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Meagan King joins The Moos Room to discuss her research into mental health and how it is connected to cow health. This is 1 of 4 in our series for mental health month!
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]
Emily: Welcome, everybody, to The Moos Room. You are joined as always by the OG three. Before I introduce our guest today, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we are going to be doing for the next few episodes here on The Moos Room. As you may know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It's also National Beef Month, I will mention that, but we really want to emphasize mental health awareness in our next four episodes here. We are going to be joined by a series of incredible guests talking about all sorts of things related to agriculture, mental health, stress, et cetera. I am so, so excited, for our first guest in this series. We are joined today by one of our neighbors to the north with the University of Manitoba, Dr. Meagan King is here. Hey, Meagan.
Dr. Meagan King: Hello, Emily. I'm so excited to be here.
Emily: We are so excited to have you here. Fun little story quickly of how I met Meagan. We met several years ago at the Precision Dairy Conference in Rochester, Minnesota. I vividly remember her and I bonded over our shared--
Meagan: We were vibing.
Emily: Yes. Our interest in our--
Meagan: I learned that word this week.
Emily: Oh, you learned vibing. There you go. We were vibing.
Meagan: Yes, that's what cool, people say. [laughs]
Emily: Yes. We were vibing about our shared passion for farmer mental health. That was really cool. It's very full circle to be back here now and have her on the podcast to talk about this exciting topic with a really interesting kind of twist, with production as well, specifically on dairy farms. Before we do that, we have some super secret questions that we ask every guest. Bradley and Joe will tell you that there is a right answer to each of these questions. They are lying. Don't listen to them. Joe is going to be asking our questions today.
Meagan: Oh, good. Now I'm nervous.
Joe: Oh, they're not that big a deal. The first question that we got for you, and we ask every guest, we got the tally here so you can know where you stand, and there is a right answer. The first question is, what is your favorite beef breed?
Meagan: Oh, I would say Angus.
Emily: Oh, nice. [laughs]
Joe: Yes, that is the correct answer. You know what that does? That puts Angus two ahead of Hereford now.
Emily: Wow. How do you feel about that, Bradley?
Bradley: We need some Hereford people on this podcast.
[laughter]
Joe: I didn't even find this guest and we still went Angus. That's where we're at. Angus at eight. Herford at six. Black Baldy at two. Belted Galloway at two. Brahman at one. Stabilizer, one. Gelbvieh, one. Scottish Highlander, one. Chianina, one. Charolais, one. Simmental, one. Nelore, one.
Emily: Lots variety.
Meagan: A lot of guests too.
Emily: Yes, we have been fortunate to have amazing guests. I usually find all the good ones.
Meagan: Absolutely. You're a pro now.
Emily: Yes. [chuckles]
Joe: I won't dispute that at all. All right. Second question, you might be able to guess what it is. We need to know your favorite dairy breed.
Bradley: Remember there is only one right answer.
Meagan: I'm going to say Jersey.
[cheering]
Emily: Oh, wow. Brad and Joe are happy.
Bradley: Oh, man. That made my day.
[laughter]
Joe: That is great. We needed a little comeback. The last few episodes have been really rough.
Emily: Holsteins are still ahead, are they not?
Joe: By a lot. Holstein's at 11, Jersey's at 8, Brown Swiss at 4, Dutch belted at 2, Montb�liarde at 2, Normandy at 1.
Emily: Wow.
Bradley: We are gaining.
Joe: Gaining. Gaining fast.
Emily: There you go, Meagan. You nailed it with the Jersey. We got two big fans.
Meagan: Got to keep the guys happy here.
Emily: Yes.
Bradley: We would like to have you on again. Then we'll ask the same question so we can double the numbers.
Emily: Bradley, that's cheating. With that, we can dive into it here. As I already mentioned, this is a part of our special series for Mental Health Awareness Month, which is May. Before we really dive into why we brought you on, Meagan, and this research project that you did that we're going to talk about specifically, let's just fill in the blanks for a few people here. I mentioned that you are from Canada, and as I understand you did a lot of your grad school work at Guelph, correct?
Meagan: Yes.
Emily: Awesome. You are somebody that we can talk to in the future about all things robots and welfare, right?
Meagan: Absolutely. I love robotic milking systems. I love cow health and welfare. I think they go together quite nicely. I'm also interested in how maybe these technologies also help people and their mental health.
Emily: That is a beautiful segue. Gosh, I don't even need to be here. [laughs] Meagan, with that said, I know recently that you had some research release that you did with, I believe it was Dr. Trevor DeVries, yes?
Meagan: Yes.
Emily: I'll let you explain it a little bit more, but I remember the headline that I read in the popular press article was "Farmer Well-being Linked to Cow Health." I thought, that is so interesting. How can you make that relationship? It's something I've thought a lot about, and I think we've even discussed it here on The Moos Room in some of our past mental health episodes. Meagan, just briefly, why don't you tell us a little bit about kind of what this project was, how it got started?
Meagan: I guess while I was researching cow health and welfare over the last several years, all my studies were focused on cows and technology, and data. That's all really great, but what I was missing from that picture was the people involved. You get to know farmers and what sort of things are stressing them out, all of the different tasks that they have to go through every day. I want to help people help their animals.
There's no point in just going in and helping cows. It's a big picture and you need to support the people as well. There's also been some nice research from Canada, also from Guelph, from Andria Jones-Bitton and Brianna Hagen. That inspired me. I guess throughout grad school, I had a few issues of my own to work through. I've been there and I want to help people be the best version they can be and be the best farmer they can be.
Emily: Meagan, I really appreciate you sharing that. Some of this was brought on by your personal experience, which I think is something really common in people who do this kind of work. I think it's really great that you want to add that human side to what is happening on the farm.
Meagan: Yes, and by no means I'm a expert in human anything, but I'm making friends who are good at that type of thing, and then we work together.
Emily: Well, and you are a human, so you have some lived experience.
Meagan: This is very true. I've been at it for 30 years.
Emily: There you go. With this research, you were looking specifically at mental health, and production and health, and again, this is just in dairy herds, so it'd be so interesting to see this kind of information from other types of enterprises. What specifically were you looking at? Just production or health data, what kind of things were involved in this?
Meagan: You're right in saying it was just dairy herds, and it was just dairy herds who had robotic milkers. In the future, I would love to compare parlors versus robots, versus tie stalls, and then look at other commodity groups as well. This study looked at those who have robots, how are they doing, what is their stress, anxiety, depression, and resilience levels. We give them scores.
Obviously the first three, stress, anxiety, and depression are things you don't want to have a high score on, but resilience is a good thing and it helps you to adapt or manage with hardships or adversity. I looked at factors related to farm management, like do you have automated feeders? How many cows do you have? What's your stocking density? Those sorts of questions. Then I looked at cow types of things like lameness prevalence, SCC milk production. Then I had the people's surveys that they did for me.
Emily: Something I'm curious about, and I'm guessing you ran across this, Meagan, was talking about stress, anxiety, depression, resilience. How did you explain these things to the farmers? Because I think people in general, we all have different ideas of what those things mean or what they are, or we maybe don't want to admit when we're feeling stressed or anxious, or depressed. I'm just a little bit curious and maybe we can cut this out since it's just for Emily's knowledge.
Meagan: It's helpful to know. I use the same types of scoring system that the other researchers did. It's a list of validated questions. It only takes about 10 minutes max. It's not how stressed are you from a scale of 1 to 10. It's a series of questions where you just describe your feelings in a normal day-to-day situation and how much you agree, or disagree with those types of statements, or how often do you have a bad feeling like something terrible is about to happen. They're just questions that people answer and then you add it up and you get a score. They are quite validated and quite accurate. I have done them myself.
Emily: I have used some different perceived stress surveys and those types of things. I think that that's such a great way to approach it in that stress, anxiety, depression, our mental health in general, mental illness, doesn't need to be this big scary thing. It's a thing that is part of our everyday lives. If we think about even having a physical injury, for most people, you have a broken arm, you're still doing your normal things but you're going to have some challenges doing some of your day-to-day tasks. I feel like this is no different, and so I think that using that type of survey really helps show that to farmers and reinforce it for me too, that this isn't a case of you're totally debilitated, can't do anything. We do have people that [crosstalk]
Meagan: Absolutely not.
Emily: It's more about the role that stress plays in your everyday life, because stress is present all the time.
Meagan: A little bit of stress can be good and it can be motivating, but if there's too much of that and you're not coping-- Physical and mental health are the same almost to me. You can be healthy on the positive end of the spectrum, or you can be unhealthy. If you're unhealthy, there's nothing wrong. You need help to get tools to get better.
Emily: Absolutely. I've talked in the past about this three-legged milking stool of our health.
Meagan: Or this three-quarter cow behind me. Do you see that?
Emily: Yes, or the three-quartered cow behind you.
[laughter]
Very good. One T is physical health, one is mental health, one's emotional health, and we need them all to be--
Meagan: Oh, sorry, I thought you were saying that there's a fourth one missing.
Emily: Oh. No. Back to this research, what did you find?
Meagan: I can't directly compare my results to other studies. It may be that dairy farmers with robots are slightly less stressed than other Canadian farmers in general, but I can't necessarily say that. What I can say is the main things were being female. A lot of the female farmers had higher stress scores, higher anxiety and depression scores than men, which is quite common all over. I found farmers with automated feeders had lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.
That's like the conveyor that runs and drops feed or like an automated robot feeder. I also found that those who worked mostly alone had greater anxiety and depression levels. That makes sense. Working alone is not only stressful, and you have a lot more on your shoulders, but you don't have anyone to go through that with. The last thing is that lameness was linked with stress and anxiety. Higher stress and anxiety was linked with more lame calve.
Emily: Now I'm going to, what's the word, postulate here a little bit. I know we can get into the differences between correlation and causation. Maybe Bradley can do that because I know he teaches stats. Is it fair to say or to maybe think that yes, when we are not taking good care of ourselves, it can be more difficult to take good care of our cows?
Meagan: I think it's absolutely reasonable. If you're not in a good place, it's harder for you to be efficient at work. Certain things might be overwhelming, you might not get as much done as you might normally. I think how people are doing might affect how their cows are doing, but it may also go the other direction. People take a lot of pride in their farm, and I think if your herd is unhealthy, people feel responsible and that reflects on them. I think it makes sense that it would go both ways.
Emily: Absolutely. I think that's a great point.
Joe: I just want to point out real quick before you go too much farther that Meagan's study definitely applies to dairy. What she found was with just dairy farmers in the study, but some of the references used in her paper and other work out there is with other species as well. There's a lot of work on the swine side that shows some of these same things. Then I would say this is any farmer. It doesn't have to be animals even. This can relate to crops and everything else. I think that it's really important to make sure that, yes, we're talking about dairy animals with Meagan today, but that it applies to just about any farm situation.
Meagan: Thank you, Joe. I've often wondered with my dogs, who are my children, if I'm affecting their health. I don't know.
Joe: I think one of the cool things that I saw you discussed in the paper was there's a-- whether or not you were talking about is this a cyclic thing where you feel bad to take less care of your cows, but then your cows are in a worse spot, you don't have as much production. Then there's a financial component that comes back around to mental health and you just get in a spiral.
It's really tough to say, but with most of the dairies in your study, we're talking about robotics, we're probably talking maybe a little more about progressive dairy farmers and people on the cutting edge, do you think that affected some of the results where we're talking about their mental health from the get-go because maybe they were in a better financial place to start?
Meagan: I think that's fair. Some farmers have even said to me, maybe the people who chose to put in robots were already happier or less stressed, or whatever. I think there is a difference between Canada and the States in that aspect, because we have a bit more debility for farmers. There are so many questions that I cannot answer and they're all interesting, so a great question, but I don't have an answer for you.
Emily: That was a very nice Canadian dig at the US. Thank you, Meagan
Meagan: No, I just put another one of the stressors.
Emily: As I think about this emphasizing whether it's cow health or profitability, or just a way that being well can benefit your business, do you feel like that is something that can be used to maybe help promote mental wellness and seeking behavioral health services for some people if we view it as this is a thing that could have a positive impact on your business?
Meagan: I think so, because some people, myself included, think that you'll just tough it out and it's okay to be miserable for a while, and it'll be fine, but that attitude doesn't really get you any better. As much as it's annoying to ask for help or to go find a counselor or doctor, or you don't want to talk to-- I don't want to bring people down around me. No one wants to, but there's a point where you just have to ask for some help and you get better. Then all of a sudden, your work is better and your whole life is better. It's like, wow, I can actually manage this, who knew? All you had to do was talk to a doctor or whatever it was.
Emily: I would just emphasize that I do not think that is something that is exclusive to farmers either. We know the impact that stress can have. Like you just said, Meagan, when we are feeling better, we can give more of ourselves to our jobs and our families, et cetera. I think that, yes, that's a very universal thing, but it is really cool to me to see it in this context and how we're looking at this TAU data and using it to tell this story of how farmer health overall can really impact what's happening on our farms.
Joe: I have a quick question, and we touched on it briefly. You said some of the risk factors were poor mental health, were being female, manually feeding, and then working alone. When I look at those, the thing that I notice right away is those are pretty difficult to change in a lot of situations. If those are my risk factors for having poor mental health and I can't really do a whole lot about them, what do I do?
Meagan: That's a very good point. I suppose one way to look at it is if any of those things apply to me, it's not that you're not the only one that those factors are applying to. It doesn't mean you have to change something. It just means that maybe you can accept or give yourself a break for feeling down or feeling overwhelmed because one of these very common factors applies to you and other people are experiencing that too. There are other ways to dig your way out of that feeling, like getting help, or you can do online workshops to retrain your brain a little bit. You don't have to change your farm or your identity.
Joe: I think this is a great place to plug some of the networks that are out there for all the different farm groups whether it's on social media or not, or if we're talking about the women in ag network. These are great tools to help you feel connected. It'd help you feel not so alone, even if you are working alone. I think those are great options for those kind of things.
Bradley: I'm interested, did you look at other health aspects of the cows or was lameness probably the one that showed up for the most part in these robotic farms?
Meagan: I tried looking at strawberries that was virtually impossible in a robotic herd with a headlamp and I'm chasing around cows. We didn't really use that data. I did look at SCC from their milk records, and I had milk production from their robot records. Those results were confusing. It was almost as if those who had high SCC and poor production were more resilient.
Bradley: That is interesting. It's very interesting.
Meagan: My study is not like a human social science type of study, but perhaps you just have to be resilient to cope with some of those things. I don't know.
Emily: I think it ties back to what you said, Meagan, how resilience is really built in the face of adversity. People who aren't going through adversity have no need for resilience, so they don't build it as quickly.
Meagan: True.
Emily: You saying that is interesting to me but also not surprising. Because I think of farms I've worked with, have battled proto-Zika or these other really terrible issues, who they want to get better and they know it's a problem, but they do have this certain calmness about them when it comes to that because they are like, yes, this is what it is.
Meagan: You make it sound so simple. Why didn't you write my paper?
Emily: [laughs] We'll do the follow-up paper together.
Meagan: It's okay.
Joe: It's natural selection at this point too, between the '80s and the rough times that we've had, the farmers that weren't resilient, they're gone. They're not farming anymore.
Meagan: True, but if you look at Andria Jones-Bitton's study of Canadian farmers, all commodity groups, she found that they were lower resilience than the average Canadian. You think of farmers as very hardworking and tough people but they had those differences in their scores. It may be they've been beaten down over time. I don't know.
Emily: Would really be interesting to see this on other types of dairies indeed and other enterprise types. I also think of farms that have a lot of employees, and how do you motivate other people who are responsible for some of these cow health things to make it a priority, and if they're suffering or stressed or not doing well, what does that mean for the farmer, for the cows?
Meagan: There's a lot of US research looking at farm workers. I wonder what the difference between a farm owner versus workers. There are probably a bajillion things that go into it, but I think everyone deserves to have good mental health.
Emily: Absolutely.
Joe: One of the things I noticed right away when I was in practice was I could really get a handle on how an owner or a worker was feeling that day by how they were moving cows. Cows are incredibly perceptive when it comes to body language, and they can definitely tell when you are stressed, when you're anxious, when you're uptight, when you're angry. They know that right away. I feel like I saw that reflected pretty quickly in how cows were moved in cattle handling. Is that something that you also-- I know you didn't look at it in this study, but just your general thoughts I'd love to hear.
Meagan: I would love to see research to back that up but I think it's very true. I know Temple Grandin, who is the guru of animal handling, her biggest thing is be patient. When you're upset and in a rush, and overwhelmed, that's the first thing to go out the window. Cows are flightier, maybe they slip and hurt themselves, but there are also so many other reasons the cows would become lame. It's not just slips. I do think that people's moods gets reflected in how they move animals. Maybe it even changes your decisions that you make and you don't even know it.
Bradley: I'll definitely agree there. I think moving of animals is very stressful and it can affect lot of other decisions and things can go wrong really quickly, and can be very stressful for a lot of farms, and employees as well.
Meagan: Exactly. One thing that comes to mind is foot baths. I think it's an overwhelming, maybe unnecessary thing if you're feeling busy and crunched for time. That's just one example I can think of.
Joe: That's a good example, a really good example.
Meagan: Unless they can.
Joe: I always wonder, why isn't the foot bath being run when we know it needs to be run?
Meagan: Why isn't it getting clean water and blah, blah, blah.
Joe: All these things. This will be my shout out to veterinarians for today, keeping that in mind is really, really important. That it isn't just about the numbers on the farm, just about labor, the cows, what's going on, and looking at that. It's about what else is going on in that producer's life, the employee's life, everything else that's going on. I think I hear that from producers constantly. They want to have a connection with their veterinarian, with the people that come to their farm.
What I consistently hear is producers are very unhappy when they feel the veterinarian doesn't know their system. When they make recommendations that don't really make sense for their operation logistically or whatever else, that's something that you can't forget, that there's other things going on in that person's life than the farm. The farm is their job and it ends up being a big, big part of their life because they're there 24/7. There's other stuff going on, and part of knowing that system is knowing that person, in my opinion.
Meagan: From the veterinarian's point of view, I know that they're a huge resource for farmers and they're probably the most respected person who knows your farm. In general. If they know your system, they're a well-respected person to ask for information or recommendations, but also veterinarians have a lot of mental health stressors too. I don't want to put it all on them, but I think it's just good for everyone to be mindful of what that other person is going through that day and try to respect that, and just everyone be nice to each other and so Canadian. [laughs]
Emily: I love it.
Bradley: I think that's a good point to think about is because, and we've all been on farms, if you go out there later in the afternoon, you don't know what happened during the day. Sometimes maybe there was a calving difficulty or something else went wrong, you just don't know what happened on that farm earlier in the day before you got there. Sometimes it's to be mindful that somebody may have had a bad day already, and to just be cognizant of that and who knows what might happen.
Joe: I definitely learned that the hard way in practice immediately, showing up. It is worth its weight in gold or it's priceless to just ask that farmer when you show up as a vet, how's your day going? What's going on? That can really set the tone for-
Meagan: It's huge. Yes.
Joe: -the rest of the conversation for that day. Veterinarians are always in a rush. We're also always late, so there's this feeling of like-
Meagan: It's not your fault you're late. We know that.
Joe: -let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. That is not the right attitude to have with lot of farmers, especially if they already had a bad day.
Meagan: Something-- Oh, sorry. Something else I--
Emily: No, go ahead, Meagan.
Meagan: Something else I learned, which I think it's really important to share, is that the veterinarian isn't able to notice lameness when pre-checking your cows in hemlocks. It's something that I think farmers expect them to notice and help with. There's a lot on your vet's plate as well but they can't notice lameness when the cows are locked up. If you want to know, I think you need to ask and communicate, and just say, can you take five minutes checking out these cows? Because everyone has a lot on their plate, and you got to ask.
Joe: Absolutely. I don't know a veterinarian out there that isn't willing to do that kind of stuff if you just ask and that they're more than happy to do that kind of thing.
Emily: I would say about vets what I say about extension educators. They want every farm they work with to succeed and to do well. Yes, I think that's a great point, Meagan, about having that open communication and recognizing those things. Joe and Meagan, to both of your points too, and I think I've talked about this before, we all have different thresholds for stress. Like Bradley said, sometimes you don't know what you're walking into if you're coming in in the afternoon or second shift, or what have you. Also recognize that if somebody does tell you, "Oh, this happened, this happened, this happened."
You may think that's not a big deal. Again, that's not a big deal to you, but it's a big deal to them. It's also important that we recognize yes, we're all in this together, and we also all experience these things differently. It ties back to that resilience piece too. Some people are more resilient than others, so they can handle more stress, and others will be more easily overwhelmed by it. That doesn't necessarily that one person is right or wrong or that one person is sick or healthy. It just means that we're all human and we're at different stages.
Meagan: You're not weak because you're more sensitive. I have a lot of feelings, and it's also a good thing. Some days. Another thing I learned, which is cool, I think, people do these tests with calves to see if they have cognitive bias. If there's a neutral stimuli, do you interpret that positively or negatively? It's showing optimism or pessimism, and that's totally what we have. There's also a lot of cases where if you're in a bad place with your mental health and someone just gives you a neutral stare or a neutral comment, you may interpret it negatively, and it may have not even been designed for that. That's something cool, I think.
Joe: I'm super guilty of that. I'll freely admit that stress, tired, I'll snap back at something that was completely benign. I'm guilty of that for sure.
Emily: Like the time You forgot to hit the record button, Joe?
Meagan: Oh no.
Joe: There was a lot of profanity and a lot of-- I couldn't throw anything because my son was sleeping at the time, was taking a nap, so I couldn't be super loud, but it was this guy's experience.
Emily: Lots of swearing. Luckily it wasn't recording so it didn't matter.
Joe: It didn't matter. Didn't matter at all. I think one of the things we should cover, especially since Bradley's here, and it's important to all of us that Bradley's here so we should talk about it, is that the farmer mental health also affects whether or not people are willing-- it's not affecting that, it might affect it. It's associated with people and their willingness to adopt environmental stewardship practices. I feel like that's something--
Meagan: In one study.
Joe: In one study. I don't think that's a hard leap to make. Some of these things, they take extra work or take extra time, or take extra finances, and being able to get that up and going and do any project. I don't think that's a big leap to make, but I think that's the same thing when we talk about animal welfare or practices as well. The willingness to get after it and go out there and get things done and do these things that are a little bit maybe considered over the top, it's probably pretty hard to do.
Meagan: I think everyone wants to do the right thing. They want to conserve water, they want to have a riparian corridor. Who doesn't like birds? People want to have healthy cows and they want to take care of their animals. It can be a lot on top of what you're already doing.
Joe: Especially if you're working alone. If you're alone, it's even worse. Right?
Meagan: Right. I know people see birds as a source of shrink, but I like birds.
Joe: I like birds.
Meagan: [laughs] You can cut that all out. Do you want to repeat that?
Joe: No, it's good.
Bradley: You like birds?
Meagan: I love birds. They're so cool.
Bradley: I have a bird that keeps waking me up at 5:30 in the morning.
Meagan: A pet bird or a real bird?
Bradley: No, wild birds. Outside my window and it's bugging me.
Meagan: Maybe you need to wake up earlier.
Bradley: No.
Joe: [laughs] Nothing but tough love for Brad on this show. I love it.
Bradley: Exactly. There's no tough love, especially from Emily because she's up at three o'clock every morning so it's [crosstalk].
Joe: Trying to work out and do crazy stuff.
Emily: Yes, but I also haven't lost 33 pounds, Bradley.
Joe: Don't have to get up early if you're as good as a tenured professor.
Bradley: Exactly.
Emily: All right. We are once again off the race here.
Bradley: Anyways, we have digressed.
Joe: Yes, gone down that [crosstalk]
Emily: I feel like we have really had some great conversation here today. Any final questions or final thoughts from anyone? Bradley? Joe? Meagan?
Bradley: I am so glad that Meagan has been on today, I think it's a great topic. I think there's so much more that we can learn about that based on farmers. I'd be very interested in looking at all farm types and knowing what's happening. Maybe you could throw in whether people have Holsteins or Jerseys and we could tell what's a little better there.
Joe: The stress level associated. I'd read. I think that's a great place to go. I'm in the same boat as Bradley. I think there's so much more to learn. I'm excited to see what else Meagan does with this knowing this was more of a pilot study and there's so many places to go. The other piece that we didn't really get into as much as we could was the connection of physical health. I know Meagan mentioned it, Emily mentioned it as well, in part of her three-leg stool or three-titted cow. It's a big piece of it. It's all probably cyclic in my mind. I think we could probably make a connection to that directly. I'm hoping that Meagan continues to look at that.
Meagan: I hope so too. We just need some funding. If you guys ever want to do some North America-type research, we should do that.
Emily: Oh yes.
Meagan: That'd be fun.
Joe: I'm in.
Emily: Cool.
Bradley: We are in. Brad could find grant money for it.
Emily: Grant money. Grant money. Grant money.
Joe: That's all it does.
Emily: [laughs] All right. We are going to wrap it there. Meagan, thank you so much for joining us today and being our kickoff episode for our Mental Health Awareness Month series. We really appreciate it. If anybody has questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals to today's episode, you can email them to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: You can find us on Facebook at UMN Dairy and at UMN Beef. You can see what Meagan and her colleagues are up to on Facebook at UMFAFS. You can also find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom, @UMNfarmsafety. We're also on YouTube. Just look for Minnesota extension, dairy, beef, farm safety, all of that good stuff. Thank you again, Meagan. I believe that's all she wrote for today.
Meagan: Thanks, guys.
Joe: Thank you. Bye.
Emily: Bye.
[music]
The mood we're going for is similar to how we met, where we're just sitting around at the end of the day, drinking a beer, solving the world's problems on the back of a napkin.
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