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Brad walks us through what is going on in Morris at the dairy. With the wet spring and plenty of pasture, what is his plan for forages this summer and going into spring? Listen to find out! Cheers. Happy 4th!
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 moos]
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG 3 are here. Bradley is in his studio. We'll call it his office, wo we can actually hear him this week, which is very nice. He won't be breaking up or driving on the road, which is good because it is a Bradley episode.
Emily: Yay.
Joe: Dr. Bradley J. Heins, Ph.D. tenure professor episode where we talk about what's going on up at Morris. How are you doing, Brad?
Bradley: Oh, doing great. It's sunny and hot out. Was hoof-trimming our whole herd today, so we did all of that, too.
Joe: Hoof-trimming when you have a good sweat going is not great. Hoof-trimming with all those little shards of hoof flying everywhere and you're sweating in the dust. At the end of the day, you're just covered head to toe in grit of hoof.
Emily: Same with clipping cattle because then all the little [crosstalk] stick to you, or if you're putting up small square bales of alfalfa, also the same thing when it's really leafy.
Joe: Do you have a swimming pool at the dairy yet that you guys can cool off in, or what's going on?
Bradley: No, I should, though. I just need to write a grant to do it. I bet you I could come up with some creative reason why we should put a swimming pool.
Emily: You could do it as a quality of life angle and introduce that because then you could write me into the grant, too.
Bradley: You could come do some mental health stuff with my pool.
Joe: It could be a benefit of working at the Morris Dairy is that you have access to this pool.
Bradley: Exactly.
Joe: I'm in, let's start digging a hole.
Emily: I used to be a lifeguard and a water safety instructor, so I taught swimming lessons.
Bradley: Me, too.
Emily: We could totally do water aerobics classes.
Joe: Oh, community involvement.
Bradley: Stress relief day at the Morris Pool.
Emily: Love that.
Joe: Sounds good. There is a pool there right now, but it is just a manure storage lagoon. Not very fun to swim in.
Emily: Please don't swim in that.
Bradley: If people want to know trimming, we trimmed 236 cows. We started at 7:00 this morning and we're done by 1:30.
Joe: That's really good.
Emily: Wow.
Bradley: We had a couple of people come in and they just do the whole herd every six months. Before that, we used to have a lot of lameness, and in the conventional herd it felt like some days we were going through bottles of Excede and Excenel like it was going out of style. We started to hoof trim. We just trim everything, all of our lactating cows every six months, whether they need it or not. Today, out of 236 cows, we only blocked one cow.
Emily: Wow.
Joe: That's really good.
Bradley: It's been a pretty big benefit to us. It costs money, but I think in the long run it's much better for us. We just don't have the lame cows anymore,
Joe: That's awesome.
Emily: It probably saves you money, actually.
Bradley: Of course. Especially with the organics when it's tough. If they have something, there's not all kinds of stuff you can do with an organic cow that gets lame or some other foot problems. There are some things.
Emily: Preventative care, right, Dr. Joe?
Joe: Management.
Bradley: Exactly. All comes down to management.
Joe: Well, the purpose of today is we've had a much different year this year than last year. We talked about some of the things that Brad was doing on the dairy last year with the drought and looking at what do you do with forages, what do you plant, what are some strategies when you're short on rain. Now, we've gotten considerably hotter lately, but this spring was wet and we have a completely different situation this year. We're looking to get an update from Bradley on what did they do different with how wet it was. What has changed, what did they had to adjust because the weather is completely different this year? Brad, give us an overview. What's going on on the forage side?
Bradley: Well, we started grazing the first week of May because we had so much rain that the pastures grew like crazy. We were really moving our cows through the pasture really fast because trying to keep up with the grass was really difficult. It still is. I have pastures that are heading out right now that we're trying to get back to a second time and we have 220 milking cows. We have both the organic and conventional herd out grazing now. There's been so much grass. That's been a good benefit to us to be able to do that. Our pastures are really productive now. At least some of them, a few of them we're going to have to rethink. One other thing that we've done is we've had rye.
We planted winter rye last year, so we were able to graze winter rye. We did that about two weeks ago, so early June. We had 14 acres of winter rye that we were grazing. That caused some of the other pastures to grow a lot faster and get out of control. It was just a benefit to have some of that grazing and provide a lot of forage for the spring.
Joe: You said you couldn't keep up with the grass. Have you had to get to the point where you're cutting some of those pastures and making hay instead, or what have you had to do there?
Bradley: We've had to cut two of them. We just chalked it for silage, I guess. Some grass silage to help keep ahead of it. Otherwise, it would go to seed and probably not be as high quality but that might be okay. Our cows aren't being supplemented with TMR. We haven't supplemented cows since early May, so they've been running on 100% grass for almost two months now. That's a good thing we're saving on stored feed, too.
Joe: Absolutely. Tell me what that did to the tank. What happens to your bulk tank when you guys went to grass that heavily and you weren't even supplementing, no TMR, it's just straight pasture.
Bradley: That milk production went up about eight pounds a cow when we went to the really good lush grass. It's settled now a little bit. We've still maintained that production, but we increased. It's really good grass. This morning I looked at the cows and they're a little loose. The grass is still a really productive high protein and it was like, maybe we should think about doing some supplementing because they're maybe a little loose. I've got to look at what that is. I should look at the MUNs on our herd to see what that is. We're running about 11 to 12, maybe a few 13s on MUN. It's not outrageously high, but there were a couple of days that maybe it was at 15 or something.
It just depends on what pasture they're in but it's not terrible.
Joe: Is it pretty rare to get to that point where the grass is just too good, because it can get good for a short period of time usually, but we've had good grass for a long time? Can it get too good?
Bradley: I think it can get too good from a protein standpoint. Too much protein. I still think that's what's happening now. Even when we turned out cows in early June, they weren't as loose as what they are now. Even the second grazing on some of this grass is still really good and they're really loose. Everybody knows what that's like when cows are really loose, don't stand behind them.
Joe: Parlors get a little messier when that happens. I've certainly been covered head to toe because of that before and I was just talking to Troy Salzer about that. It's definitely happened multiple times where I've been covered head to toe and I can't even see. I need a towel to be able to see where I'm going to get out of the shoot after something like that happens. The parlor gets messy, too. Do you see any difference in mastitis when you notice the cows are like that?
Bradley: Yes, mastitis has gone up a little bit here. Our cell counts a couple of days have spiked into the lower 300s, which is not ideal but that's all weather flies, some mud. It's rained a lot, so we've had mud issues. Flies are a lot of it. That's a problem. I was looking at the cows today and I'm like, "Oh man, there's so many flies on cows." We're using our cow vacuum. Flies are a challenge. That's another whole episode we can-- and we have talked about flies a lot.
Joe: The topic doesn't ever seem to go away. We can talk about flies probably every other episode if we wanted to. You've got too good of grass or grass that's really going crazy. You're trying to keep up with it grazing, you're saving on stored feed, but what's your plan for the fall? What are you going to do to maximize the time you have out on pasture? What else are you thinking about planting? What's the plan going into fall?
Bradley: Well, some of the winter rye that we have grazed, we're actually going to plow it and then plant Sorghum Sudangrass here. I think we're doing that this week, so we can maybe get two good grazings of Sorghum Sudangrass yet this summer. Maybe one into September if it goes well and we get a little shot of rain, but that's what the plan is. I think we're going to try some pearl millet this year as well in one of the pastures to help. We had 20 acres of winter rye that we actually chopped for silage, kind of some heifer feed for maybe the winter or just some forage. That's 20 acres and we're going to plow that down and plant Sorghum Sudangrass as well. We haven't quite decided yet whether we're going to graze it or we're going to chop it for silage. That's the benefit that we've talked about before. It's pretty flexible. We can do what we want with it and we'll see what happens when the time comes, if it grows.
Joe: We talked about manure sheds not too long ago with Melissa Wilson. What considerations when you've got winter rye there already. Then you're going to chop that, then you're going to plow under. It feels like you're using that land pretty hard or you're using it repeatedly. Do you have considerations on the nutrient side for that ground?
Bradley: We do. Yes. We'll maybe put a little bit of manure on the ground just to help with some of the fertility. It's more a little bit sandy type field and maybe the nutrient profile isn't as great, but we'll put a little bit there, but not much. The winter rye is where we grazed. The cows have provided enough fertility that we don't have to add any more there.
Joe: Is this in that hill-like pasture where you keep your heifers over the winter?
Bradley: We do, yes. The exact spot. It's one of those rotations where we like those pastures to be flexible and whether it's a fall-planted winter rye and Sorghum Sudangrass. We've also thought about going in there with oats and grazing some of that. We like to have a little bit of flexibility and you can never predict the weather. It hasn't rained a whole lot here in the last couple of weeks, so it's getting dry. We could use a little rain. When it's 102 or whatever for a few days, it dries things out really fast.
Joe: One of the things I think about a lot is that a lot of years were short bedding, and we need a lot of bedding, especially when you're going to house your cattle outside like you do. How much does providing bedding come into the plant when you're talking about forages that you plant and where and how many, especially in a year like this where you might have an opportunity to catch up and bank some bedding because your grass has been so good?
Bradley: Yes. Beddings are always a problem, especially for our organic herd. Not many people make straw bedding or grow small grains, or they like to plow that back into the ground for fertility. We try to make some bedding out of oats or rye that we have as well. It's always a little touchy on the year. It just depends on whether we can get enough or not. We thought about making some of it ourselves. We try with some of the bedding, but it's not always perfect. Sometimes I think we'd rather have the feed and then try to find the bedding because we can use some sawdust and other things for bedding. It doesn't necessarily have to be total straw.
Joe: Are there any major, major changes you can see this year that whenever it's wet like this you specifically think about, "We have an opportunity to do this because our grass is so good," and it gets you excited. Is there something that comes to mind?
Bradley: Well, of course, milk more cows, but [laughs] that's always a challenge. Being able to manage the animal inventory with the forage is always difficult. I think the big thing is trying to harvest some of that, whether you bale it or make it for silage is always helpful, because we never can predict what going into the winter or what type of feed we're going to have. Most of the corn that was planted out here in western Minnesota was planted late May. Will we have silage yields like we normally will? I don't know. That's a challenge, though. Some of the hay grass pastures, it's always nice to chop it so we have some winter feed because we just can't predict what's going on.
That's the way, the weather's been crazy in the last few years. It's just all these extremes and it's really hard to manage forage availability when you have all these weather extremes.
Emily: It's less predictable.
Bradley: It is. It really is.
Joe: Is that why you fell in love with Sorghum Sudangrass, just because it will grow and it doesn't matter if it gets water or not, pretty much?
Bradley: Right, right. It grows well even in really dry years. Yes, you might not quite have the yield if you don't get a little shot of rain. I did research with it almost 10 years ago. We started researching with Sorghum Sudangrass and I pretty much swear by it now and we always try to include some of it because you just don't know. The winter rye, I really like the winter rye grazing. It's flexible. You can either chop it or graze it, and that's provided a lot of forage for us. We've got to have a pasture ready to go in August to plant rye into.
If you have the flexibility to do that, it makes sense. It just makes sense.
Joe: All right, well I think we'll wrap it there. We've got the forage plan for Bradley for the year, in the wet year versus last year, which was just an ugly drought. Em, any final thoughts?
Emily: No, I just hope everybody out there was taking notes. The man himself was sharing his wisdom.
Bradley: Shameless plug, we're having a field day Tuesday, August, 9th if you want to come to Morrison, Western Minnesota. We'll showcase some of this grass species stuff that we've been working with.
Joe: Perfect.
Emily: I imagine Joe will put that in the show notes.
Joe: I will put it in the show notes and-
Emily: How did I know?
Joe: -I'll put it on my calendar right now, if it's not already. It's already on my calendar.
Emily: If you have questions, comments, or any scathing rebuttals about today's episode, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: You can also call and ask us a question on our new voicemail and potentially be featured in a future episode of The Moos Room. To leave us a voicemail, you can call 6126243610. Follow us on Twitter @umnmoosroom and @umnFarmSafety. Be sure to visit our website to learn more, extension.umn.edu. Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
Joe: Bye-bye.
[cow moos]
[00:16:44] [END OF AUDIO]
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