Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Dairy Intelligent, a podcast by VESR Techs.
Speaker: Together we will meet dairy industry intellects and passionate dairy producers to discuss all things cows and connected technologies.
Speaker: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of VESR Texas podcast, Dairy Intelligent.
Speaker: I'm your host Annie and today I'm excited to be joined by Dr. Rick Grant, former president of the William H. Minor Agricultural Research Institute.
Speaker: CellFlex are designed to give staff the ability to restrain multiple animals at one time, streamlining labor efficiency and making physical examinations, vaccinations, artificial inseminations, pregnancy checks, and routine treatments faster and safer.
Speaker: So when cows are restrained for too long in headlocks, there may be limited access to feed and water, less laying time, and greater human presence.
Speaker: This stress can lead to decreased milk production, reproduction, and health.
Speaker: So thank you so much for being with us today, Rick.
Speaker: Let's start off by having you introduce yourself.
Speaker: Yeah, well, thank you, Annie.
Speaker: It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker: I guess my background briefly would be, I spent about 21 years at Minor Institute.
Speaker: So that was a big chunk of my professional career.
Speaker: Enjoyed every minute of it, primarily in big part because it's not too far from where I grew up.
Speaker: I grew up on a small dairy farm here in Northern New York.
Speaker: One you don't see too often anymore about a 30 cow Thai style dairy, but it certainly made me love the dairy industry.
Speaker: Before I came here in 2003, I'd been an extension specialist and dairy scientist at the University of Nebraska, so a Midwesterner out there in Lincoln, for about 13 years.
Speaker: And it's really, for today's topic, I guess that's where I could say I got interested in it because I arrived there in Lincoln in 1990, just ready to put my graduate school and postdoc and knowledge to work, right?
Speaker: as a trained as a dairy nutritionist with an interest in forages and all that good stuff.
Speaker: But I realized after about a year or so that a lot of the questions weren't really specifically nutritional.
Speaker: In fact, they kind of boil down to the basic question of why aren't my cows responding to the ration?
Speaker: you know, and it took me a while to figure it out.
Speaker: But then I realized, you know, really what it is, is that the management environment, right, the feeding environment.
Speaker: So that's become sort of my research passion, I'd say, in the last couple of decades is really looking at the environment we put the cow in when we expect her to reach her genetic potential, right, and really respond to that expensive ration that you formulated.
Speaker: So
Speaker: That's a bit of a brief background on my interests and how I came to be here, I guess, this morning.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Welcome.
Speaker: The cow's environment is so critical.
Speaker: Well, I'd like to start with a little history of dairy barns and when and how we got to the place where we are now, where many dairies are utilizing self-flax.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker: It's always good to start with the background.
Speaker: And I would say certainly the history, I'm going to be clear, far predates me.
Speaker: But I had the great good fortune of knowing someone named Jack Albright at Purdue University when I was a grad student there.
Speaker: And he was sort of the father of cow behavior, I'd say, in the U.S. And so he was right there when this was all happening.
Speaker: And in his book, he would say back in the 1970s, really, in the Western United States is when the use of
Speaker: headlocks or self-locking stanchions really came into vogue.
Speaker: And it's because of course you think back then that's where the larger herds developed, you know, with free stall housing or open lots.
Speaker: But at any rate, they all had a fence line feeding systems you see.
Speaker: And so they needed an effective way, an efficient way to restrain larger groups of animals than we had traditionally used with, you know, manual stanchions or single shoots.
Speaker: Those have become kind of obsolete.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: That's really where they developed.
Speaker: And of course, over time, as herds began to increase in size across the U.S. and really globally at this point, they've become what I'd say are ubiquitous.
Speaker: Almost every herd has self-locked and stanched.
Speaker: So the amount of time that a cow spends in a self-lock, is this defined as when they're actually locked in it or just when they're using it when it's open at the feed lane?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker: A little bit of people can get, be confused about that, but I would say importantly from a time budgeting standpoint, from the cows perspective, it's really the management time we're concerned about that is actual lockup time in the headlock.
Speaker: You know, otherwise the cow of course is free to come and go as she pleases.
Speaker: So it really doesn't constrain her ability to practice normal resting or eating or ruminating behaviors, drinking behaviors.
Speaker: But when she's actually locked in, that's when we need to be concerned, especially if it gets to be too long every day.
Speaker: That can, I think, based on some recent research and summaries of the data, that can lead to some significant chronic stress, especially when she can't leave the feed manger to drink, or importantly, to lie down and ruminate, or even to groom, right?
Speaker: So you can have some frustration building up with these cows, maybe more aggressive interactions after they finally are unlocked.
Speaker: So I'm rambling a little bit, but it's a management time when they're locked in.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So how do modern technologies such as activity collars impact the use of headlocks on the dairy?
Speaker: Well, I think that people, some people definitely are starting to take a second look at headlocks and saying, sure, we need them.
Speaker: They're important management tools on almost every farm.
Speaker: But with these modern technologies, activity collars, other precision technology, say rumination monitors, it's a wide open field at this point.
Speaker: What they allow us to do, I think, as you all know, is they allow us to really precisely monitor individual cows within a group of cows.
Speaker: And it really lessens the need, I would say, to use something like a self-locking stanchion system to restrain all cows at one time in a pen.
Speaker: And maybe you're only looking at a few cows specifically, but every animal's time budget is being impacted, isn't it?
Speaker: And perhaps in a negative way,
Speaker: if it's being misused, if the cow is being locked in for too long each day.
Speaker: So I think we're seeing more precision technologies to identify sick cows, active cows in heat, whatever it might be.
Speaker: And they're probably going to be resulting in more efficient use of labor.
Speaker: And I think certainly over time, probably better for the cow's time budget if we can get away from the heavy use of self-locking.
Speaker: We have access to that technology and that data, so we definitely need to utilize it.
Speaker: to our advantage.
Speaker: So you mentioned some of the negative consequences of extended lockup times.
Speaker: Can you discuss these consequences in a little bit more detail?
Speaker: And I think I want to be clear here because as far as I know, you know, when they're used properly, so if the cow's restrained for less than an hour or so a day, as far as I know, there's really no negative consequences, right?
Speaker: But when we talk about prolonged periods of time and
Speaker: Some recent research and reviews published in the literature would have arbitrarily defined that as, say, four hours a day or more, which is certainly prolonged from the cow's perspective.
Speaker: Well, there can be negative consequences.
Speaker: Again, I keep mentioning this review, and if someone's interested, it was done by Texas A&M researchers and published in 2022.
Speaker: But basically, they said, well, you know, if they're locked in, clearly they're standing up.
Speaker: You can be altering feeding and ruminating behavior for sure.
Speaker: They're not ruminating while lying down, which is so critical to the cows, rumen environment.
Speaker: We call it recumbent rumination.
Speaker: They can be frustrated, as I said, lack of grooming, certainly reduced drinking.
Speaker: All of this chronic stress combined, we know from the published research, will stimulate elevated blood cortisol and other glucocorticoids, really, which basically set the bottom line, Annie, is that if we know that we have this sort of chronic stress, elevated cortisol, we see less or lowered immune function, potentially less milk yield, depending on the severity of the
Speaker: of the length of time and time spent standing and even less reproductive performance if you look at the literature.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And as you said, self-locks can definitely provide a lot of labor savings on the dairy.
Speaker: And when they're used correctly, they can be such an asset.
Speaker: So can you estimate how much time a cow typically spends in a headlock just eating and it's not locked?
Speaker: Yeah, good question.
Speaker: And again, to be clear, I think the
Speaker: the number that we're interested in is when they're locked in, right?
Speaker: Because then we've taken their ability to decide what they want to do away from them.
Speaker: But if the cow, the cow, of course, is going to put her head through the, through the stanchion, through the self-lock just to eat.
Speaker: And so really you're asking what's natural feeding behavior.
Speaker: And I would say most of the research would say for our lactating dairy cows, about three to five hours a day is a pretty typical range for feeding time.
Speaker: And it's going to vary between that depending on, you know,
Speaker: time available, but also maybe some of the characteristics of the diet, how fast she can eat it, fiber level and things like that.
Speaker: But this three to five hours a day typically would be spread over say nine to 10 or 12 meals a day.
Speaker: And that again is affected by feeding frequency, milkman frequency,
Speaker: management and so forth.
Speaker: And we know the first meal is often the largest.
Speaker: So we expect that kind of natural behavior.
Speaker: And I guess probably to me, the bottom line is if you're using self-locking stanchions, and we almost all are for a management tool, especially in the transition period, we need to make sure the cow can still maintain her normal, healthy, natural feeding behavior patterns.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: No, absolutely.
Speaker: And
Speaker: That really leads right into my next question as we've kind of been talking a little bit more at length about the effect on lactating cows who are being locked up for an extended period of time.
Speaker: But what's that effect on transition cows as they're often a little bit more vulnerable?
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: I would say anything that I've mentioned in terms of the potential negative effect of extended lockup times for lactating cows, whether it's behavioral or productive or health,
Speaker: Everything is still true, of course, for the transition cows, even more so, because the transition cows, we all know there's been so much data, you know, they're so susceptible to disease, metabolic disorders,
Speaker: They're under so much stress associated naturally with calving that they've just undergone.
Speaker: And the other thing I'd like to think about just from the cows perspective, these transition cows.
Speaker: So cows thrive on consistency in the ration, consistency in their management environment, don't they?
Speaker: And the transition period, I joke with farmers, the transition period is nothing but change, change, and more change.
Speaker: And so they're definitely stressed.
Speaker: And so, uh, we would use commonly use headlocks to lock in fresh cows for fresh cow checks.
Speaker: And that's been a good routine, but boy, there's a group of cows where you can very quickly and negatively affect their health outcomes in those first three or four weeks of lactation.
Speaker: If they're locked in for too long, every single day.
Speaker: What about cows that are being locked up for an extended period of time in potential heat stress conditions?
Speaker: I would assume that heightens the risks even more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, there are some great work done.
Speaker: I'd say probably the foundational work, if people would use that term, in the area of headlocks was done.
Speaker: There was a pair of studies, one done at Purdue University and one done at Utah State University.
Speaker: They were collaborating there.
Speaker: and Jack Albright really at Purdue was heading it up.
Speaker: But at Utah State, they did one study looking at four hours of prolonged headlock time, lockup time in cool conditions and another study done under heat stress conditions during the summer.
Speaker: And what they saw, very different responses because really the prolonged heat stress was negative in both cases, but it was so much more negative in terms of
Speaker: milk production behavior, even blood cortisol was probably twice as high as normal during heat stress.
Speaker: So if you, if you're going to lock animals up for extended periods of time, doing it during the heat of summer or during heat stress is definitely not a great idea from a, from a cortisol, from a stress standpoint, certainly from a behavioral and milk production standpoint.
Speaker: No, absolutely.
Speaker: And I think that's pretty obvious.
Speaker: However, having some of that data and science behind it is, I think, helpful to see the true negative consequences that can definitely be elevated in that heat stress element.
Speaker: So you mentioned your beginning work of your career as a nutritionist.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Feed barrier design and feed push-up strategies can be crucial for successful headlock use.
Speaker: Can you explain how these factors influence the effectiveness of headlocks and the well-being of cows?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker: So if we step back a little bit and think about, okay, we have the headlocks here.
Speaker: They're a restraint system, but they're also a significant part of the cows feeding, you know,
Speaker: feeding environment, the barrier, literally.
Speaker: And so what can we think about design and management that really kind of enhances the natural feeding behavior of the cow rather than fighting against it?
Speaker: And I can think of at least three different factors people ought to be aware of just when they're installing and using these self-locking stanchions, right?
Speaker: The first one is just the basic design and their placement needs to be done appropriately.
Speaker: And that data is all out there very easily accessible.
Speaker: So the cow can exert the least amount of pressure or force through her shoulders, through the front of her body as she's trying to reach feed.
Speaker: And so you think about that and you can, we can all picture a cow with her head through the headlock, pushing, trying to reach feed that's just a little bit out of, out of reach, right?
Speaker: And so you think about feed pushups, you think about feeding frequency, feed availability over 24 hours a day, all those become critical.
Speaker: And if we think about feed pushups, I think especially we should be in the first hour or two after feed drop, after feed delivery, because we know that
Speaker: that's when the cows are most aggressively eating and the likelihood of pushing feed back is probably the highest.
Speaker: Also, a lot of people tilt headlocks and that's nothing new.
Speaker: I don't know that it needs to be done, but in a lot of our dairies, if you can tilt the headlock, the standard would be four to six inches outward.
Speaker: of course we've all seen it, it extends the cows reach.
Speaker: And that's important again, relative to this force the cows willing to exert or will exert as she tries to reach feed, as she reaches the maximum extent of her reach.
Speaker: I didn't mention it, but I would say, I believe the number is about 500 pounds of force through her shoulders when she's reaching feed.
Speaker: That's about twice as much as it takes to injure, to cause a bruising.
Speaker: So we don't want the cows to do that.
Speaker: I'm talking quite a bit here, but the other point I would make would be we have headlocks or simple posts and rails.
Speaker: And a lot of people say, well, should I use headlocks?
Speaker: Should I use post and rail?
Speaker: There's no data that I'm aware of that would say headlocks when the cows are trained as youngsters, as heifers.
Speaker: As long as they're not naive to the headlocks, dry matter takes the same.
Speaker: And actually when we overcrowd, I think a lot of our herds overcrowd, of course.
Speaker: There's good data from British Columbia that would say headlocks actually provide more protection for the animal in terms of being displaced from the feed bunk.
Speaker: So those are some things, Annie, I would have in mind.
Speaker: Going forward, we might also think about the size of the headlock, 24 versus 30 inches.
Speaker: There's not a lot of data on that relative to feed bunk.
Speaker: cow responsiveness, but I think what's out there would indicate that at least for our high producing cows, maybe we should be thinking about 30 inch headlocks.
Speaker: We certainly do for the close up and fresh cows, but maybe also any cow that's really out there trying to maximize intake and optimize production of solids, corrected milk.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: There are definitely a variety of different shapes and sizes of headlocks available on the market today, but as a producer is building a barn, that might not be something they're thinking about on varying the different sizes they have within their barn.
Speaker: So considering the variations in observed lockup times, what recommendations do you make for an optimal duration and how can farmers balance the use of headlocks when ensuring the comfort and behavioral needs of the cows?
Speaker: Yeah, that's sort of the bottom line, isn't it?
Speaker: Well, to be clear, all the data that I've seen summarized, most of it is looked at prolonged lockup, which is they've defined as four hours per day or more, which is a lot.
Speaker: But, you know, earlier surveys would say that, you know, you see from as little as one or two hours a day to over seven to eight hours a day.
Speaker: So there's a whole range out there, right?
Speaker: I will say some work that we did when I was at the University of Nebraska was more case study work.
Speaker: We looked at...
Speaker: you know, shorter time.
Speaker: We really, we looked, what are the cows doing when they're locked in?
Speaker: That was our basic question.
Speaker: So we spent some time watching this and what we found, no surprise if you think about normal feeding behavior in cows.
Speaker: So the cow's locked in and the feed's in front of her.
Speaker: How long does she really eat?
Speaker: And most cows stopped by about an hour.
Speaker: And that makes sense because the typical meal length for a cow is as short as 20 minutes up to maybe 45 minutes to an hour.
Speaker: So the feed could be pushed up.
Speaker: It could be wonderful, well mixed, not sorted out fresh, but if the cow's already eaten,
Speaker: you're still wasting her time, aren't you?
Speaker: So I think we need to look at one, two, three hours, maybe less than four.
Speaker: We really don't know exactly what, at what point we begin to waste the cow's time.
Speaker: But what I typically tell people is for sure, the data is compelling if you have prolonged time, four hours or more.
Speaker: But in reality, I think the case study work we did at Nebraska, where cows are basically done eating within an hour,
Speaker: Some will start ruminating, but they're still, they're ruminating standing up rather than lying down.
Speaker: And there's a really large advantage to lying down while ruminating.
Speaker: Anyway, over an hour routinely lock up, I would say we're probably taking advantage of the cow and doing it for our own labor efficiency, if that makes sense.
Speaker: No, it absolutely does.
Speaker: And I think that was a really good way to kind of summarize our conversation.
Speaker: I do have one more question, which
Speaker: Actually, I think ties in really great to your first point when you introduced yourself.
Speaker: So what does an animal-centered environment mean to you?
Speaker: Well, there's a lot of ways you could answer that.
Speaker: Clearly, you're putting her at the middle.
Speaker: But I guess I have a slide typically when I'm talking to dairy producers.
Speaker: And at the end, I say, you know, there's a lot of ways to get to the end point of good cow comfort.
Speaker: There's a lot of ways to skin the cat, you might say.
Speaker: But fundamentally, I think from the cow's perspective,
Speaker: The management environment is optimal from her standpoint.
Speaker: If it's one where a cow can practice all of her desired behaviors like eating, resting, ruminating, drinking, if she can do all of that when she wants to throughout the day, and she can do it in the quantity that she needs hours per day and in the quality that she requires.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So it's a comfortable stall.
Speaker: It's a high quality ration that's there to be eaten.
Speaker: It's clean water.
Speaker: So it's when
Speaker: How much and high quality.
Speaker: That, to me, is what you need to think about if you're trying to build an animal-centered, as you call it, environment.
Speaker: Wonderful.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much, Rick, for sharing your insights.
Speaker: So when used properly, syphilox can be an incredibly useful tool on the dairy.
Speaker: But as we've discussed, the system needs to be used properly to avoid extended periods locked up.
Speaker: As we know, it's time taken away from the cows laying down and resting and ultimately producing milk.
Speaker: So thank you so much, everyone who listened into this episode, and we will see you next time.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us for another Dairy Intelligent episode.
Speaker: We hope you have found some suggestions to improve cow comfort on your farm or simply just learn something new.
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Speaker: We would love to have them listen and learn.
