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Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
00;00;13;02 - 00;00;20;19
Speaker 1
Welcome, everybody, to The Moos Room. Emily and Bradley here reunited.
00;00;20;22 - 00;00;23;07
Speaker 2
Again. Like again.
00;00;23;09 - 00;00;38;15
Speaker 1
Brad. He likes to forget I exist. And then I usually text him, and I'm like, hey, do you remember me? I exist, and we do this podcast together. And then. And then we get to podcast together again. He lets me back in.
00;00;38;18 - 00;00;44;21
Brad
This is. It's been like two weeks in a row, so something must be. Must be going right. I guess.
00;00;44;24 - 00;01;17;08
Emily
Right. Well, and for today, we have, the saddest thing that can happen in podcasting. One of the saddest things that can happen in podcasting, happened to us. You may recall many moons ago that OG three recorded a whole episode without actually hitting record. And this very similarly, Bradley and I recorded a whole episode and three minutes in, unbeknownst to us, my audio line went out.
00;01;17;10 - 00;01;40;13
Emily
So all we had was the rest of the episode with Bradley talking to himself. Which I know Bradley doesn't mind, but I do, and you guys might, right? So, we're going to redo this episode. So Brad and I have already had a very lively conversation about this topic, and so we're hoping you guys can actually hear it now this time.
00;01;40;15 - 00;02;04;17
Emily
So we're going to have it again. And the thing we're talking about is the core of the future. So specifically the dairy cow of the future for this episode. So what is that cow going to be? What does that mean? And of course, most importantly for me and Bradley. Is it a Holstein or is it a Jersey?
00;02;04;19 - 00;02;11;14
Brad
Of course. Emily's already told me what it is, and it's not the jersey. But we can debate that. Not today, but maybe another day.
00;02;11;21 - 00;02;35;07
Emily
Yes, yes, but. And and I will find, you know, in this conversation. Spoiler alert. The cow of the future is not a Holstein or a jersey. So stay tuned for that. But I want to dive into this. Bradley, I'll let you kind of kick it off. You are the one who found this study, in the Journal of Dairy Science.
00;02;35;07 - 00;02;47;00
Emily
And we thought that it would be a great thing to talk about. So again, Bradley, I'll let you kind of tears up since you you were the one who found this great topic.
00;02;47;02 - 00;03;15;10
Brad
Well, I think it went back a while ago. I had the authors of this paper were from Purdue University, and they had presented it at a dairy science meeting, I think, last June. And about the cow of the future and some things that, you know, they thought would happen or be part of the cow of the future and sort of always gets a rise out of me when people say that the cow of the future is the Holstein, you know, and we could debate that.
00;03;15;10 - 00;03;41;29
Brad
And, you know, Emily and I've debated that. But I'm not sure that that maybe that's the correct answer. I didn't agree with that. When when that statement was done. But I can see the points. I can see their points. Why they would say Holstein would be the call of the future. However, they spelled out a lot of different things about what we see in the cow of the future and kind of where where it's going.
00;03;42;00 - 00;04;06;08
Brad
I think the big thing, you know, if you think about, cow in the past, it had lots of different things, you know, we had negative consequences for an increase in milk production. So as you increase milk production and breeding for milk alone, which we did for many, many years in the dairy industry, and we have red cows to milk.
00;04;06;08 - 00;04;34;11
Brad
And they do that. You know, there are herds well over 30,000 here in Minnesota approaching 40,000. So we can get a lot of milk on the cows. But with that comes reduced longevity, lower fertility and more metabolic problems with the cows. So how can we design a dairy cow of the future, taking into consideration many of those things that we had done in the past?
00;04;34;12 - 00;04;55;09
Emily
Right. I feel like that is the ongoing lesson in any animal that you breed, right, is when you focus too much on one trait, you start to lose a lot of ones that didn't seem important, and now you realize they are. So, you know, I kind of think of this almost as like a little bit of a course correction.
00;04;55;12 - 00;05;26;15
Emily
You know, the cow of the future needs to correct some of the breeding stuff that we brought out of them, accidentally or otherwise. You know, that's how I think of this is, is we're kind of, again, correcting some of these things in the cow that we bred out and, you know, the interesting things. And you already mentioned this, Bradley really highlighted in the paper is, you know, really thinking more about shifting towards longevity, resilience.
00;05;26;17 - 00;05;50;26
Emily
This paper also uses biological efficiency. And that's, that's something that I really am interested in. Right. This concept of biological efficiency, you know, so again, it's not just about the most milk at all costs, but creating a cow that is going to be efficient in every area of her life, of your business, of your management plan.
00;05;50;28 - 00;06;19;01
Brad
You know, the modern goal or the goal of of a cow of the future is probably one that's going to be a little bit more balanced and have a lot more technology around that, you know, I think and we'll talk about some of these. But really, the six points for the cow of the future is one is more healthier and more resilient, one that has higher feed efficiency or or a moderate size cow with that's highly feed efficient.
00;06;19;03 - 00;06;51;07
Brad
You have some that are environmentally sound. So less methane emissions, less carbon dioxide emissions. You have longer for lived cows, longer productive life, more fertility. And then you have one that's kind of enabled by precision technologies. So whether that's sensors on cows or in cows and genetics, you know, genomic selection, you know, getting genotypes on all of these cows certainly is an important factor in trying to determine what the cow of the future is.
00;06;51;07 - 00;07;14;28
Emily
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit more about that genomics piece. Right. You know, we've been using genomics for quite some time now. I know we've had a lot of conversations about genomics, genomic testing. I know Bradley, I think you and I both have had a lot of lively conversations with our four kids about genomics.
00;07;15;00 - 00;07;39;18
Emily
And it's very exciting, right? A lot of animals are genotyped in the US, which is great. But this paper argues that genomics is by itself maybe no longer enough, as we consider the cow of the future, or what we want this cow to look like. You know, so there's also an argument here for, for Nomex, right.
00;07;39;20 - 00;08;03;24
Emily
So what, the cow actually experiences what they're doing, you know, how how they're expressing in their environment, you know, so I'm curious, you know, this is a little more your around Bradley. So talk a little bit about that. Like this, this idea of emphasizing phenome mix more. And especially I know you've been a fairly big genomics guy.
00;08;03;24 - 00;08;13;21
Emily
So I'm curious what you think about this movement from not emphasizing just that, but also thinking about the phenotype as well?
00;08;13;24 - 00;08;35;29
Brad
Well, I think it's important because you have to you have to have phenotypes to make good breeding decisions on cows. I you know, I not a it is the genomics world is crazy where you know, I was at a, select sires meeting the other day and, you know, they're getting semen on bulls that are nine months of age and using that to breed cows, too.
00;08;35;29 - 00;09;02;01
Brad
So you really don't have any information? Yes. We can use genomics to get what the predicted milk or fertility traits might be on that bull, but I'm still maybe a older fashion type guy. I, I like genetics, we genotype everything in our research herd, but sometimes I still want the phenotype information, whether it's production health issues on cows.
00;09;02;01 - 00;09;32;03
Brad
And I think those are important too. So trying to mold those two together is probably a good thing. So we can use the phenotypes, which is data collection on farm as well as the genetic data to build a better cow into the future. And obviously genetics has played a a big role in reshaping breeds. And one that is sort of at the top frontiers is fat production.
00;09;32;05 - 00;10;02;05
Brad
You know, we think about fat. We're hearing a lot about fat now in the dairy world, there's some processors that are maybe starting to doc farms based on the fact that they're producing. So cows are producing too much fat. I just looked up our dairy here in Morris. This was from December, but the price for fat was $1.58 a pound and protein was a dollar.
00;10;02;08 - 00;10;27;20
Brad
Sorry, $2.46 a pound. So we're getting paid more, a dollar more per pound for protein than we are fat. So, you know, $1.58 for fat. That's crazy. If you think about it. Maybe even a year ago, fat was $3 a pound or more. So fat price has dropped off by over 50%, which is kind of crazy, but I digress.
00;10;27;22 - 00;10;53;02
Brad
So we get back to what? How did that happen? Well, a lot of it is genetics and genomics. So we can we've selected for these cows. We've selected for whether it's Holstein cows or Jersey cows to produce more fat. It's one of the things that we do well here is using genetic selection to alter breeds or alter situations.
00;10;53;02 - 00;11;42;01
Brad
And we've done that. We have. If you look at the genetic trend for fat production, it has increased well over 400 pounds in breeding value in the last 30 years for both Holstein and Jersey. And now we have Holstein cows that are approaching the genetic merit of jerseys for fat production. I know quite a few Holstein herds that are producing more for almost 5% fat, so it's just crazy and we have done that from a genetic standpoint because we can get the phenotypes and we've done well in our breeding objectives, and we've altered fat production, and now we're maybe going, oh, maybe we shouldn't have selected so much for it.
00;11;42;04 - 00;11;47;12
Emily
So Bradley has also learned some lessons the hard way here.
00;11;47;15 - 00;12;10;16
Brad
Yeah. And so, you know, some of I get a little worried about some of the breeds and well will that, you know, diminish the can, will that diminish their breeding. You know, will people be interested in Jersey, Guernsey or maybe Brown Swiss, some of these other breeds that are higher fat now, you know, because Holstein can produce fat like that.
00;12;10;16 - 00;12;33;04
Brad
So will we. And I think we can debate this came up in the authors again. You know, the Holstein would be the breed of the future. But maybe if I can see why they've said that, because we've been able to alter the Holstein cow to be able to do some of these things that other breeds are doing. And so why would we need those other breeds bright?
00;12;33;04 - 00;13;00;16
Emily
And this kind of, you know, adaptability to, to changing demands ties into an idea that's really emphasized a lot in this research. And that's around resilience, right? We've already said it a few times, creating cows that are more resilient. And of course, in, in the human space I work a lot in resilience. You know, and we think of resilience as, as our ability to bounce back after.
00;13;00;16 - 00;13;28;07
Emily
Right. Something adverse. So that's, you know, very, very true. But there is also some promote of pieces and resilience as well. So not just reacting and bouncing back after something bad has happened, which is protective. But promoting resilience. So getting ready before something bad happens so that you have already built that resilience on the front end.
00;13;28;07 - 00;13;54;10
Emily
Right. And that same principle can be applied here, you know, as we think of cows that are more resilient, right, that can be more climate resilient, more resilient to changes in their diet, more resilient to changes, you know, in what, you know, the farmer is needing components wise ties back to diet as well, those types of pieces.
00;13;54;10 - 00;14;21;13
Emily
Right. And really thinking about in this paper, you know, they argue resilience as a selectable trait. Right. Like how can we know this. You know, this cow is a cow that bounces back. Well, right. Will likely create more cows that bounce back. Well, you know, and really show a lot less variability when there are times of stress or, you know, when there is an event or an incident.
00;14;21;15 - 00;15;06;24
Emily
And I, I feel a lot of this argument for, for tracking resilience or benchmarking resilience, perhaps. Ties in to a lot of what Bradley does and ties into another concept in this paper, which is about, you know, precision using precision agriculture technologies, how that is going to impact, the type of cows we're selecting as well. And, and really, again, Bradley, this is your kind of bread and butter, so to speak, here of, of how using precision technologies and are going to help us influence the cow the future select for it and what all that means right.
00;15;06;26 - 00;15;27;23
Brad
Yeah. I think it has to do with a lot of things. We can think about it from a health standpoint, so we can use some of these sensor technologies to detect health problems, whether that's mastitis, ketosis, lameness. And we can do this in calves. Now you know there's that's kind of the big push now. And in the dairy world is to put sensors on calves.
00;15;27;23 - 00;15;50;14
Brad
And we you know I've ranted about that in another previous podcast episode and I probably have more information about that now that I mean, maybe we'll talk about what I've found in the last year that I've had sensors on calves, but it also comes down to looking at using these sensors to detect things that we might not think about heat stress.
00;15;50;14 - 00;16;13;05
Brad
That's probably one thing that comes to mind. You know, I have smack boluses in, our cows where we can measure temperature or drinking behavior. And looking at that, so can we use those type of data to improve the cow and build a more resilient type cow? You know, a lot of this is, you know, we can measure daily milk yield and activity data.
00;16;13;05 - 00;16;40;29
Brad
Obviously that's what a lot of these sensors have done. But I think it's really looking at the health of of these cows. And calves and using that sensor type stuff for selecting a cow. You know, I talked about that about two weeks ago on a podcast episode looking at circadian rhythms of these cows and how they, you know, a cow has a rhythm for activity or rumination across the calendar year.
00;16;40;29 - 00;17;07;04
Brad
It's quite fascinating how, you know, we just think that, oh, a cow ruminates and is going to have 500 minutes of rumination the entire day, every single day of the year. And that's not true at all. You know, there's a rhythm. They go through this rhythm throughout the year dependent on weather, climate, you name it, feeding. And, using that type of data to build a more resilient cow, I think is is certainly important as well.
00;17;07;07 - 00;17;37;18
Emily
And now there is one precision dairying technology that I know you are not using at this point in Morris, and that's AMS Automatic Milking Systems. Robots. And that's something that is also mentioned pretty heavily in this paper about, the concept of, you know, breeding cows to interact with machines versus people. Right? So, so with these milking systems, I know a big one has been from the beginning teat placement, right.
00;17;37;18 - 00;18;13;05
Emily
Breeding cows for things like that, cows that have a quicker milking speed, you know, cows that maybe have certain behavior traits we like. Right. They're docile. They will self-select to go into the robot, those types of things, you know, that are also going to have an influence. So it's not just, you know, using the precision precision technology data to to inform what we're doing, but also considering how our cows are going to interact with that precision technology and how that is going to influence decisions we make as well.
00;18;13;05 - 00;18;20;01
Emily
Right. We are likely going to be making more cows that are designed to be built in robots.
00;18;20;04 - 00;18;40;01
Brad
I think you're right. I think in Brad's mind, the future is is robots. Whether that's a small scale or large scale, I think we're just going to get to that point. You know, we might not see it in my lifetime on all dairy farms or cows are milked by robots, but it's gaining. There's a lot more people interested in it.
00;18;40;01 - 00;19;04;27
Brad
And and you get so much data coming from these robots and not just, you know, milking time. You get behavior, data, body weight data, milking speed, you know, and you can measure a lot of these things, whether it's temperature. We can, you know, at some point we're going to measure milk from the robots and measure it for progesterone or Pags.
00;19;04;27 - 00;19;26;05
Brad
And we'll be able to know pregnancy status of a cow every milking. And we can only do that when we use precision technology. I think the sky's the limit. What what else can we measure from a milk sample? And I think we're going to figure out a lot of things that we can measure. You know, we dubs pregnancy status.
00;19;26;07 - 00;19;47;04
Brad
Outside of fat and protein. And we'll be able to measure fatty acids, in robots of cows that are, you know, every single milking and being able to use that data. So the sky's the limit with all this technology and, robots. And I think that's going to be the future. I'm excited to, be part of that.
00;19;47;04 - 00;19;55;13
Brad
I wish we had robots here. We're maybe we'll have that into the future, but, I can't wait.
00;19;55;16 - 00;19;57;27
Emily
Robots are a future grant, right, Bradley?
00;19;57;29 - 00;20;04;10
Brad
That's right. I've tried to figure out how to write robots into a grant, and I might do it one day. I might do it.
00;20;04;13 - 00;20;31;06
Emily
So a big piece of this puzzle that we haven't talked about yet, that is big. We've mentioned it and that is feed efficiency. Right. And and with feed efficiency I'm also going to tie in right methane because I know that's something that you've, spent some time studying Bradley. You know, and that's a concern methane emissions. So and again this study looks at that.
00;20;31;06 - 00;20;47;21
Emily
There's a lot to consider you know. But let's start with this feed efficiency idea right. Like we know feed is a big expense. So the less we need to spend on it, you know the more bang we can get for our buck. Great for the farm, great for the cows as well.
00;20;47;24 - 00;21;13;05
Brad
Yeah, I think feed is certainly an important factor in the cow of the future and how to make that cow more feed efficient and just be more efficient overall. And I you know, that that comes into either selection for a more moderate size cow. You know, we're doing some research here at the University of Minnesota looking at feed efficiency of heifers, young heifers, six months to a year of heifers.
00;21;13;05 - 00;21;35;13
Brad
So nobody's really looked at what the feed efficiency is of a heifer. We've measured a lot of things. With cows and trying to get that, you know, I've done a lot of feed intake studies here at the university trying to figure out what how much a cow eats every single day. And it's very time consuming. You have to do it by hand, but it kind of goes back to technologies.
00;21;35;13 - 00;21;59;03
Brad
You know, I this morning I was out trying to fix one of our precision feeders where we're collecting some of this daily feed intake on heifers and trying to figure that some things out. So I think that's going to happen more and more and more into the future, is looking at precision technologies to measure feed intake on a lot of animals, whether it's heifers, calves, milking cows, we can do that on automatic calf feeders too.
00;21;59;09 - 00;22;22;01
Brad
We know how much calves drink so we can look at actually, almost a lifetime feed efficiency of cows. If we use technology to do it. I think it also comes down to environmental efficiency, where we're trying to produce more milk with less methane. And we can certainly use genetics to do that. We know that methane is is heritable.
00;22;22;03 - 00;22;45;09
Brad
And we can, you know, try to maybe select for cows that are more environmentally efficient. And I, I think if we think about methane, that's sort of the main one. But there's a lot of other, gases nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, all of those things that come into an environmental, standpoint as well. So, but methane is, is the top.
00;22;45;09 - 00;23;05;09
Brad
We can measure that methane out of cows. You know, we're measuring it out of cows. We've measured we're currently measuring it out of heifers. So we can kind of look at how we can breed better cows that are more environmentally efficient, as well as feed efficient. Well, I think there's a few things that we can look at as a challenge to a cow of the future.
00;23;05;09 - 00;23;25;01
Brad
Obviously, this paper is stressed that, you know, the Holstein breed is going to be the dominant one. But I think we have to think about genetic diversity in in all of that and making sure we have, less it's going to be I don't know if we're going to have less inbred cows. The only way we're going to do that is cross breed.
00;23;25;04 - 00;23;59;01
Brad
But trying to reduce or minimize inbreeding will help in these cows. So trying to preserve some sort of genetic diversity, manage inbreeding because more inbred animals have negative effects on health and longevity. So trying to use genetics in a responsible way to manage inbreeding and preserve genetic diversity, you know, I'm all about breed diversity. And in you know, some breeds like I have bred has this Guernsey heifer.
00;23;59;01 - 00;24;31;03
Brad
And I'm really interested in guernseys. I want to preserve breed improvement. Where people think I'm crazy trying to focus on Guernsey. But, you know, I have a lot. But maybe I might have. You know, I've thought about this. Bred drives around the US too much and thinks about things, and I'm like, maybe I want 20 Guernsey cows at our university to do a little research on guernseys and, you know, produce milk from those cows and, and process it, things like that.
00;24;31;03 - 00;24;45;23
Brad
So Brad has ulterior motives around that. But I think Guernsey might be a good breed to do and try. So if, if you have any Guernsey, you know, embryos or heifers you'd like to donate to Brad's cause I would gladly take those.
00;24;45;25 - 00;24;48;21
Emily
All right. Now, now that you're done soliciting.
00;24;48;23 - 00;24;54;10
Brad
I'm trying my luck. But I think breed diversity is important. I think, you know, preservation breeds, you know, we don't.
00;24;54;10 - 00;24;55;02
Emily
Want.
00;24;55;05 - 00;25;01;02
Brad
We don't want the Guernsey to be a zoo breed. That's not. I don't want that to happen at all.
00;25;01;05 - 00;25;32;03
Emily
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, I, I am a Holstein girly. And and yeah, there's no denying Holstein is a very dominant breed. And, and due to that. Right. Like there's some advantages with that. We we can move quickly with changes in Holsteins on some things. You know, we have a lot of accuracy with Holstein genomics because of how many we have genomics for, you know, this paper says what 89% of all US genotypes are Holsteins.
00;25;32;10 - 00;26;01;08
Emily
Right. So most of the genotypes we have Holsteins. But I also, you know, have to give a shout out. Doctor Les Hansen, my former professor, one of Brad's former professors, you know, I'm just hearing him talking about Holsteins and specifically chief. Right. I think we all know that name. And just how many cows in the breed are still related to that one bull and and what that means.
00;26;01;08 - 00;26;25;04
Emily
Right. And you already said it, Brad. Like, we have to be careful about inbreeding. Right. And what that is going to do to the gene pool. And yes, unfortunately, I do think Holsteins have maybe reached a point where they're backed too far into the corner that I do think crossbreeding is a great way to introduce some new genetic diversity.
00;26;25;07 - 00;26;53;03
Emily
I again, I like Holsteins, but I am not opposed to crossbreeding. Right? What I like more than Holsteins is an efficient cow. And so what is that going to take to achieve? And you know, there are a lot of breeds to crossbreed with. Of course, Bradley has a ton of experience with that. And so while I think there's a lot we can take and learn from Holsteins, I agree with you, Bradley.
00;26;53;03 - 00;27;05;21
Emily
I, I just think that we need a little more than just Holstein in the mix for, for this cow of the future to really reach the point these authors are suggesting.
00;27;05;24 - 00;27;40;10
Brad
Yeah, I agree, I agree, and I think there's a lot of different new breeding strategies that certainly could come out of this. You know, we could talk about beef on dairy a lot where we're going to. And people are doing this now, breeding the low end genetic animals in your herd to beef bulls. So I think, in the future, most dairy cows will either be bred to beef to produce crossbred calves for the beef market, or the sexy men you know will be there won't be any such thing as conventional dairy anymore.
00;27;40;10 - 00;27;51;15
Brad
And 40% of the meetings in the US are probably still to conventional dairy semen. But I don't think that will happen any more. It'll be either you'll be sexed or beef. That's just the way it will end up. The senior working groups.
00;27;51;15 - 00;28;12;05
Emily
That are going for replacements with your hired genetic cows, or however you're determining that. And then, yes, everybody else is going to beef. Right. But, you know, I also think of as, yeah, as a solution of, you know, not not every cow on this path to the future is going to be the right, you know, combination of genes.
00;28;12;05 - 00;28;30;11
Emily
And so, yes, still providing some sort of productive life. We know these beef dairy crosses I think are just only going to get more popular and continue to be a great option, especially as we work on developing these future dairy cows.
00;28;30;14 - 00;28;51;20
Brad
And I think, you know, gene editing is going to play a role. We talk about slick hair coat cows. You know, I think slick is becoming, you know, a little bit of a buzz in, in the dairy world. So it's breeding cows that are more heat tolerant for, for some breeds. We you know, I've been doing some slick stuff in with some African dairy populations and gene editing of slick into those animals.
00;28;51;20 - 00;29;01;13
Brad
So I think that's going to be important. One thing we'll figure out, I'm hearing some things that maybe slick cows don't work very well in a northern climate, like where it's cold up here.
00;29;01;13 - 00;29;07;27
Emily
So I was wondering, I'm like, you know, we get hot, but we also cows that are cold tolerant.
00;29;07;27 - 00;29;35;06
Brad
But at 40 below zero, what happens to a slick cow? Do they, you know, suffer some detrimental effects. But and I think we're seeing this in in the dairy world is at AI companies are contracting directly with farmers for genetics and sort of developing their own subpopulation. So I think in the future we may be, you know, you'll use all of the AI companies, you know, because they have something different.
00;29;35;06 - 00;30;01;14
Brad
So you'll breed your select sires, animals to abs, animals, or just because of of how the subpopulations they're developing. So I think there's a lot of things that are coming down the pipeline. We might not see it yet. They're not on a oh, big scale. But I think these are some of the things that are going to shape, you know, the cow of the future as we go forward.
00;30;01;15 - 00;30;24;12
Emily
Yeah. And I think that weather tolerance piece especially is going to be really important in climates like ours, where we do really experience both extremes and I got it. I got to give it to you, Brad. That's just another argument for some of these breeds that you are already cross-breeding with, right? You know, Montpelier, these you know, what I would call kind of mountain type breeds.
00;30;24;12 - 00;30;50;06
Emily
Right. So these are cows that yes, have been in the heat and have good feet and legs, but it also gets cold up there. Right. So, so we know that they can withstand those extremes on both ends. And so I think especially in kind of this upper Midwest climate, that's going to be perhaps a more important consideration than in other parts of the world.
00;30;50;08 - 00;31;18;17
Brad
So I think in the end, what what is the cow of the future look like? I think, you know, we're not going to focus solely on milk production like we have in the past. Obviously, we want to have more balanced cow that has health, efficiency, welfare and sustainability. And so we need to think about these cows not merely as a production unit, but a resilient animal that is very efficient and produces lots of good data.
00;31;18;17 - 00;31;20;27
Brad
In an automated world.
00;31;20;29 - 00;31;28;26
Emily
And and a key, I think you missed. And this is an argument you and I have always made badly. This cow also needs to be moderate sized.
00;31;29;02 - 00;31;29;28
Brad
Moderate sized.
00;31;29;28 - 00;31;31;28
Emily
Yes. No more monsters.
00;31;32;00 - 00;31;53;26
Brad
No more monsters. But I think that's that's what's going to happen. And whether that's, you know, Holstein cow or Jersey cow or Brad's idea now with Guernsey, I think it's going to all come down to that, you know, a resilient cow that we can get lots of data from and, will be a more sustainable cow.
00;31;53;26 - 00;32;20;27
Emily
And I will be interested to see how individualized you can make this right, because that's a piece of it, too. In talking about climate. And of course, we talk about management and and system types and all of that is, you know, how individual farms might breed for their cow of the future. Right. I, I really think we're going to see continued diversity in breeding plans between farms.
00;32;20;27 - 00;32;38;03
Emily
You know, I think used to be a lot of farms kind of had the same thing. We're breeding for the same stuff, same goals. But I think we'll continue to see a diversity in that. Especially among our, our farmers who are listening today. Right. I know you're all making your plans for your calves of the future now.
00;32;38;05 - 00;32;50;14
Brad
Yeah. So who knows what what the cow of the future will look like. I think there's lots of good implications, and I know we'll use lots of genetic data and phenotype data to make a better cow. I am confident in that.
00;32;50;14 - 00;33;16;29
Emily
I couldn't agree more, and I think that is a great place to wrap it. So again, we want to shout out, the authors of this paper, Brito Schinkel and Rojas de Oliveira. We will link, to this paper. References paper in the show notes. So make sure you check that out if you are curious. And as always, if you want to learn more about us and our work, you can visit extension dot.
00;33;17;02 - 00;33;31;00
Emily
Got Edu and if you have questions, comments or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, those can be emailed to the Moos room. And, in that web, we will catch you next time on the Moose Room. Take care.
00;33;31;03 - 00;33;32;20
Brad
Bye bye.
00;33;32;23 - 00;33;34;21
Emily
All right. Hopefully it recorded me this time.