And ultimately if I, I would like a to the tree and if we had, if I could draw it, I draw it for you. But every dairy basically should be like a good old California Redwood and it should be pretty narrow at the base roughly about 30% L ones and then progressively get narrower. But if, if we have too many heifers that poorly do poor doers at, at the bottom of the tree, our tree doesn't look like a Redwood. It looks like some kind of like a Chinese hat, right. Broaden the baby shop, and you'll never get the longevity that way. It's straight maths. You have to have the top of the tree about 15%, five, and Sixers to get to six or two seven. So there is all critical because if they have high attrition, our tree looks like a good struck by lightning.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:43:21):
Sure. And I, I think part of the problem, there can be that if you have too many halfers, for whatever reasons you've begun using sex semen or whatever it is, and, and you try to push 'em through your facility, they're too crowded and you're doing an injustice to all of them, rather than going back, as Gavin says and selecting the heifers. And now there's genomics that you can do some of that with and not having more heifers than you need, because what often happens if you have HES and you need, you push the cows out and herd,
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:44:00):
Cause you
Dr. Al Kertz (00:44:00):
You're bringing the HES along, they gotta go someplace.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:44:04):
El you know, and I, I love genetics, but I, I use this analogy if you will allow me, Scott, you know having good genetics I say is a lot like having a, sending a kid to Stanford college, you know, a top school and the tuitions right up there. And it's wonderful. The only problem is that that kid never graduates. That is what it's like having great genetics, but these animals never get to express it. It's the Stanford kid syndrome.
Speaker 5 (00:44:36):
Hmm.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:44:40):
You pay for a high-quality heifer and then you don't treat her right?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:44:44):
No, no, get her.
Dr. Al Kertz (00:44:46):
Yeah. You,
Dr. Glen Aines (00:44:47):
You never, you get her right. Sometimes.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:44:49):
Yeah. You never get her
Dr. Glen Aines (00:44:51):
That most expensive animal on the herd is that high quality, you know, a genetic heifer that milks one day, and then she's down the road, right?
Dr. Al Kertz (00:45:00):
Yeah. Well, in another, another issue is when, when the herds weren't as large and they knew their genetics more and they had a GHI type records, you had actual and your equivalent data and, and more information to evaluate the heifers. But when you've got to larger commercial herds, you don't have the genetic information and you don't have those kinds of information that you can calculate what the genetics should be and what it is is, and what is it in the first lactation versus the second lactation or the third or fourth or fifth lactation. So without that information, it's, it's harder to see what's going on.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:45:44):
Yeah, yeah. And there's an overriding young in old out you know, just the one lameness, one mastitis, one, whatever, look at Youku and the heifer shows up knocks on the door and an old cow goes. And when I say old cow, I'm not even saying she's a broken cow. I'm just saying she's a mature cow. There's this sort of promise of the future is young and the future is wonderful, but the future never shows up.
Scott Sorrell (00:46:14):
Hmm. You know, a related topic that you brought up Gavin during the webinar was that HES that, that freshen, when they're a little less mature often have issues with MEUs. Can you talk a little bit about that and what might be causing that?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:46:31):
Yeah, so, I think El alluded to that earlier, you know, I've spent many years in my career as a large animal practitioner, so I have pulled out a lot of calves on two different continents and the worst nightmare still was you, you know, you called out and there's this little heifer, this teenage pregnancy, right. And of course, I'm using the extreme, it, these animals that don't have the birth canal or have those big Loles of fat, that it splits like a ripe you papaya those animals never end well, you, if you fill them up with antibiotics, they lose body condition score. They don't breed back. There's frankly, just a higher incidence of MATR, a higher incidence of DOAs. I mean, right. There's the giveaway, right? There's the giveaway, there's a higher correlation of DOAs and, and never mind RPS, you know, if you start with a bad repro tract, you know, good luck, good luck. And, versus an animal that's up there at, you know 1400 pounds and spits out a 90-pound calf man. It's a pretty picture
Dr. Al Kertz (00:47:44):
I'm involved in a project where we're trying to look through some Laura scale records that have Calvin difficulty scores, cuz I am convinced that's one of the most unsung UN understood problems on a dairy. So if a calf is, is a difficulty, difficult being born, it's more likely to have to die. And you know, barn dead often includes the first 24 hours. If it doesn't die, it's compromised and the cows are compromised. And so they, they never recover at least the cow doesn't in that lactation. And, and, and so I think that, that we haven't done a good enough job of scoring. And then looking as to why the score isn't very good for, Calvin's difficulty, is it because the heifer's fat or the cows fat? And if we knew that we could, we could get a better picture of why this Calvin difficulty occurs. It's all nationally, somewhere around maybe 10%. It's higher for first calf efforts, lower for older cows, but there's, there's seasonal variation. And we haven't done a good job of looking through this and trying to sort out what are these issues that we don't recognize?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:49:14):
Yeah. I, I like what you're saying and I've seen those calves and I, I dealt with the falls too, the equine that work and I'll tell you what, they were dumb, call them dumb animals. They were compromised at birth and, they were not functioning well, I don't know if there's a sort of a cerebral palsy equivalent for animals, but they were slower. They didn't nurse, they didn't cycle. I mean, it's not gonna end well, yeah. You know just one other point, too, you know, as we look at longevity and productive life non-completion rate becomes important by the non-completion rate the number of animals that are born alive that make it to calving, right? So this all fits in. We have to do a super, super job at keeping that NCR down, or we gonna have too much excess animal number in the system. Leads to obviously as mentioned earlier, you know, the expense of losing animals that you've put so much money in
Scott Sorrell (00:50:22):
Gentlemen, your arguments are very compelling. The data's very compelling. We need to have these heifers mature when they cap what's the solution. What are the steps that get us to the solution?
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:50:35):
I'll have the first crack, if you don't mind Al, no you know, raising heifers, if you think about it is like a production system and it's one of the fewer systems I can think of that has no quality control. Can you imagine investing $2,000 in a system where you have very little quality control, they go on one side and they spat out the other side. The solution is actually to monitor this thing to be very, very intentional weights, Heights, whatever it takes to get this product to where it needs to be because the outcomes if you don't are a long term I'd say almost forever. So it's well worth the effort, but we, we flying blind. In my opinion,
Dr. Al Kertz (00:51:21):
I, I would agree. And so the more data and understanding about the growth process, how critical it is to have a good Calvin, a clean environment, good colostrum administration, and have a good weaning transition. So we don't create problems. Then double that birth weight by the end of two months, and then get on a good average daily gain of somewhere between 1.8 to two pounds. You know, it fluctuates some because the growth hormone is episodic and its release rate and, and then measures if we don't have the measurements, I'd have to agree with Gavin. I mean, why would you do something for two years? And then at the end, not know for sure what you have until you go into the first one and maybe that's all they get because they haven't been well developed.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:52:15):
Yeah. Right. And that's true on so many dairies. It honestly is reality,
Dr. Al Kertz (00:52:22):
But we have to have a better simpler way of getting heightened in the weight. And that's why, yes. I'm intrigued by this 3d system. Him cameras. Me too.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:52:30):
Me
Scott Sorrell (00:52:31):
Too. No, that makes a lot of sense. You know, when during Gavin's presentation, he commented that you just gotta have eyes on these animals, eyes on these animals. And it immediately popped into my mind cameras. Right. We're starting to do so much with cameras may be too much and wanna get political. But right. So yeah, I, I think technology's gonna play a big role in this someday. So
Dr. Glen Aines (00:52:56):
It's, it's like a lot of things, if you don't find a simple way to do it, it simply won't happen
Dr. Al Kertz (00:53:00):
Simple and cost-effective.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:53:02):
Yeah. And I think it also has to be segmented Al I think that that whole thing of understanding where that Cal she's at, you know, a month later, and then what, you know, age, age, and weight and height that at breeding, those set the scale. Right. Cause if you do that right, and then the rest of it just feed her halfway D oh, she doesn't overfeed her too much energy and get her to a, but the ball. Right. You've got a good plane. You can get there from there, but boy, if you don't get at breeding age,
Dr. Al Kertz (00:53:32):
That's why I think that two month period of weaning is key. And then so is the six months because by the six months you should have half the height increase. And if you don't have it, you got fat, sharp animals. You got a problem
Dr. Glen Aines (00:53:48):
Yeah.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:53:49):
For life.
Dr. Glen Aines (00:53:50):
And the problem is gonna be, you know, having each farm, having some good idea of about where that is. Right. You know, as you said earlier, you know, mature size and weight, it's kind of vary from dairy to dairy-based on genetics.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:54:05):
See, here's another thing there's always a pushback of spending that extra money on the protein quality protein to get that frame. Well, if we didn't need so many animals, we could easily spend that money on that. Yeah,
Dr. Glen Aines (00:54:18):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Gets back to your noncompletion rate and your, your CU rate and, you know, longevity and all things. Cause if you don't have to have as many heifers, you can spend more money on those high-quality genetic heifers to get them into the herd, get 'em milking, and keep 'em there for a couple three, or four years, if
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:54:38):
You can't. Exactly. It's that simple. It's like the cohesive equation of dairy
Dr. Glen Aines (00:54:43):
Always sounds simple, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. That reality rears its likely had.
Scott Sorrell (00:54:49):
Yep. Great comments guys. I dunno if you just noticed, but the lights did flicker, which means that is time for the last call. So time to fill up your drinks. If, if you need to in wrapping up, we'd like to ask you guys just to talk to audio it's about out two or three things, impactful ideas for consultants, nutritionists, dairy farmers that they can do immediately to optimize their heifer production. And why don't we start with Glen?
Dr. Glen Aines (00:55:18):
Well, I'll start by saying that Daven, I, I was enthralled when I saw your presentation. And actually, I think I'm sort of, kind of responsible for getting you in, on our real science lecture series, because I, I thought it was an amazing presentation with a whole bunch of really neat information and Al your, your contributions to cabs over the years are just incredible. I was just looking at some stuff today, and I've got, an article by you that was a hundred years of, of caps or review, I think, was along those lines that you had in dairy science. So, I thank you for everything you've done for the industry. I go back to what I started to say earlier. I think we just need to have, you know, a, a simpler way to identify these calves as being keepers or tossers before they get into the, for the lactation. And I think that's probably somewhere around a, I think that weaning period, you know, that little transition you talked about, you know, do they make that transition well, and then getting them, you know, make sure they're physiologically mature enough, at least from a height than weight and body condition score or whatever. So if we can find a simpler way to do that until life will get a lot better for everybody
Scott Sorrell (00:56:44):
Al, what comments do you have?
Dr. Al Kertz (00:56:47):
Well, I would kinda elaborate a little bit on that. I think it's important, on any dairy operation that if you don't do it regularly, consistently do it periodically, let's get a dozen calf birth weights, and what's the range. Let's get a dozen calves, weening, weights, and Heights, and what's the range. Let's get a dozen of them at six months. What's the height and the weight. And any operation can do that if they want to, it's a little extra work, but it's not like doing the whole thing. And then once you look at those numbers and you do them maybe a couple of times a year, you'll have a much better idea of where you are with your dairy operation and what might need to be fixed.
Scott Sorrell (00:57:38):
Yeah. Great comments. Gavin will give you the final comments.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:57:43):
So just follow on with what Al said too. I don't think you have to weigh every animal, all the heifers. I think you just, need to know what, how your system's operating. So you, you need these little cohorts that you can just say, are we on track or tweet and to the simple message, if you have a fairly stable system and you know that you are hitting your, your goals of ADG and Heights and weights, then you can go into age breeding. If you know what the system is spitting out, you do not have to overcomplicate like, oh, I have to weigh all these animals at breeding. You've, you've done your homework. You've done the weights. Now keep it simple 420. This is what it is to further notice on this dairy there are ways of making it very palatable, but you've gotta, gotta, gotta have weights. And I'd love it if this radius can fix this 3d thing. It'll be the solution I'm sure. But right now the scale works pretty well in my experience and I'd recommend it, and every dairy has a scale
Scott Sorrell (00:58:49):
Very well. Gentlemen, big, thank you. This has been a lot of fun. Appreciate spending some time with you today. It's been very interesting and great information for dairy farmers. The title says it all right. Maturity matters. It sets the ceiling for the entire herd. I think that there's nothing more that can be said that can be more convincing. So thank you very much. And I also want to thank, our loyal listeners for stopping by here. Once again, here at the real science exchange, hope to see you next time here, where you're where it's always a happy hour and you're always long friends.
Dr. Gavin Staley (00:59:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 6 (00:59:28):
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