Dr Katie Joins our practice Dr. Katie Buatois graduated from Purdue College of Veterinary Medicine this past May. She was part of the early admission program and President of the Student AVMA. She earned a Master's of Public Health from the University of Minnesota at the same time. Dr Katie was also President of the One Health Club, a member of the Curriculum Committee, the Food Animal Club, Exotic Animal Club and Dairy Challenge, where she was the first place finisher.

Dr. Katie's Bachelor of Science degree is in Animal Science from Purdue where she was an Ambassador, served on the Program Committee, and served as a Peer Mentor in the Dean's Scholars Program.

Dr Katie worked at the Purdue Dairy Unit, was an undergraduate research assistant monitoring colostrum and characterizing bacteriophages. She spent two summers as a veterinary assistant in a small animal hospital, one summer as a farm management intern at the Miner Research Institute studying dairy nutrition. Also 8 weeks as an extern in a Wildlife Center in Malawi. She completed an 11 week internship at the St Louis Zoo. Dr. Katie was a student tutor in Calculus for almost two years. Did I mention she is smart?

Dr Canel has taken a position with a corporate practice in eastern Ohio. She has been told she will have no on call. She will be able to live with her grandmother. We wish her the best of luck.

Abolish Summer The past few weeks have divided those with heat abatement sufficient to abolish summer from those that have not. The holding pen and area around the robots is our first priority as cows packing together raise their internal body temperature and it takes half a day for that to dissipate. Increased body temperature causes cows to stand up, decreasing production and destroying feet. Heat stress with light avoidance and fly parasites causes cows to bunch. Once cattle bunch, dry matter intake and production go down and diseases, especially mastitis go up.

Evaporative cooling is a great tool for cooling of dairy cows. This involves getting cows wet to the skin, then blowing that moisture off with fans. Cows in holding pens only need 15 minutes to raise their internal body temperature. Skipping getting cows wet, you only get a fraction of the cooling with fans alone. There are companies that will sell you fans with misters on them. They work well in low humidity climates but not east of the Mississippi. We've had discussions about how water is not the best for crowd gates, but yet we've had some crowd gates in for 20 years with little repair. I-Wob sprinklers do the best job in holding pens. Some have tried to put fence line sprinklers on the perimeter of holding pens. There are areas that do not get covered. The same is true with fans. Multiple banks of fans should move air through the holding pen at 11 mph. Creative solutions are rarely as effective as tried and true methods.
 

Even if you do a good job in the holding pen, cooling in the barn is an important part of keeping cows on track. Evaporative cooling by putting water on the backs of cows from shoulder to hooks is the first step. Many of our sprinkler systems are poorly installed. Resulting in commonly too high, wetting feed, and spraying in the air. Moved down to 60 to 66 inches, the water is effectively put on their backs. There is commonly a discussion about the low sprinklers at risk for damage. We find that cows that are more comfortable are less likely to tear things up. Durability is increased by installing the sprinkler line with the support of angle iron.
 

 I prefer the half gallon per minute sprinkler heads to run a little longer wetting the barrel of the cow but using less water than the gallon per minutes nozzles. The objective is to wet the cows, but not the floor. If you can find 180 degree sprinklers, I'd like to know your source. All of our installations are 120 degrees, which at 8 foot spacing leaves a gap. Narrowing the spacing to 6 foot has helped to narrow this gap.
 

The second half of evaporative cooling is fans. Tunnel and cross-vent barns rarely achieve the 4 mph needed to drive moisture off the skin surface. They are more predictable at having ventilation, but generally need the same kicker fan configuration as naturally ventilated barns. The feed lines are a given for a row of fans over the cows backs. 49 to 54 inch axial fans throw a good plume of air 32 feet. We commonly put a double row, often staggered over the head to head stalls and fans over the outside row of 3 row barns have helped to fill that outside row with cows lying down. Well placed shade cloth done well or strategic use of curtains can help to have cooler air available to the side wall of naturally ventilated barns.
 

Dry cows need the same cooling configurations as lactating cows. 25 years ago I heard a talk entitled, "Why cows don't milk in the Fall." It was known then that we need to cool dry cows to maintain dry matter intake and health. We now know the far reaching effects on the fetus in heat stressed dry cows for two generations. We are getting increasingly involved in ventilation and cooling of young stock. It is best to think of this as two things. Ventilation is bringing fresh air into the animal space and is achieved with open sidewalls, tunnel ventilation or positive pressure tubes. Cooling requires fans blowing on the animals, which aids in fly control and spreads the calves out.

 

Heifers, Cost or Investment? A few years ago, we had burgeoning heifer pens that were eating up the dairy profits. We urged "Right sizing heifer pens to fit needs." Pendulums swing and many failed to account for the fact that only 80% of heifers born, calve. Beef on dairy calves sell nice at the sale barn, but if you don't have enough replacements in two years, keeping a cull cow or buying a replacement, gets expensive. So we need to figure out how many you really need and how you can do a top job of raising them.

Laura Homan, Zoetis, joined our doctor's meeting to focus on heifers and discuss a service Zoetis offers to Leaders Edge clients. The hard part of evaluating heifer performance is digging through records. They will do that for you and we can then identify steps to obtain better heifer performance. Heifer survival is a key indicator of net farm income. Beyond survival, many farms fail to calve at 85% of mature body weight. After we identify and fix issues with milk fed and weaned calves, the next cost opportunity is to shorten the weaning to breeding period, while still freshening a mature heifer.
 

Steps in this:
 

1. Move heifers into the breeding pen on a regular basis.
2. Give Prostaglandin on the day of the move
3. Breed soon
4. Have routine Preg checks. Don't skip
5. Reenroll the opens in a breeding program

Some farms do great with simple heat detection, others use prostaglandin once or twice, while others, use prostaglandin once then roll over into 5 day CoSynch. Facilities make a big difference to make these programs work. Headlocks and chute systems take much of the work out of this. What is easy gets done and this needs done.