Dairy Producers Banquet: December 14
at the Knights of St John Hall 8608 SR 119 Maria Stein (across from the Post Office).
"Reviewing the Present, Focusing on the Future"
Schedule:

• 9:30 Exhibits Open

• 10:00 The State of Dairy 2022, The Good and the Not So Good -Dr. Mark Fox Thumb Vet Service

• 11:00 Gaining a Competitive Edge in Milk Quality Dr. Pam Ruegg Michigan State University

• 12:00 Wedding Style Dinner by Everyone Cooks

• 1:00 Cow Signals, Are Two More Lactations Possible? Dr. Mark Fox

• 2:00 How We Manage Herds Differently with Activity Monitors Allflex, SCR, & Producers

About our speakers: Dr. Mark Fox received his DVM degree from MSU's College of Veterinary Medicine in 1984. He has practiced in the "Thumb "of Michigan for 38 years. Thumb Veterinary Services is currently has 11 veterinarians and is a predominantly large animal practice, with a heavy emphasis on dairy production medicine services. Dr. Fox has a strong interest in nutrition, milk quality, reproductive programs and dairy welfare. He received his postgraduate training at MSU's Dairy Certificate Program in 1994. In 2015, he traveled to the Netherlands, receiving a Master Trainer Certificate in CowSignals. Mark has been the recipient of MSU's DVM Young Achiever's Award and the Birth Of A Purebred Food Animal Award. He recently completed terms of service for the AABP Amstutz Scholarship Committee and the Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference planning committee. He is currently serving as a co-author for the Cowside Practice column in Hoard's Dairyman. He has been a member of AABP, NMC, AVMA, and MVMA since graduation. Dr Fox has also served on his local school board and church board. Mark and his wife, Jane, have three married children, and eight grandchildren. His hobbies include fishing, hunting, motorcycling and of course looking after cows!

Dr. Ruegg currently holds the David J. Ellis Chair in Antimicrobial Resistance and Large Animal Clinical Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University. She is focused on research and outreach which help to improve animal health and farm sustainability. She previously served as the chair of the Dept. of Animal Science at MSU and spent 20 years as a Professor and extension milk quality specialist in the Dept. of Dairy Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she remains an emeritus Professor. Dr. Ruegg has academic degrees from both Michigan State University and the University of California, Davis. She has had varied professional experiences including private veterinary practice, academic positions at both Atlantic Veterinary College in Prince Edward Island, Canada, the College of Veterinary Medicine at MSU, and corporate technical service. She maintains a research program that is focused on ensuring antibiotic stewardship on farms by optimizing antibiotic usage. She does this by identifying animal, environmental and pathogen factors that can be manipulated to reduce disease risk. Dr. Ruegg is active in a number of industry organizations and is a past-president of the National Mastitis Council. Her extension program has focused on developing programs that help farmers maintain healthy cows while reducing antimicrobial usage, improving milk quality, and safety on dairy farms. Throughout her career she has received a number of awards for research, extension and international outreach programs. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles that are frequently cited.

Air Quality for Babies  Dr. Laura Nusbaum

How do you know if you have good air quality for your calves? Well, use all your senses and let your calves tell you what they think. When you first walk into your calf barn, look around to see what the calves are telling you. Where are they laying? Are they bunched or shivering? Are they panting or laying around the edges of the pen? Walk into the pens and make an effort to visit every corner or area of the barn or pens to see what you think of the air quality. What does it smell like if you bend or kneel down to the level of the calf standing or laying down?

We focused so much on air quality and ventilation tubes several years ago, but it seems to have fallen by the wayside a little bit. I know we all worry about enough air movement in the heat of the summer, but now is also a critical time to worry about air quality. Now that the temperature can swing 40 degrees in either direction on any given day, we have more trouble controlling the ventilation. Actually, every day we need to assess the air quality. There are several tools available to help you assess if you have your calves in an environment with good ventilation.

Anemometer: An anemometer is a tool to measure wind speed. Ideally we want the air to be moving at the calf level, but not causing a draft. Sixty feet per minute is the standard wind speed to look for. This speed should help direct fresh air to the calves, but not chill them. Anemometers can be used to measure wind speed coming out of the holes in your tube, wind speed at the calf level and at the level of the bedding. All areas of the barn will need to be measured and retested during different weather conditions to ensure some areas aren't drafty or have dead air spaces.

Fogger: Foggers are used to assess air currents and air flow through a barn. A bug fogger with mineral oil will work just fine. We also use the fogger to see how quickly the air is exchanged. Once the barn is filled with smoke, it should be clear again in 10 to 15 minutes. Also look to see if the smoke fails to get to one part of the barn or fails to clear out of a section. This will change during different weather conditions or different curtain levels. Therefore fogging a barn shouldn't just be done when you first get your new tube installed, but over and over again.

Ammonia monitors: Ammonia is a gas emitted from soiled bedding that harms a calf's respiratory defenses. We often struggle to identify ammonia as a problem because we lose our sensitivity to it and are unable to detect low concentrations of this gas. Experts recommended keeping ammonia concentrations below 5-10 ppm. There are different monitors you can buy to get very accurate readings. But there are also very inexpensive test strips. These test strips just need to be wetted down with bottled water and waved around at calf level to see what color change happens. It is a less sensitive, but very easy way to keep tabs on the ammonia level.

As always, we are willing to help design a positive pressure ventilation tube for your barn or evaluate if your barn needs one. We can also do an assessment if your current tube is doing the job that you expect it to be doing for you.

A wise man speaks because he has something to say. A fool speaks because he has to say something. Plato