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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.
Joe Armstrong: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. Dr. Joe Armstrong with you today. I'm by myself mostly. This is an episode in response to last week Bradley talking about on-farm pregnancy testing with blood and taking those samples himself, working through the process of pregnancy diagnosis with a non-farm kit, either a single kit or with multiple at a time where he could do up to 96 animals at one time.
He mentioned specifically that I wasn't on to defend the veterinary profession when it comes to preg checking and pregnancy diagnosis, and maybe I had strong opinions on this and the use of pregnancy diagnosis in this way. Really, what it comes down to is my viewpoint on on-farm pregnancy diagnosis using blood or milk or those kinds of technologies coming into play. Now, for me, I think those are great technologies. I'm happy to see them exist. I'm happy that they are coming in and being used by producers. I think it's something that we should do and a direction that the industry should move towards.
Why not make it more accessible? Why not make it more affordable? Let's figure out how to do this accurately, and make it as easy as possible to do for producers, no problem at all.
This isn't a surprise at all to the veterinary profession in my opinion. These technologies have been coming for a long time. It shouldn't be a surprise that farmers are going to be looking to have more flexibility, and potentially cut costs in certain ways and still get the same information. That's the whole name of the game. The veterinary profession should have been preparing for this moment when it comes to not preg checking cows with an arm anymore.
Hopefully, many of my colleagues have been preparing for this moment and have been figuring out ways to be valuable that does not include preg checking. It's been a basis for our industry for a very long time. I still think that there's a lot of value there and there's a lot of things that producers need to think about when they potentially are going to move to an on-farm test or milk diagnosis however they're going to get that done. The reality is a veterinarian is very, very valuable in a lot more ways than just as an arm. We should be more valuable than just as an arm when we're on-farm.
There's not a whole lot of people that are trained the way a veterinarian is trained to be able to comment on your whole system and how it operates and all the moving pieces and what can happen and the consequences, and how to make recommendations on the entire operation top to bottom. That's the value of a veterinarian. That's what makes you money, makes you more efficient seeking veterinary advice. If you see your veterinarian as just an arm and a pregnancy diagnosis tool, that's fine.
I encourage you to talk to your veterinarian and engage them in a conversation about all the other things that they can bring to your farm and help you with. There's so many things that a veterinarian can do for you that don't include preg checking, whether that's employee training, protocol development, SOP development, problem-solving skills on a weekly basis so that nothing gets out of control, record analysis, biosecurity management, vaccine schedules, the list goes on and on.
We could talk about all the different things, but I think we will save that for another episode talking about the value of a veterinarian, and you guys don't need to hear me sit on my soapbox and talk about that. Have that conversation with your veterinarian about all the things they can bring to the table that don't include preg checking at all. Hopefully, you have a relationship with your veterinarian already and you've recognized some of those things. Let's get back to the issue at hand. We're talking about on-farm blood pregnancy diagnosis or on-farm milk pregnancy diagnosis.
Again, I think they're great tools, and I think we can use them as we move towards them, and they get more accurate and they get more affordable. The big thing we need to talk about is what are you not getting out of that test that you might be getting from an ultrasound, especially early in pregnancy from a veterinarian. When I preg check an animal, especially when they're early in gestation at that 30 to 40-day mark, even all the way up to 60 days, potentially up to 75 days in gestation, I have a lot of information at my fingertips literally when I'm using my ultrasound on that animal.
The test itself when we're looking at blood or milk is not assessing calf viability. The first thing that I can give you with an ultrasound that you cannot get from your test is, does that calf look viable? Does it have a heartbeat? Is there something wrong with the fluid in the uterus or in the embryo itself? Can I tell you if she's likely to slough that calf or it's going to be resorbed? I can give you that information with an ultrasound and you cannot get that information from the test.
Something that happens frequently and more frequently than we'd like to admit is that things get written down incorrectly, or we have something off in our paperwork, and breeding dates get off. With the tests, you're not going to know that that animal was bred at a different time point whereas with an ultrasound, I can tell you the age of the calf that is in that animal. I can tell you if your breeding date is correct, because I can see that animal and I can tell you exactly how old it is and you will be able to know, does that match the breeding date or not.
If you're keeping track, that's two things now that I can give you with the ultrasound that you will not get from the test; calf viability and double-checking your breeding date to make sure that's correct. One of the other things that's really important that a lot of people want to know about ahead of time that I can give you with the ultrasound is, are there twins there or not, especially if we preg check early in a dairy scenario, which is what we're talking about, I can see twins. The test is going to tell you pregnant or not. It's not going to tell you if there's one in there or two or three or four.
With an ultrasound, I can tell you that there's multiples in there, and I can get you prepared for that, especially if you have different management practices that you might do with that animal if they're having multiples. Especially if it's a heifer, we know that process is going to be hard on that animal and we need to be prepared for that. There's a couple more things that we'll talk about quickly that are an advantage for the ultrasound user over a on-farm blood or milk test.
One of the next things that we'll talk about is that not only can I assess calf viability, check your breading date, see multiples, or twins, triplets, quadruplets, whatever is in there, I can see that with my ultrasound. I can also, if we're checking at the correct time, 55 to 75-day window, I can give you a sex on that fetus. I can assess whether or not it's a bull or a heifer. At this point, we're not able to do that with on-farm testing. That may change in the future, but right now that's an advantage to the ultrasound.
All right, last thing, and then I will let everyone go and I will quit being on my soapbox about how I love my ultrasound and preg checking. I'll even expand on that after we're done talking about this list. I can see the ovary. That's something I can do with my ultrasound that you're not getting information about the ovary from your test. I can see both ovaries when I look through my goggles and I see what's going on, I can tell you what's going on. Is that cow cystic? Is that cow cycling at all? Is there a big CL there? That's important when we're talking about syncing programs and where we start in that process.
It's pretty fruitless to continue to breed an animal that's cystic. That's information you want to know. Some people can pick that up without an ultrasound just by activity and how often they're in heat and those kinds of things. It's nice to have that information and be able to actually look at the ovary and tell you exactly what's going on. Like I said, a CL is very important depending on if you're syncing or not, but it's nice to see also that the ovary is functional. One thing that we haven't mentioned yet is that I can see in that cow and tell you if that cow is breedable at all.
I can tell you if there's a problem with the uterus, whether that's an abscess or an adhesion, or if that cow has a pyometra, and breeding her is going to be fruitless until we take care of that. This information is not going to be on that test. You can breed that animal over and over and over and over again. If she's got a pyometra, she is not going to get pregnant. Those milk blood pregnancy tests are going to call her open because she's not pregnant. They're not going to give you information about the fact that she's never going to get pregnant until you fix her problem.
Again, we're seeing some advantages for the ultrasound. Now, I want to address this idea of preg checking and how I love my ultrasound and I love preg checking, and then we'll wrap it up and call it a week. In reality, do I love preg checking? Do I like arming cows and the process itself of preg checking an animal? I would say when I was a baby veterinarian and just starting out the knowledge, the experience, getting to learn that process, feeling like I had very trackable gains in knowledge and skill made that process fun.
After doing that for years, and doing that for thousands of animals, I'm at the point in my career where I would be happy to never have to do that again and never preg check an animal with my arm again. I'm certainly willing to do it. There's times where it can be fun when you're working cattle and you've got a good group and you just go. Overall, it's not something I enjoy. The pieces of it I enjoy are the connection with the farmer, the conversations that we have during that process, working with the cows, being on farm outside. That's the process I enjoy. The actual physical act of preg checking a cow is not enjoyable to me at all.
The secret's out, maybe. Maybe you're surprised to hear that. Maybe there's many veterinarians out there that feel the same way. I would guess that there are plenty of veterinarians that feel that same way and there's definitely some that don't. That's fine. I personally would love to see the veterinary profession take a big jump forward and let preg checking go. It's a vital skill, and we need to keep that as part of something that we learn. I would love to see us move past that and find all these other things that we can be valuable on farm doing that have nothing to do with preg checking.
There's plenty of things and plenty of knowledge in your veterinarian that can be accessed in one person, one source efficiently, that can help you be better in your operation. Hopefully, you got the sense that I really value these tools of blood and milk pregnancy diagnosis. I think that is a great thing that they are becoming more accessible and more affordable. I hope you also learned a little bit about what an ultrasound can do for you in certain times during pregnancy and the value in having your veterinarian there to check on certain things using that ultrasound.
Overall, we're going to continue this conversation, and we're going to talk about more of this and some of the other things and thoughts that I have and Bradley has, but we're going to do that together as a team. Let you in on that conversation, and we're going to do that soon. That'll be coming soon where we are in the same place or we're at least online together talking about where we see this fit moving forward and does it fit better in certain applications or certain farms or in certain time points than others.
We'll talk about all of that, but we're going to do it together as a team, Bradley and I, and hopefully, Emily will join us as well. With that, you guys know what time it is. Comments, questions, scathing rebuttals, those go to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. Catch us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom and @UMNFarmSafety. Check out Bradley on Instagram @UMNWCROCDairy. Thank you for listening, everybody. We really appreciate it. We'll catch you next week. Bye.
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