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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.
Welcome to the Moos Room. Finally, it's a nice day in western Minnesota. It's been really hot lately, especially this last week. It's been in the 90s and really humid with high dew points. So the cows are going through quite a bit of heat stress again, but today it's cooled off a lot, so it's been quite nice.
But the first heat stress kind of in July really didn't take too much of a toll on the cows, but this time I looked and we lost four pounds of milk. Now, some cows obviously were a lot more than that, eight to 10. Some cows didn't lose any, but on average, we lost four pounds. So that is kind of concerning.
Obviously, we're trying to do some things to try and help with heat stress. We've been looking at more shade structures that we can put out with our cows, especially with our conventional cows that are a little outside. And the organic cows have been in the barn during the daytime and not grazing during the day because they're just standing out there in the hot sun anyways and not really grazing or drinking water.
So trying to reduce their heat stress as well, but it's taken its toll on the cows in the last week. So we'll be trying to figure that one out here so it doesn't happen again But with that I've been thinking a lot about lame cows. We've had some lame cows, uh, recently. It happens, uh, with kind of all this mud.
We've gotten some rain. We had two inches of rain the other day, and we had some mud, and then it gets dry and hard. And so it's lameness. We've got a few cows that, that are lame now, and there was this study that kinda caught my eye, and we're gonna talk about it a little bit from a footbath management perspective.
And it was actually done in Canadian dairy herds, so gives you an idea about what's happening from a footbath management standard. And we can look at realities and operations, some gaps that the study found, and what the future of hoof health is. And this study was done by Melissa Duplessis from Agri-Food Canada, which is kind of the, I would say, maybe USDA research, uh, institute, uh, in, in Canada.
Now, this herd Or this study looked at about 250 dairy farms across eight provinces, uh, in Canada. 98% of the herds were in freestall. So freestall housing kind of reflecting the modern dairy world in Canada. 94% of the herds were Holstein. So Holstein herds, freestall housing. On average, about 180 lactating and dry cows for these farms, and they averaged about 11,800 kilos of milk per year, which is about 26,000 pounds of milk So let's dive into the study and see what it looked like.
So if you think about it from an operational flow standpoint, so how are cows flowing through the footbath? Well, 66% of the herds routed the cows through the footbath immediately after milking, so whether in a milking parlor or through the robots. Still, 25% of the herds utilized a dedicated time at the far end of one pen to run the cows through.
So I think that still happens on herds here in the US as well, where you take a time of day and we're just gonna run all the cows through it, do the footbath, and call it good, instead of having to wait for all the cows to come through the milking parlor. And there were still a couple farms that allowed unforced ad lib passage through a footbath, so go through it when they want, as many times as they want So what about the frequency?
56% of lactating cows went through one to two times a week, and 16% went through three times a week. So on average, you know, some farms are allowing cows to go through a few more times through the footbath, but a majority of the farms are going through one or two times a week. So what about disposal of the waste solution?
So 100% say they are sending it directly into the manure pit or lagoon, and we'll talk about that in a little bit as it pertains a little bit to copper accumulation from a lot of these different footbaths
So what about the realities of this? So if you look at kind of the standards of going through the, the footbath, these solutions, we'll talk about copper sulfate and formaldehyde in a second, they kind of lose their efficacy when organic matter exceeds 20 grams per liter. So what is that? That's typically 150 to 300 cows going through a footbath.
So if you're trying to run, you know, maybe more than 150, 200 cows through a footbath, you may have to change the solutions more often because they really lose efficacy. So the first cows going through the footbath are doing much better than the cows that are going through towards the end just because cows are going through it, they're defecating.
The solution just loses its efficacy
So if you think about it from a herd size perspective, the smaller herds are s- trying to stretch the solutions a little bit longer. So herds discarding a solution after zero to 100 passes averaged about 116 cows, and herds that push 200 passes average about 273 cows. So the smaller herds now are trying to stretch those solutions a little bit longer and not change them as often as what other herds do
68% dispose of the solutions after 50 to 200 passes. However, some herds are keeping that a little bit longer than others. About 27% of the herds leave it for about 24 hours, so that's retention time. 32% leave it for less than five hours, but some herds are actually leaving the solution out for 24 hours before they actually dispose of it.
So what are people actually using? Well, 73% of the farms are using only a single product. Most of that is copper sulfate. So 54% of the herds are using copper sulfate as the only sole product. About 12% are actually using it in combination with something else. But overwhelmingly, the favorite was copper sulfate, and we see that throughout the dairy industry as well.
And there's really less human risk perception, so there's really a lower concern by using copper sulfate, although it can cause some severe eye and skin irritations if you get it on your skin or get it in your eyes. But there's some environmental realities that come with this. So
Farms were maybe a little more likely to recognize that there can be some environmental harm with copper sulfate because it accumulates in the soil and it can potentially impact crop yield. So that's one to think about when we're thinking about copper sulfate as well. 12% of the farms were using formaldehyde as a sole product, and there the h- risk perception was maybe a little greater.
Farms were three times more likely to view that as a human health risk compared to the copper sulfate because it's a known carcinogen and can require some strict handling protocols So we think about it from a safety perspective and handling all these chemicals. Well, only 46% of the farms reported use of PPE, or personal protective equipment, during the preparation of the footbath.
39% said no, they don't use any. So farms are, you know, no gloves, no nothing to do that. So some are using others, and most of that was of the 46% that reported PPE use, a majority of those are using gloves. So 97% use gloves, 45% use coveralls, 37% use a mask, and 35% use safety goggles. So overall, if you have PPE, they're using at least gloves, which I would think you would want to at least use gloves so you don't get it on your hand or any irritations on there.
Safety goggles might be a good thing, so you don't get it in your eyes. That's certainly a big concern as well. Some of the other ones, yeah, maybe. I think they're good methods for safety, but might not necessarily be necessary. At least the gloves and maybe some goggles. Depending on what product you're using, obviously, that can be a challenge.
So formaldehyde users, they were two times more likely to wear PPE because of the carcinogenic risks
So if you're using formaldehyde, I would suggest using a lot of PPE to do that. But even if you're using copper sulfate, because it can cause eye damage, skin irritation, so you may wanna use some gloves when preparing that as well So what about the herds? Let's talk about herds. So again, what I said, 56% go through one to two times a week.
And there were some herds in this study that never sent cows through a footbath. So 3% of the herds never sent cows through a footbath at all. Probably the biggest gap or the biggest oversight that the study saw was dry cows. 69% of dry cows never passed through a footbath, and that's interesting because we s- tend to see a lot of foot health related in- problems in early lactation compared to later lactation.
Even though most dry cows have probably been trimmed, foot trimmed, just before they go dry, we never really think about their hoof health. They're probably in the same barn, same environment, free stall barns, and they never go through a footbath. So maybe that's one thing to consider is putting your dry cows through a footbath.
Heifers obviously a big blind spot. The study revealed 82% of heifers never passed through a footbath either. Now we can see some hoof problems in heifers. We probably see a lot less, so that's why people tend not to run heifers through there, but it might be a consideration if you see a lot of foot related problems in your cows or early in first lactation cows, maybe consider running the heifers through that
Because really, what is the cost of kind of some of these blind spots, you could say? Literature has really shown that digital dermatitis or hairy heel warts during a rearing period negatively impacts milk yield and reproduction in first lactation. So one of the things to think about, especially if your heifers are having some hoof issues
So what about automation? So there's a lot of thought about automation and automatic footbaths. You know, it takes a lot of time to set up these footbaths as well
About 19% of the farms that were surveyed had an automated footbath system, and that emptied and fills without any human intervention, which I can see happening into the future. You know, you don't have to worry about it. It cleans itself, it empties itself, and it's automated. What a time saver. So it really-- these automated systems remove kind of this labor friction that happens, and they may help in this retention time or kind of drive this clean-out time to less than five hours.
Remember, there were some farms that were keeping that solution for well over a day, and if you have automation, you can certainly have a shorter retention time before the organic matter kind of neutralizes a lot of these solutions. So that's one thing to think about is if you had an automated system, you might be able to help out with a lot more cleaning and less retention time, because technology really forces adherence to some of these best practices because it removes the manual labor bottleneck that a lot of us think about.
You know, "Oh, we don't have time," or we don't-- You know, "Oh, somebody forgot to put the footbath out tonight." Well, automation will help with that. So I think automation is only gonna increase into the future, especially with these footbaths So what did the farmers think? Well, 92% of the farmers believed their footbaths were effective at preventing foot lesions, and we tend to see that farms with some footbaths tend to do much better 51% were very confident in their use of a footbath.
Obviously, confidence plummeted when they were asked about the recommended weekly frequency. If you're running through every week, they weren't as confident. And confident dropped even further to 25% when asked about the recommended number of cow passages before they discard the solution. So you know when farmers start thinking about it and go, "Oh, well, we don't clean it out very often."
Well, then they start going, "Oh, well, maybe our footbath doesn't work as effectively as what it should or what it might work if we clean it out more often So that's one of the things, and that's maybe where automation certainly can help as well. So what does the future look like here based on this study?
Well, there was a projected 7% increase in footbath adoption, and so footbaths are only gonna keep, uh, increasing on these farms. So what is the driver of this? Really new barns. Building new facilities, 47% increase were based on new barn construction, and this really saw a major shift, especially in these eastern provinces of Canada as they go from tie stall herds to free stall herds.
And so if you're moving from a tie stall to a free stall and that you would see that here in the US as well, that more apt to put in footbaths as well. Now copper sulfate obviously remained kind of the uncontested product of choice and really the farms that were intending to adopt footbaths were not going with formaldehyde at all.
Copper sulfate was the definite choice
So really it's all about operational efficiencies and trying to execute correct protocols for footbath management, and that'll turn into great hoof health as well. Obviously, you need to think about retention times, and they varied widely based on labor and herd size. Obviously, you have to think about the harsh chemicals because they can be dangerous, and you should think about using some PPE when trying to deal with these.
And then maybe s- think about heifers and they're going through a footbath. You know, most of these farms thought their footbaths were effective at improving their hoof health. But really you have to think about from an operational standpoint that You may wanna think about changing the solution a lot faster than probably what most farms are.
I would think that if you sat down and thought about it, you maybe have your solution maybe a little too long. And so really thinking about when those solutions are changing or even going to automation, that might help as well And then thinking about, like I said, these heifers and utilizing their foot bath, 'cause really that might be missing
a critical window for long-term hoof health if we're think- not thinking about the heifers And obviously we have to think about some sort of custom protocol for every farm, because not every farm is the same. Everybody's different. They've got, uh, different manure handling systems, different cow flow, different milking facilities, labor needs, all of that.
But we need to think about some custom protocols, because really there's no universally applicable footbath protocols. The farm obviously must work with the veterinary protocols to kind of account for some of these organic matter thresholds that we might see, chemical safety training, and really what the whole herd life cycle is from a footbath perspective, and how much hoof health issues are happening in the herd.
So with that, hopefully you learned a little bit about footbath issues and challenges and management, and I think they're applicable to a lot of dairy farmers across the, the globe actually, as we, uh, transition to more confined herds and move to more freestall based herds, and really thinking about automation, uh, as we move into the future.
I thought the study was quite interesting and gives me a, a perspective on, on some things, uh, as well, especially with automation and, and automatic footbaths. So with that, if you have any comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at The Moo's Room. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M @umn.edu, or find us on the web, University of Minnesota Livestock Extension, or UMN WC ROC Dairy.
And with that, hope you have a good week. Bye.