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We briefly talked about bull safety with Micheal J. Cruse PhD last week and we all agreed it needed an episode all to itself. Strong opinions as always, and plenty of entertainment. 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.
Dr. Joe Armstrong: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. Dr. Joe Armstrong here. We got one thing to talk about before we jump into this episode. We are working on a study, a collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Beef Council. What we're trying to do is map the pathways that beef calves take from birth to market in the state of Minnesota.
The first part of that is a survey that we need input from producers in the state of Minnesota to give us so that we can figure out where our calves are moving and how they're working through the system here in our state. The goal is to use this information to further target research that is relevant to Minnesota producers. We need your input. Please, if you see the survey, it's going to be popping up everywhere. Email, social media, you're going to see it all the time.
Please take time to take that survey. If you don't want to have to find a link in social media or an email, just head straight to the survey at z.umn.edu/beefpathways. It should take you about 5 to 10 minutes to fill out the survey. It's very, very important to us to be able to help us target our research as we move forward with this project. Head to z.umn.edu/beefpathways to take the survey. Thank you for listening. Please enjoy the episode.
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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 here with you today. Just Brad, Emily, and myself, we're talking bull safety. This came up in the Potpourri episode. I said that really stupid. In the--
Emily: Potpourri.
Joe: In the Potpourri episode with Mike Cruz. We talked about bull safety and really, we got a big, big opinion from Brad Heins on that one. Sorry, Dr. Bradley J. Heins gave his opinion on bulls and dairy bulls being on the farm.
Emily: He was very passionate about it.
Joe: Very passionate.
Dr. Bradley J Heins: Don't I always give my opinion?
Joe: Yes, it's nothing different, we're used to it by now here in The Moos Room.
Bradley: It is based on science. It's all science-based.
Joe: It's very true, it's very true. Today, we figured we better follow up on that conversation and talk about bulls specifically and trying to be safe around them. Luckily, Emily's here. She's the farm and safety regional educator. Not local educator, but regional educator with state--
Emily: Don't you forget it.
Joe: Yes, statewide responsibilities for farm safety. She might not be on the dairy team, but she is definitely-
Emily: [laughs] But I'm on the dairy team in your heart.
Joe: -still in our hearts. We're going to just talk about bull safety today and get through that. There's actually a decent amount to talk about. I think we should probably start with just basic cattle handling. That's part of all of this, and all of that all plays into it. Give us a little overview of cattle handling.
Emily: The basics of cattle handling and the basic reasons why you do it are to help keep the cattle safe, to help keep yourself safe, and you want to reduce injury to animals, you want to reduce damage to equipment and facilities. We need to remember that cattle are still a animal of prey, and so they will have that fight or flight response when they feel that they are under some sort of threat. The biggest goal always is to not cause that fight or flight response.
Joe: Absolutely. On the veterinary side of that, we're talking about health as well. Not just the injuries and the things that can happen to cattle at that time and that happen to people at that time, but that stress created by handling has a huge effect on their health long-term or longer term than just in that moment. That can affect vaccine efficacy. That can affect your outbreaks of disease in the feedlot or anywhere you're going to be handling cattle.
It's very, very important to remember all those basics. There's all sorts of resources on how to handle cattle correctly. BQA is a huge source of cattle handling knowledge.
Emily: For dairy producers, UMASH, the Upper Midwest Egg Safety and Health Center has a really great series of videos on dairy handling. They have videos on handling in the milking parlor, all sorts of great things. You can find that at umash.umn.edu.
Joe: I don't think we're going to stall out on talking about cattle handling in general too much. I think there's a lot of resources out there for producers to do that. It's really hard to convey all of that kind of thing on a podcast where you're just hearing us talk. It's very, very important to have visual aids to be able to understand how to move cattle correctly and how to do that safely for everybody. We're just going to jump into bulls and why we worry about bulls so much. It has to do with the things that dangle between their legs. They have those and other cattle do not.
Emily: Bulls are dicks because they have balls.
Joe: Exactly. The biggest thing for me is a mindset. You really want to have the correct mindset around bulls. It starts with never fully trusting a bull to act in a certain way. They can be unpredictable. The risk and the danger of that bull, if he decides to do something, is too great to just totally trust him and get complacent.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. I think that that's a mark of a lot of people. A lot of people that have had cattle for a long time. You get used to your animals, you feel like you've developed a bond with them, and so you slowly let your guard down, get complacent. That can cause a lot of problems when you're being complacent and then you don't pay as much attention and you should always be aware of where the bull is, in my mind.
Even if the bull is in the pen and you're not in the pen with it, so be aware that it's there. What corner is it at? What is it doing? I just think that bulls sometimes are a little bit of a ticking time bomb, in my mind, and so you just need to really be vigilant.
Joe: I think we need to definitely make sure that everyone knows we're not talking about just dairy bulls. We're talking about beef bulls as well. This is all bulls. Yes, dairy bulls tend to be more aggressive and have a few other issues, especially everyone's got their breeds that they tell you to watch out for, but we're talking all bulls here. All bulls have this potential. Pretty much, all bulls are way too big, way too strong to take chances like that.
I think the other thing we need to point out is that I don't want anyone to be afraid or terribly scared. That's also the incorrect mindset. The thing that I try to tell people when I'm teaching and especially when I was teaching and I was working in the auction markets with all these bulls that are at the barn for a reason, usually a lot of those reasons is because they're too aggressive. You want to be cautious, but not fearful. That's the big takeaway. Always have an abundance of caution, but you don't-- Being totally afraid and timid about things is also a great way to get hurt as well.
Emily: They can sense the fear.
Joe: Absolutely, absolutely. They're made to do that. We've already talked about it. You need to be constantly vigilant. You need to be looking out for that bull, knowing where they are at all times, and you need to be very, very aware of your surroundings because you always have to have an out. You don't want to end up in a spot where you have nowhere to go. It's very obvious in some situations where you don't want to be inside a pen where there's nowhere to get up or get out of there quickly, but that also applies to pasture.
I always think about guys that have pasture-based dairy and they may or may not be using AI. Maybe that's where part of Brad's strong opinion on bulls comes from, but you don't want to get caught out in the open pasture with a bull out there either. That is a bad spot to be.
Bradley: I usually ask a producer if they have a bull out in their pasture before I tend to venture off into their pasture just because I don't want to get caught out in the middle of the pasture and all the cows run away and there's just me and a bull staring each other down. I don't trust any bull, doesn't matter if people are like, "Oh, well, he's friendly. He shouldn't hurt." Hmm, yes, well, I don't think so.
Emily: Especially, you know they're not used to you and you smell different. Cows have a very powerful sense of smell, so it wouldn't take much to get him mad.
Bradley: They're probably coming after me anyways. They see me on the pasture and it's like, "He's the one. That's who we're going to go after today."
Emily: He's dead.
Joe: I think there's something to be said for that newness like Em said, they're not used to you. We joke about it as veterinarians, but those green coveralls seem to just be a huge target for angry mama cows and bulls to come looking for. I've been in some bad situations, especially early in my career, where I was thinking a lot about the medicine and what I needed to do for that cow, and I was not thinking enough about what I needed to ask before getting into some of these situations.
I've been stranded in the pasture in that situation Brad was talking about, staring down a bull, and it's not a good feeling, not a good feeling at all. At one time, quick story time here, I was out treating in grass tetany on a beef farm. Grass tetany being a lack of available magnesium from eating too much really lush young grass, so you have to IV a bottle of CMPK to give them some magnesium. I'm standing over this beef cow who's not all that happy, and then the bull comes over. I've been out on this farm before and I know that they take a lot of pride in having really docile animals. I was very surprised to see him not all that happy, but there's not a whole lot of places I could go. I'm in the middle of the pasture.
I ended up basically curling up with this cow, pretty much with her tied down with a halter, giving her the IV. I curled up right next to her, almost letting this cow spoon with me basically, trying to stay away from this bull. He sat there and watched me the whole time. I had to ran that IV, got it done, got my bucket ready to go, kick the halter off.
When you get in that spot, you're really not supposed to run. That's just a reason for that bull to chase you. You try to slowly back away, but I tell you what, when you're full of adrenaline and that bull starts coming for you, you're going to run, there's no way around it. I ran like crazy, threw my bucket at him with everything in it, took off for the fence and, of course, I'm in a pasture. As I was getting close to the fence, it's a single strand hot wire. That's the only thing I got. I baseball slide underneath that thing and pop up running.
Thank God that bull respected that fence, because I was done if he didn't. It was not a good situation to be in. It's not something you want to get into. They're way faster than you. They're way stronger than you. They're way quicker than you think they are. Just make sure you take the time to look at the situation and evaluate everything ahead of time and do the best you can to avoid getting in that situation in the first place.
Emily: Let's reinforce the learning gains here. If you were in that situation today, what would you do differently?
Joe: The first thing like Brad said is he always asks where the bull is and is he out there? I tend to, as a veterinarian, I ignore all those comments of like Brad was talking about, "Oh, he's really nice", or "He's just a giant teddy bear," all those things. Completely throw that out the window. It means nothing to you when you're in a situation like that. You just need to know where he is, and you need to ask for help instead of being allowed to be alone in that position.
I know that farmer would have been more than willing to bring the quad out and just watch my back for me if I'd asked for it, but I was in a situation where I couldn't get ahold of him, had no cell phone service, it was just a really dumb situation. Knowing to ask if there's a bull out there and being willing to just say you're not comfortable with the situation and ask for help, that's the big key.
Emily: Love it. Very good.
Joe: Two thumbs up.
Emily: Two thumbs way up for that, Dr. Joe.
Joe: It becomes important on the dairies because we forget that there's still bulls on dairies. There's actually quite a few bulls still on dairies. Despite our best efforts to not have that be that way, it just happens. You need to remember to ask.
Emily: Right. Especially on the dairy side too, it's a safety issue for the cows as well as the people. It's like you said, dairy bulls are typically a little more aggressive and they're large, especially you get a big Holstein bull out there. Yes, they can injure cows and we can get all into diseases and stuff like that, but--
Joe: The big thing on bulls, we've talked about mean bulls and aggressive bulls a lot already today, but I would say there's actually more injuries caused by people just being in a bad spot around a bull that doesn't necessarily want to hurt them. They're just so big and so strong. They break stuff. They fight with each other, which is very dangerous for everybody involved that's around it. They break gates and gates come flying at you at a hundred miles an hour.
It's about having all that kind of awareness too. You're not looking just for that aggressive bull who's going to try to actually kill you, you're looking for all that other stuff that could also hurt you and potentially kill you just because they're so big and they break stuff very easily.
Emily: I like what you said, Joe, about that it's not always necessarily that their goal is to hurt you, but like I said before, fight or flight response. Yes, some will fight and come after you and be aggressive, but most of them I would find, they go with more of a flight response, but due to size and other factors, they can knock stuff around and still hurt people even if that's not their intention.
Joe: Yes. Some of these bulls know how big they are too. They discover that they're massive. Especially on the beef side when they've been around a while, they know how big they are and they know they can break things. You have to watch for that. Again, it's about being situationally aware, having the right mindset going into it, remembering regardless of how comfortable you feel in a situation, making sure that you're constantly watching, and not becoming complacent around these bulls.
For me, there are some other things you can do if you're going to raise bulls yourself. I really don't like bulls that are raised in individual pens because they don't necessarily find out where they fit in the whole dynamic of being a cow. Raised alone in a pen all the time, they lose their place in everything and they're more likely to see you as a threat or a herd member rather than knowing that the other cows are a cow.
We see that same thing with actually bottle-raised llamas. I don't know if you guys know about this, but bottle-raised male llamas are dangerous, absolutely dangerous. They get really aggressive and they do this really dangerous torpedo launch that they do. I don't know how else to describe it. They run at you full speed. They jump in the air and they tuck their front feet in and they just try to smoke you. It's really dangerous. It's basically a 250 to 350-pound animal running at you full speed and just launching at you.
Emily: My gosh.
Joe: There's your weird facts for today. Don't bottle-raise crias. Don't bottle-raise male llamas.
Emily: Lesson learned. Thank you.
Joe: Lesson learned.
Emily: The Moos Room fun facts.
Joe: Fun facts in The Moos Room.
Bradley: Yes, I think there's lots of other things we can talk about when we talk about bulls. I'm the geneticist, so I'm going to talk about the genetics of the bulls. There's lots of other safety stuff that you-- We've all got to be mindful of the safety, but I think that sometimes in the dairy world, those bulls can be lower genetic animals.
Another thing, have your bull tested if you're going to use it, because I've heard lots of stories from all over the US where people buy bulls to breed their cows and then they realize they put it out with 50 heifers or cows and realize, "Oh, I got two pregnant," and the bull is not working. I think there's a few other factors to consider.
Emily: The bull's working, his equipment isn't.
Bradley: That's right.
Joe: He might be doing something but nothing's happening.
Bradley: Genetics show that those bulls are probably a little inferior to AI bulls. In the beef world, maybe it's a little bit different. Some in the beef world too, you've got to watch what bulls you pick based on your genetics. Just because it's a bull doesn't mean it's going to have great offspring.
Joe: That's a good point. I don't know how we skipped past the whole genetics topic of even just bull safety with genetics. Selecting for docility never used to be a thing. We had very mean bulls and high-strung cows because of it. Since we've put an emphasis on selecting for docility, it makes a huge difference in a herd knowing that you're just selecting for cows that just tend to be calmer and less mean.
I think that now's the time to get on the soapbox and plugin that you need to be getting rid of those mean cows and paying attention to docility score when you're selecting your bulls because even the thing that I hear in practice all the time is that you go out to take this calf and usually I hear about it at weaning time or when we're working calves is, this calf has no ear tags, still has his testicles, and you're like, "Why didn't this get done?"
It's because mom is pissed off all the time and she's this angry cow and you can't be around her. That cow needs to go. It's not worth having that cow around. I don't know what happened in the last two to three years, but that conversation has become much easier to convince the farmer that it's just not worth it. People are getting rid of those animals a lot, and it makes a huge difference.
I think the thing that we overlook too is that one really uptight cow can wind everybody else up. If you remove her from the situation, all of a sudden the entire herd is better and calmer and easier to work. I think people are starting to realize that. It's good to see that people are just not dealing with that regardless of the fact that they always say she has a great calf and that's a justification for keeping her, it's still not worth it. Just get her out of there.
Emily: Right. If you remember, Bradley, when we had our Potpourri episode with Michael Cruz PhD, [unintelligible 00:20:27] when we were talking about what we think the biggest issue in farm safety is, and do you remember what I said? What was that, Joe?
Joe: The people.
Emily: The people. People I think are the biggest farm safety issue, they're my biggest farm safety concern, and that applies to bull safety as well. Joe, as you were saying, we need to make sure it falls on the people to be paying attention to know where the bull is, to understand where do I have an escape route if I need it, all of those things.
I'm feeling a little dramatic today, so I'm going to say I think it is pretty reckless when a farmer tells a vet or somebody else, oh, the bull's really friendly. That is a reckless thing to do. You're putting somebody in danger just by having that attitude. I know that that sounds a little bit harsh, but again, I am dramatic and mean, so that's all I'm going to say about that.
Bradley: That's right. The Jersey bull out in the pen is not friendly. Is not friendly.
Joe: I don't care what you think, it's not.
Emily: Yes, so don't even say it. Even if you feed him an apple every day, doesn't matter.
Joe: Doesn't matter at all. That's a great point. I think one of the things that I saw and practice a lot especially like I said at the auction markets when we're working, we would have bull sales where we would have 200, 250 bulls come in and they're all coming in as singles for the most part and they're alone. They're already there for a reason. Like I said, sometimes it's age, sometimes it's size, but sometimes it's because they're mean. Some of these guys who have been working cattle for 40 years, they know all these rules. They know how to stay safe, and they do some of these things without thinking about it.
When you're just starting out it's really nice to have someone like that, but you also have to make sure that you know when someone's getting too complacent and too comfortable, because that's something that can happen when who's been around cattle a lot too, so just having someone who is constantly looking out for you. I like working in pairs in situations like that where someone is really always watching your back and helping you out and making sure that you have the right tools around proper gates, quick closing gates, and that you're confident in.
Then always having a stick or something in your hand. That helps direct the traffic of the bull and helps him concentrate on where he's supposed to go. It's really dangerous in certain situations and weird things happen, you got to be ready for it.
Emily: Yes. That's a great point, Joe. I would say pens with bulls and grain bins, never go in alone.
Joe: Just thinking one step ahead of and looking at what could happen is always what I'm looking at when I'm coming into the situation whether it's bulls or not, and looking at cattle, and especially looking at when we're working cattle. Well, what if someone jumps a gate? Do I have the gate closed that's beyond that, so it isn't a big deal if they do jump something?
For me, it's knowing that that way out is secure and maybe even knowing that there's two outs if you need it. I've been in bad spots in that auction market where the only thing that saved me was that I left the gate behind me unlatched, and I could get through it in time, and it's because something else failed and you have to have the backup plan ready to go. I think that's a pretty nice short, sweet episode.
Emily: This is adorable. Potpourri. [laughs]
Joe: Potpourri. That'll probably be why it's at the end just us saying that over and over again.
Emily: The supercut of potpourri.
Joe: Yes. Brad hasn't said it yet [crosstalk]-
Emily: Yes. Brad, say it.
Joe: -part of it.
Bradley: Potpourri.
Emily: No. Say it the fancy way.
Bradley: Potpourri.
Emily: Yes. Amazing.
Joe: Okay. Perfect. All right. That is going to be a wrap for this episode. There's a ton of resources to look at this. Cattle handling basics is definitely where you need to go. Like Emily said, there's the UMASH website on the dairy side. Definitely check out BQA for basic cattle handling. There's all sorts of resources out there, so thank you for listening. Check out our website extension.umn.edu. Comments, questions, scathing rebuttals, send them to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: Check us out on Facebook @UMNBeef and @UMNDairy. Throw a like when you get a chance. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll catch you next week.
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Emily: Bye. The supercut of potpourri.
Joe: Potpourri episode in the Potpourri episode with Mike Cruz.
Emily: Potpourri.
Joe: Potpourri.
Bradley: Potpourri.
Joe: Potpourri.
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[00:25:22] [END OF AUDIO]
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