Hi, Welcome Bc ci Chat. On Brad white.
Happy to have you with us today and
happy to have our full crew here in
the studio. Good morning, Philip. Good morning, guys.
Dustin? Good morning.
Hello, everybody. White So as always, we've got
several good topics to talk about today, including
we're gonna talk about feeding in times of
heat and heat stress. We're gonna talk about
risk management and marketing for those caps. Prices
have been really high. How do I protect?
How do I make sure that I get
the best price for the... Those calves. And
we're gonna wrap up by talking about a
couple unusual diseases,
lumpy jaw, and wooden tongue, and what are
the implications of those in your herd?
As always, if you have interest, you could
send us a question at bc at k
u dot edu, and we've got another podcast
called Bo Science with bc where we dive
into further topics.
But in preparing for this 1 today, guys,
we talked about unusually named diseases in cattle.
I had some questions that I wanted to
ask you knowing that you're all fish disease
experts. No. I'm gonna ask you some questions
about fish disease. And I'm gonna start easy
and we may get a little bit harder.
Okay? So the first 1...
Is called hamburger gill.
What do you think that looks like in
fish.
It's when their guild just
turns to mush, and it looks like hamburger.
See. I knew you guys were fish a.
I kinda could I guess that 1 too.
Okay. Okay. The next 1, now we're getting
a little bit harder. Mh. This is called
Hole the head.
What could that be? Is there a hole
in their head. Cans.
I'm guessing says sometimes they could ex exclude
their brains, but then keep swimming.
So it didn't really need. They went they
don't really It is a bad disease though
You don't wanna have a hole in your
head. Okay. It.
I'm thinking, like, some kind of slimy
texture or something like that on the outside,
they just no? Good cast, but no.
It tastes bad. Tastes bad. Taste bad. Think
like their their fins get all back. Ic.
Just came hardly avoid saying. Yeah. I guess.
It's actually gonna get little white spots and
ic is short for the bacteria or pro
in that car these. So... Alright. And I've
extended all my
sorry share with you guys. So let's let's
switch to something that we do know about,
which is
how do we manage rations and feeding
when it comes to heat? And and Philip,
I'm gonna
be more specific with this 1. So we're
not talking about pasture We're talking about... If
we were raising
he for replacement he or raising yea bowls,
and we've got them in a dry lot
scenario, their appetite gonna drop some when it
gets hot. Do I need to adjust the
ration or change anything in that environment?
Feed intake is gonna drop off. So that
means
energy intake is gonna decrease. And so you're
not gonna get the performance that you want
from just from 2 aspects, 1,
maintenance requirements are gonna go up because they're
trying to get rid of that extra heat,
and then 2, they're not eating as many
calories. And so
1 of the things that we can try
to do to alleviate
is to increase the energy density of the
diet. So we can decrease the amount of
rough in the diet and add more concentrates,
so that they're consuming more calories. Okay? But
the other thing that happens is the the
ferment... The heat of fermentation is actually less.
When they're ferment
starches in in grains when compared to when
they're ferment
forage.
Which seems a little bit counterintuitive to me
that you would have a higher
diet and the heat of fermentation is less.
Mh. So
because of the way that those different carbohydrates
are fermented to what we call the volatile
fatty acids.
When starches are fermented fermented, we don't have
as much
carbon dioxide produced during that fermentation as we
do with 4,
and that is the metabolism
part of that that creates the heat.
And so we have less heat
per unit of
carbohydrate
consumed
with a starch than with a forage. Well,
and we're providing that
meal in a bolus. Typically, which is different
than our grazing cattle, which are grazing continuously.
Mh. And we don't see as much... And
they're in a different environment. So hard to
compare grazing to this dry lot scenario that
we have? Mh. So, Bob, what are what
are some of the things as we think
about managing that heat diet
do do you change the time and day
that you feed? Or do you feed at
the same time of day? No. I think
you need to think about that because kind
of the peak heat of the day is
mid afternoon.
And as Philip was saying, you've got the
heat of fermentation. So we're trying to avoid
having, you know, a big belly full right
during the middle of the afternoon because that's...
Gonna kinda compound those 2 things. So a
lot of people talk about feeding really early
in the morning or technically, you do it,
you know, kinda after
So late evening, early morning, so that,
by the time you're getting in the middle
of the afternoon, that's... They're they're starting to
get hungry and they're and they're not as
actively
creating heat of digestion. Well, it's not it's
not different for us and that during the
heat of the day. You're not as hungry,
but then the the room and you talks
about that heat from fermentation, how long does
that occur after they have a meal? Well,
for for several hours, but it's gonna peak
probably somewhere around 3 to 6 hours or
so after meal. So, yeah. So Bob, there's
some good research that shows that if you
can do it. Feeding those cattle in the
evening,
in the hot weather, then that heat of
fermentation is gonna happen in the cooler morning
hours,
when they've can dissipate that extra heat a
lot better. And so their performance actually improves
quite a bit. Yeah. Because if we if
we feed them at, 8 or 9 in
the morning. They're heating up right as the
day is heating up, and then it's hard
for them to dissipate dispatch. So if you
get it done at night that makes sense.
And and that makes sense for cattle that
are on a pure
concentrate diet. For some of these scenarios where
we talked about He or bowls,
Do do I not only wanna feed more
energy dense, should I back off if I
know... So we're talking in general summer? But
now I know a heat waves comment it's
gonna be a hundred and 4 the next
3 days,
Should I increase or decrease the amount that
I feed them.
I would decrease the amount that you're gonna
feed them. So that... And and you can
begin making more interested. And we can do
something maybe not quite as extreme, but more
toward a what we would call a limit
feeding type of program where we can make
that diet more energy dense.
But then we can limit the amount instead
of put of how full feed we can
limit the amount. So we're getting the right
calories for them to grow we want, but
but but there... The appetite depression from the
heat of of heat stress is not gonna
have as big impact because we get in
more energy dense diet it. 1 other big
nutrient that we know is hugely important during
times of heat is water. Any tips on
managing water as we go through this hot
time period, and do I need to add
in? Maybe an extra water source that we
don't normally have. I think that's something you
have to have to think about the pen
size, how many animals we're talking about and
plenty of of water space. And so 1
of the things I think to consider is
to bring in an extra tank.
So that that there's any animal that thirsty
at all should be able to get access
to that water quickly. They shouldn't have to
stand in line. I think it's right. Yeah.
I mean, big open source tank that they
can...
Lots of drink from this bowl fountain is
probably not gonna keep up with those cattle
during the heat event,
and they're... Because it's not designed to flow
as fast. Well, we wanna be sure that
we're checking it frequently that we've got fresh
water there because some of those big tanks.
If I'm filling it every day, it's gonna
be fresh. If I'm not, then it's gonna
get the gets stagnant pretty quick. Mh. Same
thing as we watch our our ball flow
tank to be sure that it is keeping
up that the well can pump as they're
drinking because they're gonna drink a lot more
water. So thanks for your thoughts on heat
feeding and managing that diet, including the water
portion of that.
Dustin, Gonna turn to you and Cattle prices
have been good lately, which is something to
look forward to as we go into fall.
But it's time to actually start thinking about
how am I gonna to market my calves.
So if I have an in the scenario
that Had cab born in the spring, and
they are due to be sold in October
and November December, typically, that's my time frame.
Any advice as I start thinking about marketing
for this fall because this may be a
year that I just say.
I'm not gonna worry too much about it
because I think prices are good. Well, I
mean, that could be 1 marketing strategy. Right?
Prices probably gonna be record high. So do
I really need to invest the time. And,
I mean, that's 1 strategy. It could be
a risky strategy.
Or you if you're more risk ave reverse
like myself, maybe you wanna invest a little
more time.
Thinking about when you're gonna
you know, time frame,
location, are there certain programs you're trying to
hit Target.
If there are, do you what are some
of those requirements?
And and do you have to vaccinate it
at a certain point in time before you
sell them? And those are all things you
probably need to think about if you already
haven't? Yeah. And as you think about putting
putting some of those things together, it ties
into
1 of the questions comes up is what
weight do I think my caps are gonna
be at the time of marketing? So Philip
up, what are what are some of the
ways that I could kinda
project or look forward to
How do I know what weight they'll be
at at a specific time in the fall?
Well, probably just trying to estimate based on
past years,
knowing 1 what your
say take it look like last the last
few years.
There are some
nutrition programs and things that we could use
to try to project based on forge that
you've got and and things like that, But
that's probably a little bit more in depth
than most producers are gonna do.
I mean, And by, Bob, do you have
any other thoughts, but I sales tickets its
past sales tickets is probably of a best
bet. I I think so you... That's 1
where you really helpful to have some about
how your herd is perform in the past.
Now there's year to year differences and and
you... In your local area, what's grass production
like, particularly as we get late summer, You
know, it's been at least around us. Been
pretty good up till now, but things can
change and and that's gonna change in the
growth curve.
But if you have a number of years
records,
you can kinda predict well, based on this
year's voyages, it seems more like certain ear
and and that gives you an idea of
what those calves are gonna we off on
and you can start maybe doing some risk
management on the price side if if if
you're concerned. Dustin you you mentioned
might be risky to do nothing, but I
wanna start kinda planning as I look forward.
Should I lock in prices
now, should I wait and how do I
make that decision? Because I know that's not
a singular answer for everyone?
Yeah. I mean, again, it comes back to
kind of your risk level. I mean, some
folks are more risky and they're willing to
just take to the cash price maybe what
if they go to a sale
later in near year. Others there's might 1
lock that in. They know exactly what their
breakeven is, so they might wanna try to
participate in some kind of forward contracts, some
kind of maybe futures contract.
There are other in risk management products out
there to livestock and or grazing forage as
well that from a risk management perspective,
that you might wanna think about as well.
Yeah. And I could do forward selling too.
Right? And it addition do just rate risk
management. I could go ahead and actually contract
them now to be sold certain point. But
that that in itself comes with some risk
that the price could go up from where
it is today.
That that no it's true. You might lose
out on a little bit of potential extra
revenue,
but
comes back to what, I mean, that risk
management you're trying if the prices to go
the opposite way. Right? You you don't wanna
lose. You're trying to lock in a profit
because, mean, if your livelihood is based on,
selling those calves and you know what your
breakeven is and you wanna make a little
bit of money, you lock that in. Yeah.
You might before going so, but you're also
protecting On the downside. Yeah. Which means you...
I may wanna make a different decision this
year because you've said a couple really key
things. 1,
I have to know what my breakeven is.
Right? I can't just go the prices are
high or how much they are. What my
breakeven is compared to what I think I
can get for them. And and 2,
if you can lock in a profit, you
can't do that every year. This year you
may be able to do that in which
case it's essentially a hedge. Right? I'm putting
in a hedge, and I'm losing upside potential,
but I'm also limiting my downside loss by
picking the price I wanna up now. Am
I understand what you're saying Correct? Yep. No
That's exactly it. And and again, it comes
back to kind of your risk your risk
level. How...
What do you like? What do you? How
risk ave reverse are you? I'm extremely risk
ave reverse, and I know that I wanna
live to see tomorrow and so I'm gonna
probably lock in something with just a small
margin, willing to for the than the much
larger ones. And there plenty of more complex
options if you decide you can put... You
could do something with part of the calves
can do something like the other part of
the cap crop you've got enough. But I
would consider that, especially this year, and I
think really good advice there, Dustin on thinking
about. Can what are my options for managing
those. And I like the idea of starting
to think about marketing now? Mh. Rather than
the fall when everybody else is marketing because
I may wanna be a little bit counter
and either market them a little bit sooner
or a little bit later than everybody else
does wanna come. Yeah I'd say just a
couple things is Start thinking about it now,
planning for. And another thing that Bob mentioned
and we're all actually hitting on it is
you need data. Right? You need to know
which breakeven are. You need to know which
your past weights are. And so if you
aren't keeping your records or at least that
close.
Maybe a start to year that way in
the future years,
you can start to to use your own
data to make your decisions.
Absolutely. Great points there. Now we're gonna talk
a little bit about. I mentioned at the
start,
lumpy jaw and wooden tongue and Bob. I'm
gonna go to you first and let's let's
talk about woody tongue first, and what actually
causes wooden can? Woody tongue. So both of
these diseases are basic. Like caused
by bacteria that are normally in the mouth
and and throat area.
And so it's not really something that they
can't get. From someplace cells. It's it's bacteria
that's there,
but it has to have some way to
get into the tissues of the... And it's
a couple of different germs, but they're related
to each other.
And so basically, it happens when the the
tissues of the mouth are damaged. So a
lot times we'll think about it when we
get into the fall or winter and cattle
on a
stem, you know, green gore grass isn't likely
to cause this problem. But stem,
more horse forage.
Damages those mucus membranes and causes leash lesions.
Exactly. Anybody that's it's gotten, you know, eaten
something that caused a little cut in your
mouth, You know, that's kinda painful. And that
allows these bacteria to get in there. And
so the kind of the differences, so wooden
tongue that is when there's an lesion to
the tongue that allows some germs to get
in there. And it it can cause several
problems in that that tongue gets... Well, the...
This has come back to your fish disease.
It's a their tongue gets large, it tends
to hang out of their mouth. And so
they they only look like they're pant or
or drooling because their their tongue is swollen
and and painful.
And so makes eating difficult. It's you know,
so Yeah. It's some small and painful. It
will... And you'll see them. You don't very
often see
animal, a cow, especially.
Sticking their tongue out of their mouth. They're
not doing it into play. No. They're no.
It's doing it because the tongue won't go
back in. And the other place you kinda
see it is is just basically swelling under
the under the jaw. Which could be a
wooden tongue or a lumpy jaw, the it's
again, with lumpy jaw. It's a bacteria that's
in the mouth, and it gets into some
of the other tissues of the of the
mouth. Now, what's dangerous about that 1, sometimes
it'll actually invade bone. And what if it
invades bone, you've got you've got real problems
and and those are difficult to cure. The
good thing about both wooden tongue and and
lumpy jaw, it's not involving the bone is
they respond pretty well to treatment. A lot
times, that's when your veterinarian will give
sodium iodine and iodine.
Fluid, and they'll give it Iv,
and that's that and antibiotic treatment are pretty
effective at bringing those
to syndromes back to back to normal. Yeah.
Absolutely. And I and I think that's an
area that... You just look through
observation. Mh. You'll see that the cattle are
not behaving normally. And you'd expect this is
not something that is technically
contagious. Right. You're gonna have an animal that's
affected, not a group of animals right effect.
And if it's a group of animals. It's
usually a subset of the group, and it's
not that they're passing it to each other.
It's that they're all being exposed to the
same feed stuff that might be kind of
heart on their mouth. But a lot of
times it's 1 animal, maybe 2 in a
group. And, you know, just rapid treatment of
those is the best way to to deal
with it. Now differentiate that from something like,
squamous cell carcinoma or other types of cancer,
what would we... Could... Which may involve the
the bone or the face area. Yep. That's,
you know... So maybe 1 of the things
just take home is is look at your
cattle. And when you're looking at the face,
it it... Do you see anything that's unusual
such as the tongue is sticking out. There's
kinda swelling under the jaw or in the
case of cattle can get kind of a
a cancer eye in that third eyelid or
along the eyelids of their eye.
That's AAA
problem that if you treat it early and
treating it early, a lot of times you
remain surgical removal removal. Of that area.
Those animals can can go ahead and respond
and and get multiple years of productive life
after them. Again, though, if that cancer spreads
and it involves the bone of the head,
that's not gonna get better, and it's... Time
to think about AAA eu just from a,
and I'm a welfare for a standpoint. So
monitor your cattle closely enough if you see
anything kinda odd going on in their head
and face, get a veterinarian to look at
it because probably, it's something that they can
actually...
That do something really positive so that the
outcome is good. Yeah. And I as we
get into these diseases of older cattle. It
makes me start to think about and we're
we're coming to that. I mean, cows right
now, late summer should look about the best
as they all yesterday. They're they're nursing a
calf. They've had grass all summer,
as they go through depending on where you
are as long as you've had rain, you've
got good grass. They should look about as
good as they can. What are some of
the things that you guys would... Start to
think about be a disease, like you just
mentioned or nutrition that might make me think
of getting those cows out of the herd,
a little bit early. Because now would actually
not be a bad time if I had
to to call, but I'm not not quite
to check time. It's a little bit different
time of year, If you were evaluating the
cows and Philip, I'll ask you first? What
are some of the things you'd look at
that might make you say,
I think I'm gonna remove her from the
herd this year? Well, I think if number
1 thing because we're still in the in
the nursing period is if she lost her
calf. So if the calf died,
there there's... Even if she's red,
you may still wanna go ahead and pull
her and and sell her off.
And instead of keeping her around for another
year without a a calf on
without we a calf this year.
There might be some reasons to separate cows
that not just not necessarily cool them, but
separate them. So if I've got... Some younger
cows that I have gotten thin. I might
wanna separate them off where I can feed
them more or even some older cows that
have gotten thin. I wanna set trade them
off where I can supplement them a little
bit more than I need to the whole
rest of the herd to reduce my feet
cost.
That's anything you'd look at on cows at
this time to try to decide if you
wanna remove them a little bit earlier?
I mean, my first thing I came to
mind was, you know, did they have the
calf or not? I mean, other than that,
I'm not
1 thing to maybe keep an eye on
a ask about this as well is is
calf performance. If you've got a cap that's
really pretty small for his age with them
compared to the the other kids in the
herd. I'm starting to con... Be concerned about
her utter, does she have. Does she have
a couple blind cord or something like that.
And a lot of times those are are
problems that aren't gonna get better next year.
And again, if I can sell her, you
know, ahead of the the low in the
coal cal market,
And when she still got some pretty good
body condition on her, I might be better
off to make those decisions earlier rather than
later. That's been kind the theme as we
talked through and earlier.
Some of those
conditions,
we have to think about, like, suit... So
she has, for example,
blind quarters.
That's not getting better. Yeah. That's not gonna
change over time. If she had some of
the other medical conditions that you mentioned, it's
possible... It's likely. That it's gonna get better.
But it's not a hundred percent guarantee. So
it depends on where I am and where
my herd size, where I want that to
be.
What about thin cows?
Right right now, late summer, the rest of
the herd looks great. I have 1 or
2 cows that are really thin, and my
options are, I could investigate do a health
work up, or I could decide to just
keep them and see if they're pregnant or
not, or I could decide to call them.
Where do you guys land on that?
I guess. My first thing is is it
is it health or is a nutrition? The
main figuring out why they're so much thinner
than the rest of the herd?
And then I can make decisions from there
based on what I think is best for
that cow.
And maybe bringing in some records into that
decision. Is she a Calf. I keep individual
records. This is she a cow that normally
produces
a heavier calf than average, then maybe she's
a really good milk. And for whatever reason
this year, the the grass is just not
up to par for her, but they're making
getting all that information to make those decisions.
I think it's it's kind of the way
you said it. It's a decision in that
win, you've got a group of cows they're
all on the same diet. They're all on
the same pasture. I don't expect them to
have exactly the same body condition. Some are
a little bit... Your keeper her something little
bit less. So... But... And so when you
have a cow that's kind of on that
dinner end, maybe that's just typical for her.
Maybe that's just normal and you know, she's
still very productive Her calf is gonna do
great. But then my animals that have problems,
so there might be problems with their teeth.
Might be problems with their digestive sis, liver
of those types of things, they're also gonna
be thin. So then my question is when
I've got a thin count if she just
she's fine, but that's the way she is,
or is she 1 of these cows that
has a problem. So that's kinda the work
up the thin cow because I don't know
at this stage whether it's honestly not a
problem. Maybe she needs a little more nutrition,
but maybe she's just a little bit thinner,
or is this an early indication that, her
actual weight is gonna continue to drop because
she's got a serious problem. So how your
veterinarian and kinda work it up really, see
you figure out why? Figure out figure out
what the answer is. And I think that's
a a great point on you guys. Talked
about a couple unusual cattle diseases, the heat
feeding and the marketing plans. So you guys
covered a lot of ground today and Appreciate
you hanging in there with us. If you
have questions for us, you can always send
us an email at bc at KSU dot
edu d u.