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- [00:05]
A
Hi, welcome to BCI Cattle Chat. I'm Brad White. Happy to have you with us and happy to have our crew here this morning. Morning, Dustin. Good morning, Jason.
- [00:12]
B
Hello, Bob.
- [00:13]
C
Hello everybody.
- [00:14]
A
And our special guest today is Cambry Schmaltz. Good morning, Cambry.
- [00:17]
D
Good morning. Thanks for having me.
- [00:19]
A
So Cambry is finishing up her degree here at Kansas State this May and she's been doing some work on a project to collect data from cow calf herds and we're looking forward to learning more from her. But just tell us a little bit about you, Kimbery.
- [00:33]
D
Yeah, so I originally grew up in the panhandle, Nebraska, right around Baird area. I was very fortunate to grow up on a first generation cow calf operation and background in feed yard. So that really is what sparked my interest to come here to K State and learn more about that, especially on the economic side. So getting my degree in agricultural economics and wanted to learn the numbers behind the industry a little more.
- [00:53]
A
Excellent. And I think you've had some great experiences both in the classroom and outside, which we'll learn more about today. We've also got a question from a listener on shipping cattle relative to this time of year, shipping cattle when they're pregnant, when is the best time to do that? And we'll dive into those. If you have a listener question for us, you can always send us an email at bcisu Edu before we get into our main topics for the day. Bob, I talked to a practitioner and I do have a question for all of you, but I talked to a practitioner the other day and he had just got back from a call where he was dealing with a Schistosomus reflexis.
- [01:32]
C
Yes.
- [01:33]
A
So the first question for you is, can you spell Schistosomus reflexis?
- [01:37]
C
Absolutely not. I'm sure it's spelled just like it sounds.
- [01:41]
A
It's spelled just like it sounds, just with some extra letters. Can you tell us what it is?
- [01:45]
C
Yeah. So it's an interesting, it's a birth defect that we see in cattle where if you think about the way the body is built, you know, so right down the middle of the chest, all the way down, that's the center line because, you know, bodies, human bodies, animal bodies, they're pretty symmetrical. You know, you got two kidneys, you got two lungs, same on the left and the right. Well, there's a, there's a zipper right up the middle of the chest. And for some reason in these calves that doesn't ever close. So their, their organs form, you know, their lungs and their intestines. Everything form, but it's not sealed in a sealed chest and abdomen. So basically the chest and abdomen are open. So what you've got is a calf trying to be. And they're kind of, not only that, but they're kind of turned inside out. So in fact that's a lot of
- [02:36]
A
times what produces the inside's on the outside.
- [02:39]
C
The inside is on the outside's on the inside and the outside is on
- [02:41]
A
the inside, which is not conducive.
- [02:43]
C
No, it's not conducive to being delivered in a normal way. So. And in fact that a lot of times producers will call them inside out calves, which is pretty, pretty accurate. Yeah. And so as a young veterinarian, you're always going to have your first one because they're just common enough that you'll see them every year or two in a practice that's a busy practice. And so your first one is always pretty exciting because it's a little bit confusing of what you're feeling in there.
- [03:09]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's hard to, hard to sort out. And that was, leads to my question for you guys today is tell me about one of your unusual calving experiences or something that you saw that was unusual or the first time you saw it. You get to go first, Bo.
- [03:22]
C
Okay, well, I did not get to do this, but my wife delivered a set of triplets which I still have never done.
- [03:30]
A
Triplets are super rare.
- [03:31]
C
They're super rare. I still have not done that, but my wife has delivered a set of triplets.
- [03:35]
A
Yeah, we had a set of triplets one time. They just, you're like, they just keep
- [03:38]
C
going like a litter.
- [03:40]
B
Jason, I, I would agree. I think triplets is probably the most unusual thing that yeah we've I've encountered and, and remember encountering as a, as a kid growing up. It's always surprising when you get them and nice when all three of them are doing well. So.
- [03:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, we had a calf one time that had a fifth leg that was on his, that was on his back and we debated should we take it off or not because that may be what he was using to help get him up. If he gets over on his back, he could flip up. Yeah, we ended up taking it off. It wasn't functional.
- [04:09]
C
That's probably gonna.
- [04:10]
B
As we talk. I do remember a two headed calf born a family probably seven or eight miles or so from us and I was probably in high school at the time when that calf was born, but I do remember that. Yep, yep.
- [04:22]
A
Those are cool and unusual too. Dustin I don't have any memorable stories.
- [04:27]
B
No.
- [04:28]
C
I thought you were gonna ask him, like for a really unusual, cool spreadsheet or something like that associated with Cambry,
- [04:34]
D
I would have to say the only thing that really comes to mind is we kind of had a premature hairless calf come out once and that was very odd to see. For sure.
- [04:42]
A
That happens always during calving season. We want everything to be normal and go with the flow. Everybody has their baby and no problem.
- [04:50]
C
Unusual is not necessarily what we want,
- [04:51]
A
but once in a while you'll see stuff come up and you just manage it and work your way through it. If you have something that's unusual or out of the box, one of the. One of the tricks, and we've talked about that before, is get others involved relatively quickly, have a plan for how you're going to deal with the unusual. Because if you invariably that will happen somewhere and it may be across the county or somebody else, but across the calving season nationally, we'll see some of that. But some of your work, Cambrian, I want to transition. So you've worked on a project that's called Cafdex and that project allows. And it was really driven by questions from producers about how can we better transfer data between segments of the industry. And it's evolved to now, how do we have better records in each segment of the industry so we can better understand production goals, economic goals, some of the other things that we're targeting? Tell me, give me your overview of what this project has entailed and how you got involved.
- [05:47]
D
Yeah, I think you said it really well. It really just started as a way how do we record our data and make sure we're actually using it for management decisions? There's so many people that are great about. They have their calving record books and they write all the records throughout the year, but then they throw the book away and they never look at it again. Or maybe it's in a drawer somewhere and maybe they look at it once a year, but it's really not driving their management decisions. So how can we convert that information that we're doing a great job recording and make sure it's something that they can use to influence their management decisions, their culling decisions, whatever that may be, to drive their production forward in the cow calf sector, and then we have those records collected and they can go downstream to benefit the next producer.
- [06:26]
A
Yeah. And so, Bob, as we've talked about record systems in the past, they can become very complex and intricate to. To enter some of those record forms. What have you done in this project because you and Dr. Schroeder from AG Econ have kind of headed up this project. What have you done to alleviate some of those challenges with. I don't. I don't have time to enter 900 records.
- [06:48]
C
And it's been a good project because, you know, I'm coming at it kind of from the veterinary practitioner standpoint, you know, helping my clients collect records. Dr. Schroeder and Cambry kind of came from it from the Ag Econ perspective. You know, what kind of, what kind of ratios, what kind of numbers do we want to be able to look at? And throughout this entire project, we knew we would have to make some compromises. The more information I want, the more information I have to gather and the more complicated that is and the less likely it's going to happen. So we've had multiple conversations, really trying to figure out the true target audience and recognizing that we can't provide a product that absolutely fits everybody's needs. So we focused on a few things. We focused on commercial producers. So we weren't really trying to provide the answers that like a purebred person may want. Purebred producer. We were interested in commercial producers who were interested in passing that information on to their buyers. And so those became kind of some of the things that we were. We had some surveys where we surveyed cow calf producers and had them kind of rank which were the most important pieces of information that they wanted to make decisions on. And then we also asked some feedlot producers what is the most important information that you want to get from your suppliers. And we use that to kind of create a relatively simple. And the relatively part is the hard part because we tried to keep it as simple as we could and still gather the information that we wanted. So in some ways, so we will have people using our product, the record keeping system, that want more. And we've kind of decided not to add any more at this point, although we have. And I'll turn back to Cambry, had a recent upgrade to this system, which I think is really handy. In the past, basically it was a used your phone or a tablet or something like that to collect the information. But we recently added an online dashboard, which I think adds a lot of functionality. And Cambry was really the one behind that and making sure that that happened.
- [08:48]
D
Well, yeah, so just hearing from producers and their concerns, it's very clunky and it's not convenient to enter all your records. Those 900 records, typing in one at a time on your phone is not Nobody wanted to do it. And I think that was enough for them to give up and go try something else. So we just made an option for them to go on kafdex.com, they can the same login as they would use on the app and have the same features and then some. They have the ability to move their cattle between herds because we understand that they don't necessarily stay in the same group their whole life. They can enter 50 females at a time in a big batch and they can do it within 10 seconds, move on to the next group. And as we've just made it a lot more convenient and accessible for them by being able to have that web platform, I think Bob did a great job detailing that. We have been very intentional about what we allow them to record and trying to not make it happen so that they have an overwhelming amount of data that they just end up not using. We want to make sure this is accessible, beneficial data that's going to drive their operation.
- [09:47]
A
And Dustin and Jason, you guys have a lot of experience with record programs in general. And as you think about what drives producers to use those or not use those, what do you see as some of the limiting factors? And maybe they're addressed in the Cafdex project, But what, what stops producers from keeping better records? Well, I think they've kind of already hit it. Like if it's clunky, it's hard to enter. Like, especially if you're on your phone, you're not going to sit and type a bunch of things on your phone. It's just, it's just not easy, it's not practical.
- [10:21]
B
So that's one thing limiting.
- [10:22]
A
I would argue probably the biggest is if it's just not easy to use.
- [10:26]
B
You know, as I really think about it, I think it was alluded to, right? It's what do we use the information for? Right. And I think the underlying question that we always go back to with producers is what are we going to use with, with this information? What kind of good data driven decisions are we going to make? And that just varies so much from one operation to the next and what they value. And so that's why I'm curious what the, what the ranking of priority was for the least on the cow calf side for those main data points, those main things that they want to record that you found when you surveyed those producers. Because it just, it just varies so much. But there's so many different systems out there and ways that people can capture information. It's got to be easy. And They've got to have an incentive to do it. To Dustin's point, I think, yeah, there
- [11:15]
C
were a number of things that were pretty consistent. And when I say these, you're going to probably shake your head and say, that makes sense. Birth dates, they wanted birth dates, they wanted weaning weights, they wanted keep track of health treatments. You know, if calves got sick and what they got treated with, those types of things rose to the top of almost everybody. And so we tried to focus on the things that were the three or four most important things for the most people. And it's pretty simple. Things like that, such as keeping track of cow age, calf birth dates, weaning weights, those types of things. And from when we asked feedlot producers, purchasers of calves, what they wanted, some of the same things came up, some of the health things, such as when were calves processed and what products were used, as well as birth dates and things like that. So a really good idea of ages and things like that. So there was, there were some similarities between cow calf and feedlot producers, and there were some that were just important to one or the other.
- [12:10]
B
Sure. Yep.
- [12:11]
A
So in the process, you actually surveyed people to come to some of those answers. But I like what, what Jason said, sometimes we collect data because we think it would be good to make decisions on. And we spend 98% of our time collecting and entering data and almost zero time using it. And you have to have the ability to get some use out of it. So. So, Cambry, from your perspective, and just to kind of review so we can, if I want to get involved or I try this out or I want to look at it, where do I go and how do I learn more about it?
- [12:44]
D
Yeah, of course. So www.caftex.com you go on there and log in, create an account. Kind of very simple online platform to get you started. You can also, if you're on the go, you can download it from the App Store, Google Play Store. It's also just right under kaftx. Get started in the app. There's tutorials on the website. You can see what it offers and how each function operates. But then once you're in there and you're using it, you have access to your data. You can export it into a spreadsheet template and do your analysis however you please. But we also have options coming down the line here where we're going to kind of do some initial analysis for producers where they have some quick reports they can work off of.
- [13:23]
A
And is there a cost associated with this? I know it's been put together by the K state team as part of a grant. Is there a charge for the app? Is there a charge for managing the data?
- [13:32]
D
Nope, no charge. We're still operating under the grant, so wanted to make it available for producers for free.
- [13:37]
A
Okay. And last question you mentioned, one of the goals is sharing data. Do I get to select whether my data is shared or not? Or do it? Does it automatically get shared or how does that part work?
- [13:50]
D
So this data, the only way you can access it is you can download it directly to your device that you're operating off of. So once you have it, it's yours. You can choose if you want to pass it along and if you want to edit it and decide there's certain elements you don't want to pass along, it's completely up to you.
- [14:04]
A
So even but down to the field level, I can figure out if I want to share something with the next person who's buying my.
- [14:09]
D
Yep. So it just comes in a spreadsheet. So if there's certain fields that you need to aren't important to the information you're sharing, you can go ahead and just decide what you want to pass along or not.
- [14:18]
A
Excellent. Thanks for your work on this, Cambria and Dr. Larson, Dr. Schroeder, for putting this together. It sounds very useful, I would say. Check that out@caldex.com if you're interested. I do want to shift gears because we had a great question, and this is from a producer that has a spring calving herd. They have a summer grazing lease that starts on May 15th and so they take the cows to the grazing area and they can't get in before May 15. Consequently, they have been putting the bulls in at the same time they put the cows on the grazing lease. The producer's question is I'd kind of like to move my breeding season back a little bit, get them bred a little bit sooner. So should I put my bull in on May 1st before we go to grazing or. Or May 9th or 7th, whatever that is, and then ship them? The issue is the pasture spring grazing lease is four hours away, so it's a four hour truck ride there and a four hour truck ride back. So should he start the breeding season a little bit earlier before he gets there, or keep putting the bulls in and he's concerned about pregnancy loss on that truck ride? Bob, I'm going to ask you first.
- [15:27]
C
Well, I have an opinion and it's based on some pretty good data, but there's still some things we don't know about this topic, but one of the things that we do know is that. Well, first of all, this question is very relevant. I mean, when a pasture lease starts, dictates when we're going to move cows and we're not going to. We just don't have the option to move much earlier than that. There's a couple of times in pregnancy where we lose more fetuses. And one of the areas is what they call the maternal recognition of pregnancy, which is about two weeks after conception. So about that time is a really critical time, and we lose a fair number of pregnancies right around that time. So I don't want to do anything to stress an animal or anything right around that time, such as putting them on a truck for four hours. That would not be ideal during that critical time, about two weeks after she's mated. But honestly, even the first 50 days or so are when we see most of our pregnancy loss, kind of. Well, if you think about it, probably the most is during that first two weeks. The next most is over the next, say, to day 28 to 35, and then still quite a few out there to day 50. And then once we get out there past six, seven weeks, don't lose as many pregnancies. It really trickles down. So. But this, this is such a great question because you run into competing needs. I really, really don't want to do anything such as trucking those cattle, even trailing them a long ways, or anything like that during early pregnancy. So my answer to this guy is the way he's doing it right now, where you turn out bulls on May 15, when the cows get there, that works. But he would like to calve a little bit earlier. I think if he's going to calve any earlier, there is one period of time, but the cow is pretty protected, and that's actually during the first week of pregnancy. During the first week of pregnancy, that, that early, early embryo is still up in the uterine tube and it's pretty protected up there. So if he was going to start the breeding season earlier, I would not go any earlier than one week before trucking him. Because if you go two or three weeks out there, then a bunch of my cows are right in that real critical time frame where I could lose some things. What do you think, Jason?
- [17:37]
B
Oh, I agree. I mean, I think that's a really good point. Just thinking about the timing of when this will happen relative to maternal recognition and pregnancy, and we think about, think about why, when we think about our synchronization protocols, the you know, single shot of prostaglandin after bull turn in. You know, that idea of why we can do that within four or five days, why that works, because that idea of when maternal recognition of pregnancy occurs. Yeah, I mean, this is, this is very, very. This is a great question. I mean, I think one question I would have for this producer, just thinking a little bit more about it would be, is maybe what does the distribution of your calving period look like right now in terms of the percentage of those calves in that herd that are born that first, second versus the last cycle? And are there maybe some things that we could do to try to just try to front load and push more of those females to get pregnant earlier on and maybe shift that distribution up a little bit ahead? You know, because it's one thing if we maybe start on, you know, right around March 1st with maybe a few. But where does the bulk of those. Where do the bulk of those. Those calves, where are they primarily born on? And I think that's just a good question to look at. So maybe, you know, do we need to do some things nutritionally or synchronization to try to pull more of those females up? But, you know, I think if he wanted to turn bulls in a little bit earlier. Yeah. Within a week. The question from a practical standpoint is, is can he manage that? What are the facilities like? And do we have the ability to, you know, to start the breeding season without, you know, potential risk of injury, those types of things? Just all those types of kind of logistic questions that you got to think about.
- [19:10]
A
So I got a quick question. You said they're shipping these cattle for four hours by truck. And then Bob, you said trailing or trucking significant distances. So instead of four hours, what if this was a 30 minute ride?
- [19:22]
B
Would that change your response?
- [19:24]
A
Oh, that's a good catch.
- [19:26]
C
That's a mean question. Because a lot of the risk or a lot of the stress really just comes from the gathering and loading and stuff. And in some ways it hardly matters how far. And this is where I don't have data. This is where I. Because one of the. So somebody said, well, I just need to trail them a mile or two down the road. Maybe I'm okay with that. And then they go eight miles. I go, so I don't know what the number is kind of trucking, but if you put them on a truck, I would almost say no trucking. You know, whether it was five miles or 150 miles for four hours. And again, do I have a ton of Data to support that. No, but I'm just not very interested in putting them on a truck because of the gathering, the trucking and all that kind of stuff, the trailing them down the road. There is probably a distance that I'm not comfortable with, but I don't know exactly where that line. I'll let Jason decide how far I can trail them before I get into trouble.
- [20:19]
B
Well, that's a really good question. Unfortunately, I don't think any of us want to try to design a project to try to measure that. Nobody wants to try to lose pregnancies. Right. So that's. It just gets to be difficult to try to determine where that line needs to be. Yeah, I mean, I think you got to be realistic with it. You just got to be realistic with it. And, you know, for talking about walking cows slowly under low stress conditions, 1, 2, maybe 3 miles somewhere in there, you're probably okay. Other factors will certainly dictate that.
- [20:47]
A
Yeah, but cattle handling, always an important aspect of any of these. So it's not just distance or just putting them on a trailer.
- [20:54]
C
I'm picturing really calmly, not a lot of dogs, not a lot of yelling, just really calmly moving them down the road.
- [21:01]
B
Right. That's a key component of thinking about doing these things.
- [21:04]
A
Yeah, especially. Especially right around pregnancy. So in this case, and one of the things that you're saying, Bob, was kind of a key point is that 14 days post conception is when we think most maternal recognition of pregnancy occurs. That is the key time that we don't want to add stress to the system. If we go shorter, if we put the bull in a week early and we left at seven days, yes, there's some risk, but not, not as much. Or if we went longer and we said, okay, we're going to move them at day 28 of pregnancy, I don't like that. Yeah, that's. That's harder.
- [21:36]
C
Yeah, that's almost as bad as the 14, you know, I just don't like.
- [21:41]
A
So you could go short but not long on this, which, in which case it's hard to move your calving season much. And Jason's point, which I thought was excellent, is if they're not all calving in that first three weeks, it's going to be hard to move it forward very much anyway. We may want to have other considerations and factors. So what he's doing now may be the best approach. And other producers probably have some of the same issues as they. As they go into this calving season. Any other thoughts for him thinking about shipping Cows. Are there concerns with that distance when they're open and getting ready to breed the next day?
- [22:15]
C
Not really. It may affect our fertility, you know, for the first few days after they've been trucked. Again, we don't know that for sure or the extent of how much that may affect it.
- [22:26]
A
What about bulls and truck rides? Any, any time that bulls. Does it affect their fertility? As long as we're asking you hard questions.
- [22:32]
C
Yeah, you. You are asking me hard. So stress will impact a bull's fertility. Not immediately in that there's a lag. So anytime we're talking about early conception, early fertility, low stress is really critical. Here's a question.
- [22:48]
A
No, no. You can't answer a question with a question. That's not how this works.
- [22:51]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm trying. I am trying to figure out. So see, this is again, back to the personal relationship part of this business. I would love to take those bulls down there a couple weeks early and let the bulls get acclimated and then have the cows come and say, okay, the lease doesn't start till May 15, but how about if I take some bulls, like a handful of bulls down? I would love to have the personal relationship that will allow me to. Because I. You bring up a good point. I also don't really want to stress the bulls right at that time, but
- [23:23]
A
some of this and how it is working. We have the value of hindsight here. So in a scenario where we've been doing it this way for years, we take the bulls and the cows, they all turn out May 15th. And if we had two thirds of the calves born in the first three weeks of the calving season, I would
- [23:40]
C
be hesitant to change anything.
- [23:41]
A
We're probably.
- [23:42]
C
Things are going well.
- [23:43]
A
If we're struggling to get cows bred early. Well, I might be looking at some alternatives. So don't ignore the history. So in this specific question, if it's been going well and you're doing it this way, it's not broke. Don't fix it. Good. Saying for a reason. Even if you want to move them up a little bit, you may have some constraints there. And the little bit that we would recommend at most is a week. If you get anything over that. We're struggling to get that pregnancies.
- [24:10]
B
This is where having good records to be able to look back on right from the calving.
- [24:15]
A
If they were using cavdex, they'd be able to look back at those birth
- [24:18]
C
dates and see how many of them are born in the first 21 days.
- [24:20]
B
I mean, this is where, you know, these types of conversations. That's where kind of the rubber meets the road, so to speak, of being able to go back and look at, okay, where have we been? What do our numbers realistically look like? Do we have a problem that we realistically need to address, or are we okay with where we are? The only last comment I would have is just be cognizant of heat stress if you've got a haul cows right during that time period, because we know that that is certainly not beneficial for
- [24:45]
A
because may 15th in this part of the country could be cold, typically cold, or hot or in between. I do have a side job as a meteorologist, so I can predict long term forecasts. So thank you for that listener question. If you have other questions for us, you can send us an email@bcisu.edu.