A (2:19)

Yeah, she. Well, she brutally honest, she was going

B (2:22)

to mathematical probability and like, yeah, there really no way.

D (2:26)

But yeah, there we go.

A (2:27)

That's. We had one of our boys one time, coach. And the coach, doing typical coach speak, goes, who's tired? And my son goes, I am, Bob.

B (2:37)

Oh, yeah. Well, I got to coach little league baseball team a couple times. And there's a lot of stories, but most of them have to do with fielding errors, gross fielding errors, base running errors, and oftentimes the parents response to those errors. So some of it's funny, some of it's just not funny. But you know, you got to do a little bit of coaching of kids sports. It's got, it's got to be some good kind of character development.

A (3:05)

Yeah, you got to coach some facing the field and some facing the stands. You got to coach both directions. Philip.

C (3:11)

So I was trying to think. I've coached my boys here in lots of sports the last four or five years. I'm trying to think of a funny story and I don't know, nothing's really coming to mind. But one thing that does come to mind, Picture sandlot, all right, and the new kid out in the outfield, and is it Jimmy that hits the. I think it's Jimmy that hits the baseball, right?

B (3:31)

Yeah.

C (3:32)

And the kid just put your glove up and I'll hit the ball to you and your glove, you know. So we had a kid on the team a couple of years ago, just not the best player, you know, not. And he was playing second base and it was a pop up and it was kind of like that. He's pop up and he just goes like this, just sticks his hand out. I'm pretty sure he may have even closed his eyes and the ball lands right in his glove and he makes the catch.

A (3:56)

That's fantastic.

B (3:57)

Miracles do happen.

A (3:58)

He'll remember that forever. That was me. That was me playing.

D (4:00)

You got to be really careful at the language, like the words you use when you're trying to explain concepts. So like, you know, they end a tee ball where the bases are loaded, the last player and everybody runs home. So the first game, that's what the coach said, all right? Everybody, when she hits it, run home. And they all run straight home instead of around the base. Second base runs through the pitcher. First base goes retrograde.

A (4:21)

Yeah, that's where you have kids comment, but I don't live close to here. You gotta run home all right, I distracted us from our important issue of diarrhea. So let's talk diarrhea. Bob, I know this is one of your topics, and I'll bring it up because the question is coccidiosis, and coccidiosis can cause diarrhea. It's one of the things we think about. Sometimes we'll have that bloody diarrhea that occurs. And specifically they said, what do I do to prevent this? Where does it start? Is it in the soil? I've heard that maybe I should lime the soil. So I'm going to start. First question, where does coccidia come from? Does it come from the soil?

B (4:57)

Yes, that's at least part of the answer. It's actually a really common organism. It's a little tiny organism, and basically all cattle carry a certain load of coccidia. I don't think it'd be possible to completely eliminate coccidia from the digestive tract of cattle. So it's in cattle, so it comes out their manure, and then it. It survives in the soil for quite a long time. So in a way, yes, it does come from the soil. In fact, a lot of times when we see our. Our biggest problems stereotypically, it would be, you know, a muddy lot where you're not getting good, you know, drainage. The organism is in a wet, moist environment and it can do great there. It's going to survive really well. And so, yes, there's some things we can do from a lot management, so things like keeping the mud down, scraping, those types of things. Lime has been tried because theoretically it should work. It's just real hard to make that practically be there long enough to really change an outcome. So biggest problem in recently weaned calves, they're changing diet, going through some stress, those types of things. That's when we most commonly see it. There are some feed additives, a couple of different feed additives that will help control it. And we do try to control the mud so that you just have less exposure.

A (6:13)

Yeah. So Philip, he talked about feed additives or Scott, what would you guys recommend for controlling coccidiosis?

C (6:20)

I'll let Scott handle that. But I had another. Another thought. Another comment is we. If we. We line the lot and we would control the coccidiosis in the soil there, but the calves are going to always. They're going to pick it up from the pasture or wherever they were before, and they're just. They're just going to bring a. Bring it with them onto the new lot. And so sterilizing so to speak that lot surface is not necessarily preventing them from getting coccidiosis in their system because they already have it when they showed up.

A (6:51)

They may still break with it. And you can control the environment. And good pin cleanliness is important for a variety of reasons, but it's not going to eliminate your coccidiosis problem. Scott?

D (7:03)

Yeah, I mean, I think just to summarize, a lot of that's all pathogen load. I think at the end of the day, right, if you can keep the, you know, if they're exposed to 5 million versus 50,000, that's a different. Maybe a different outcome. So product wise, there's a number of different things. There's drugs that'll actually kill the coccidia. There's drugs that are considered coccidia stats that'll just interrupt the life cycle. So you've got things like anprolium that are meant to use for treatments. You've got things like diquinate, which you can, like, run through the cows and kind of clean cows up before you go to calving. So hopefully you don't get transmission to calves. And then all the ionophore compounds, at least some of those have a secondary coccidiostat label to them. Things like rumensin would have that label. So there's a number of different things, and it just depends on how it fits into your management system. So you'd work with your veterinarian to come up with an idea.

A (7:50)

Yeah, that's just what I was gonna say. Great, great place to work with your veterinarian. So if you've had consistent problems, you have groups of calves that have problems, it may be embedded in the herd, and you may want to, at the time of weaning, dietary transition, all those stresses, you may want to use something that would be, like we talked about, coccidiocidal, which may mean different route of administration than just putting it in the feed. Or if you're maintaining and you don't want to have problems and you haven't had big problems. Our ionophores can be very helpful if we can get some of those in the ration as a coccidiostat or something that breaks that life cycle basically doesn't kill them off, but keeps them from reproducing nearly as effectively. So I think both those are good answers. Great, great answers there, guys, to that question. The next question that we got, and I like this question, Philip, it's from someone that is producing their own beef for sale. So they're selling freezer beef, they're Doing some things direct to customers. They're raising those animals. And then they had customers request, we want these to be growth hormone free. So they modified. And what they saw was they had £200 less of hanging weight. And so now their question is, should I keep going this route? What's the pros and cons of being growth hormone free or not giving the cattle an implant as they go through the process?

C (9:10)

Yeah, so the question is that they've got to educate their clients. Problem is that doesn't work well. So the clients have the fear of eating meat from growth implanted animals is going to have some negative effect on their health. There's numbers out there that eating a steak from an implanted steer will contain about 2 or so nanograms of estrogen activity in it. So now all of us sitting around the table right here today are naturally producing estrogen in our body. Somewhere between about a hundred thousand nanograms and 400,000 nanograms, depending on your gender. And so adding two nanograms from an implanted steak doesn't seem to be very important. But again, you're working with consumers and people that don't necessarily understand the science and education is hard and getting them to change their mind. So I've been part of some situations where people are doing similar things selling locker beef. And clients are always asking, do you use growth hormones or use hormones? And so the easy answer is, no, we don't. So you can sell your beef. Problem is you're giving up a lot of efficiency. Like they said, they're giving up 200 pounds in hanging weight. And so what you have to do as a producer is compensate yourself for that. And so you're giving up about 15% in efficiency by not using a growth implant. So you need to be charging about a 15% premium for non implanted beef is kind of the way I look at it.

B (10:55)

Yeah, I think that's a really good answer. You know, I valid question. People should be concerned about, you know, healthy eating and those types of things. This is a situation where I, because of this, the interest that public has about hormones in beef, there's been actually a fair amount of safety research and the federal government has pretty strict guidelines on proving safety to the end consumer. And so it is a well researched question. So I feel about as confident saying that I think it's safe as I do, you know, any other situation. But I also agree with Philip that, you know, if I have a consumer that really doesn't want that, that's fine. But because I lose Some efficiency. There's a premium associated with that difference.

A (11:32)

But looking at the numbers, how does that compare? And you talked about the amount of estrogen or hormones that we have circulating. How does it compare between a castrated steer and an intact male?

B (11:46)

No. Yeah, well, a bull is going to have a lot more than even an implanted steer. Yeah.

C (11:51)

So some of the numbers I've seen that. So like I mentioned, an implanted steak from an implant steer is about 2 nanograms in a 4 ounce serving. The standard serving in a, in a standard serving from an intact male is about 20 nanograms. So it's 10 times as much from an intact male.

A (12:09)

A four ounce serving is what we're supposed to be eating.

C (12:11)

Yeah, I know.

A (12:13)

That's all I gleaned from that sentence I got stuck on that, Phillip. I'm like, I don't eat 4 ounces.

C (12:18)

That's the standard serving that they do the calculations by.

A (12:23)

So just like a bag of chips. That's a one serving bag, no matter

D (12:28)

the size of the bag. That's right. You'll see some comparisons too to other food groups. And I don't know that we need to go into detail, but you can look those up too. And it's, I just, I think it hammers home the, that 2 nanograms is minuscule and meaningless in a lot of ways. And I, in order to put that into scale, it would be really hard to do. But you're like millionths of an ounce at that point. Almost zero really in all. But anyway. But it is another place to maybe educate clients on that.

A (12:54)

Well, it's a place where communication becomes important because it, it is higher than a non implanted steer.

C (13:03)

Non implanted steer is about 1 nanogram.

A (13:05)

Yeah. So it is.

C (13:06)

So a non implanted steer is not zero.

A (13:08)

Right. So it's, it's higher, but it is not meaningfully higher. And sometimes when we communicate scientific information we end up conveying this is higher or lower, more or less. And we've done the statistics on it that does not necessarily indicate importance or meaning. And that's where we need to have that discussion. I also like your point on. Okay, well, I'm not going to make the choice for the consumer and this is the choice I have to make as a producer. And so maybe talk just a little bit about, okay, if I am going to do it non implanted or growth hormone free. Because none of them are hormone free. No, no beef is hormone free.

C (13:49)

No, because animals produce. Yeah, animals produce it in their own.

A (13:51)

Yeah. But if I'M going to go that direction. What do I need to do differently and should I maybe feed those cattle longer to re achieve that same harvest weight?

C (14:02)

Yeah, so one of the things I would, would recommend is growing the animal more. So basically you're going to feed them for a lower rate of gain, you know, two to two and a half pounds a day for a period of probably three or four months to allow them to put on frame and muscle before you start to fatten them so that then you can add those extra pounds back onto the hanging weight in that case. But again that's an extra cost to you. So you gotta, you still gotta be compensated for the decrease in efficiency when you don't use a growth implant.

A (14:39)

Dustin couldn't be here this morning. But channeling him, he would probably say do a spreadsheet and figure out what your break even is for raising the beef in that manner and, and charge appropriately. And I have no problem with either of those scenarios, but make sure that it's a beneficial process to you.

C (14:56)

Yeah. Another farmers that I worked with, they would price their animals based on market value and then they would add a premium onto that price so that the consumer's still getting the benefit of market changes and so is the producer if the market's going up. But then, you know, but then they will charge a premium based on the decrease in efficiency from not using that technology.

A (15:23)

So I think a good discussion there and dig into it. Figure out what do your consumers really want? Are they flexible or is this what they really want? And if so, you have to decide is that your target? And go for it. But understand under the hood that those implants are not making a meaningful change in the amount of hormones that's in that, in that product. Last listener question that we've got. I think this is a really good one. I'm interested to get you guys opinion on this. And it's from a veterinarian that says he's got clients that will talk about how soon prior to processing or how early prior to processing should I gather cattle. So should I gather them immediately before we process them? They're not held for very long or should I gather them for hours or days and have them held in that period and how does that impact their behavior? Going through the chute was his question. I'm going to follow up with. How does that impact the efficacy of anything that we do as they're going through the shoot? Bob, I'll start with you.

B (16:21)

Yeah, it is a good question. And the listener asks specifically if there's research on this topic. And I'm really not aware of any research that really looks at either behavior or immune response to vaccinations and those kinds of things. But I would say that I'm trying to balance low, low stress cattle handling. So bring the cattle up quietly. But in general, the things that cross my mind, I like to process them fairly soon because a lot of times access to waters, because as I concentrate cattle into a smaller area, they're going to need as a group, more water, more quickly. And so I don't want them dehydrated. And in some ways, you know, from a diet standpoint, do they have or can I deliver enough feed? So I want them well rested, feed and water. And the longer I hold them close to the processing shoots on, that makes it more challenging. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it makes it more challenging. I think depending on the size of the herd and the size of the area that you're gathering them from, you know, I know guys that'll gather them up the night before and bring them to the pasture right next to the processing chute. And you know, just to make that gathering time minimal. And I think there's some logic in that. In general, I don't like to have them sitting too long. And again, it's water and feed and. And just close proximity to each other. One of the benefits, health wise, for range cattle is that they spread out. And so I actually like them to be spread out as much as possible.

A (17:47)

Yeah. And processing is not innocuous. We did a study a few years ago, probably 10 years ago now, where we looked at processing cattle. We were monitoring behavior and all we did was run them through the chute. We didn't give vaccinations, we didn't do anything else. We ran them through the chute and then their behavior was altered for the next three days of what they did and how they allocated their time, how much time they spent walking around. So it changed it a little bit. The more I get them up, do I have more or less impact? And I think part of his question was, and I could see this as being logical, if I do the gathering in one step and the processing in step two and they're separated by time, the cattle have time to calm down. So they don't necessarily. They aren't as worked up. They're not going through the chute worked up. Scott, what do you think?

D (18:38)

I kind of went at this from a different angle. And a part of it's because that's. I don't know what I get to focus on, but it's a lot of times the corral areas are the ones that. It's where all the bad stuff grows. So you end up with, you know, these toxic plants. You know, that's kind of the angle I'm going on. But you get this overgrowth, all these weeds and things, and then you hold cattle in there that's they're going to eat it. And it. I've just experienced, I've run into a few absolute wrecks where you hold. And it's typically smaller groups, but you hold them in a corral and they eat nothing but that one plant because they can't get anything else for a period of half a day or whatever it is. And then the outcome's pretty poor. So I'm sensitive to that just based on my experience. But back in. In practice, I don't know that it mattered. I think a lot of it depended on the cattle themselves, like how they were actually handled together. Was the gathering easy? Was it. Did you have to get kind of fired up to get them where they need to go? All of that, I think, matters. And different herds respond differently, I think. And, you know, people handle them differently as well.

A (19:34)

And it depends what. Exactly what you said. It depends what gathering means. Right. Does gathering mean we're moving from the pasture next door into the corral system or we're moving them from the pasture that's miles away where we're trailing them or loading them on trailers and bringing them in? That all makes a difference I hadn't thought of. That's a great perspective on the. Because typically what grows in the corrals is whatever wants to. It's not monitored, it's not maintained. And our corrals and our systems are not. Are used infrequently, but they're trampled down whenever they're used. So what comes up a lot of times is weeds, and some of them can be toxic. Darn pigweed. Not to point fingers at pigweed specifically, but that's the one that's there I'm

B (20:17)

thinking of too, you know, to really answer this question. This. This is another one. And I know. I know people get tired of it depends on. But. But I think some of the things you listed. So how. What is. Can I gather them in a relatively short period of time, relatively low stress? I would go ahead and work them pretty soon if. If we're talking about a long distance. Well, how well can I take care of the cattle once they arrive? Do I have the feed and Water resources available. Is that going to work? So I think there's just a lot of things to consider. And so I'm going to leave it up to the people with boots on the ground to come up with the best solution for their ranch.

A (20:49)

Well, there's benefits to having a waiting room, right. An area outside the corral system maybe where we've. And we can bring them up and have them kind of get better, have a chance to get accustomed to what we're doing. I like the idea of having a calming down rest period where you can water and get a chance to eat. But if they're in a new environment, it may be different water, it may be well water, it may be an automatic water versus the pond. There's all those things to take into consideration. The underlying theme is we want to do low stress cattle handling because we know the higher the stress, the more challenges we have both in physically working the cattle and getting the response we want from whatever we're trying to do, whether it's pregnancy testing or giving vaccinations or anything like that.

D (21:36)

From the veterinary side, it was always frustrating when you pull up and cattle aren't ready. And so as the veterinarian, I want the tub full and one getting ready to go in the chute when I back up and get ready to roll.

A (21:46)

But when you see them in the pasture and they're just starting the process or worse, when they've been in the pen once and the gate is down, that is the, that's where, you know,

B (21:59)

we didn't even mention that the. What is the probability that they will still be in the retaining area 12, 24 hours later? And that's not always a given that they'll still be there.

D (22:09)

No.

A (22:10)

I separated off our bull a couple weeks ago and I put him in the pen and my probability was 100% he would still be in the pen the next day. He and I differed on how we. How secure that pin was and whether that gate needed to have straight lines or it should have bent in the middle. And he won. So that's the way it goes sometimes, but it's a little low stress. Handling is important. We'll appreciate you guys thoughts on all of these topics. And we did all listener questions today, which I love. That's a blast to do that. So if you have questions for us, you can send them to us at bcisu Edu or reach out to us on social media. Sam.