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Eric Mousel, beef producer, and UMN Extension colleague joins us to discuss decisions related to a lack of winter feed for your beef operation. 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]
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. OG3's here, and we have an Extension colleague with us. He's been on the show before, it was a while ago, way back in, I think--
Emily: I think it was 6.
Joe: Episode 6, that long ago. Single digits. Long time ago.
Emily: 6 or 7. Yes.
Joe: Eric Mousel is with us. He's joining us from Grand Rapids to talk about all sorts of different stuff today. Before we jump in too far to the topic today, Emily's got questions for Eric that we haven't asked him yet.
Emily: Yes, and can confirm. I just looked it up. He was on Episode 6, one of our early guests.
Eric Mousel: What episode are you on now?
Emily: 85? 87? 89. I don't know what your hand signals meant. Oh, 85. Cool. From Episode 6 to Episode 85, we've added some questions for all of our guests, so we didn't get your answers yet. We're going to ask you now, and this is important. It's for science. What is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Eric: Guernsey.
Emily: [laughs] Wow.
Eric: I used to have one Guernsey cow when I was a kid. My family had one Guernsey cow, and I milked her day and night for, oh my word, I don't know how many years. She was just this most super lovable dairy cow I've ever-- She was a pet.
Emily: Did she have a name?
Eric: Taffy.
Emily: Taffy. Aw.
Eric: Actually, now that I'm thinking about that, haven't thought about this in like, what, 40 years, we actually didn't even own the cow. It was one of the neighbor's cows, and he just lent her to us in exchange for something. I don't remember what, but probably beef, I'm guessing.
Joe: Running down the totals. That's Holsteins with 14, Jerseys with 9, Browns with 5, [unintelligible 00:02:10] with 3, Dutch belted with 2, Normandy with two, and one vote for a Guernsey named Taffy.
Eric: What Bandwagon sucker would say a Holstein?
Joe: Agreed.
Eric: Exactly.
Emily: Lots of them. 14 of them to be exact.
Eric: Get original. My goodness.
Emily: Yes, I kind of can't believe that this is our first Guernsey.
Eric: I know. That is surprising.
Emily: Wow. Well, shout out to Taffy in cow heaven.
Eric: Oh, Taffy.
Emily: Question number 2. What is your favorite breed of beef cattle?
Eric: Well, see, this is always a little bit of a family squabble a little tussle, if you will, because my family, my dad's family in particular back in the day was quite well known in the Hereford world. Kudos to Brad's background there. All of the anxiety, derivatives that they produced between, roughly the 1880s and the 19-, let's say the 1950s. They were quite well known in the Hereford world.
In fact, just a few years ago, my wife was visiting with some folks from the Hereford Association and they're like, "Oh, Mousel, do you know any of the Mousel families? She's like, well, I'm married to one of them."
They were my great uncles, the main ones in the Hereford deal. They were so excited. They sent me all kinds of Hereford paraphernalia and coats and jackets and shirts, and which, not that I would necessarily wear any, but it was quite flattering that even after all these years, they were still quite- remembered my relatives and whatnot.
Anyway, my wife's family, however, is quite involved in the Red Angus deal, which means that I am now involved in the Red Angus deal. It's always a little bit of-- I don't know that I really have a favorite, but I really enjoy, the history of the Herefords, the story of the Herefords, but now obviously a little more into the Red Angus and some of the Red Angus crosses and things like that
Joe: We need an answer. We need an answer--
Emily: Yes. That's not an answer.
Eric: [unintelligible 00:04:31] pin me down on this and then we email to my wife.
Joe: I know--
Bradley: You don't have to agree with your wife on your--
Emily: Okay, Bradley quiet. You're already electioneering. You are on razor-thin ice right now, with that Hereford bull background.
Eric: Okay. I will answer and I'll tell you why, I'm going to answer this way. My favorite beef breed in the whole wide world is a Red Angus, South Devon limousine cross. I'll tell you why, because I've been working on such a cross here at home, much to the dismay of others of the management committee. However, my daughter, who is nine, showed one of these crossed heifers at our county fair and won Supreme Champion.
Joe: Wow.
Emily: Wow.
Eric: That heifer will be on display this weekend at the Northeast Livestock Show in Brainerd. Hopefully, we'll do quite well. I think there's a lot of potential right there. The Red Angus is the base, so that's what I'm going with. That was a really long answer to a very simple question, but I like to be a little bit original.
Joe: Oh, yes. I like it. We have not broken out Angus into red and black, so I guess we need to know your opinion on that. We have--
Bradley: He said Red Angus.
Joe: I know, but we've grouped in everything into Angus, so should we break it out?
Eric: It's gone on long enough now. The silliness has gone on long enough now in the United States that I think you got to be specific. Why they ever separated red and black in the first place. I don't know, but, it's silliness if you ask me, but it's kind of been the standard since the 1950s. I guess an interesting note, we took a black bull to the county fair and won Champion Bull in the Red Angus class with a black bull because it was registered Red Angus.
Joe: I like that.
Eric: Right. That sounds kind of silly, but there was quite a to-do on what you do with a Black bull that's registered Red Angus. Do you show it with the Angus or do you show it with the Red Angus?
Joe: No, and I've seen that quite a bit in--
Eric: Oh, yes. It's becoming more common now, but that was a real shock to people up here in Bush and people couldn't understand why there would be a black one in the red class. The fair committee got together and decided, well, it should be shown in whatever it's registered as.
Joe: There you go. All right. Totals update, Black Angus with eight, Hereford with seven. Black Bali with four, Belted Galloway with two, Scottish Highlander with two, and then all with one Stabiliser, Gelvi, Brahman, [unintelligible 00:07:21], Singleton, Lori, Jersey, Normandy Shorthorn, and Red Angus.
Eric: There's only one Red Angus? Are you kidding me?
Joe: You're the sole vote so far?
Eric: In fairness, if you haven't been breaking it out before, I guess that--
Bradley: It's like black and white Holstein and the red and white. It's kind of the same.
Joe: See, so we're advocating that if we're going to do this on this side, then we have to go back and reduce the total for Holsteins is what Brad's saying.
Bradley: Yes, agreed. If we just take a few off it'll be fine.
Emily: I don't think that's right. I just think this is collusion to get Jersey higher up as Brad's video background has just been a rotating slideshow of Jersey cows after he took off the Hereford goal.
Eric: Was that supposed to subliminally get me to say Hereford earlier, the background?
Bradley: That's what I should do now. I should just try and do--
Eric: Oh, you should do a low project and see if that really influences people.
Bradley: Yes. I probably need RRB approval to do that.
Joe: Definitely. We got plenty to talk about today. Eric has been running around Northern Minnesota talking to people about the drought, and I know everyone's probably sick of hearing about it right now, but there's still a lot to do as we move into fall and winter here, and things that people need to do to make sure that they're not impacting their operation in a negative way for probably years down the road.
Eric's been running around talking to people, kind of getting a feel for what's going on in Northern Minnesota. Eric, what is the vibe that you're getting up there are? People, have they accepted the drought? Have they decided that they really do need to do some of these things we've been talking about? Are they getting rid of cows? What's going on in northern Minnesota?
Eric: Yes, it depends on where you're at and who you're talking to. Certainly, there are some people that have taken the necessary steps to put themselves in a position to really weather the thing out.
Having grown up in central and western Nebraska where this type of deal is pretty common, I can tell you that, just from my personal observation, the people that are the most resilient through these types of events, and droughts rarely come in groups of one-- Just because it was dry one year does not necessarily mean it's going to be wet next year. Right here in Grand Rapids where I'm at, this is the second year of substantially dry weather. My 70-year-old father-in-law said he's never seen it drier than it is right now.
I just live about a quarter of a mile off the Mississippi River, and I was over there this weekend and you could dan the river with your foot. It's dry all over. The folks, at least in my experience that have been the most resilient are the ones that recognize that we have an issue that needs to be dealt with and they deal with it before it really becomes a problem.
We're fortunate here in Minnesota because we have a lot of options that we don't necessarily have further west. If you watched what happened earlier this spring, there were guys out in the western Dakotas, Western Nebraska, Wyoming, they were culling cows in the first part of June and there were thousands and thousands and thousands of cull cows that went through those sail barns out west mostly in June.
Then it slacked off after the middle of July because they pretty much culled everything. They either sold out or they culled everything that they needed to because they recognized right away that we've got to have fewer mouths to feed this winter. From experience, they know that well if we don't get a certain amount of precipitation by the first or middle of June, more rain is not going to help.
We probably have a little bit more extended period here in Minnesota, but when we didn't have enough rain by August 1st, for sure we were done. That of course remains the case right now, but we are fortunate because we have a lot of annual crops that can be relied on for feed. We have a lot of annual crop residues that can be relied-- There's a lot of things we can do here that they don't necessarily have the option to out west.
Joe: As producers head into fall, Eric, what is your biggest piece of advice for them that they can do right now?
Eric: Just really encouraging folks that are going to need to thin things out a little bit for this winter to do it now. One of the real interesting things is to loosely track where a lot of these cull cows have been going. You'll find that, well, of course, some of them are going south to eastern Nebraska. Missouri's got had more rain and they got more grass than they know what to do with. Some of those cows certainly are going there.
One of the interesting observations is how many cows are being soaked up by feedlots because what's it been, 18 months since they've been able to turn a profit on a feeder calf? Even looking at calves bought today, 150 days from now are still upside down. They're soaking up these cull cows because that's really the only opportunity that they could even dream about of making a profit on right now. You guys know it, it's nothing to get a cull cow to gain four to five pounds a day. When are these cows going to hit the market? Right about the 1st of December.
Right now, we've got cull cow prices that are in the big 60s or the big 70s, even maybe the low 80s if they're good. I'll take 70 cents on a cull cow any day of the week, but as we get closer to December, that's going to keep going down and down and down. I have no crystal ball but I would not be surprised at all to see cold cows by December in the 40s because these cows got to go somewhere.
As a cull calf operator, if you have cows that need to go to town, they need to go now while the prices are still good. It's not going to get better. There's not going to be more feed magically appear. If they got to go, get rid of them. The sooner you do that, the better off you are.
Joe: You mentioned cull cows and what they're doing in the market and how prices are good and people need to jump on that. What's going on with calves?
Eric: As we just talked about, what's it been, 18 months or so since these feedlots have been able to turn a profit on these calves, and I cannot believe how these buyers are picking through these calves. As we think about the number of folks that maybe have already weaned their calves or are just thinking about doing it right now, some of them have already been weaned for a month.
A lot of folks don't have a lot of opportunities to background this year myself included because we're just not going to have the feed to do it, but don't be thinking you're just going to take these calves off the cow and send them the sale barn or you're going to get beat up pretty bad. We've been seeing that for about the last month.
All the same rules still apply. They got to be 45 days weaned. They got to be pre-backed. They got to have all the trimmings or you're going to see some pretty healthy discounts, about $20 on calves right off the cow. $10 to $15 on anything that's not pre-backed. We're seeing and we have seen the last couple of years, so probably not that much different, but I think it's starting a little earlier than normally the discount on heifers. It's running $10 to $20 right now which it has the last couple of years, but usually not until into November do we start seeing big spreads on the heifer discounts.
As you think about marketing calves, I think those are some things that a person really needs to keep in mind is even if you haven't weaned yet, let's start getting these calves set up to be preconditioned. Let's get them weaned off so they can be off the cow for a while before you take them in. Get that second round of shots in them. You got to do everything right. You got to have the documentation because these buyers are picking through them, and anything that they don't particularly like is not doing very well.
Now, that being said, a lot of the farmer feeders from Iowa, Nebraska, and areas like that have not really jumped in the game yet. They're busy chopping silage. That's certainly having an impact that maybe the buyers just aren't quite there yet. Nonetheless, I don't anticipate it getting much better in terms of the discounts just simply because these commercial yards just can't turn a profit on these calves. They can't be buying anything that's even questionable because they can't afford to treat them. They can't afford to do a lot of it. They just got to be able to go in, get to the bunk and start eating.
Joe: One of the things that I noticed and I've thought about this for a long time and it's something I used to try to communicate to my clients, all these things that we do in terms of preconditioning, backgrounding, trying to get calves bunk broke ahead of time, a lot of times you do see a better price for those cattle, but even if you didn't, there's still value there in being able to build a reputation for cattle that perform because it protects you in times like this when things are tight because people are going to be looking for your cattle and knowing they're going to perform and knowing that you have built a reputation for cattle that don't need to be treated and they hit the ground running in the feedlot.
It's worth it and it needs to pencil out for you to do it in terms of just price on the marketing end, but there's still value even if you don't make a ton of money off of it, or even if you just break even because of the reputation pushes you through these times when it is pretty rough at the sale barn or wherever else you're selling calves. Unfortunately, the drought has highlighted some of these practices that we should be doing every year or preferably would be doing every year, but it's made it even more important this year as we move into winter.
When we talk about culling cows, open cows, that comes down to preg checking early if you can. That's your number one cull criteria for cows. If you can do it early, get it done now as who needs to go to town. That's the way to go because you can't sit on these cows and allow them to eat resources that are even more precious this year.
Eric, we were talking the other day and you said there's been some tough decisions on things that you normally do every winter that you're just not going to do this year. Can you walk me through how you guys came to the conclusion that maybe you're not going to have feeder calves this year?
Eric: Well, we typically put up about, I don't know, it's probably 30 acres of corn silage. We typically do 15, 16 tons on silage. That's pretty good for this part of the country. If you just go by the old rule of thumb about a ton per linear foot of plant, we're probably looking at about six to seven tons silage this year. The last several years that I've had calves in here, probably about 60% to 70% of the silage goes to those calves.
We've never fed silage to cows before, and so as the summer went along and we saw that our hay crop was about 25% of normal we knew we were in trouble. One thing that really held us back is we summer cattle all over the county. We don't have all our pastures right there at home. We really thought hard about trying to get these cows pre-checked in July. That just really wasn't feasible. We tried to do something again in August, couldn't get anybody to come out.
When we really took a look at it, we were not as ready as we think we are and some of these areas have no facilities or anything, so we would've to bring all the facilities over and just little things like that. We were just talking about it's not something we normally have to do. We really got caught on that deal. We just got them pre-checked last week, which is still two months ahead of normal
When we were looking at where we were at with silage, where we were at with hay, just to feed the cows, we're already going to have to buy some roughage in. I was just there's no way we can feed any calves. You look at the return on these calves, these feeder calves, it's been pretty good the last couple of years.
If I take my own advice, I don't know if it's going to happen this year, but I think this calf market's going to get pretty hot. Fires in Grand Island and things like that aren't helping anything. Eventually, they're going to run out of cattle, particularly with the number of cows that have gone to town this summer. I just thought long term that keeping the cows together was more valuable long term for us than liquidating cows so we could feed a few feeder calves this fall.
Joe: Do you think that's what's playing into some of the denial we're seeing across the state of people waiting to get rid of cows so long that they know that the calf market's probably going to turn around and they'd really like to hang on to cows?
Eric: I guess that kind of depends on who you talk to. As a whole, no, I don't think so. I think a lot of it is just simply a lot of these guys are older and they're afraid to get out of it because they won't get back in. Nobody's said that per se, but that's kind of the vibe I get from a lot of guys is just, they're like, if I got rid of part or all of my cows, I don't know what I would do. Say this goes on for a couple years, some of them are going to be pretty close to 80 and they're like, am I going to buy cows back at that point? No. For them it's a conundrum that isn't necessarily economically-driven, driven more by personal things.
Emily: It's mental. I'm kind of glad that you brought that up, Eric, because I get asked a lot about, with the drought, what does that look like from a stress standpoint for farmers? I think you really hit the nail on the head with that in that and for older farmers. I think for a lot of farmers of any age, that is a real concern that they have. Our emotions and our mental thoughts can really influence the business decisions that we make. I think that that's not talked about enough, so I'm glad you brought it up and had to drag my soapbox out really quick to make that point. [chuckles]
Eric: No, I think that is a real issue that is hard to address because it's hard to get anybody to admit that it's really bothering them.
Emily: Yes.
Eric: A lot of guys don't want to admit defeat. It's really hard for me personally to talk to people around here about this because it is so ingrained in my upbringing that it's not a big deal to sell cows in a drought. That's just part of the business. If you've never ever had to do that before, I can come across as maybe a little bit callous. I know that my wife and her dad have accused me of such, just being too quick to sell cows. Oh, we've put so much work into this. I'm like, "Well, it's not admitting defeat, you're just managing the current situation you're in." If you didn't grow up with that, that's not that easy to get in your head that, this is just part of it. It's not really not. To me, it's not that big of a deal to have to sell half your herd. My dad and uncle did it five or six times just as I was growing up.
Emily: I wouldn't be surprised also if for some of these people, they're thinking to themselves, we got through a couple of rounds of bad prices, and we got through COVID, and maybe got through some other severe weather stuff and now it's like, "Drought isn't going to take me out." Minnesota farmers, they're going to dig in their heels in.
Eric: All cow guys are. If you weren't stubborn, you wouldn't be in this business. The other observation that I've made is, I don't know how many people have told me, well, it's going to rain eventually. It always does. I'm like, "Well yes, someday it will, but I'm not talking about the next five years. I'm saying, what are you going to do between now and December?" "Oh, well, yes, I hadn't really thought about that, I guess.
Joe: One of the best lessons I learned from my economics professor in vet school was that not all decisions are driven by economics. There's a lot of things that you need to be paying attention on the farm as a veterinarian that have nothing to do with economics. If there's any young veterinarians listening, that is a huge, huge lesson to learn. Don't learn it the hard way. Try not to, by just absolutely creating a terrible situation with a client because they're angry at you for not being able to see the fact that it's not an economic decision.
Keep that in mind as you're out there, young veterinarians, if you're listening. It's one of the things, being able to recognize that that kind of thing is what builds that trust for you as a veterinarian. Knowing that okay, that yes, the farm is a huge piece of this and we're trained to look at economics and make sure the decision works for the farm that way, but you have to consider everything else going on on the farm, whether that's kids, whether it's something as simple as it's football season and the kids got to get to practice at a certain time so there's less time during the day and there's going to be sacrifices on the farm so you can make Friday night football games, whatever it is, there's always something else going on.
I like what you said, Eric, about it's not admitting defeat, you're managing the circumstances, but I think what we have in Minnesota is a lot of leftover dairymen that are used to not getting rid of very many cows at any given time.
I saw this on the feedlot side all the time where you've got converted dairies to feedlots where when that first high-risk feeder calf dies, these guys are devastated. It's tough to get expectations managed correctly in those situations because they're expecting a 1% death loss on 500 head of high-risk feeder calves, out of the southeast. That's not realistic, but it's how their brain has been trained in Minnesota dairy country to not have to deal with that. It's the same thing with the drought. The exact same thing.
Eric: Yes, that's very true. I hadn't thought about that. I think you're absolutely right that some of it is just a holdover from a lot of these guys before they ever got into beef cows had dairy cows for 20 years and that's what they grew up with.
Emily: I was just going to say a quick comment in that it can be hard for former dairymen to really get out of that mindset. That's a learned behavior over 20, 30 years.
Joe: For sure. Eric, you mentioned corn silage and how you've never fed corn silage to your cows. What are you thinking about as you start that process?
Eric: Well, it's not really something I want to do, but I'm going to have to. There's no real management concerns. It's more of a principle of mine more than anything. If a cow can't hustle up a living on her own, then I don't have much use for them. The fact is we're not going to have much choice this year. Given the shortage of hay, I haven't actually done it yet, but I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and bring in some corn stove and have it ground up and then mix corn stove and corn silage just to try and bulk it up a little bit and probably have to feed a little distillers grains with it, something of that nature.
Considering the state of affairs, dry distillers is still fairly reasonably priced, so I'm not too worried about that. It's more of the cost obviously of getting the corn stove in here. The corn stove itself I don't think it's going to be that expensive, but I don't know how far I'm going to have to truck it yet.
Joe: Well, and you guys don't have a TMR, right?
Eric: No, we don't. I've got a little- I don't even know what the hell you call them, but one of those chain feeders. I'm not feeding a 63 mega-cow ration here [laughs], just feeding a bunch of dumb cows. We'll just throw it all in there and just kind of let that thing mix it up a little bit as it comes out the shoot. I think that will be fine.
The bigger issue is when we start calving, and of course, we're a seed stock deal for the most part, so we tend to calve a lot earlier than we really should, end of February through March and April. I'm anticipating, I don't really know because we've never done it before, but I'm anticipating one of the issues is going to be our place gets pretty muddy starting about the middle of March. If we're having to feed silage in some of these traps where we hold these cows, the closeup cows, during calving, I think that's going to get to be an issue. We're going to try and save all our grass hay for when we start calving so we don't have to try and get tractors and feeder wagons through pens with relatively narrow gates when it's starting to get really soft and muddy. We'll see how that goes.
Joe: Those are the kind of things that I think hopefully everyone's thinking that far ahead because there's going to be some decisions that get made now and in the winter they're going to affect everything in the spring and probably into next summer. I'm hoping everyone's thinking that far ahead.
Eric: A lot of times, you don't really know until you're out there and you try and figure it out. You figure out what's working and what's not. One of the other things that we've really thought about was, when you really do the math on corn, even at $5 a bushel, that's cheaper than a lot of roughage.
I did some research years ago on replacing roughage with the energy from corn. Obviously, the research on the physiological aspect of it has been done repeatedly. What I was particularly interested in was the cow psychology, I guess, of how will cows respond to being fed 1.3 or 1.4% of their body weight on a dry matter basis. Even though all of their nutrient requirements are being met, just the fact that they feel hungry all the time, what are they going to do?
You find out that they adapt to that pretty quick. The first 10 days is pretty ugly because they are not happy with you, because they really feel like they're starving. In a lot of cases, even you cut the roughage back 30, 40%, and they're still gaining weight. They just have to get used to not being completely plumb full of roughage all the time. Once they get through that transition period, they actually do quite well. In a lot of cases you have to be careful not to get them too fast.
Joe: That's my other concern as we start looking at other ways to feed cows this winter that involve things other than hay. I'm worried about us going too far the other way. It's definitely a concern that body conditions are going to be too thin coming into spring and that'll affect us getting rebred. There's also the current concern on the other end that we're going to come in because everyone's trying to feed corn instead of hay or too many calories, really.
Eric: I believe there's going to be a lot of light test-weight grain available this fall and winter, and there's going to be a lot of guys get into that. It's a great feed and it's going to be potentially very reasonably priced in comparison to just regular number two yellow. What a lot of folks don't understand is that that actually has a higher energy content than just your standard 56-weight corn. If you're not finishing cattle, it's not a real big concern in terms of shorting them on fiber. You can get some cows pretty fat on screenings and light test weight and things like that. Guys just going to have to be a little bit careful.
Joe: Another reason to work with a nutritionist. I don't know if I've ever said that as much as I have this year. Again, strange to hear a veterinarian just advocating constantly for involvement of your nutritionist, but it it's real. If you're going to find one, this is the year to do it.
Eric: Yes, right. We're trying to figure out a way to incorporate some momentum. Again, like you pointed out, we don't have a TMR, so just mixing, it's not really going to be an option. Not typically something we do. When you look in a properly balanced diet, properly delivered diet, Rumensin can save you a lot of feed, a lot of feed.
Host: I'm adamant that it should be in every ration. I think I'm safe saying that. I really do think that's a pretty safe blanket statement.
Eric: Yes. It's a safe thing to say, but the reality is that most cow-calf guys don't really have a methodology of being able to deliver it very effectively other than in a free choice mineral. How many of them actually feed mineral in the wintertime?
Emily: I have what may be a dumb question, but maybe some other people listening don't know this. Dr. Joe, do you need a prescription for Rumensin or you can just--
Joe: No. Rumensin is an ionophore, so it's not labeled as a human important medication like some of our other feed additive medications. No, you don't need a VFD or Veterinary Feed Directive for Rumensin. The thing you have to be careful with is that Rumensin cannot be fed with other things that you might feed in the diet such as CTC. You can't put in CTC and Rumensin together. That's actually illegal. There's other options for that. You need to talk to your veterinarian and your nutritionist to get that figured out.
Eric: So much of that is governed at the feed mill rather than at the producer level is my understanding.
Joe: A lot of times, yes, the VFT is going to catch all of that because if you ask for CTC, the first thing I'm going to look at is do you have Rumensin or Bovatec interaction. Seems ridiculous. That's how it's labeled. You can feed CTC with Bovatec, but you cannot feed CTC with Rumensin.
I think we've given everybody plenty to think about. That's a lot of information, just kind of an update on what's happening in Northern Minnesota. Some things to think about. Try to look ahead. Get rid of cows now. Check them now if you can. Thanks for being on today, Eric. Really appreciate it.
Eric: Yes. Anytime.
Joe: Comments, questions, scathing rebuttals to today's episode, they go to themoosroom@umn.edu,
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: Find us on Twitter @UMNMoosroom and
@ UMNFarmSafety. No more plugs. Thank you for listening, everybody. We'll catch you guys next week.
Emily: Take care of yourselves.
Host: Bye
Emily: Bye.
[music]
Eric: What bandwagon sucker would say a Holstein.
[00:35:11] [END OF AUDIO]
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