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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 our crew here in the studio this morning. Morning, Dustin.
- [00:12]
B
Good morning, Jason.
- [00:13]
A
Good morning, Todd.
- [00:15]
C
Good morning, Bob.
- [00:16]
D
Hello, everybody.
- [00:17]
A
So we're happy to have you guys here and we've got a good program lined up. We had Bob Weber, who works here at K State and was previously on the podcast with us, recently went to South Africa and he was able to interview Dr. Steven Hughes. So we'll get a listen to that and get their South African perspective on a few things. We've also got a good listener question relative to using prostaglandin, pre breeding and what the impacts will be as well as a few other topics. Before we get into those guys, I know we're right in the midst of holiday season, so you could probably guess the question I'm going to ask you. I want to know when it's really hot, what is your favorite, like tropical drink? So if you're thinking about what I was thinking, I figured it was probably a gimme because you knew that was coming. So, super hot day, you're gonna have a tropical drink to cool off. What's your favorite summertime drink?
- [01:13]
D
Well, I really like the old Arnold Palmer, you know, the iced tea, lemonade mix. I like that mix.
- [01:19]
A
So it's hard to beat that.
- [01:21]
D
It's kind of refreshing, Todd?
- [01:23]
C
Well, you got to keep in mind my background, having grown up in Idaho and Utah, my, my drink selection is a little bit limited, but definitely a pina colada Slurpee from 7 11. Pretty tough to beat.
- [01:36]
A
Yeah, that's good, Dustin.
- [01:39]
B
Oh, I was probably just say depends if, you know, if you're out working, you know, thinking about bayonet and stuff like that. Probably just iced tea, unsweetened iced tea. But if I'm not working, you know, probably just a beer.
- [01:54]
A
Yeah, nothing, nothing fancy.
- [01:57]
B
Nothing fancy.
- [01:59]
A
Put it in a nice cup for you.
- [02:00]
B
Yeah, put it in a plastic cup, Jason.
- [02:03]
E
Yeah, I think depending on what the situation is, if you're wanting to hydrate just good old plain water, of course, but if you're not wanting to hydrate then, then yeah, probably just regular pina colada would be very appropriate on that.
- [02:14]
A
There you go. Perfect. Probably won't be breaking those out for a while now because of the heat anyway, but glad you guys are here and I wanted to take a chance to listen to this interview that Dr. Weber did. So we'll do that and then we'll see what all they had to say.
- [02:32]
B
Well, Good day.
- [02:32]
F
This is Bob Weber reporting from Aldum, South Africa. Find myself at LRF Stockman School. So a producer meeting here in South Africa mostly focused around genetics and beef production topics of the day. And, and I ran into a avid listener of the BCI cattle chat, Dr. Steven Hughes. And we thought it would be helpful and interesting to our Cattle Chat audience to have a little conversation. So, Stephen, welcome to Cattle Chat.
- [03:02]
A
Officially.
- [03:03]
F
I don't think you've been on the air before with us, so welcome to the podcast.
- [03:07]
A
Yeah.
- [03:08]
F
Tell us a little bit about your background and what you do here in South Africa.
- [03:11]
G
Yes, I'm a cattle veterinarian. My focus is. Is both on the dairy side and on the beef side. So our practice has got about 10 veterinarians in and we all focus on cattle. So it's a rather large practice. My particular interest is on the reproductive side. I managed to do a specialty in theoryogenology and so that's where my passion lies. And one of the talks that I was giving today at the LRF Stockman School was on bull subfertility and the factors affecting that. And we have a diverse background of a diverse range of clientele. Quite big producers on the commercial side and on the seed stock side.
- [03:55]
D
Yeah.
- [03:56]
F
And where's your practice located? So we're about geography for everybody. We're about three hours south and west of Johannesburg at present. So from here, where's your home and practice?
- [04:10]
G
And I'm about. Well, we are. We practice about 500km east of where we are located now.
- [04:17]
F
Okay, so you'd be on the other side of Johannesburg.
- [04:19]
G
Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So we are very close to the east coast of South Africa, let's say roughly 100 miles inland from the, from the east coast, the Indian oceans.
- [04:29]
F
Okay. And should you be in Drakensberg?
- [04:32]
G
Yes, yeah. So the foothills of the Drakensberg. Yes.
- [04:35]
F
Excellent.
- [04:36]
G
And which is beautiful.
- [04:37]
F
I have not been there, but I've seen pictures. It's an amazing place.
- [04:40]
G
Yeah, yeah. So we have a high rainfall there, a lot of grass growing there and most of our dairy production there is grass based. And. Yeah, so it's a. It's a really beautiful part of the world. It gets cold in winter, but we have wet summers and. Yeah, grass management and is. Is really the key. The key focus of our farmers in that area.
- [05:01]
A
Be.
- [05:02]
F
I'm just kind of thinking geography again. Mostly straight south of Krueger.
- [05:06]
G
Yes.
- [05:07]
A
Yep.
- [05:07]
G
Yes, absolutely.
- [05:08]
F
Maybe 100 kilometers south and 100 in.
- [05:12]
G
No. So from Kruger we are probably about closer to 700 miles south of Kruger.
- [05:17]
B
Okay.
- [05:17]
G
So way down. The Drakensberg Mountain range does extend all the way up to Kruger. So it's a long range of mountains, but we are quite far south of, of Kruger National Park. Yeah.
- [05:29]
F
So very much in the temperate part.
- [05:31]
G
Yes, yes, it is much more temperate. Yeah.
- [05:33]
A
Great.
- [05:34]
F
Yeah, I think it's. And I've had several people come up and talk about, you know, various K state resources that they've been able to access here in South Africa via YouTube or podcast. How did you find Cattle Chat and our various other products from bci and what do you, what do you find valuable out of those?
- [05:52]
G
Well, I, I can't remember how exactly how I found Cattle Chat, but it was certainly. Cattle Chat and Bovine Science from BCI are the two podcasts that one of the first two podcasts that I really started to listen to on a regular basis practicing in the area that I do. We spend a lot of time in our vehicles. Probably 60 hours a month we spend traveling from farm to farm.
- [06:14]
A
You need something to do.
- [06:15]
G
Yeah, so we needed. I needed something to do continuing ed, right? Yeah, exactly. And so when I found Cattle Chat, downloaded it and there was just, you know, what I liked so much about it was there was a group of like minded guys that were just chatting about relevant cattle topics and many of the topics, even though they based from the, you know, a lot of the topics are North American based topics are applicable to, to any cattle area in the world and I found them very informative and I also just enjoyed the camaraderie that you guys have and, and the information I felt was, was really useful to me as I drove around from farm to farm.
- [07:00]
D
Great.
- [07:01]
F
Well, that's the best news all day.
- [07:02]
A
Kind of.
- [07:03]
F
You follow a bit into the longtime listener, first time caller category. So we're delighted to have you on, on the podcast and share a bit of your story with our listeners back in the States. And we wish good rainfall. You're going into summer here in, in South Africa and so we hope you have a productive season. And really a pleasure to meet you and I enjoyed just for our listening audience, Dr. Hughes's talk was on male subfertility or infertility. And maybe not surprising, your producers face many of the same challenges ours do in terms of, you know, injury and you know, environmental insult to male reproductive tract and its fallout and consequence in breeding systems. In an area where it sounds like maybe your producers can do a better job, I know ours can as well. Yeah, it becomes a pretty monumental challenge and one that sometimes Producers don't realize they have an issue until they have an issue being proactive about monitoring male fertility performance. Right. So observing bulls out in the breeding pasture, not just ignoring them and expecting them to get their job done, is pretty important to assure breeding success.
- [08:06]
G
Yeah, that's a, I think that's a great point.
- [08:08]
F
Thank you so much.
- [08:09]
G
Thank you. And Bob, it's been a pleasure to meet you. And I was quite surprised when I, I saw you in the speaker list and I certainly made an effort to come through and say hello. And I'm great, great to have met you.
- [08:21]
F
I'm, I'm very appreciative of that. So thank you. Good, Excellent.
- [08:24]
A
Thanks, Bob. And Dr. Hughes, we appreciate you listening and I appreciate you sharing your comments on the podcast. A couple things there that I wanted to visit about that he mentioned. One is resources. So this, this podcast that we put out hopefully is helpful and I like that he's using it for drive time, which I think is a good time to do it. But Jason and Dustin, tell, tell us a little bit about some of the other things that if people are sitting home, cold weather, or wanting to look some things up, what are some of the other resources that are easy and freely available?
- [08:53]
E
Well, you know, a few things that just come to my mind as I look at it is in addition to, you know, things like podcasts, we've got a lot of other really good resources. Things like spreadsheets, document extension, document publications that may go into a little bit greater depth and detail for a specific topic that somebody might need. And so the big takeaway for me as I, as I think about the response from this listener is how interconnected our information systems are and the value of information that we put out as a university system and the importance of extension and outreach and why that's so critically important. But a lot of the really good resources, webinars, YouTube videos, getting spreadsheets, those types of things that we have that can complement for additional information that people might need that they may not be able to necessarily grasp right away.
- [09:40]
A
Well, the nice thing about some of those spreadsheets is you can download them and modify them. You don't have to use them as is. You can modify it to your situation. You can change some things. Dustin, you've got some things available as well.
- [09:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, I, I don't anything specific I say. Just what I like is the technology that we've over time that allows him to listen to cattle chat. Right. That's halfway across the world. And it's the same Thing as you can go to most land grant universities at K State as an example. You know, if you go to the ag econ, agmanager.info you've got your spreadsheets, you've got different fact sheets, different decision that if you live in Brazil or wherever you can download, modify them as needed. And so it's not necessarily just for producers here in Kansas. It's really a global product.
- [10:26]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And Bob and Todd, I saw you guys light up when he talked about therio and bull sub fertility. And so I'd like to. Todd, you just had a paper that was published looking at evaluating bulls and some of the challenges that we, that we face in that area. And, and a lot of times we talk about bulls as being fertile or infertile. And I may ask Bob, first the subfertility. Tell me what that means and then Todd, tell us a little bit about your thoughts.
- [10:56]
D
I think actually subfertility is more common than infertility. Infertility would mean we turn bulls out with cows and they get no pregnancies. That's actually pretty rare. That either takes, you know, severe, you know, leg injury or something like that where he can't mount, can't breed, or severe testicular or epididymal problems, something like that, which are actually kind of rare and oftentimes noticeable because the bull is, you know, very ill or can't move and those kind of things. What is more common is bulls that underperform in that we really expect those bulls to be able to go out there and breed a couple cows a day and get them pregnant. And if he fails to do that, meaning that yes, he gets some cows pregnant, but it's not at the pace that we would expect bulls to be able to perform. And that's actually because it's kind of a gray area that's a little more difficult to detect than infertility. But we use things like their overall health, you know, their body condition, their movement, as well as a semen evaluation to try to predict that. But we're far from perfect at predicting those bulls that are kind of subfertile.
- [12:01]
A
Which is a lot of your work. Todd has been around the breeding soundness exam. So would you agree with Bob's comments on we're hard to find those subfertile bulls or are there some other ways we can find them?
- [12:12]
C
Well, yes, I would agree largely with what Bob had to say. I think to define subfertility you need to define what fertility is first. You need to have some type of a metric and in all of my research and discussions with other experts in this field, I don't know that we have an agreed upon metric for, for what truly is a fertile bull. But there is one metric that I have seen in print that I really like. It's my personal favorite, and that is that a bull should be able to impregnate 25 healthy, actively cycling cows in a 65 to 70 day period. To me, that seems like a fairly rational benchmark. And part of that is because it involves some dimension of scale, countable ratio, a very important metric economically for productivity and efficiency. I could throw one bull out there for every five cows. Now, the probability that I'm going to get cows pregnant is much higher, but it's much less profitable because those bulls represent a significant expense. And so being able to have more cows with one bull benefits me greatly. The problem is there's an upper limit to that, both biologically and. And from a risk management standpoint. If I turn one bull out with 50 cows, there's a decent chance that he will be able to get that job done in the time period I want him to. But if he fails for whatever reason, then that's a massive loss that I incur because now I'm taking a much bigger risk on more cows. So any metric for fertility or sub fertility has to involve scale. I like the metric of a group of cows being able to achieve a rate of conception per estrus cycle of 60 to 70%, 2/3. I think that's a good metric. I think biologically that's probably as good as we can do. And so finding ways to identify bulls that either can or cannot achieve those types of numbers is critically important. You know, we have tools like the bull breeding soundness evaluation that does an okay job of doing that. But I like the comments that our friends down in South Africa made about it's not just about doing an evaluation on the bull. You got to be out there watching them work. Bulls are not just semen factories, they're semen delivery systems. In terms of natural breeding situations, you have to look at bulls in both of those dimensions. Can they produce fertile semen and can they deliver that semen to the places that we need it to go? And if we have any suspicion that they can't, then we need to take a hard look at whether that bull is going to be the right bull for us.
- [14:43]
A
Well, I like how you defined it, because when you said I needed to define fertility, I'm thinking, well, it seems easy because if the bull creates a pregnancy fertile but what you're saying is we need to incorporate timescale and number of cattle to really figure out our question of is this bull adequate to do the job I'm asking him to do so we can assess with the breeding soundness exam, could he breed a cow today? But there's more to it. I like the kind of inbreeding season evaluations as we go through. Jason, do you see producers doing that? Do you see them evaluating as you go through the season?
- [15:19]
E
Through the season? That's where it gets to be a lot more challenging. Because how do you, how do you do a really good job of detecting that? And if you have losses that are occurring or you've got bulls that are, are not doing what they're designed to do, how do you practically pick that up in most production systems? Right. So I do think that's a challenge. I think, I think generally speaking, our producers do a really nice job of recognizing the importance of breeding sound and success exams prior to the start of that breeding season. I think for the most part, our industry does a good job with that, but we know that there's areas to improve upon. I think the big thing that I think about that's also important too, as we have this conversation is as an industry and our production systems, we do a great job of evaluating bulls during that development period prior to their first service and evaluating their ability to go out and breed a group of females prior, during that first service. But after that point, how do we do a good job of evaluating whether that bull, as he matures later on in the life for the next three, four, five years, how many years we've got him into service? That's where it gets to be, I think, a lot more challenging. How do we truly evaluate that?
- [16:18]
C
Yeah, I agree with that. That's something I encountered commonly when I was in practice was a perception that if a bull passed a breeding soundness evaluation as a yearling, that meant he was good for the rest of his career? And that's not a good assumption to make. You will see bulls develop problems with fertility as they age, as they mature. And those problems can range from semen manufacturing problems to semen delivery problems.
- [16:43]
A
It's not a lifetime test.
- [16:44]
C
It's not a lifetime test. And even I would add the test we do on yearling bulls is not as predictive as the tests that we do on mature bulls. Yearling bulls are in a state of flux. They're not, especially if they're young yearlings. If they're 12, 13, 14 month old bulls Those bulls are not completely sexually mature yet and the breeding soundness evaluation results are not quite as predictive at that stage as they would be in a 2 year old or 3 year old bull.
- [17:11]
A
So I think the moral of this is it's not just fertility. Subfertility has to be considered, but we want to do follow up. We can't just look at that BSE at one point in time and say, yep, it's all good. There may be some things we want to do during the season next year, make sure that we're prepared. So great comments and we sure appreciate you joining us, Dr. Hughes, for that interview. I do want to shift gears, but Bob, don't worry, we're going to stay in repro. So this is a question from a veterinarian working with a, with a producer. And they're talking about pre breeding protocols. So it's time to think about spring and breeding. And one of the things that they were thinking about doing was they have a pre breeding processing that they already have in place and they thought about doing a prostaglandin injection at that time point with the idea that maybe we can shorten the postpartum interval, help some of these cows get cycling. As they've described it, some of the cows will be cycling, some of the cows won't be cycling. Can we just do one shot of prostaglandin and sync them up a little bit?
- [18:14]
D
All right. This is a protocol that has been described and used and basically what it involves is a single shot of prostaglandin, either basically the day the bulls are turned out, or another option is after the bulls have been out four or five days to give a shot of prostaglandin to the cows. And the idea is cows that are cycling, technically they would have a corpus luteum that then would respond to the prostaglandin injection and then they would come back in heat in two or three days.
- [18:40]
A
But if we did a group of, let's say I have 100 randomly cycling cows, they're all cycling, how many of them would respond to one injection of prostaglandin?
- [18:50]
D
About 2/3 will respond to an injection of prostaglandin if they are cycling. The reason is some of them are too early, the early CL does not respond and some of them are late. Meaning. Well, actually they, they actually do kind of respond. They just didn't respond to the injection. They responded naturally. They were going, they were going to come into heat, but we could affect about 2/3. Now that becomes the difference though on day one of a breeding season, I do not expect 100% of the cows to be cycling. I think even in a herd that's really front end loaded, that had a lot of calves born really early in the, in the calving season, you know, at best we're talking about 60 or 70% are cycling on day one and way more commonly would be 40 or 50% cycling on day one of the breeding season. So then we're talking about getting two thirds of, you know, 50% of the herd to kind of respond to that injection. So you think about that. That has the potential to move the average calving date up a little bit. But when you do the math, I've got a spreadsheet. When you do the math, it's, it's relatively few days on a herd level because you've got a bunch of those cows that we're going to come into heat today anyway and a few that do not respond to the injection. And then I've got, you know, half the herd or so that isn't cycling on day one. Now a lot of times they'll be, they'll resume cycling by week two or week three of the breeding season. So they get pregnant early. What I would call early in the breeding season is the first 21 days. But they weren't necessarily cycling on day one. You know, there are synchronization protocols that use progesterone that will kind of jump start and speed up that postpartum interval so that they'll come into estro sooner than they would have. Single prostaglandin injection doesn't do that, so it won't jumpstart anything. It has to have a cycling animal. And so, yeah, it can move the average calving date up a little bit. And it's not as much as what I thought originally, but it will do it a little bit. So it's something to consider. But I've talked to Dr. Gunderson about this and I know he has one concern that I think is a valid one.
- [20:50]
C
Well, I've actually got a couple of concerns, but the one that I think Bob is referring to is the fact that if I get a bunch of cows that were otherwise going to cycle randomly throughout an estrus cycle, they were going to come into estrus at random intervals over that 21 day period. And I get a bunch of them to come in at a more closer interval. I've now created a lot more work on a per day basis for my bulls. That bull has to go out there and breed a Lot more cows in a day than he would have had otherwise had they come into heat at random intervals throughout the estro cycle. So if I'm going to do this, that means I probably need to have a little bit of extra bull power in that pasture, which might negate the benefits that I would see. Regardless. The other concern I have is when are you going to give this shot? Because if you're going to give it as a pre breeding shot, when you give the shot matters. And the reason for that is because there's not the. The other shots we give pre reading are modified live bovine herpes virus vaccines or IVR vaccines. And those are not innocuous. We'll say in a pre breeding shot, especially if you give them too close to bull turnout. In some cows, especially in cows that are naive, have never been vaccinated before, that modified live bovine herpes virus will cause a transient inflammation of the ovaries and cause those cows to skip a cycle. Which is why on the label it recommends that you give it no sooner than 30 days prior to turnout. So if I give my pre breeding vaccines on day 30 prior to turnout with the bull and I give prostaglandin on that day, also, what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to ensure that a greater proportion of my cows come into heat the week before I turn bulls out, which is actually going to push my breeding group to the third week of the estrous cycle and completely negate the benefits. In fact, it's going to do something worse. It's going to actually result in more calves being born towards the end of the cycle. And so now I've got a decision to make. Do I back my pre breeding shots even more, which puts me into the middle of calving season. Do I take a chance and try and get it on day 21 pre breeding, which theoretically would probably not cause as many problems with the herpes virus, but I would then be confident that the cows would cycle most of them in that first week of the estrus of the breeding season. A lot of different moving parts that go along with this problem that a lot of times we don't think about. The best way I have heard of people doing this is actually not to give it pre breeding, but to give a prostaglandin shot day five after bull turnout, which seems completely counterintuitive because you're like, why would I be giving prostaglandin to cows that have already been bred by a bull? The answer is if they, if they had an ovulation on day zero through five. Their ovulation site isn't quite receptive yet to the prostaglandins. So those cows should be safe. And then anything that, you know is ready to cycle, if I give it on day five, will come in a little bit sooner. Downside to doing it on day five is it's got to be day five. It can't be day six or day seven. If I do it on day six or day seven now I run the risk of aborting some pregnancies. So. Kind of a complicated question.
- [23:44]
E
Yeah. So I think a couple big things that we think we got to keep in mind as we think about having this conversation is, is one that point on, you've got females that, yeah, if they get bred during that time period, that initial time period, you can still give that shot.
- [23:58]
C
Right.
- [23:59]
E
You know, thinking about that with the idea of, okay, it's all got to fit with how people manage, right, and how people are handling cows and lots.
- [24:06]
C
Things of different times.
- [24:06]
E
You know, that time of year, if people are going to be turning cows out to grass and exposing bulls at the same day that they're going to do that, you know, they don't want to turn a group of females and. And a couple of bulls out into a pasture and then say, okay, yeah, I've got to regather everything five days later and give that shot. So having the flexibility with it is. Is nice. But the other thing that I think of, big picture, as we look at this, this idea and this concept here, is keeping in mind that, okay, it's a relatively cheaper, easier to implement synchronization protocol than what a lot of our other protocols tail. And, you know, I think about, Bob, to your point, especially if you've got a group of cows that if initially, if they're really strung out in terms of their calving season, you know, that's probably where you're going to see a little bit bigger of a response there, versus if you've got a group of females that are pretty tightly managed, you've got, you know, to your point, a real front end loaded calving season already to begin with. So I think for the producer, if you're thinking about, okay, trying to decide whether or not you implement this, if you want to try to implement a synchronization system, but you're not ready to make the jump into doing AI and investing in Siemen and some of the other costs that come along with it. I think if you've got a herd that you think will respond to this. This is a good place to start if you want to try to have the benefits of synchronization, but you still want to use natural service.
- [25:23]
A
Yeah, I think. Excellent points, guys. And a couple things came out there very clearly. One, this should be in a conversation between the veterinarian and the producer for their specific situation. Two, we want to be sure that we're using our products on label and making sure that it makes sense where we're doing it and the downstream implications should be considered. So what's the impact on bulls? What's the impact of my breeding season? And I like your approach there of this may be an easy way to help sync. But the other thing that Bob brought up, have realistic expectations. It's not going to move if they're not cycling. It's not going to help them. So be sure that we're at the right spot. It's not going to take a group of cows that are really behind and get them really far ahead. You're going to help those who are already in that first cycle anyway, maybe be a few days ahead. So great question. Good discussion, guys, and appreciate you joining us today. As always, if you have a listener question or topic you'd like us to discuss, discuss, you can send us an email at bcisu Eduardo.