Grazing Plan, Supplementing Cows, Employee Recruitment

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

4:14 Grazing plan

10:13 Supplementing cows

18:57 Employee recruitment

Guest: Vaughn Holder, Alltech Ruminant Research Director

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

When Bulls Do Not Pass Their BSE, Consumer Interest in Local Beef, Synch and Natural Service

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

5:18 When bulls do not pass their BSE

11:50 Consumer interest in local beef

18:11 Listener question: synch and natural service

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

Drought-Related Reasons to Wait on Spring Turnout

Some places of the eastern Great Plains have received some rain, and the drought monitor looks a little better, but much of the Great Plains and Intermountain West are still in moderate to severe drought and areas of extreme drought are increasing. Warmer temperatures and a little moisture have caused some pastures to begin greening up, but without additional rain plant growth will be limited.

Turning out on these pastures too early will have detrimental effects on plant growth. Cattle will graze off the leaf area limiting the ability of the plant to photosynthesize sugars, which will require the plant to pull sugars from the roots. Without rain to stimulate more leaf growth the plant will rely more heavily on nutrient reserves in the roots, possibly decreasing the root zone and capacity to pull the limited moisture from the soil. This stunting of plant growth and reduction of the root zone will have negative effects on forage production in future years.

So, what can you do? Keep cattle off the pasture as long as possible with the optimism of more rain. Continue to feed hay or find other feed resources that may let you economically extend the winter feeding period. In a previous newsletter we discussed limit feeding cows. The difficulty is that lactating cows have their greatest nutrient requirements during this time from calving to rebreeding. Thus, feed expenses will be greater than the last few months. In late gestation, hay with total digestible nutrients (TDN) of 57% and crude protein (CP) of 10% will meet the nutrient requirements of a 1300-lb cow (Figure 1). But in early lactation, the same cow producing 20 lb of peak milk will require TDN of 59.5% and CP of 10.5%. To make up this nutrient deficit will require 4.5 lb/day of a supplement that has TDN of 75% and CP of 20%.

As Dr. Larson, likes to say “There is something magical about green grass.”. As a nutritionist, I am not sure about the magic, but early spring grass has a nutrient profile that will promote fleshing of early lactation cows (Figure 1). Cows that are in a positive energy balance from calving to rebreeding typically return to estrus sooner and rebreed better. There will be tough decisions to make this spring, because neither spring turnout or continued hay and supplement feeding are likely to be without consequences.

Food Animal Veterinary Certificate/ Veterinary Training Program for Rural Kansas, Should You Perform a BSE on a Mature Bull, Veterinary School Advice

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

4:37 Food Animal Veterinary Certificate/ Veterinary Training Program for Rural Kansas

9:20 Should you perform a BSE on a mature bull?

17:10 Veterinary school advice

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

Cattle Handling Facilities

Many animal health interventions require that cattle be gathered to a handling facility that allows individual animals to be separated from the rest of the herd and confined in a squeeze chute. In situations where all the cattle in a pasture or pen are healthy and are going to be handled to give animal health products such as vaccines or parasite control, or to monitor body condition score or pregnancy status, the facilities have to be large enough to accommodate all the cattle in the group. When a few cattle from the herd need to be examined or treated for disease, the facilities have to allow safe and efficient separation of the desired animals from the rest of the herd and then adequate restraint in a squeeze chute to allow access for close inspection of areas on the animal’s body that require treatment. Cattle should be able to be moved from the pasture or pen to the working area and through the handling facilities with a minimum of stress to both the cattle and producer.

Because cattle are prey animals and can easily react to contact with people and dogs with a ‘fight or flight’ response, it is important to prevent cattle from becoming agitated when being handled. Cattle are herd animals and tend to become fearful when left alone. Strategies to minimize fear include moving cattle slowly and quietly and always moving cattle in small groups. Do not use dogs to move cattle in confinement, and minimize the use of electric cattle prods. Because cattle balk at moving or flapping objects, the crowding pens, single-file alley, and loading ramp should be monitored to make sure that nothing within the line of sight could cause them to react. As cattle are moved from the pasture or pen toward the working facility, do not over-crowd them. Never fill the crowd pen – rather only add enough cattle to be about one-half of capacity, and then do not “crush” the cattle with the crowd gate to force them into the single-file alley. The crowd gate is used to follow the cattle, not to shove up against them. Cattle should have room to move around in the crowd pen with the only visible route of escape being the alley. If a lone animal refuses to move, release it and bring it back with another group.

Cattle have excellent wide-angle vision (in excess of 300 degrees) due to the wide position of their eyes and can see behind themselves without turning their heads. And while cattle do have depth perception, they have difficulty seeing the size and shape of objects at ground level when their heads are raised. To see depth near the ground, cattle have to lower their head, perhaps explaining why cattle balk at distractions at ground level. Because contrasting patterns caused by fence or panel shadows will cause balking, lighting considerations are important for moving cattle smoothly through handling facilities. In addition, cattle in a dark area will move towards a dim light but they tend to balk if they have to look into the sun or a bright light. Because cattle may refuse to enter a dark, indoor working alley from a bright, outside crowding pen, it may be necessary to extend the alley outside the building or to cover the crowding area to prevent sharp contrasts in lighting that cause cattle to balk at important points in the handling facility.

Cattle like to maintain visual contact with each other, so in most situations, the single-file alley leading up to the squeeze chute should be at least 20 ft. long (30 to 50 ft. for larger facilities) to allow each animal to see others ahead of it. Don’t force an animal into a single-file alley unless there is plenty of room. If cattle see a dead-end, they will most likely balk, therefore, blocking gates in a single-file alley need to be “see through” so cattle can see the animals ahead.

To protect all the people handling cattle, the corrals, working facilities and chutes must be in good repair and must match the operation and cattle. Gate latches and latches on the squeeze chute (head-catch and squeeze) must have scheduled, proper maintenance because slipped latches are very dangerous. All persons using the squeeze chute should know where the pinch points are, and the arc of movement of squeeze bars and head catch handles. Pipes slid behind cattle to serve as a back-stop are dangerous because an animal moving either forward or backward rapidly before the pipe is fully engaged can trap a person between the pipe and the side of the alley or chute. And to prevent being injured directly by an animal, do not get in the crowding area or alley. Also, the working area should be easy to clean and provide non-slip flooring in the crowd pens, alleys, chutes, and the exit from the chute.

While good working facility design, construction, and maintenance are important for safe and efficient cattle handling, the people handling the cattle probably have the greatest impact on the level of stress inflicted on the cattle and handlers and the ease that cattle move through a facility. Most cattle producers know of people who handle cattle particularly well (as well as people at the opposite extreme). We use terms like cow-sense, common-sense, or stockmanship to describe people who are able to observe cattle behavior accurately and then respond to that behavior so that cattle move exactly where the handler wants them to move. Although there may be some in-born personality traits or skills that make some people naturally better cattle handlers, good cattle-handling training that emphasizes unlearning bad habits and learning low-stress cattle handling habits can benefit anyone who routinely works with cattle.

            It is easy to recognize that handling cattle is required for many, if not most, animal health procedures. In order for health and production management interventions to provide the greatest benefit to a cattle herd, the cattle must be handled through good facilities quietly, efficiently, and with minimal stress.

After the Chat: Bacterial Vaccine Efficacy

In After the Chat, the BCI experts go in deeper about topics from this week’s episode, but also other ideas:

This episode contains a follow on bacterial vaccine efficacy.

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

Developing Bulls and Heifers, Bacterial Vaccine Efficacy, Cow Leasing

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

3:49 Listener question: developing bulls and heifers

11:31 Bacterial vaccine efficacy

18:32 Listener question: cow leasing

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

After the Chat: AI for Cows

In After the Chat, the BCI experts go in deeper about topics from this week’s episode, but also other ideas:

This episode contains cow jokes, a follow-up to AI for Cows, and Kansas trivia!

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!

AI for Cows, Transitioning to Lush Pastures, Listener Question: Small Ruminants and Cattle

Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat!  Please click on any links below to be taken to sources mentioned in the podcast. Keep an eye out for news regarding the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

3:56 AI for cows

12:20 Transitioning to lush pastures

20:00 Listener question: small ruminants and cattle

For more on BCI Cattle Chat, follow us on Twitter at @The_BCIFacebook, and Instagram at @ksubci. Check out our website, ksubci.org. If you have any comments/questions/topic ideas, please send them to bci@ksu.edu. You can also email us to sign up for our weekly news blast! Don’t forget if you enjoy the show, please go give us a rating!