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We talk with Jackson County Extension Agent John David Johnson from West Virginia Extension about the differences between our states. This is part 1 of 2 so make sure to come back next week to finish our conversation. Thank you for listening.
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.
[music]
[cow moss]
Dr. Joe Armstrong: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. This is Dr. Joe Armstrong. We had a super long recording session with our guests. We're going to have to break this into two episodes. Fortunately, it really broke down into two parts. We talk a lot about extension and the differences between our states, and we talk a lot about beef production. The first episode that you're going to hear here, we're going to fade out, we'll come back. Next episode, finish our conversation with our guests, talk a lot more about pasture and topics that Bradley was very interested in when we were looking at the differences in grass use and things like that between our state and our guest's state.
If you've been listening religiously to The Moos Room, you will notice that we are out of order with our episode. This episode was actually recorded before our Selective Dry Cow Therapy episode with Dr. Sandra Godden. We got out of order for no other reason than I was sleep deprived and didn't catch up in time to get everything out in order. No excuses, that's what I got for you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being understanding about things being a little out of order. Let's get into this episode.
Dr. Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. We have another guest this week. It's not just the OG3, you're not stuck just listening to me and Brad, and Emily. We have another guest. Emily found this one, Brad found the last one, so it was Emily's turn. Who's with us today, Em?
Emily: Well, I am really excited about the guest we have with us today. Also, you know, through the joys of technology, we are able to explore extension and cattle throughout the country. We're joined today by a good friend of mine who works for extension in West Virginia, actually. We met through a national extension conference a few years ago. He's been a good friend for a few years now. It is my pleasure to introduce John David Johnson. He is the agriculture agent for Jackson County, West Virginia. Not Jackson County, Minnesota, Jackson County, West Virginia. Welcome, John David.
John David Johnson: Thank you for that, ma'am. When you approached me then, I said, "Well, that sounds like fun." We probably do things a little bit different than other parts of the state in our state or other parts of the country. I was interested in coming on and see how y'all run these programs and [unintelligible 00:02:37] programs in Minnesota.
Dr. Joe: We're excited to tuck into that more. We're going to talk a lot about the differences between the states and how things differ management-wise, get into the beef side quite a bit. We have two questions. Before we start everything and whenever we have a guest, we ask them the same questions, and we'll start with dairy this time. We need to know your favorite dairy breed, has to be a purebred breed, no crossbreds. What is your favorite dairy breed?
John David: Oh. Well, we're not really a dairy state.
[laughter]
Emily: Yes. He looks very taken aback by this question. He was not ready for this.
Bradley: He's not.
John David: If you threw out beef there, I would probably throw out a crossbreed to get a little hybrid vigor but I don't know. I've got a soft spot for an old Jersey you know if you think you can go Holstein-
Bradley: Yes.
Emily: Oh, man.
Joe: Yes.
John David: -dairies out there and you see those huge Jerseys in there to bump up that butter fat, you're there like in a sea of giants. They're like, "Okay, I like something a little different."
Dr. Joe: Perfect. Well, that is the correct choice as we all know-
Bradley: He's right.
Dr. Joe: -Jersey is the best, that's the correct choice. That puts them ahead of everyone now, Jerseys have 3 votes, Holsteins have 2, Dutch Belted with 2, Normande with 1, Brown Swiss with 1, and Montb�liarde with 1 so that's the correct choice. Brad, myself, and now John David all voting for Jersey.
Bradley: Yes.
John David: I want to know what Emily voted for because her eyes about rolled down the back of her head. I could see them like marbles, they're spinning.
Emily: [laughs]
John David: I'm curious, what did you vote for?
Emily: My vote was for Dutch Belted.
John David: I was figuring that, and [unintelligible 00:04:24].
Emily: We have discussed Dutch Belted before.
John David: [laughs]
Dr. Joe: Okay, so let's get away from dairy. We do have to ask you your favorite beef breed as well. We try not to do any crossbreed, so if you have a--
John David: No, you're killing me.
Dr. Joe: I know, I know you but I know you raise Baldies.
Bradley: You got to have purebreds to have crossbreds.
Dr. Joe: I love the Baldies, I do. You're allowed to do a composite breed which I don't know when we decided that was okay. As long as it's an accepted breed--
Emily: We didn't. We didn't decide that.
Dr. Joe: Wow. Someone threw out Stabilizer last week and I'm still conflicted about it. What is your favorite? I'll let you go with Baldy. If you wanted to choose Baldies, that'd be fine. At least, you'll get half of [unintelligible 00:05:09] for dinner.
Emily: Okay, Joe-
?Bradley: Yes, [unintelligible 00:05:10].
Emily: -you're just throwing all the rules out the window now?
Dr. Joe: They're gone, all the rules are gone.
John David: They'll be better than Dexters or something like that. I could throw out something strange or like the ornamental cows. Now I'll have to go with probably, since in the market, Angus has been going so well in marketing and they get the higher price, I'm like everybody in agriculture, you go where the money is. I'm going to go with Baldies, but you can cover up a lot of sand with a Black Bull too.
Dr. Joe: We are on the same page.
John David: It's a [unintelligible 00:05:36] figure, whatever, guys. I'll go with a Black Baldy then.
Dr. Joe: All right. Well, I'll give you--
Emily: Who invited this guy?
?Joe: [unintelligible 00:05:44].
Emily: I hate him a lot. [chuckles]
Dr. Joe: I think that's a great choice. Baldies, Black Baldy. We've got half the Black Angus, and then half of Brad's vote, which is for Hereford. Baldies have been around forever. They're a separate breed in my mind at this point. I'm throwing the rules out. I can do that, l produce the thing.
?Bradley: [unintelligible 00:06:04].
[laughter]
Dr. Joe: All right. That puts us at Black Angus with 3, Hereford with 1, Chianina with 1, you can guess who voted for Chianina. Brahman for 1, Stabilizer with 1, and now Black Baldies with 1 vote. Those are the important questions.
Emily: Beef thing is just a hot mess now.
Dr. Joe: All right, it's fine, I don't mind, it's fine. We got the important questions out of the way, got the important questions out of the way. Now, I guess we should talk about what we're supposed to talk about, the differences between Minnesota and West Virginia. Let's start with extension because we're all an extension even in different states. You're an agricultural county agent, right John David? You don't just do beef even though that's your preferred topic?
John David: No, I'm all AG. I have to be pretty much well-rounded you can say, the older I get, the more I look at way too. We get questions from beef cattle and hay is obviously 75% of our agricultural income in the county so that's what I specialize in. That was my wheelhouse. I fit in very well here with the agricultural systems. Also, we're getting a lot more high tunnels that extend that horticulturist season up here in these cooler, higher elevations that we're in because there's a lot of people that are interested in agriculture that may not have the landscape to do so.
We have a lot of hillsides, a lot of, I wouldn't say useless land but land that you really cannot occupy in an agricultural setting unless you're growing timber. That land is on the steeper hillsides. Other than that, we do have some really small bottoms and really good soil. You could let a line [unintelligible 00:08:00] silky lawns in this area. They can put up a high [unintelligible 00:08:05] where they can not really be beneficial to run that many cattle or really cut that hay but they could feed your family, increase that nutrition so get a lot of those, a lot of gardening questions to go with that.
There's something running, you want to reach out and grab this. Let's see, I kept this and I've never taken it down, let's see. May 16th, 2011, this little lady come in, Miss Harper, and brought me this knockout Rose Lee with blowholes all in it. It's bad, it's been chewed up, I put it up there because that was my first agricultural question in my job and [unintelligible 00:08:48]. [laughs]
Emily: I just want to cut in to say, since we're not visual here, he literally has a little plastic baggie with this decrepit old moldy leaf in it.
John David: It has been taped off on [unintelligible 00:09:00].
Emily: That's a great memento.
[laughter]
John David: Yes, for 10 years now, it's been sitting up there collecting dust. The lady just passed away, but she brought that in here. I tried to help her with insecticide protocols. We do a lot of, "What's this fungus? What's this bug?" trying to identify that they do not have the insect or the plant. That's when we help them treat it after we identify it. That was my first farm question but we get everything. You know, "What's wrong with my lawn? Why is there [unintelligible 00:09:34] all in my pastures, even though that I haven't [unintelligible 00:09:37] in 20 years?" We answer everything. Now that's just on the AG side.
I have co-workers who are family and health agents, she answers the family and health questions. They even do Read to Me Mommy seminars where they go into the prisons and take the ladies reading books and then mail the tape to their kids. Stuff like that, you know we've family-based -programs. Then we have nutritionists that adult and youth nutritionists that stay in the community or in the schools that talk about nutrition. I can work with them quite well because we're growing the vegetables. I can work with the youth growing vegetables and they take them and do the nutritional lessons so that works out good. Then one of the bigger programs along with AG, is 4-H WVU is a 4-H state.
It amazed me coming from South Georgia where I was born, we had 4-H. I was in 4-H. In my state, you're in 4-H long enough to get into FFA. Then once you're in FFA, that carries you on through high school but here, they really bleed green. Every county has their own 4-H camp. We have a camp every year with about anywhere from 350 to 400 kids at 4-H Camp every year and that's just my county.
Dr. Joe: Wow.
John David: That's great because all of them take a project. A lot of those are animal-related projects. I have a county fair and just my county fair, we're looking at 500+ animals.
Dr. Joe: Really? Wow. At a county fair?
John David: At a county fair. I have 223 hogs alone.
Dr. Joe: Oh.
John David: Yes, [chuckles] that's [unintelligible 00:11:24].
Emily: By comparison, Brad, how many dairy do you usually have at the Stevens County Fair?
Brad: Stevens County Fair, we have about 25 dairy and 40, 50 beef animals.
John David: We don't do the dairy in my county. Now, Mason County next to us, they do have a dairy project. We do beef, we have beef steers. We usually average anywhere from 38 to 40 steers in the barn and then we have a replacement heifer program and project, which they have to own the mother before she gives birth. That's why it's called a breeding project. The goats are in line with that. The rabbits are in that also, that breeding project where they own that mother. They have to go through the whole birthing process. I like that project because it gives a whole nother aspect of education so they see it pre and post-parturition. I really like that.
I think those kids learn a lot from those projects specifically. That's a great project and that helps build a herd. They keep those heifers, most of those heifers do not sell. They usually show multiple animals and only they can sell one animal that they shot. The only way they have to sell is if they get grand and reserved. Now our sale, we didn't sell this year, obviously, we had a little stock market sale. We're not counting that. Last year, each kid only selling one animal, we were about $665,000 sale-
Emily: Wow.
John David: -with each kid selling about one animal. Now--
Emily: We've discussed this before, John David, there, they sell the actual animal.
John David: Yes, yes. On hoof. On hoof.
Emily: On hoof. Which is different-
?Dr. Joe: Different.
Emily: -in Minnesota, they're called ribbon auctions. The local organizations in the county, they buy, it's a commemorative ribbon basically, and then they get a picture of the kid and the project.
John David: Oh, okay.
Emily: We don't do any actual sales of the animals. To me, that's an interesting difference. I do want to kind of steer us back to the AG extension realm here and since we have another extension employee on, which we don't have extension guests super often, but when we had Michael J. Cruz, PhD, for his [unintelligible 00:13:53] episode, I had asked-
?John David: [unintelligible 00:13:55].
Emily: -him so I'm going to ask you, what's the most interesting question you've gotten, or like the most interesting call you have gotten [unintelligible 00:14:03]?
John David: The craziest or the interesting?
Emily: Both, yes.
John David: [unintelligible 00:14:07].
Emily: [laughs]
John David: Okay, so we'll start with the craziest, I always like the craziest. I can, for some reason, I bring them money. [laughs] They love it. Crazy is attracted to me I do believe. With the craziest, I have a gentleman called me and said, "I'm trying to get rid of ground moles." I said, "Okay, there's different ways. There's pros and cons to all of them." He said, "I've tried everything. I've tried the baits. I've tried rolling. I've tried shocking them. I've tried trapping." I said, "Hold on, let's rewind. You tried shocking?" "Yes." I said, "Walk me through that process.
[laughter]
John David: You sparked my interest. I'm not familiar with this form of control." He said, "Okay, well, I got a 110 line that was hooked straight to my breaker box and I went out there and I split it." I said, "I see the ground moving. I'd stick it in the ground." He said, "The problem is the breaker kept breaking, tripping."
[laughter]
John David: I'm just sitting there just like, "Wow. I'm glad he called. This was a phone call, thank God." I'm just sitting there, there's not many moments that just rendered me speechless but that was one of them. I said, "Okay, that's good." Then I said, "You know if the breaker wouldn't have tripped, you would be dead." Our electric unit did or hurt but that was the most. Then he went on to ask me if he could buy skunk because he wanted the skunk to take moles, or no, skunks take grubs, which was on the right track, which the moles ate.
I said, "Well, you know you're probably going for a four-inch hole now instead of a little rise for the moles." That's kind of the craziest question. The most interesting. [sighs] I had, kind of puzzled me there for a little bit, I had some gardens on the same road, dying. Everything was dying in the garden. Couldn't figure out why. Each of these three people called me separately, did not contact their neighbor, they called me. I went out and after the third one, I said, "This couldn't be a coincidence. There's something going on here. All the plants are dying."
I researched and researched and it went back to one farm they all bought their manure from that was using forefront and their hay. The chemical was still active in forefront in the manure, they got the manure from the same producer. I explained to the producer there, "You cannot let that manure leave your barn for so long." I got that corrected but that was interesting. That was investigation that we had to do.
Dr. Joe: I like stuff like that. Those questions keep you loving that job when you get to do the little investigations and things like that to try to figure out what's going on. That's a good one.
John David: It's nice when you finally actually figure it out. [laughs]
Bradley: Yes.
Dr. Joe: Yes. Sometimes you never do, but yes, when you can figure it out, it feels like you're making a difference and trying to figure out what's going on. That kind of thing matters a lot to people. I'm always surprised at how much attention and how much people care about their garden and their gardening program. That's something at the University of Minnesota, we see a ton of, like a ton. We have a Master Gardener Program and that is a huge program and consistently the number one reason people even visit the extension website online to look up gardening questions and tree trimming questions and things like that. It's a huge source.
All right, well let's talk cattle. We are on The Moos Room, we need to talk about beef cattle. I've seen a couple of things from West Virginia as far as what kind of programs you have out there. In Minnesota, we used to focus on trying to be in-person with meetings and things like that. Now since the world has turned upside down, we're doing more of this thing, we're online, we're working on articles, we're working on YouTube channels, we're working on The Moos Room here, the podcast, all sorts of different ways to connect. It looks like you guys have some pretty cool stuff going on though at West Virginia. What do you got going with the beef side of things?
John David: Right now, we're halfway through the process. We do a lot of board sales, we call them calf pools. What we do is we gather the producers up in regions and they can join it or not join it. Of course, it's not a force program, it's a volunteer program. They all have the same management strategies, weaning dates, vaccination patterns, types of vaccination, we all consult with the same veterinarian. That's where we get all our vaccinations, dewormers, and everything else.
We all have the same calving windows for these programs from anywhere from January to late March, April is the main calving window for the spring calving. Now this is for the spring calving pool. We do not have a fall calving pool, which some producers have picked up and made their own little pool and they have their own special sale at the stockyards or they just deliver the calves at the stockyards at the same time and make their own sale. We do very well with, in my county alone, that probably, we're only looking about 700 calves to 800 on a really good year, that's steers and heifers.
This year, we sold them for, well, let's say we sold them on September 19th, and we will deliver them to the stockyards to be put on [unintelligible 00:19:47], they put loads together November 3rd and 4th. For instance, you get that extra 60 days or so, well, a little less than 60 days at that point. We wean for 60 days. We were at 45 days, but that was a management decision we made as a group. You may always vote on it as very producer input driven.
We had a couple of little issues there and we said, "Well, I think we could fix this problem by pushing that weaning from 45 to 60 and to prove to our buyers that we're committed to that and preconditioning.� We sell them there in September and then we deliver them in November so you have that extra time to put a little bit of weight on them. I'm not sure if y'alls markets hold and stay as similar as ours, but usually, in November, end of September, you'll see that market decline.
You sold them back in September 19th and this year, usually the markets are a little higher. You still get that same price withholding those cattle over and putting a little bit of weight on them and preconditioning than in November as you did back then. If you look at the prices from November and September and compare those same prices when you deliver, you usually make a little bit of money extra.
Dr. Joe: Yes. There's always a decline as there's more calves that come into the market. We see that in Minnesota as well. I love this idea and being able to be a part of it is something that I had started to work on when I was in private practice with some of my producers and trying to put that kind of thing together. It's such a great idea to have to increase your power in the market by having a group of cattle that are marketed similarly or the same and then have the same background.
It gives a lot of confidence to that buyer in that that feedlot being able to buy a big group that they know the history and all those kinds of things and that it really is taking what would be if they were all sold separately and then put together later. That would be a medium to high-risk group depending on the management and now you've taken it and created a super low-risk group by having everyone on the same page and all those kind of things.
That is what people want on the feedlot side, low risk and then being able to benefit both sides where you get to lock in the price for that producer on the cow-calf side. I love the idea, I would love to get something going like that here in Minnesota. We'll just put it out there, maybe someone will hear this on the podcast and tell me to run with it, we'll see.
John David: Well, if not [unintelligible 00:22:29]-
Emily: Stranger things have happened.
John David: -in West Virginia, buy some really good preconditioned, double-vaccinated wean cows. [laughs]
Dr. Joe: Double vaccinated. We can go to West Virginia to get them if we need to. You're saying that you're weaning for 60 days in that group. What do you mean by that? What does that mean when you say you're weaning for 60 days?
John David: Well, we've, of course, pulled him off the mother and we've already vaccinated, usually give the vaccination the last day. At least, I like to actually vaccinate mine a little earlier so it gets in their system before I move them off their mother. Of course, weaning is just pulling them off the cow. Every farm is set up probably the same in Minnesota. Every production is different, but you have some that fence line wean, so they just move the cows on the other side of the fence.
Some take the calves down the road to another farm. Some put in, I've even tried nose clips, last year, I'd done that. Actually, before I weaned, so I actually weaned a little more in 60 days but it allowed that calf to stay on the side of that mother without sucking and to transition his diet a little easier. They started eating grain a little bit quicker than they did this year where I took the mothers away, but I still left them two fall cow babysitters with them, to try to pick up their habits and teach them how to eat out of that bunk a little smoother.
There's different ways to do it, I do it different. I'm an extension agent, so I like to play with different methods and I have that leniency to do that. Getting these cattle on the set diet that we want them on, eating out the bunk, drinking out of that trough where they go into these feed yards and they're already prepped, they're not standing around just milling around not eating, costing the feed yard money because when you drop them [unintelligible 00:24:26], the pot belly pulls up, you unload them, you want them to go out and start eating and not have that shipping fever too so that stress.
Usually, weaning is the highest stress in calf's life, hard shipping. That's already out of the way, that it's hopefully uphill from there. As long as there's no problems in shipping, you want that calf to hit the ground eating and it's going to be a healthy calf. It's going to make that producer that buys it more money.
Dr. Joe: This is the ideal system for me. If I had the choice, I would want almost all cattle, all calves to be backgrounded that 60 days. It's really important, bunk broke, people don't think about it enough, but those calves need to be water broke too. Some of those cattle, especially if you're coming from out west, they don't know what a waterer looks like. They've never seen one in their life. I think it's a huge deal and it obviously pays. Especially when you pool these calves, you got that power in the market to be able to get a certain price.
I like the 60 days over 45. I'm always going to like 60 days over 45 because I think a true respiratory break from the stress of weaning that day one, a true respiratory break is going to happen anywhere from 28 to 42 days. At 45, you can still potentially see a respiratory break. If you go to 60, I just feel so much more comfortable that those calves are that much closer to being bulletproof so I'm a big fan. That sounds like an amazing program.
John David: You know that water, you don't think about water, you're just talking about knowing what that water trough is. Y'all probably see these out in the feed yards. When I done an internship out in Panhandle of Oklahoma one year, just bump up the iration a little bit, make it a little hotter, a little hotter, a little hotter where you won't hit that acidosis mark and you want to push them, but don't push them too far. You want to get that residue in that bunk. When you [unintelligible 00:26:25] that bunk, you don't want it [unintelligible 00:26:26] clean, you don't want it full, you want that residue.
One day I come up, it's like four o'clock in the morning and I hit the light and there's a lot of feed in the bunk and I was like, "Oh crap, I'm in trouble." I messed up the math and I put them all in acidosis. Well, what happened? A storm comes through that night, knocked out the whale, knocked out the water. They didn't have water, they don't eat, that's a big part of it.
Dr. Joe: Oh, it's a huge piece. We forget about it all the time. Obviously, in the winter, we tend to think about water a little more just because we're checking waters for freezing over and things like that, but you can't get away from it. It's the most important nutrient and like you said, I mean it's directly tied to dry matter intake. If they don't have the water, they're not eating.
Now the only other thing I had a question that we were talking about this beforehand, there's not a whole lot of silage that gets made in West Virginia. When you guys are backgrounding these calves, are you putting in fermented feeds, or is that-
John David: No-
Dr. Joe: -not something that happens?
John David: -not really.
Dr. Joe: Do they feed fermented feeds in the feed lots in West Virginia?
John David: They have some small feed lots. In our bull cell, our bull test, we are a forage-based test. They do a lot of corn silage there, haylage, and then some of the feeder or feed lots, the smaller ones that we do have, and the dairies even, the ones we do have, they are usually a corn silage-based forage and nutritional plan there. In the calf pool, we're mainly feeding, and that's something we haven't really set a huge standard for amongst our producers, we let them choose what they want to feed and precondition on. Some start the old jumpstart, the pellet. That's some stampede, that has a little [unintelligible 00:28:20], I always get tongue-tied on that one.
A little growth promotion there. I'm going with a 12% corn base, I always start them off with a little bit of soybean pellet and soybean pellet to increase the fiber and then I take that away slowly, like a feed bot ration would do. I do that because that's usually the most economical. Since I'm an extension agent, I do not have the ability to have a large herd so I have to make every dollar count. That's just economical for me and that's the reason I do it.
Dr. Joe: Interesting to see. That's one of those things that in the backgrounding period, that's where the communication comes in if you know where your cattle are going I love any communication back and forth from the end to the beginning is helpful for everyone involved. Yes, we have a lot of backgrounding operations that are introducing fermented feeds just so that when they hit that feed lot and they see that silage, they don't turn their nose up.
John David: It does take a little time for cows. Now, I do have one producer that does a lot of haylage. He'll get those wrapped bales and he'll put them out there and you know, after about a day or two, they eat them like candy. You're right, you don't want to wait that day or two. If we do have a buyer that is interested and they do ask about that, we can put them into more calves than has been exposed to that haylage and they should transition really quick from mileage to silage.
Dr. Joe: Let's see, what else do we want to talk about? Well, you guys, you've mentioned the bull test quite a bit. Walk me through--
Emily: Oh yes. The bull test.
Dr. Joe: The bull test and I--
Emily: I've always been confused by this, so maybe I'll get it this time.
Dr. Joe: When I say bull test, when I say get your bull tested, I mean probably something completely different. I'm talking--
John David: Well, we do that too. We do a breeding soundness exam-
Dr. Joe: Good.
John David: -on all these bulls. This program is for more seed stock operators, those wanting to sell breeding stock. They are able to bring, and we have a heifer program too that runs right along with this, so they bring their heifers or their bulls in and we put them on feed for next amount of number of days. Then we weigh them every so many days. Then we take pelvic measurements, we take hip height, we take for the bulls, scrotal circumference, we do the muscle ultrasound. We do, of course, breeding sound, making sure that bull is ready to go out and breed cattle when you open that trailer door at your farm.
We test all these bulls. We take a top portion of them, we have cutoff lines on each of the categories, and as long as they're above those lines, we will put them in a sale. Operators around the state for cow-calf operators can come buy these local bulls that has been finished on a forage diet. I like the forage-based diets in our area because they're going to go out on grass, they're not going to get grained all the time. They're not eating corn residue crops. It's a little closer to what they would get at home but they are young bulls.
I think the biggest problem we have is, and we've done this and we keep trying to do this, is educate the producer too. When you buy a young bull, yes, we can say that a bull can service 25 cows, but a young bull that's [unintelligible 00:32:08] out the gate, he's not ready to sire 25 cows, put him with 12 cows, 12 cows, he can take care of them, maybe even 15 but he is not to his mature state yet. Give me a year or so and then, increase your herd up a little bit for him.
We do have bulls that go out and breed 25 cows. What happens is what I say, they say they melt, they lose body condition score and they're just running themselves to death. If you buy a young bull, just keep that in mind. Start him off slow and then increase. I think that's more of an education for producers. We see that. I think we still have a little bit to educate there on that side.
Dr. Joe: Well, that's a great opportunity having the sale to begin with and the test and that's my biggest question every time when I'm talking bull testing is what does the nutrition look like? When you're in there and you're feeding them and you're just lobbing grain at them and they're putting on weight and it just makes me cringe every time. I hate fat bulls, I hate bad feed on bulls, it's just you're ruining them. It's really good to hear you guys are doing it right.
Like you said, the young bull thing is something that I struggled with in private practice. Everyone's always wanting to push that young bull really hard. To me, in the ideal world, I wouldn't even have my yearling bulls as part of the equation when I'm looking at bull power and numbers. I like to pair old bulls or mature bulls with really young bulls and then don't count on that young bull to do much. If he does something great, if he doesn't, it's not a big deal, your mature bull has got it.
Then following the kind of rules of thumb when you're looking at number of cows is going to be equal to that bull's age in months. If you're buying a 15-month-old bull, then he should be able to cover 15 cows. Again, those yearlings, I like to cap it at 12 like John David was saying. I think that's a huge, huge program that you guys got going and again, a great opportunity to talk to producers and just get people together to talk to them.
John David: They love getting out. They come out early looking at all the bulls and something they do it's a little different and our test, the test across the country is they have a contemporary group of three that each producer has to bring, at least, three bulls or heifers to the test or you can't participate. I really like that contemporary group that makes your data strong and that really brings it home. We can all feed our bulls, we can all put our cowboy hats on and go to a sale, but this actually is looking at the data behind it and strengthening it. I think if we're going to come out and we're going to pay good money for a bull, all the data we can get should be as accurate as we can get.
Dr. Joe: Emily, do you have a question? I saw you--
Emily: I actually was going to put Bradley on the spot because he is really, really, really quiet.
Dr. Joe: Do it.
Emily: Bradley, ask a question.
Bradley: I am. I've been waiting, I've been listening but [unintelligible 00:35:19].
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Emily: [sighs]
Bradley: Actually, I'm interested in, you talked about--
Dr. Joe: That was our wrap on our first half of our conversation with John David Johnson from West Virginia. We will be back to finish our conversation, talk a lot more about the differences when we're talking about pasture and what types of grasses that we use in our different states, and how we utilize those resources. Check out the website extension.umn.edu, scathing rebuttals, comments, questions, any of that goes to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. Check us out on Facebook @UMN Beef, @UMN Dairy. Catch you next week everybody.
Emily: See you.
Dr. Joe: Bye.
Bradley: I tried to move my chair on carpet and I freaking fell out of it.
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[00:36:16] [END OF AUDIO]
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