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Cattle Chat
Guest: Dr. Cassandra Olds, Theileria, Theileria Transmission, Winter Feeding Strategies
00:26:44
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- [00:06]
A
Hi, welcome to BCI Cattle Chat. I'm Brad White. Happy to have you with us and happy to have a full crew here in the studio. Morning, Scott.
- [00:11]
B
Good morning, Bob.
- [00:12]
C
Good morning, everybody.
- [00:13]
A
Dustin. Good morning, Jason.
- [00:16]
D
Hello.
- [00:16]
A
And we've got a special guest today. Dr. Cassandra Olds is with us. Good morning, Cassandra.
- [00:22]
E
Hello.
- [00:23]
A
So tell us a little bit about you.
- [00:25]
E
Yeah, so I'm the odd one in the room, I guess. I'm an entomologist and so I work on the ticks and flies and all the biting things that transmit pathogens and impact production, so.
- [00:37]
A
Excellent. Well, we're glad to have you here today because we've got lots of questions for you and there's some specific diseases, including valeria, which we want to dive into as it's really new and emerging. We'll learn a little bit more about it. We're going to talk with Jason on winter feeding, kind of how do we plan out, make sure that we're going to have enough feed to get through and how that plays into the operation. Before we get into those topics, I wanted to remind you, if you have a listener question, you can send us an email at bcisu edu or you can reach out to us on social media. I did have a question for you guys today. As we're coming up. We're getting to the end of the year. The first of the year is going to be right around the corner. And I just wondered, as I'm sure all of you have rewatched Rocky recently, the training montage, Eye of the Tiger. I wonder if you hear that song. What's your training montage that you've been doing lately to build up if you've got Eye the Tiger playing in the background. What are you working on? What are you doing?
- [01:36]
C
I'm chasing chickens around.
- [01:37]
A
Chasing chickens?
- [01:39]
C
Yeah.
- [01:39]
A
You got chickens you're out chasing. Trying to get. Trying to get ready.
- [01:42]
C
Working on my quickness.
- [01:42]
A
Working on your quickness. I was thinking something serious. What are you really training for? Are you training? Chasing chickens?
- [01:50]
C
No, not. No, I am not. But I was just trying to picture, well, I don't have a side of beef hanging in my house, but I could run upstairs. I haven't done that either, Scott.
- [02:00]
B
We just got a new German shorthair puppy and so a lot that's gonna be mine running up and down the block trying to get at least me to shrink and her to grow, hopefully in time for, you know, next year. So busy times at our house, Jason.
- [02:13]
D
I don't know that I have a training montage per se. But the first thing that comes into my mind when I hear that song is high school wrestling. Because they used to play it during the championship matches at our tournament when I was back in the day. So that's the first thing that pops into my mind when I think about that song.
- [02:30]
A
Absolutely. That song. That song brings you back to certain things.
- [02:33]
C
Yeah.
- [02:33]
F
I don't know that I have much here to offer. I don't exercise, at least in the last few months.
- [02:40]
C
Yeah, but you're smoking meat. Maybe you could just start hanging. Hanging aside.
- [02:43]
F
The thing that came to mind was, you know, we had just had Thanksgiving and know, getting ready, preparing for all the food and upcoming here, you know, Christmas time holidays, getting ready to eat a whole bunch more. So I gotta.
- [02:54]
A
Maybe you gotta train to get in.
- [02:55]
F
Mindset for that mindset to eat.
- [02:57]
A
I'm not sure you play that song while you're just sitting there watching meat smoke.
- [03:01]
F
No, because that could be over.
- [03:03]
B
You just got to tell people you're on a bulk.
- [03:05]
F
I'm bulking. I like that. I'll cut later.
- [03:08]
D
You could be. It'd be a very dramatic smoking event if you were to do that. So.
- [03:12]
A
Yeah, would be good. Cassandra.
- [03:14]
E
I'm in the perpetual loop of I'm going to wake up early tomorrow because I'm definitely going to do it tomorrow morning. And then wake up in the morning and be like, you know what? Tomorrow, this evening, it's going to be better this evening. And. And I've done all the things, I've bought all the equipments and all the workout gear and all the matching, you know, tops and bottoms. And still I'm. Every morning, I'll do it this evening, every evening. Now that's okay. I'll do it tomorrow morning. So. But I'm really good at it. This is the thing. Like, I may not ever. I'm really good at postponing the exercise.
- [03:46]
C
That's excellent.
- [03:47]
A
See, Play to your strengths.
- [03:48]
E
Yeah.
- [03:48]
A
Play to your strengths.
- [03:49]
C
Yeah.
- [03:49]
E
Yeah. I'm gonna choose to feel good about this instead of bad next time.
- [03:52]
A
When you listen to Eye of the Tiger, you'll be like, now I can procrastinate.
- [03:55]
E
Yeah. Yeah. A good friend of mine once said, you're not procrastinating, you're just not ready to do it yet.
- [04:02]
A
See, that's a good way to look at it.
- [04:03]
E
And so now that's what I do. Anytime I feel bad about procrastinating, I say, it's okay. I'm just not ready to do it yet. I'll do it really well when I'm.
- [04:09]
A
Ready when you're ready. Exactly. So let's jump in and talk about. There's a topic that has come up several times and there's been several veterinary practitioners and producers that we've discussed with Deliria and I'll have you tell us just a little background on what is the lyria and then we'll talk about what symptoms it causes.
- [04:31]
E
Yeah, so it's a parasite. So it's, you know, it's closer to us than a bacteria. So it's a single celled eukaryotic organism to get super, super scientific, which means nothing other that it tends to be difficult to control. Right. Its cousin is malaria. And I always say, you know, malaria has been around since mummies in ancient Egypt and we're still, you know, technically not closer to figuring it out. So notoriously, these parasites are difficult to control. It's transmitted by a tick, but it can also be transmitted by other ways. And I think for a long time we focused on this being a tick borne pathogen and. But there's other ways it can get around. And I think that it explains some of the things that we've been seeing sort of transmission without a tick being present. And I think that producers really need to know this because, you know, it has implications for how we move cattle in and out of our herd and what we do to really make sure that we're doing this properly.
- [05:26]
C
So what are some of the other ways besides tick?
- [05:28]
E
Yeah, so it's. So the tick is by far the most effective way. So what happens is when a tick feeds on an infected animal, it takes up those infected red blood cells and, and it goes through a little journey through the tick and it lands up in the. Most people don't realize ticks have salivary glands. Right, they have salivary glands and there's a replication stage and it really, it sort of amplifies the number of parasites you have.
- [05:50]
C
It's amplifying in the tick.
- [05:52]
E
Spit in the tick. Yeah, it's spitting out more than it took in. Okay, put it that way. And so very, very effective. So you don't need a lot of ticks to get transmission. The other ways that we can transmit it is there is sucking license. So the lice that take in the blood and that can do it. And so we especially see this in our young calves because this is primarily an issue of young calves. And so if you have an animal that's infected and it's bumping up and sharing its lice with its friends, you can get fairly good Transmission that way. And so this would normally occur in winter, which is not when we're paying attention to, you know, tick borne pathogens. Placental transmission rates are really low, but it can happen. We're probably looking at 2% maximum that it can happen. And then cool stuff we found. This summer we had strange things where cattle in areas where there's no tick presence were it was spreading throughout the herd and we don't have the tick. Well that we confirmed on the premises. And so we actually caught stable flies and we chopped the heads of the stable flies and tested the heads of the stable flies and we found the pathogen in the heads of the stable flies. So you know, we're starting to think that. And then I spoke to Dr. John Curran out of Virginia and he said too that they had this. They were also thinking flies are playing more of a role. So we've put in a proposal, hopefully it get funds funded to look this out. But I do think that if my gut tells me flies are doing a pretty good job of transmitting it, that's.
- [07:19]
A
Scary because unlike some of our other diseases, when we think of viral diseases or bacterial diseases, they spread animal to animal directly. A lot of times it's oral contact or aerosol contact. But in this we've got other carriers that the other question that I had, when we think of other bloodborne diseases like anaplasmosis, we're concerned about transmission through equipment. Things like needles, syringes, moving it back and forth. If I draw blood or castration, dehorning equipment, can we transmit valeria that way or do we know we can?
- [07:52]
E
We can. And so they did really good studies where they used just needles. Right. And they quantified how much parasite was in the needle and it can. And the more blood contamination, the shorter that process prepatnt period is. So the time between the parasite being inoculated and seeing symptoms. And so we do see this with Tyler is tile areas are dose dependent. The more you get in, the worse and the faster your disease is. Which is why we tend to see severe disease with ticks. We don't tend to see severe disease with flies because flies are giving less and lice are giving less. But needles definitely. And so we are really, really recommending single needle use. I mean it's a good practice anyway. Right. But this just really hammers home that we should be doing this.
- [08:34]
B
So was there an amplification stage in the flies when you looked at that?
- [08:38]
E
No. So the, the flies are what we call mechanical vectors. So they're just picking up and moving it to. From animal A to animal B. And, you know, I crazy fact, 75% of stable fly feedings get aborted because most insects have numbing agents in their salivas. And stable flies, we're just like, yeah, I'm not going to bother with that. And so that's why they have really painful bites. But that also means that they get disturbed frequently. And so, you know, if three fourths of the time you're getting disturbed and there's another animal within a close vicinity, this movement could potentially be.
- [09:15]
C
So they move from one animal.
- [09:16]
E
They will move.
- [09:17]
C
The animals are switching their tails.
- [09:19]
E
Yep. And, hey, this animal is a really sensitive animal. I'm going to, you know, take my chance with somebody else.
- [09:25]
C
Which means they move from animal to animal more than other flies.
- [09:28]
E
Yeah, I, I mean, it's a good thing to look at. Right. We could mark some flies and see how often they move and they move.
- [09:34]
C
From one to another.
- [09:36]
A
Sounds like a good project for you, Bob somebody. Yeah, you're out there marking my binoculars.
- [09:40]
E
Yeah, we've done it before with house flies. Yeah, we just shake them in a Ziploc bag with colored powder and then let them loosen, saw where they went.
- [09:47]
C
See where they went.
- [09:48]
E
Yeah.
- [09:48]
C
See, I think that's a great grad student project.
- [09:52]
D
I agree. So, so as we think about these different fly populations and these different fly species, are we seeing an increase in our stable fly populations in other areas where we wouldn't typically expect them?
- [10:05]
E
So stable flies really depend on the weather. Right. So they're, they're ubiquitous, they're everywhere. But they're really good at taking advantage of the weather conditions. And this is really every fly, because each female lays hundreds and hundreds of eggs. Right. So they can capitalize on number, nice warm weather and humid conditions and really have that population explode. This is in contrast to ticks where, you know, it might take you two years to get from egg to adult. And so when we see increases in tick populations, people always want to correlate it with the weather that we have right now. But often it's the weather that we had two years ago that really determines whether you have these, these influxes in populations. But stable flies, you know, you just need one. And then next week you've got 100, and then next week you've got a thousand. And it, it just keeps going.
- [10:56]
A
So. So one of the questions on the disease itself. So we've talked about the disease in cattle, and I've heard reports from a couple veterinarians where they're seeing clinical signs that would mimic red blood cell loss. So rapid breathing, rapid respiration, depression, sluggishness, moving around, very similar to what we would see in anaplasmosis. With the exception that it's rare to see a clinical anaplasmosis in a young animal, five to seven month old calf. Whereas I've heard reports of deliria in young animals as well as adults. What do you see or what do you hear as far as clinical signs?
- [11:38]
E
And I really urge producers to reach out to people like myself because as we're getting more reports of this is what it looked like, we can do a better job of educating other people. And so as these are coming in, we're starting to build a better picture of what this looks, looks like than we had a year or two ago. And so with, with anaplasmosis you normally see your clinical disease in your older animals. With Tyleriosis you, you tend to see clinical disease in younger animals or naive animals who are moved into an area. And so in an older animal, and this is what makes tularia quite fascinating really is depending on the age of the animal, the, the presentation is slightly different. And so in our calves, I always say, I say calves very Britishly and calves.
- [12:26]
But in our animal, our younger animals, we, it tends to look more like a pneumonia and it's a pneumonia that doesn't respond to treatments. And so in the rapid breathing, the rapid shallow breathing, depressed. For me, the hallmark of a tulare is that cattle go feed very quick.
- [12:43]
C
Oh, they go off feed, they go.
- [12:44]
E
Will feed, they stop eating and they get lethargic and they just look miserable. And often you'll see their heads are hanging down.
- [12:55]
C
I'd treat that as pneumonia.
- [12:56]
A
Just like beards.
- [12:57]
E
I would, yes. And so when I get reports especially from veterinarians, they would say it looked like pneumonia didn't respond to treatment. I'd bet the farm that it was BRD or something like that. And so that's what it looks like in a calf, in a mature animal, this is when we start to see it shift to more of an anaplasmosis presentation. So this get. But before even you see the anemia, the anemia is later on the animal is going to go feed, it's going to get, you know, we see a lot of exercise intolerance, them just really struggling to just move and, and be comfortable and, and you'll get weight loss and fever. And then later on the anemia becomes really, really pronounced. And again people think it's anaplasmosis. They give a couple of rounds of treatment, it doesn't respond. And that's when you know, and, and veterinarians are seeing it more and more and now getting better to say that hey, maybe this isn't anaplasmosis, this is maybe tyleriosis. And so now this is, this is sort of not every animal is going to get clinical disease. And I think this is important for people to realize when we were in Iowa because they just had their big outbreak and so we looked at the herd that had the big death loss, you know, 20% death loss, that's catastrophic. When we then sampled all the other herds and this was a herd that had been brought in from out of state, put on a pasture that was unknown, to be infested with the tick. So naive animals got high dose disease happened. When we looked at all the native cattle that had been there for years and years and years, 100% infection rates there or thereabout, zero history of disease.
- [14:36]
C
Really. A lot of times it's the naive animals. The animals, this is their first exposure.
- [14:41]
E
So that's what we've got to be looking at. And so a lot of the time I get producers or you know, people calling me and saying, oh well they, you know, they really want to buy in this animal and it's got great genetics and it's a great animal, but it's tularia positive and I don't want to do it.
- [14:55]
C
Or actually that might be a good idea.
- [14:56]
E
Yeah. And so one person actually brought it in, great bull and it was like, well what if I just use it for breeding in the winter and then I'd kill it. And you know, and I said, well, would you have kept this bull otherwise? Yes, lovely bull, great temperament, just fantastic. I said don't kill this animal because the realistically we are never getting rid of teleria. It's not going away. Herds are 90 to 100% infected. It's coming. Especially if we can prove conclusively that flies are transmitting it right then, then it's not just where the tech exists, which is still half of the country. So how do we bring it in and get ourselves to that point where our herds are 9200% infection rates but we're not seeing clinical disease.
- [15:40]
A
And I think that's the challenge. In some of those herds you mentioned, they're 100% positive and no disease. And I would argue in some of our anaplasmosis endemic areas of which that is one, we may have seen disease for years and misdiagnosed Misdiagnosed it?
- [15:56]
E
Yeah.
- [15:56]
A
Anaplasmosis. And I wanted to follow up on your respiratory case and some of those calves. Cause I've worked with some of those veterinarians and seen some of the pictures of lungs. The tell is it looked just like a respiratory disease calf until you do a necropsy.
- [16:10]
E
You do a necropsy and then the.
- [16:12]
C
Lungs are pink and beautiful. So how do I diagnose it? Is there a blood test that tells?
- [16:16]
E
Yes. So you can submit a whole blood sample to state diagnostic labs. Most of them have tests or will be able to give you the closest one in your region. They're getting cheaper as time is going on. And I always tell people, even if you don't have disease, test your herd to find out if you have it. Right. Because if you already have it, then a lot of these worries, non issues.
- [16:38]
C
Not going to worry about bringing it.
- [16:39]
E
Yes, yes. So it can really shape the decisions that you make.
- [16:43]
A
Because we don't have a lot of control techniques for tick flies. We've got some control techniques, but they're not perfect.
- [16:50]
E
No.
- [16:50]
A
And then managing bloodborne transmission is challenging. So this is a disease that we're going to have to live with over time. And appreciate your insights there because I thought that was very informative. I do want to address and I'm going to shift gears and Jason, I'm going to turn to you and talk about as we plan for winter hay feeding and we're thinking about what we need to do there, there's some pretty simple calculations I can do. How many cows, how much hay. But tell me, what should I be thinking about this time of year?
- [17:20]
D
Well, you know, I really think some big things that I think folks want to be keeping in mind as we transition into this time time of year is that even right now, in times where calf prices are really high, really good economic conditions for the cow calf sector and feed prices are generally low, it still is good practice to be paying attention to what we're doing from a hay feeding standpoint, thinking about things like loss, trying to minimize our costs there as much as we realistically can. You know, I think for a lot of folks, the first thing that I think of as we kind of transition to this topic and thinking about our last discussion here is in those areas where we've been feeding, you know, those, those winter feeding grounds, if we've been doing some supplementation out here, even maybe during the fall and in the summer, taking the time to go through and clean those areas up and try to get rid of our wasted hay and our old hay that's out there in those areas to try to clean those areas up, to just try to minimize the, our available spots and grounds.
- [18:18]
C
The stable fly loves old hay.
- [18:20]
E
Old hay. And I always say we'll never win the war. Right. Flies will get the better of us every single year. But it's. Do they get the better of us in June, July, August or September? Right. And so there's things that we can do to really shift that back. And one of those great things. Unless you remove that breeding site, you can plant as much pesticide as you want. But if you're not removing that breeding site, you'll never impact the population because.
- [18:42]
A
Describe the ideal breeding.
- [18:43]
E
Yeah. And this is what makes stable flies. Stable flies are one of the hardest flies to control for two reasons. One, they will breed anywhere where there is decomposing plant matter. It's, it's especially favorable if we've got some manure and urine mixed in with it. But really any decaying plant matter will do. That's the first problem. Right. So in cattle production, we just supply the buffet for them. And then the second thing is that they, they have a really low contact time when they're feeding, like five minutes max. And so even if you have insecticides on the animal, you're not getting long enough to cause damage to the fly, but you are giving it just that sublethal dose. So it's like, hey, I might want to develop a detoxification system for this nasty chemical. And we see, that's what we see as insecticide resistance.
- [19:26]
D
Yeah. So good, good hygiene, you know, just good, just good management around feeding sites, you know, feeding areas, calving grounds, those types of things. That's really. So I really see, as I work with producers, that's an issue that it's, it's just really easy to miss and something that can be really easily overlooked.
- [19:41]
A
When you see it every day. It's hard to think that this may be a problem.
- [19:45]
D
Exactly. Yep, yep. So I think just taking the time now as folks are working into that, that time of the year to be a little bit more diligent, there's is really beneficial getting, you know, thinking back to, you know, some big things on the supply side of things. Right. You know, having a good estimate of forage intake, a good, a good estimate of what you think that your animals weigh and being able to, to properly assign, you know, some forage intake estimates there based on, based on animal weight. I think generally speaking, you know, we kind of under predict our weight in the case of mature cows, in a lot of situations, making sure that you're thinking about needs for gestating cows versus lactating cows, understanding we're going to see a increase in forage intake there. Forage quality is a really, really big indicator and a big driver there of forage intake. Right. And so as we think about forage digestibility, fiber digestibility, as we think about, you know, that forage that's got increased digestibility, greater passage rate and less time that's spent in the room. And so as a result, greater intake there. And so just really having a good handle on that is, is really, really important as we go into, into this time of year.
- [20:57]
F
So you said quality, you brought that up. So what are your thoughts on maybe testing the hay?
- [21:02]
D
I think that is something that generally speaking we don't do a good enough job of just industry wide. I think that's something that, you know, as you really take a look at it, forage tests are pretty inexpensive for the information that you get. As I work with producers, I think generally speaking we under sample a lot of our forages and what I mean by that is not getting enough good, representative samples for the lot that we have. And just taking the time to do that is good. Generally speaking, as you look at it, getting at least 10 to 20% of your lot, whatever you consider your lot of foreign forages to be, getting 10 to 20% of those of those bales that are in that lot represented as core samples is good practice to do.
- [21:47]
A
So.
- [21:47]
C
Here's a couple of questions. I guess I liked what you said about the weights because really it's pretty simple math. But say I need to know my average cow weight. So average cow weight times the number of cows tells me how many pounds of cows that I have consuming hay each day. And then I need to know how much hay I've got. So I can count bales, but I also need to know how much each bale weighs. And if we purchase hay, a lot of times it was purchased by the tons. So we know how much, how many tons we purchased. But if we grew it ourselves, my opinion is I don't always estimate bale weight well and I tend to overestimate. So I need to know how much my cows weigh so I know how much, you know, body mass is consuming hay. I need to know how much hay I've got. And then.
- [22:36]
So I'll you're the nutritionist. So 2% intake, like so I take my body weight of cows times 2% and that's about how much they should eat each day during the winter times, maybe another 10% of wastage. And that's how much should disappear each day. Is that a fair number or is that not quite right?
- [22:55]
D
Good place to start with. So those, those ranges that we typically think about. So for gestating cows this time of year, if we think about a forage that's going to be, you know, less than average quality, if we're looking at something that's maybe 50% TDN or less, about 2% of body weight on a dry matter basis. And then as we increase our forage quality, they're getting up to, you know, maybe 2.2 to 2.3% of body weight. So. So your estimate there, Bob, I would say be on a dry matter basis.
- [23:23]
C
Yeah. So then you start thinking about it's 90% Dr. Or about 10% more on.
- [23:28]
D
Top of that, if we're working with.
- [23:29]
C
Basically, because basically I know how much the bay weighs as fed. So. So, so a couple of. So I gotta adjust my calculation. So it's. It's 2% of the cow's body weight plus another 10%. That's how much should disappear each day. But I'm gonna waste some. And this is another. So one of the things that I, I think because over the winter I'm really concerned that cows would lose body weight between, say, now and when we're ready to calve. And I really want to avoid that. But the problem with body condition score is that's a real slow change. A cow even that's losing a pound a day, it's going to take me three months for her to lose a whole body condition.
- [24:08]
D
Right.
- [24:09]
C
And I wanted to detect it before that. So one of the things I like to do is monitor how much hay is disappearing. It gets a little complicated because what you were saying is actually the better quality hay is, is the more rapidly the cows eat it, it's more digestible, it goes through them, they'll eat more. So poorer quality hay, they're going to eat less and they'll probably waste more, which then makes my disappearance calculation harder because it's disappearing, but it's not going into the cows, it's getting trampled. So these are my problems. Now I want you to solve my problem. How do I monitor hay disappearance? Kind of keeping in mind maybe the quality of the hay and how much is being wasted. How should I monitor hay disappearance?
- [24:53]
D
Yeah, it's a good, good question. Difficult one, right? You know, as I really think about it, you know, the big thing that you've got to try to do is, is, you know, right. Track how much you're putting out over the course of time based on the numbers of animals there. Are you coming up with a pretty close number there based on what you think?
- [25:09]
C
So I should be happy. Calculate how many I, how many bales I take out per week or every two weeks, because I. Then I can got some weather differences and things like that. And if I'm not taking out 10 bales every two weeks, it's less than that, then my cows are probably over under consuming or basically use my target to see where I am. Is that fair enough?
- [25:28]
D
Right? Exactly. I think that's, I think that's a good place to be. Good place to be thinking about there. The other thing too that I think you want to, that you want to keep in mind is right, so do you have some other loss there that you're not. That you're not accounting for some other consumption there that you're not accounting for that you know, do you have. Okay, in this situation if you've got pregnant cows, but are you managing calves with them as well too? And are you accounting for the intake there as well? Gotta make sure that you're doing that in some of those situations if you're gonna be doing that. So.
- [25:58]
A
Yeah, I think, I think excellent points. And as you guys kind of summed it up, if I understand what I heard is we wanna come up with an estimate, how much are they gonna eat? But when I'm doing my estimates, the cows may weigh a little more than I thought, the bales may weigh a little less than I thought. I've got some estimates, but then I monitor it over time. So it's not just how many bales do I need for the winter, it's how many bales do I need for the winter? And then I get the first month in. Does that seem about right or not? And then I adjust on the fly. So appreciate the information that you guys shared and if you have any questions, comments or things for us to talk about, you can send us an email bcisu Edu.