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If you have been listening to the show you know that we poke fun at Bradley quite a bit. This episode is dedicated to making sure everyone knows that Bradley works hard and has plenty of projects going on at the WCROC Dairy. Hope you enjoy learning a little more about one of our co-hosts.
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]
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. We are here OG three, no guests.
Emily: What's up?
Joe: We needed an episode with no guests because there's some things that we just haven't been doing that we decided are really important. We make fun of Dr. Bradley J. Heins a lot for having tenure and how he could do whatever he wants.
Emily: Grant money, grant money, grant money.
Joe: Unfortunately, we do have to admit that he did do some work to get those things.
Bradley: [chuckles] I did? I did work.
Emily: He does actually work sometimes.
Joe: He does work. He works hard. Today, we really wanted to talk about all the stuff he's got going on because grant money came flying in, and now he's got projects left and right and we thought it would be beneficial to everyone if we could talk to Brad about what he's doing up there.
Emily: There are some cool projects he's doing. I'm excited to talk about those, but maybe Brad, just to start, I know you have, in an earlier episode, given us a brief rundown of what the dairy is there, what system you're working with. Just a little teaser.
Bradley: A little teaser. Well, it's a 300-cow dairy. I talk to a lot of people, producers even in Minnesota or around the US are like, "Really? You have that big of a dairy there?" Yes, it's 300 milking cows. About a third registered Holstein and two-thirds crossbred. We don't have any free stall barns. All the cows are housed outdoors. Like today, there's six inches of snow on the ground and all the cows are outside. About 80 cows are in a compost barn and they're still outdoors, but pretty much, everybody's outside. We do lots of outwintering work. In the summertime, it's-- Our herd is actually half organic and half conventional management system. It's the only place in the United States where there is an organic and a conventional herd managed on the same site.
Emily: They go through the same milking parlor?
Bradley: Through the same milking parlor. Organic cows are always milked first because they come into a clean system but otherwise not really allowed anywhere else. We are very unique in that aspect and we are very diligent about keeping things separate and holding up our integrity because we have to do that. There's lots of checks and balances to make sure everything works.
Emily: Bradley, we've always known that you were a little bit special.
Bradley: Exactly. Well, I've always done controversial stuff. Even when I was a grad student, it wasn't like I was mainstream crossbreeding.
Joe: That's so surprising.
[laughter]
Bradley: There's been times, even as a faculty member here. Once, I was speaking in Canada and some people from a Holstein organization there were not very happy with what I was saying about the Holstein breed and crossbreeding. Holstein Canada was not very happy with me, but I'm there to talk about research and I present the data and the facts.
Emily: Now, speaking of Holsteins really quickly because I don't know if we've discussed this on here and it's a fun fact, talk a little bit about the Holsteins that are at Morris and some of the line and genetics you use there.
Bradley: It's quite a unique herd. We have two Holstein populations where we did-- One's a 1964 Holstein group, so they're frozen in time. They're from genetics from the late '50s, early '60s. They milk about 10,000 pounds in 305 days. They don't have any health problems. They get pregnant really fast, but they're really over-conditioned. They're small, round.
Emily: That's a polite way to put it.
Bradley: That's right. They're small and round and have deep udders.
Emily: They're like little meatballs.
Bradley: That's correct. They finish out nice. I had a few steers that went choice.
Emily: Whoo.
Bradley: The other herd is a registered Holstein. I registered the herd because I use Holstein ID system, ear tags. I won't guess they owe me a cut for saying that right now. We use Holstein ear tags, things like that, and we have registered the herd because I genomic test all the Holsteins and crossbreds on site. That's a benefit of doing all that. At university herd, we have 386 [unintelligible 00:04:44] cows, so I'm quite impressed. We do not select for type really. I don't select for type. I select for [crosstalk].
Emily: You just get lucky sometimes?
Bradley: I just get lucky. That is correct. We use top Net Merit bulls, select for fat and protein, productive life, and fertility. That's really what I select for.
Joe: All right. Well, I think we had talked about 64 cows before, but you're right, that is a really cool thing that you don't see very often.
Emily: It is cool.
Joe: It's cool to see them. I love walking in there and watching, seeing today's genetics standing side by side to '64's genetics. It's cool. At some point, we'll have to get up there and really profile that and take some really good footage and look at that because I think it's excellent that we have that opportunity to look at how far we've come.
Emily: Yes. That's very neat that we still have access to those genetics and that semen from that long ago. You're right, Joe, it's really interesting to see them side by side.
Joe: Bradley, what do you got going on right now? What's the main focus? What's the big projects you got going? What are you working on the most right now?
Bradley: Nothing.
Emily: Oh, shocking.
Joe: Nothing. He's never working.
Bradley: [chuckles] No, actually, there's lots of good stuff that we're working on. I can talk about what we're going to do and what we've started. Back in March, I started a small project looking at raising calves. How can we raise calves in an organic pasture-based situation? This is applicable to conventional farms, so it really will help the whole industry raising calves individually. Last spring, I was raising calves individually. I raised some on our automatic calf feeder, and I raised some on their mom to look at basically growth. Kind of an early project.
We had about 15 calves each just to get something started to see what would happen. Actually, it was quite interesting to see what happened. The calves that were raised on mom had the highest growth rate. Some of those calves were doing three and a half pounds of growth per day just drinking milk from mom. It was quite crazy to see how that worked out. I do some ad-lib stuff, so on an automatic calf feeder, let calves drink as much as they want. It's interesting, I saw calves that would drink somewhere between-- oh, now I have to convert it, but 12 to almost 20 liters per calf per day, which is a lot of milk. Quite crazy.
20 liters is 5 gallons a day what some calves were doing. Now, those were calves that were eight weeks of age. It was mimicking what you would expect to see being raised on mom where those calves are drinking as much. That's what we started in the spring, and Brad was feeding calves almost every day for a long time.
Emily: We remember.
Bradley: Exactly. That's right. I'd have to leave all the time to go feed calves.
Emily: Five o'clock,
Bradley: Actually, I don't mind it. Feeding calves was kind of nice. It brought me back to my younger days, and it was kind of fun. I still feed calves too.
Emily: Bradley, I have a question on this, specifically with the cows on calves. Were these cows just randomly selected based on who was due to calve or were you just looking at the comparison between being on the cow or not, or were you also looking at breed of the cattle, or were these cows that were first-calf heifers?
Bradley: Good question. We had really everything. We had some that were first-calf heifers raising calves and we had some older cows that were raising their calves. I used what was available. I tried to get certain groups enough to compare, about 15.
Emily: An aggregate.
Bradley: Right. I think there were 16 calves raised on their mom, 15 individually housed, and somewhere about 15 or 16 that were raised on an auto feeder ad-lib. I tried to get close to having enough calves to do some sort of comparison of those systems really,
Joe: I'm still waiting on the GoPro footage of you weighing those calves and having to chase down these calves that are raised on mom.
Bradley: There is GoPro footage of that because we were trying to look at behavior of those calves when we weighed them and just to see what would happen. There is GoPro footage of behaviors of those cows. One thing with those cows, we actually milked those cows twice a day, which some people might think is crazy, but we actually did milk them just to see what would happen. Sometimes those cows would come up with no milk in them, and sometimes they'd have 5 to 8 pounds in them. They had some milk in them, but we kept milking them.
Joe: I feel like you should. Even if it's just all you do is bring them up to check them, make sure everything is doing okay, no mastitis.
Bradley: Right, there's no mastitis, things like that. Sure. I'll tell you, they came up in milk but not as much as what you would expect them to do. Now, I'm looking at about 5 of the 16 cows. What are we, seven months later? I'm going to dry them off because they have no milk now. They didn't really recover, but that's one thing we need to look at in all of this as well. I'm not saying-- That's five cows, so we can't base any of our conclusions based off of five cows. They'll probably go dry two months before they should, so they'll have a little bit longer dry period.
Emily: Are you going to have any economic analysis on this?
Bradley: Yes. Yes. We've expanded the project now because Brad got some USDA grant money.
Emily: Oh, grant money, grant money, grant money.
Bradley: [chuckles] Exactly.
Emily: I wish everybody could have seen the smug smile you just had.
Bradley: [laughs] Gosh.
Joe: Yes, it was pretty smug.
[laughter]
Bradley: We've been very fortunate to get some grant money from USDA NIFA to expand the project, so we're going to do this for two more years now. Where I raised calves on cows, raised calves individually, we're going to have some in groups, so groups of six raised in a big super hutch, and then I have paired calves, so calves raised with a pair, two calves by themselves. It'll be interesting to see what happens. That gives you an overview of what's happening in the dairy industry. There's a lot of calves that are group-raised, pair housed, individually housed, and now, yes, there are some that raise their calves with the cows. We're going to see what happens.
Joe: Well, it definitely seems like a throwback. To me, that's an old-- There are still places I used to go in practice where we'd walk into the tie stall or the stanchion and there's calves just running loose. That's how they were raised. They stayed in the barn with everybody and drank off of pretty much anyone that would let them. It's a little bit of a throwback, but I always struggle to figure out how it's going to pencil out over time. I think it is something that people are interested in because it just-- Definitely, there's a perception issue to it too, I think. If you can say yes, well, that's always been the conversation with the general public is, why can't they just stay with mom?
Emily: Number one consumer concern.
Joe: Which is crazy to me. There's a lot of good reasons to take that baby away besides economics. We're looking at disease, and if you want to [crosstalk].
Emily: Safety.
Joe: Yes, all that. I'm excited. I'm excited to see it.
Bradley: It's a good question. We're trying. Our goal is to help the industry farmers as well as consumers. They're asking for it, so we're one of the first that's going to be able to have some sort of data that's going to show whether it works or not. There is a project happening in Sweden right now where they're raising calves on cows in a freestyle barn with robots, so it is happening in other places in the world, but it's still early. Even in the Swedish study, there's nothing really conclusive about it yet either.
Joe: I'm excited that you got it extended for two more years. That'll get you more numbers, all those other things.
Bradley: Yes. We're going to go to farms too. We're going to go to about 40 farms in the Midwest here, looking at calves on how they're raised on different farms and stuff. We may be calling on some producers that are listening to go look at their calves and take a few measurements just to see what's happening.
Joe: Absolutely. What else are you working on?
Bradley: What else?
Joe: I know that's ongoing and will be ongoing for a couple more years. What else do you got going?
Bradley: Actually, we've started another new project looking at disbudding in calves. Some people call it dehorning, whatever. We're going to look at alternative ways of pain reduction in trying to disbud calves. We haven't started it yet, but we're going to be looking at white willow bark extract as a way to help alleviate pain, so looking at some--
Emily: Really?
Bradley: Yes. Yes.
Emily: Interesting. Are you going to be looking at lemongrass at all?
Bradley: No lemongrass. Sorry. No lemongrass. Banamine or flunixin, lidocaine extract, kind of a-- I don't know what you'd call it, essential oils.
Emily: Holistic.
Joe: Is that driven by the organic side then, Brad? Is that all--
Bradley: It is driven by the organic side, yes, because you can use lidocaine, but you can't use meloxicam, which a lot of people want to use for pain mitigation in the US and Canada and other places, but that is not allowed in organic situations. We'll look at alternatives. Yes, we're doing it for organic farmers, but I think it will help the dairy industry in a whole too is trying to figure out, can we use other methods just besides lidocaine or Banamine or-- I shouldn't say Banamine, flunixin, to do that. Here's the intriguing part of it.
Emily: Oh, man.
Bradley: Uh-oh. Just because we talk about disbudding in part of the National FARM Program and stuff, that doesn't mean that you actually have to do it. We are going to have about 30 calves that we don't disbud. They're going to grow horns.
Emily: Oh, boy.
Bradley: We're going to have a few-- [chuckles] Joe is shaking his head.
Joe: It makes me cringe a little bit.
Bradley: We are going to have about 30 calves at some point. This is long-term. Our oldest cow at Morris is 17 years old, so we could be talking about a calf being born next March is going to be around for 15 years in our herd with horns.
Emily: Oh, [unintelligible 00:16:11] before that?
Bradley: Yes, we got to know that too. There are some farms that do have horns on their cattle and there's nothing wrong with that, but we need to know what happens. We'll be looking at behavior and behavior of when those animals are in a chute, how they interact with other cows, how they interact with humans, things like that. Joe gave me the look that everybody at our research center gave me when I told them that, like, "What the-- is this crazy guy doing?"
Joe: Well, I think that it's--
Emily: And I'm up here like, "Yay." [laughs]
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: Well, it's something that happens in the industry. There's animals with horns. I'm always conflicted on it because I get called when I was in practice to places where to dehorn animals that are way too big to be dehorning, and it's not a good process. It's not. I'm almost to the point where, yes, maybe there should be a limit that says no. If they're this old or their horns are this long or however you want to do it, then we're not doing it, and that's your problem. I'm pretty close to being fine with that. Now, maybe that's just my new I'm a dad and I don't have any sleep, so there's this, I don't care anymore.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: Maybe that's part of that, but I'm pretty close to that. I think it's one of those things where we have so many people that do such an excellent job of managing that piece of it that I'm pretty much out of excuses for other people that want their cattle dehorned but do it incorrectly if that makes sense.
Emily: Yes. It's a safety issue for other cows and for people. That's my biggest issue with it and why I think, yes, there does need to be some sort of standards in place to protect vets, to protect people working on the farms, to protect other cattle in the pen.
Bradley: We have one horned cow at our research center. I think it was supposed to be a polled bull that I used and then it wasn't polled and kind of a breeding oops.
Emily: Bradley was hungover the morning he was supposed to dehorn her.
Bradley: Maybe. Who knows? [chuckles] She does have horns. She is a three-year-old cow now and not really causing any issues. I have seen her use her horns once in a while on another cow to push them along if they're in a pen or something, just to get it moved out of the way, but she's not any worse than any of the other cows. She's quite docile so that's an N of 1.
Emily: [laughs] N = 1.
Bradley: N of 1. N = 1. We do have one, and she's not any worse than any of the other cows.
Emily: We had a cow with one horn growing up and her name was Rega Muffin.
Bradley: Nice.
Joe: That's a good name. That's a good name. That's a really good name. Doing some dehorning and you've got calves raised on cows, I think the big thing to point out so far that I hope everyone is picking up on, this is stuff that happens in the real world. This is applied research. This isn't something that's going to matter to nobody. This is going to matter to a lot of people. I'm a big fan of that. I always want to ask the question, if you're going to do a research project just to do a research, then I really don't care, but this is stuff that matters and people are going to get valuable information out of it.
Bradley: That's what we've always tried to do. Even when I started there, my first research projects were really started by an idea that farmers gave to me when I was attending some meetings or whatever, meeting people. They just give me these ideas on what to do and it's like, "Oh yes, I could probably do that." Sometimes they're like, "Well, you figure it out first and then tell us if it works or not." That's what we're here for. We're here to do the research and ask the tough questions. All my research has been applicable to farmers. Yes, sometimes we get results that we don't like or it's like, "Oh, well, that didn't really work, so let's do something else."
Joe: That's good to know too. You got to know when it doesn't work, and when you don't get the results you want, that's still valuable information. I think we look past that sometimes. You're also ultrasounding calves now for whatever reason. I keep getting texts and pictures of ultrasound machines and calves.
[laughter]
Emily: Oh, good. You get those too?
Joe: Yes. Tell me what's going on.
Bradley: We're ultrasounding lungs on calves, so looking at-- It goes along with all these calf housing situations, looking at pneumonia and respiratory problems. A lot of farms have respiratory issues with calves, so we're ultrasounding lungs at four weeks of age and at weaning to see if there's any respiratory problems or pneumonia or anything like that. I haven't found anything yet, which is a good thing. I don't expect to find much on our dairy.
We vaccinate for respiratory issues, and our calves are outdoors and we have quite good management. Like I talked about all these other farms, we're going to go to other farms and ultrasound some of their calves to see if they have any respiratory problems or what's going on. It'll be interesting to see what we find on other farms. We may find some at our research farm too, but we haven't found any yet and I've ultrasounded, I don't know, 20 calves or more.
Joe: Are you going to try to correlate that down the road with lifetime performance or at least all the way into lactation?
Bradley: Right. At least try and look at breeding as a heifer and first lactation performance to see what happens. At least that's the goal.
Joe: Then compare it to treatment records too, right?
Bradley: Yes, and compare it to all that too. That will be kind of interesting.
Emily: Then you'll be doing this on different types of farms, like not just grazing dairies, you'll do it on standard conventional freestyle?
Bradley: Yes, we'll go to some other farms too and look at respiratory issues and try to get a cross-section of how people have raised their calves and what's happening.
Joe: That would be really cool, especially if you can get treatment records from farmers if they're willing to give that to you and compare it with ventilation types and all sorts of other different things, stocking density, paired individual, all those things.
Bradley: Yes, it'll be interesting to see what happens.
Joe: That's a lot of work though. You got someone helping you with that one?
Bradley: I do.
Joe: You do?
Bradley: [chuckles] I do have a--
Emily: Joe's sad because he wants it to be him. [laughs]
Bradley: Joe can come out and do it anytime he wants.
Joe: I would love to, but yes.
Emily: Can I come out and do it?
Bradley: You can, anytime you want. You know that.
Emily: I felt excluded.
Bradley: No, you can come out and do it.
Joe: [laughs] No, I would love to be out on the farm. That would be excellent but--
Bradley: Remember Joe is the DVM. He's the doctor. He knows it all and--
Joe: I do not. I do not.
Emily: Yes, that's true. He does know it all.
Joe: I don't know it all. Don't put that out there.
Emily: Joe Armstrong knows everything.
Joe: Is it Kirsten? Is Kirsten helping with that?
Bradley: Kirsten, yes, my grad student. We've heard her on podcast stuff before talking about solar and dairy energy. I hired her to keep as my technician to help with these projects because it's a big undertaking, especially right now when we're feeding calves ourselves and it's hard with Coronavirus, trying to keep everything going.
Joe: Well, good.
Bradley: I'm lucky to keep her around.
Joe: Yes, it's really nice that you can have someone else to help you with that because that's three projects that are very involved and--
Bradley: I do have another one. I do.
Joe: You got another one, yes, so there's four.
Bradley: Oh, yes, yes, yes. No, I got another fortunate USDA grant.
Emily: Money grant, money grant, money, huh?
Bradley: This is a grazing project actually. We're going to start next year. We're looking at trying to increase clovers and legumes in, I guess, diets of cows and looking at phytoestrogens in clovers and grasses. There's an idea that a phytoestrogen reduces fertility. If cows maybe eat too much phytoestrogen from legumes or something, it may have a reduction in fertility. We're going to look at alternative clovers and grasses and trying to increase legumes in diets of cows and look at grazing, milk profiles, all that stuff. That's a four-year project too. We'll be doing quite a few stuff with the grazing cows starting next year as well.
Emily: Stay tuned because in four years we'll revisit this.
Bradley: [laughs] Exactly. Yes, lots of stuff. I'm going to put cows back in our tie-stall barn at our research center, so there hasn't been any cows. We can do a small study next winter looking at feeding these cows over the winter, how they produce on increasing legumes. We're going to go, I think, 50% legumes in the diet on some, so we'll do a small study in our tie-stall barn and look at individual feed intakes and stuff. We haven't had cows in our tie-stall barn at Morris in 20 years, and I'm the crazy guy that decided that we should do it again. Anybody wants to come out and feed cows in a tie-stall barn individually? We'll be looking for help.
Joe: That's a lot of work too.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: You don't pick projects that are just low input here.
Bradley: No, not at all. Not at all.
Joe: This one, are you looking at the effect on calves too and replacements?
Bradley: No.
Joe: Because I feel like that would be my big question with these phytoestrogens, is there an effect on a developing animal and what's happening?
Bradley: There may be. That's not the big objective of the project, but that certainly could be something as a side effort that we're working at. We're working on this project with University of New Hampshire, so my colleague, Andre Brito, out at New Hampshire is leading the project. It's happening at New Hampshire, University of Maine is working with us, and here at Minnesota. It'll be across the top half of the US where we're looking at lots of organic herds throughout the US, so it'll be a big study.
Joe: I've heard about phytoestrogens in sheep and that was where I didn't realize it was something that had become something that was a potential in cattle as well.
Bradley: Yes. There hasn't been much really in cattle. There's some maybe in Australia that have done a little bit but not a lot. That'll be an interesting project. Looking forward to it.
Joe: Something's ringing a bell about phytoestrogens too, about potentially protective effects in some way. Is that in small doses? Is that a thing?
Bradley: Possibly, yes, we're not quite sure what it does. There may be some indication that it reduces fertility, but it could. It's certainly at what level does that have to be? That's what we're going to try to explore anyways.
Joe: Oh, cool.
Bradley: It'll be interesting.
Joe: Plenty of work. Are you going to get more help or are you looking for more grad students, trying to manage even more people?
Bradley: Yes. There'll be lots of grad students now. Lots of grad students, so it should be fun. I got another project. Do you still want me to keep going?
Emily: Yes.
Joe: Absolutely.
Bradley: You want me to keep going?
Joe: You might as well if you got more.
Emily: [crosstalk] going to be three [unintelligible 00:27:44] by the time we're done.
Joe: I know, right?
[laughter]
Bradley: We'll probably start another project next summer recommended for funding would be to look at longer-term effects of grazing underneath solar panels. We did that before. We talked about it in an earlier episode this past spring, but now that was a short three, four-week time period where we did that, so we're actually going to look at it for the whole grazing season and look at it for winter, so can we use the solar panels for windbreak? Also, I have planned to grow crops under them. Can we grow corn, soybeans, wheat underneath solar panels and how well do they do compared to regular field conditions?
I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I'm not a big fan of solar panels taking away valuable farmland. That's what our plan is, to raise them up. Our [unintelligible 00:28:43] now are 8 feet up, can I raise it up 15, 16 feet, still get solar energy and grow corn under it and run a combine under it? That's what we're trying to do. If a farmer has a field and a solar company comes to him and wants to use the light, well, we're going to put it up 16 feet and you grow corn under it and we'll get your solar energy and everybody wins.
That's what the other project is going to look at. That'll be probably starting later next summer. That'll be three years after that, but it'll be interesting to see what happens there.
Joe: Yes, it's been a pet peeve of mine and then even just in the last two to three years, we started to see a ton of it where people were converting really good farmland and/or pasture to solar farm only. There was no other use for that land and that really-- Yes, I agree, Bradley. Maybe it'll get me in trouble as well, but I'm right there with you. I really don't think that we have to choose one or the other. There's got to be a way to use both.
Bradley: Right. That's what we're trying to figure out is, can we integrate solar into AG land and make it useful and a win for everybody?
Joe: Emily, do you have any other burning questions for Bradley? Are there more? There's no more projects, right? Is that the last one?
Bradley: [chuckles] Well, I could keep going on and on and on and on.
Emily: Please, no.
Joe: There's another project?
Bradley: Well, I do other-- I'm still crossbreeding, so I'm comparing Holsteins and crossbreds.
Joe: Oh, okay. Yes.
Bradley: That's ongoing and has been ongoing, so just a matter of looking at data. There's always stuff going on. It's not like I don't do anything.
Joe: [laughs] Well, you've got enough sensors out there too.
Bradley: Exactly, I got sensors. I got some new sensors I'm putting on calves too. It's kind of cool.
Emily: Oh God. All right.
Bradley: [laughs] [unintelligible 00:30:28].
Emily: All right. Actually, I do have a burning question.
Bradley: You guys need to come out and see what I'm doing.
Emily: I know.
Joe: Yes, I wish we could travel. All right, what's your burning question?
Emily: My burning question because, Bradley, you'll remember I was always kind of obsessed with these. Are you going to be doing anything more with the fly vacuums or anything further? Do you just feel like, "That's done, we found what we found"? Because that's so cool.
Bradley: It is, and it works and we still use it. We still use our cow vacuum to take horn flies off our pasture cows during the summer. I think they work. Our research shows that they work. I don't have any plans to do anything more with them. I could do some things with them. I've thought about looking at heifers or incorporating some essential oil sprays as the cows walk out. There could be lots of things that I could do with them, but I don't have any plans to do any more research with them. I still use it and I like it.
Emily: Oh, you'll find a grant to do more research.
Bradley: At some point, I could. Yes. Maybe you want to be my grad student.
Emily: Sure. Sign me up. I'm there.
Joe: Yes, Emily doesn't have enough going on already.
Bradley: Exactly. [chuckles] Exactly.
Joe: Just pile it on. It's fine.
Bradley: We like to do things that are pertinent to the industry that's cutting edge and we'll have probably long-term effects on dairy cows in the US and around the world. That's why we're here and that's what makes me tick.
Joe: Good deal. Well, we learned a little bit more about Dr. Bradley J. Heins and the Morris theory and what's going on up there. Periodically, we'll provide updates. Some of these are pretty long-term projects, but maybe we can get ahold of some of that GoPro footage. Maybe there's some footage of Bradley being frustrated by chasing calves. That would be appreciated.
Bradley: [laughs] I guess so.
Joe: We'll continue to provide updates. Hopefully, this gave you an insight into one of our very important tenured co-hosts here.
Bradley: Here's my shameless plug, if you want to see more, I have an Instagram page. It's U-M-N-W-C-R-O-C Dairy, so follow us. See what we're doing.
Emily: It is a pretty awesome Instagram actually.
Joe: Yes, I'm impressed. It's nice, especially when we're stuck at home here to wake up, check Instagram, and see that at least someone's getting outside and someone's seeing animals. That's really nice to see.
Bradley: It's all about cows and what we do and what we do and what we do.
Joe: What else do you want to see on Instagram?
Bradley: Exactly. Exactly.
Emily: My workout selfies.
Joe: Oh, of course. Sorry. Don't forget about Emily's workout selfies, but most of us want to see cows. Check out Brad's Instagram. U-M-N-W-
Bradley: C-R-O-C Dairy.
Joe: Perfect. Check it out. Also, Emily needs to plug her YouTube channel.
Emily: You can find us at UMN Extension Farm Safety and Health.
Joe: Perfect. If you have scathing rebuttals, questions, comments, anything that you want to know more about on this show, you can send those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: Check out our website, extension.umn.edu. On Facebook, we're @UMNDairy and @UMNBeef. Thank you for listening, everybody. We will catch you next week.
Emily: Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
[music]
Joe: You can email us at themoosroom.umn.edu. That's that. I said it wrong.
Emily: [crosstalk]. Yes, I know you did. Can I cover for you?
Joe: No, no.
Emily: All right. Do it again then.
Joe: Fine.
Emily: That's perfect.
[music]
[00:34:27] [END OF AUDIO]
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