Protecting Your Profits
Managing risk and protecting your profits on a dairy farm isn’t always easy, but it’s a necessary part of running your business. Welcome to the “Protecting Your Profits” podcast – a brief monthly update designed to give you the data, production trends, and national and statewide updates you need to manage your dairy’s risk management strategy.
Protecting Your Profits
July 2025: Healthy herds and happy cows, risk mitigation for your dairy with Dr. Jody Kull
In this month's "Protecting Your Profits" webinar, Dr. Jody Kull from Penn State University shared how dairy farmers can use their farm's specific protocols not just as a once-a-year way to check a box, but how to develop them to prepare for anything that might happen throughout the year. She explained how dairy farmers can use these protocols to mitigate on-farm risks and seasonal concerns such as mastitis, pneumonia and metabolic issues. She also shared real-life examples from farms who have developed their own protocols to successfully treat and navigate illnesses within their herds.
During the webinar, Dr. Kull covered how dairy farmers can use their protocols, how to identify clinical signs of illnesses, what monitoring looks like on the farm, and how to address concerns, illnesses, and diseases before they happen. Listen now!
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Welcome to Protecting Your Profits, the Center for Dairy Excellence's monthly podcast, where we will feature guest speakers on a wide range of risk management topics and dairy market insights. From price volatility to unexpected changes in the marketplace, dairy farmers face countless uncertainties. Understanding dairy markets and risk management tools is incredibly important. Our goal is to provide a platform for dairy industry professionals to share their knowledge with farmers and sales and service providers to help mitigate risks, make informed decisions, and increase their profitability. I'm your host, Valerie Mason-Faith, the Center's Risk Education Program Manager. Let's get started.
SPEAKER_02:Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our July installment of the Protecting Your Profits series. I'm Valerie Mason-Faith, the Risk Education Program Manager with the Center for Dairy Excellence, and I'll be hosting today's webinar. It can be tempting to create your own or creating your own protocols for the farm program just to check boxes, but they can be useful tools to help farms proactively mitigate animal health and care related risks on the farm. In today's webinar, Dr. Jodi Call with Penn State University will cover using farm protocols, identifying clinical illness signs, monitoring and what it looks like on the farm, and addressing animal health risks before they happen. She'll also share some real life examples of farmers who develop their own protocols to successfully treat and navigate illnesses within the herd. And here is a brief overview of today's webinar. Before we start, and to help our audience get to know you a little better, Dr. Call, I want to ask, could you briefly introduce yourself and share with us what led you to a career in veterinary science?
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you, Valerie. Thanks for the invitation to speak today, and I'm looking forward to the discussion that we're going to have. My background, actually, and I'll give a little bit in the presentation, but I did grow up on a dairy farm, and I just always had a love and a passion for being on the farm and around the animals as I was growing up, and kind of paired that with my love for for science and biology to explore veterinary medicine and then ended up in veterinary practice. And, you know, I'm just excited about where the career has led me at this point and into the future. But that's a whole other podcast.
SPEAKER_02:Great. Thank you, Dr. Call. We can really tell how passionate you are about the dairy industry. So to prevent any background noise, we've muted your mics, but please feel free to submit questions in the chat. And at the end of the presentation, we'll go over them with Dr. Call. And without further ado, Dr. Call, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. I'm going to start with sharing my screen. Valerie, if you can just let me know that that went through okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, I can see it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, great. Well, like I said, thank you for the invitation to speak today and thank you for everyone for taking some time out of the middle of what is a beautiful Friday to spend some time talking about a topic that I personally am very passionate about, about utilizing the protocols that are established on the farm in order to help mitigate risk and prevent disease, and then also just ensure that we have a, you know, I hate to use the word happy cows, but happy cows and healthy cows and a safe product that's going out to our consumers, which I think is something that we're all very passionate about in this field. So just to expand on my background, like I said, I did grow up on a dairy farm in Chester County, which started my love for being in the barn and around cows. I went to Penn State and then Virginia Tech. And then after graduating from veterinary school, I did return to Pennsylvania. And I spent most of my practicing career as a solo food animal vet in Northeastern PA based out of Montour County. I was there for about 20 years, and then I left practice in 2023 to take on the assistant teaching professor position at Penn State, where I hope to share my passion with some of our undergrad students in the Penn State Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences curriculum. I'm also a board member on the Center for Dairy Excellence, something I enjoy sharing to promote our dairy industry in the state. And then I also spend some time with the Farm Journal Foundation as a veterinary ambassador supporting my colleagues that are out in practice. So as I was putting this presentation together, I started with a little outline just giving a little bit of background about the farm program and then how we can use that farm program to you know, optimize what we're doing on the farm and what everybody is doing every day to ensure a healthy animal and a safe product leaving the farm. And that's where we'll start with some of our discussion today. I think everybody's pretty familiar with the farm program. The farm program is not something that's new to anyone in the dairy industry at this point. It is facilitated through National Milk Producers Federation, and over 90% of the U.S. milk supply is produced under the farm program guidelines at this point. Farm 5.0 guidelines were implemented in July of 2024, and there are current discussions with the farm team. I'm not part of that, but I do know they are underway with the farm team about the next steps moving forward to ensure that we're continuing to grow on the program silos of the farm program. These farm program silos that I have listed here, animal care, antibiotic stewardship, biosecurity, workforce development, and environmental stewardship. Again, I like to think that these are things we do on farm every day to, you know, this is part of our daily activities that we are aware of and that we continue to improve on. They overlap in their background in my mind and just also overlap in the underlying theme of ensuring that we have healthy animals on farm. and ensuring that safe food supply. As a veterinarian, my initial priority in my training and background always starts with animal welfare and cow comfort. And for me, that's an easy silo to start talking about. Pain management continues to be a crucial part of what we do on farm and is something that I think producers, employers, employees, and veterinarians should be all part of the team where we're talking about whenever we're handling or any type of procedure within animal or management group on the farm that we need to keep pain management in the back of our mind and making sure that we're staying on top of what is industry standards and any new changes that might be coming out. This ties into animal stockmanship and handling so that we're allowing and following natural animal behaviors in the farm. And again, when we look at different management groups, this is going to vary from age group, whether we're talking about pre-weaning calves, those breeding age heifers, or even those lactating or dry cows that might be in different types of groups and management facilities throughout the farm. I'd like to discuss how all of these topics on the farm and continue to be at the forefront for cow comfort and animal welfare, especially when we look at our facilities management. And I'll throw a plug out to the Center for Dairy Excellence with one of their grants programs that they have had the last couple of years that have helped with improving some of the facility management facilities that are on farms. And I know some of my former clients that were able to take advantage to improve Um, shelter and facilities, and nutrition and water and ventilation, and some cooling systems to ensure that we are keeping that animal welfare and cow comfort at the top of our priority list. To me, when I put all of this together, and it's like what you said in the introduction, Valerie, that it's not about just checking the box for that farm program. To me, it's not just about making sure that we've got everything prepared for the annual veterinary review that's going to be happening or for your three-year review with your farm inspection to me using that farm program and the protocols is all about management and mitigating some of those risks that we might see on farm and again as a veterinarian i'm going to say disease but it's not just disease and so when we look at a risk management process, I like this graphic to show that it is an ongoing cycle. This isn't something we just stop or start, excuse me, and then finish, but it's something that's an ongoing cycle that we have to continually be aware of and continue to manage and improve on. And so if I make an example of a type of risk, you know, something might change on a particular farm. And so what we want to do is start off with identifying that risk factor. So for an example, a very simple one would be if you'd be looking at maybe one day the cows decided not to come into the parlor as easily as they were coming the previous day. And so we've identified this risk factor on the farm that what is going on with the cows that's slowing them or making them hesitant about coming into the parlor. So we'll analyze that risk. What might have changed? Is it something relating to lighting or a shadow, something with the flooring, maybe the concrete grooving isn't quite up to par at this point, or maybe there's some loose stones that might have caused some sore feet. Is it too warm? They don't like being crowded. You know, we need to look at and look at all of the factors and analyze this particular risk that we have identified. Then we need to look at how we're going to mitigate that risk. So what changes can we do to alleviate this risk and improve that facility that we've noticed as the risk. And then once we've implemented those changes, we need to continue monitoring. Did this fix the problem? Were we able to achieve success? And what do we need to do from here? And we're not just going to forget about it from there. We want to continue to monitor it in case there's any other future changes. And so this is where I come back to this graphic that it is a constant circle of management, managing that and mitigating that risk on the farm. And I throw this one in here, not just put a picture of myself, but to me, it's that reminder that this is something we can always work with our veterinarians with on the farm and that it's really necessary and critical to involve them as part of that management team on the farm. And just to look at many of the different things that that veterinarian can bring with their different resources and network and connections and availability of other opportunities for new ideas and thought process. And so really, we know that managing farms is a team process. And that's going to include the veterinarian, the nutritionist, the herd manager, the employer, and the employees as well, and many other people. So let's look at some of these more specific protocols. I divided it into a couple different areas. And again, as a veterinarian, I'm going to come right to disease management as our first one. And I like to remind myself, and I think this is where the farm program comes from, is that common things occur commonly. And so when we look at our protocols that are required for the farm program, we do have to have set up on the farm protocols for some of the most commonly seen diseases on farm. So that's going to be including mastectomy. pneumonia, mitritis, and retrained placentas. and some of the more common metabolic challenges such as ketosis and milk fever. I'm going to focus and let's look at metritis just specifically at this point and just to provide a little bit more detail and an example about metritis. Industry reports state that on average 20 to 40 percent of cows can be affected by a clinical metritis. So how do we define clinical metritis? It's going to be defined in some of the studies I'll note here as being an abnormal discharge within the first 21 days after calving with or without signs of clinical systemic disease. So they may or may not be systemically ill, but they do have an abnormal vaginal discharge. What we're looking at with an estimate for the average cost, and there's lots of different studies out for this, but the one I'll particularly cite at this point was from 2021, that the average cost for a case of metritis in a dairy cow is going to be around$500. And you can see the range there, that there is quite a wide range. The data for this particular subset was collected from cows throughout the country and from 16 different farms. So they had actually a fair amount of clinical data And I feel bad for the grad student that had to analyze all of that information. But what they did with this to come up with that number is they did take out looking at different treatment costs, labor costs, costs of milk production loss, cost of decreased reproduction, cost related to any death or cull rates, and also looking at costs for replacement costs. And the only thing I'll make a note of is, of course, what the cow price, the cattle price is right now. That number might even be a little bit higher for an average cost given the replacement cost right now for cattle compared to when this study was done. So that cost adds up. And to me, that's a reminder that when I'm going to a farm as a veterinarian or as a producer and you're looking at, well, you know, I had one case of clinical matritis this month. You know, one case, that's not that bad. But if it's going to cost you$500, that's a significant amount of money. And so we need to look at that as a particular cost. risk and how we're going to mitigate and manage that risk and move forward in that management mitigation cycle. Part of the other reason, besides just economics for looking at this to mitigate the risk, is the fact that sometimes treatment recommendations will vary on farms. And this might be related to individual farm preference or maybe employee training and availability to implement some of the treatment recommendations. It might vary from veterinarian to veterinarian. It could also vary based on pharmaceutical product availability. We all are familiar with some of the products that have been in and out of backward order and unable to get. And then sometimes these treatment recommendations might change and vary based on industry trends. And I found this study that looked at from the University of Florida that was looking at different antimicrobial treatments for different metritis cases. And so they were using a commercially available Ceftiofer product and comparing it to ampicillin versus cases that did not have that clinical metritis. And maybe, as I would read this in clinical practice, as this report would have come out, I would say, well, maybe I need to look at, based on the results in this study, maybe I need to make adjustments to my treatment protocols based on this study. And maybe I don't. Maybe it's something that, as a veterinarian, I'm not going to take to my producer. Or if you see this or hear about this in a trade magazine that you might be reading, maybe it's something you want to bring up with your veterinarian. The other thing I'll point about is that with some of these industry trends and maybe looking at some of the pharmaceutical products that may be available or may be used for treating metritis is that we're also keeping it within the guidelines of extra label drug usage. And that's another reason why we need to keep on top of these protocols. So what are we looking at with metritis? Our goal is to have a clinical cure within 10 days of starting any type of treatment, whatever that treatment protocol might be that you have established with your veterinarian. And so that is an absence and resolution to normal discharge from where that clinical discharge started at the start of the treatment protocol. This particular study, also out of University of Florida, did find that 20% or more cows that were treated for metritis did not actually achieve that clinical cure. So that's a fair amount of animals that you're already putting that financial cost into that are getting treated for a clinical metritis. that are not actually achieving that clinical cure goal. And so we still have an ongoing metritis. And so what does that mean for you as a producer? And what I'm looking at on the farm is that could result in further reduction of milk production, reduced reproductive performance and delay of increased days open and an increased death risk by 60 days of milk and also an increased cold risk that they're more likely to leave the herd. And so there's another reason that if we're seeing these cases of clinical metritis or maybe a change in the prevalence of clinical metritis on the farm, that maybe we need to look at that protocol, identifying that risk, mitigating it, and maybe making some management changes to that protocol. And that's where I like to think that these protocols are going to be a fluid piece of paper and implementation of that paper on farm so that we're continually making changes to improve. And so one of the things I'll turn to you is are you reaching that clinical cure goal or whatever your particular goal is on your farm? Are you achieving that? And so I actually was talking to one of my former dairy clients. And as I was preparing this presentation, I said, well, let's talk about it. You know, we went through about where we had some metritis cases and increase in prevalence. And we started looking at what was going on with that. Well, we tied those cases to retained placenta. And this is where we're, you know, I'm talking about analyzing that risk factor that we've identified. So we analyzed it and determined that most of these had a retained placenta. And this is probably Probably not something I'm familiar to all you do. We looked into the fact that many of these presented as a clinical hypocalcemia. As we investigated that even a little bit further and through some diagnostics and lab work, we found that it wasn't actually the calcium, but more the phosphorus. So as we made some management changes and looked at how we were handling these, and yes, we needed to treat the clinical cases while we were continuing to analyze the why. the why behind them we came back to let's look at what we're doing with our fresh cows and what are we doing how do we change and i know in practice for me as a veterinarian i would always ask my producers and they said well Don't worry, nothing's changed. We haven't changed a thing on the farm, but something has changed and we need to figure out what it is. So we went back and we were looking at some of our pre-fresh protocols, like where do we continue to look at this? And what ended up changing on that particular farm once we kind of looked through some of the information a little bit further is that it came down to our dry cow stocking density. We had a little bit of an adjustment in overpopulation in some of our breeding management And so the pen got a little full. And so we were seeing some issues with overstocking in the dry cow pen. It wasn't that it was severe, but it was enough that it was causing a decrease in our dry matter intake and causing these cows to come into the fresh cow period with some clinical diseases that were presenting as a metritis, but as we worked our way back through it. And so as we made adjustments to this and looked at, you know, identifying that preliminary risk we identified and how we managed that protocol and utilized what was already established on the farm to make some changes to mitigate and manage some of these other things that were stemming from it, how we were able to make improvement on the farm. And so while I called this producer to talk to him about it, he's like, well, I really haven't seen too much since then because we were able to mitigate that risk. And I found it interesting that they actually used that exact phrase and I had not even prompt them for it. So. As we move away from diseases and looking at those actual clinical diseases on farm, let's turn to some of the protocols related to herd health. And so I come back to the phrase, an ounce of prevention is worth. Yeah. some of those farm programs related to hoof health and lameness, some of our vaccination protocols and parasite control protocols, our pre-weaned calf management, colostrum management, disbudding protocols, animal identification, and our fresh cow and dry cow management. And I'll just throw in a plug here with the Center for Dairy Excellence Animal Care Protocol record keeping book that has been released as free from the Center for Dairy Excellence is a great way to help set up some of those protocols and maintain some of those records that are needed on the farm. So I'll dive into pre-weaned calves a little bit as part of that herd health protocol. From the Dairy Calf and Heifer Association and Farm Program uses them as a resource to set up some of their guidelines. Those pre-weaning goals are that we're, of course, going to double our birth weight in these calves by weaning, have less than 10% of clinical pneumonia cases, less than 15% of cow deaths, of scours and a greater than 97% survival rate. I think this is achievable on farm. I think some farms might work on maybe making some improvement from it. When you look at two of the most common diseases we'll see in those pre-weaning calves. We are going to be saying pneumonia and scours cases. And so what do we look at as far as mitigating the risk associated with pneumonia and scours? And it does come down to colostrum. That's going to be part of it. So of course, colostrum goals, making sure that we're going to be achieving 10% of the calf's body weight, and then also ensuring that we have adequate passive immunity. And that's something you can work with your veterinarian about, setting up protocols about how we're going on a monitor for both good quality colostrum, in quality and quantity and in the timeframe, but also then are we achieving that passive immunity? And one thing that I would bring up here is that how some of the industry trends have changed over the years regarding that passive immunity level and guideline and target that we wanna achieve on farm. And so most commonly when I was in practice, I was usually doing total proteins. And so if we look at what DCHA kind of establishes as what excellent passive transfer is for those total proteins versus poor or failure of passive transfer, which could lead to an increased risk for respiratory disease and scours. Are we managing and monitoring these total proteins on farm? to make sure that we are achieving some of these industry goals to make sure we're mitigating the risk of disease. And so when we look at a case of, and I'll just focus on respiratory disease, respiratory disease, pre-weaning, these calves, even though they appear clinically normal after their treatment for respiratory disease, they are almost three times higher, three times higher chance of risk of dying and also almost a three times higher chance of being culled before they reach having their first calf. And they also have a decreased average daily gain as well. And it may not look like much in that average decreased gain, but if you think of factoring that decreased average daily gain over time, this could add up to close to 100 pounds by the time it comes to breeding weight, which could extend that time for them to their first breeding and then extend their time for time till when the calvin is at first calf heifer. The other thing that's being studied more and more, and we're going to continue to see more information coming out about this is that even one case of respiratory disease in a pre-weaned calf could affect their milk production as a lactating cow in that first lactation. And there's varying reports on that. This particular study does cite over 270 pounds of milk loss in that first lactation, but I've seen others being higher. So to tie in an example of respiratory disease, again, this was another farm. And I did talk to my clients to talk to them about, my former clients, about using some of their information today and did have their approval to talk about it. But this was a 400-cow dairy that, again, when I asked the producer about it, nothing had changed. We were doing everything the way our protocols were set up. But what we were looking at is we had an increased rate of respiratory disease in our pre- weaning calves. And so what I did was a calf audit where we were looking at how are we looking at that colostrum? What are we doing differently? What can we do to improve? How are we going to mitigate some of that risk with respiratory disease using the protocols that we already have on farm and maybe making some adjustments and changes to the protocols for the future? And so we looked at how are we identifying these cases of respiratory disease? And we had some employees that were doing some of the feeding on the farm, both family and hired. And so there was always a change in the employee that was doing the feeding depending on the time of day. So we implemented using a respiratory scorecard that I've got showing on the slide right here. And so that allowed us some standardization for how we were identifying the cases to make sure everybody was on the same page. It's one way we were able to mitigate some of that risk. The other thing we started doing was monitoring for failure of passive transfer or rather monitoring for effective passive transfer. And it turns out we actually weren't doing a great job on the farm and we had some space for improvement there. What we did then is... We reviewed some of those colostrum protocols, and it turns out that we were having an extended time for that colostrum from when it was being collected to when it was being refrigerated. Additionally, I thought we were using too large of a container to refrigerate it in the refrigerator for the second colostrum feeding. And so it was taking too long for the colostrum to cool down, which allowed for increased bacterial growth to happen in that colostrum and increasing the bacterial diseases and susceptibility to the the calves. Once we implemented some of these changes, we were able to make a difference in the number of cases that they were actually treating and their survival rate. But arguably, we still had some goals to achieve. And so it was a constant, you know, it's a constant motion, a constant work in progress on what we're doing on the farm. So moving away from some of that herd health preventative aspect of our protocols, what are we doing regarding our protocols related to farm management? And this is where I think we really can use some of our protocols to be more on that proactive side, not reactive side. I'm married to a firefighter, and so we talk about preventing fires instead of going around and putting out those fires. And so I think some of the protocols in the farm program related for fitness for transport, looking at our body condition score, lameness, any other disease management, and making sure that our animal records and identification is up to par so we're able to make sure that we're following milk and meat withholds for animals. Looking at our non-ambulatory cattle and how we might be moving them and also management and identifying the underlying cause that's making them being non-ambulatory at the time. and then promptly identifying and being able to mitigate what's going on with those non-ambulatory cattle. Looking at our euthanasia protocols, ensuring that we've got two people and two methods for that euthanasia on farm. And then we've got two people that are approved to be able to administer euthanasia and ensuring that both for animal safety and human safety, that this protocol is up to date and where it should be. And then, of course, biosecurity. I wouldn't be a veterinarian if I didn't talk about biosecurity in some kind of discussion. but our biosecurity relating to both diseases that we are going to manage on the farm, but diseases that we also want to prevent from entering the farm. And that's gonna look at some of our visitors, quarantines, both quarantines, new additions, and animals that are already on the farm that might be sick. How do we manage vehicle traffic and movement in that flow on the farm? And that's where we're going to look at these biosecurity plans that I know a lot of my colleagues have been working with both Center for Dairy Excellence and Pennsylvania Department of Ag at putting and implementing biosecurity plans in the last year. So then I turn it to you. What is in your particular protocols? As much as I can give a couple examples from some of my former clients, every protocol is going to be different on different farms, depending on what type of management system, what your employees are, what diseases you see, maybe some of these seasonal changes that might happen. For instance, maybe you see an increased case of mastitis in the summer when the weather is a little bit warmer, or maybe you're going to see an increased lameness in the winter maybe some of the changes that might happen with milking parlor management in the winter with how we might make sure that where our our tea dens aren't going to be damaged in colder weather and so there's always going to be some kind of variation that's going to be on your protocol and it's going to be different than your neighbors of course some of those protocols might also vary depending on regional and state recommendations as they change and over time based on what is needed for the industry. We want to make sure that any treatment protocols that you do have, we're following and writing and recording any milk and meat withholds to make sure everybody's on the same page for that. And again, we want to continue to monitor, make sure that we are in that disease mitigation cycle, that we're continuing to monitor for any changes in that disease risk or any modifications we might need to make to that protocol. I think some things besides what changes we might see within industry and farm is that we have to talk about the fact that there might be protocol drift within and ongoing at the farm. And so we might have different types of protocols. And so while I work with farmers and we're establishing a written protocol that's going to be electronically on the computer system or written and put in a binder on the shelf in the office. And so we have an idea of what that protocol might be between the veterinarian and the producer, but that might vary from what the protocol is that's going to be posted. And we wanna make sure that protocol is going to be the same protocol that is going to be what's going on with the employee training through the herd manager or the producer who might be doing that training with all of their employees. So are they the same? Are we talking about the same thing? Is everybody on the same page with how that protocol is going to be managed on the farm. And we are not perfect. Nobody is perfect. But we're going to try to mitigate some of those errors and mistakes that might happen by reviewing and updating those protocols. And this is where I'll tie in some of that workforce development that's part of the farm program and where employee training is going to be key to making sure that we don't have any of that protocol drift on the farm. And that consistency is key between all of the different people that are going to be handling and around the animals, whatever management group that might be, whether or not that's going to be the person cleaning the stalls, bringing the animals up to the parlor, pushing feed, mixing feed, or the person that's in the parlor doing the milking procedure or doing any of the treatment recommendations as well. That employee training, and I make a note of it being at least annual, but I think it should be more frequently depending on your employee turnover, or again, adjustments to that protocol based on some of the identified risk that you might see on that. The farm program does make recommendations that employee training does have to be for the following topics, including stockmanship, fitness for transport, non-ambulatory cattle, pre-weaned calves, and then the euthanasia that I was talking about earlier. I think that employee training is, again, not something we should just use as a, we're going to check the box and you are considered trained at this point, but that we want to use this employee training as another tool in our toolbox for mitigating risk on the farm and making sure everybody's prepared so that we can be able to adapt and make adjustments for any changes that might need to happen it's going to set up some contingency plans and make sure that everybody is uniform in that and the two pictures i shared here while these are more formal types of employee training i think it's also important to Reiterate that employee training can be shared over a cup of coffee, talking about a magazine article that you read in your dairy herd management or Hort's Dairyman. And how do we apply this? And is this something we need to make adjustments to our protocols on farm? So what does it mean when we are implementing some of these protocols and implementing them and utilizing them as a risk management tool on the farm? It's really about teaching employees how to think, right? I think, and this is what I actually like as teaching here at the university, is that what we're actually trying to do is not just reiterating, this is what it is, here's what we're doing, just go do it. It's more of a matter of this is what it is, here's why we are doing it and how it's going to make a difference. And that's going to also then have some of your employees help with that investment and buy-in to these protocols and why we need to follow the protocols to ensure we've got good animal welfare and animal handling and a good safe milk product for our consumers. So we need to make sure that everybody understands some of these variations. Again, some of the changes in that risk management that we might see And then how are you using these protocols to stay on top of that animal health and utilizing the data that we actually get on farms? I always loved going into producers' offices and looking at the computer records before we did any discussions to monitor and see, is there something that has changed? Is there an increased risk of something that we need to have as a discussion point? And I think... Using that, if we're able to do that on farm to use these protocols to mitigate risk, that we're going to ensure our farm success to make sure that we've got healthy cows, that our employees are safe and knowledgeable, and that everything is up to date for the industry trends. this fun video which hopefully it shows okay on zoom to to make sure that we are doing that where we've got these i love this video of all of the cows coming back from the parlor on one side um looking for that that nice fresh meal and on the other side of the barn we've got a group of very clean healthy cows where the majority of them are laying down ruminating and making more milk And so when we do this and ensure our farm success, we're going to increase our milk production, increase that feed efficiency, increase our consumer trust in the product that we're going to be making for them. And that's where I threw in just that risk management process circle again to reiterate identifying, analyzing, mitigating, and monitoring for any of these risks on farm by using our protocols. And I think this is where we need to be right now, but also where we need to continue growing as a dairy industry for the future so that we continue to respond and be able to provide a safe product for what our consumers are looking for, for both our generation and the next. And so with that, I'm going to go ahead and leave my contact information up for another minute, but then I'll go ahead and stop sharing my screen and I'll pass it back to Valerie for any questions and discussions. So I'll say thank you for your time.
SPEAKER_02:Great. Thank you, Jodi. You did an excellent job. If you haven't already done so, listeners, please submit your questions for Dr. Call in the chat if you have any. Meanwhile, we've had some that were submitted in advance. As we learn about emerging threats like the foot and mouth disease outbreak in Europe, how can farmers update or create their farm protocols to account for those potential illnesses before they become a problem on farm?
SPEAKER_00:That's a really good question, Valerie. And I think this comes back to looking at some of those protocols for preventative measures and herd health management. And so when we talk about biosecurity planning and setting up and establishing a biosecurity plan on the farm, it's really not just about making sure that we've filled all of the boxes out and we've checked the boxes so that we are set up with our biosecurity plan, but it's also to make sure that we're prepared for any potential foreign animal diseases that might come to the farm. And I think that's where, as the transition has happened in the last year and a half with the HPAI outbreak, we can bring that a little bit more closer to home. as the changes and transitions that have happened with the HPAI outbreak have happened and what we've needed to sort of shift and adjust and modify our protocols on farm to ensure that we are making and practicing good biosecurity to prevent exposure to diseases like HPAI. And hopefully, we will not have to have exposure to foot and mouth disease, but that's another elevated risk that we are preparing for in the future. And I'm sure many of you have seen in the news recently to tie in another foreign animal disease that we are continuing to monitor in the industry is New World Screwworm and how the changes that might end up happening with regards to if that would end up getting closer to the United States, how we might need to make some adjustments to our biosecurity protocols, maybe some of our pest control protocols and adapt to that so that we can mitigate the risk of those diseases.
SPEAKER_02:Great answer. So the next question. When illnesses pop up, how would you recommend that farmers balance written protocols and the kind of uncertainty that comes with real world decision making that can happen in the moment?
SPEAKER_00:That's a hard one, Valerie. Let's be honest. Dairy farming is not an easy profession. It is not. It is hard. It changes from day to day. And you never know when something's going to happen on a farm with a particular animal. And so when we look at some kind of either new or emerging disease or an increase of prevalence of a disease on a farm, whether it be something that I talked about as metritis or pneumonia or maybe even a disease we don't necessarily know know what it is particularly right off the bat. I think this is where it's important to be able to have employees and producers that are able to identify any abnormal changes. So understanding the normal and then being able to identify something that is abnormal and whether or not it's one of those most common types of disease ailments I mentioned or maybe it's one of the lesser common disease ailments that maybe you don't have a protocol for yet on the farm I think this is where identifying that and then being able to have that open communication. with the team that is on the farm, including the herd manager, the employees, the producer, the veterinarian, and the nutritionist, so that we are all working together to brainstorm what needs to be done and what it is we might be looking at regarding a disease that you had mentioned. And of course, once we involve our veterinarian, that's where the veterinarian is going to be potentially looking at something like, do we need to be collecting and analyzing any types of samples, whether that's from live animals or hopefully not dead animals with a necropsy. But what are we looking at to be able to identify what that disease is and do it promptly so then we can go ahead and start analyzing what the risk is and how to mitigate it from there. And from once we've done that, we'll make adjustments to our protocol as needed.
SPEAKER_02:Great. Thank you. So another question here. Okay. When a farm protocol is in place, but an animal health issue still arises in a herd, how should farmers use that opportunity or use that situation as a learning opportunity? I
SPEAKER_00:think that's some of where we look at. farming for the future, and that what we're doing today, we always need to be prepared for the future. And so while we might be working on mitigating a risk for some kind of disease or herd management change, or, you know, establishing some kind of biosecurity plan for today's particular risk but we'd be amiss if we weren't going ahead and preparing for the future and so what can we learn from this situation whatever might have changed from it what can we learn how can we use this to prepare for the future and and i think that's where we just you know we always try to be a step of ahead of whatever might be coming in the future but i think that's where it also comes from also looking at all of the data and all of the information we have today in order to put our ducks in a row for whatever situation we might end up seeing tomorrow. And so I think always learning and always trying to think ahead and using these protocols for that preparation, as in, you know, this is what we're going to do today for, again, you mentioned a disease, but this is what we're going to do today for a particular disease. But here's what we might be thinking about because of, again, industry trends, different regulations that might come about from regional and state recommendations or even particularly you know what might change with particularly a new disease or new treatment recommendation that we want to be thinking ahead on how we're adjusting some of these protocols
SPEAKER_02:well great so um next question i have here is What role do you think the farm program will play in the next five years, especially as consumer expectations and biosecurity risks evolve?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think we saw some changes with Farm 5.0, and I think they were good changes where we looked at and focused on those five program silos with the farm program. And I think as we move forward with utilizing and being able to implement some of the changes related to the farm program moving forward, and again, I'm not part of that discussion, so I'm not sure what's in the works at this point, but what my focus would be as a veterinarian would be how we could continue to keep animal welfare and environmental stewardship, antimicrobial stewardship and workforce development at the top of our list of priorities and then with that by ensuring that we're going to be keeping all of those at the top of our list of priorities. By then we're going to be, or by doing that, we're going to ensure hopefully our consumer trust in the products that we're making on farm. And so I think looking forward, what we're going to be looking at or what my focus would be on continuing to improve on animal welfare, cow comfort, facility management, environmental stewardship, antimicrobial stewardship to just make sure we're staying on top of this and that we're moving forward as the industry changes with us.
SPEAKER_02:Great answer. So last question and then we'll wrap up. But say a dairy producer told you that protocols can't prevent every illness or issue. What would your response be to them?
SPEAKER_00:Well, first off, I'd say I agree. They are not perfect, right? We come back to, I said, humans aren't perfect and neither are our protocols. But that's where the protocols and using risk mitigation with those protocols is that it is a fluid document. And so where that preparation happens is that we're not going to be able to prevent all diseases. We're not going to be able to have a protocol for every disease. And I don't want to focus on disease and But we're not going to have a protocol for every disease that you could see on the farm. We're not going to have a protocol for every type of treatment that's needed on the farm. But what we're going to do is we're going to establish that baseline to be ready and set some guidelines so that we're able and we're prepared with some contingency plans in place so that when that risk changes, whatever that risk might be, whether or not it's disease, changes in nutrition, changes in the environment, changes in facilities any one of these types of risks that could happen on the farm even something as simple again coming back to my metritis example of what it turned out to be was actually overcrowding so even just animal management that we that in itself could be a risk and so Where we look at with using these protocols is it's not perfect, but what it's going to do is set up these contingency plans and ensure that we're all prepared so that we can adjust quickly and effectively when we need to make adjustments for whatever that risk might be.
SPEAKER_02:Great. Thank you, Dr. Call. Before we wrap up, I'd like to mention some of the center's materials that we offer for free to dairy farmers. So a couple of things that you're probably familiar with are our biosecurity kits. They're complete with farm and secure milk supply resources. It's a great starter kit for your farm biosecurity plan. While HPAI and PA has, and Pennsylvania Poultry has slowed down, it never hurts to be proactive and have a completed plan on hand to be We still have a limited supply of biosecure area signs to encourage visitors to call before entering your premises. They're a great simple way to beef up your biosecurity measures and make sure to request yours while we still have supplies. We also have a whole suite of farm safety materials, including videos and signs for common safety hazards found around most dairy farms. They feature English and Spanish to enhance your farm safety protocols and better protect visitors, employees, and families. To explore the resources mentioned and more, the other resources that the Center offers at no cost to Pennsylvania dairy producers, you can view our resource catalog at the landing page at the bottom of the screen, www.centerfordairexcellence.org backslash request dash material backslash, or you can scan the QR code in the top right corner of your screen. If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to subscribe to our weekly markets and management email updates. There you can receive the recording of these calls earlier, as well as various other markets and management related updates. So thank you, Dr. Call. You did an excellent job detailing how proactively developing your farm protocols can help farmers mitigate risk and better protect their herd. We've recorded this episode and it will be available in podcast and webinar formats for you to rewatch or share with others. You can find the links to both on our website at www.centerfordairexcellence.org backslash PYP. Thank you all for tuning in. Enjoy the rest of this hot afternoon and have a great weekend.