Organic Dairy Myths, Answered

Jim Lawhead from Penn State Extension interviews Dr. Amy Kraus from Horizon Organic Dairy about the myths surrounding organic dairy farming.

Transcript

Speaker: 00:11

Welcome to Bovine Banter. I'm Jim Lawhead, Dairy Extension Program Specialist at Penn State University. I'm pleased to introduce Dr. Amy Kraus from Horizon Organic Dairy. I've known Amy for quite a few years now, and I had the great honor of being one of her mentors as she went through Vet School. There's such a reward in seeing students develop their careers as veterinarians, and then also to work with them as colleagues supporting dairy farms in Pennsylvania. Good morning, Amy. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Jim. Can you share information about your background and how you came to Horizon Organic?

Speaker 1: 00:50

I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, and my neighbors had a dairy where they bottled and delivered their own milk. So from there I got involved in 4-H and decided to become a veterinarian and practiced in New York after vet school and then came back to Pennsylvania. And I'm excited to be working with

Speaker 1: 01:12

 Horizon Organic for a year now.

Speaker: 01:16

Well, what is your role at Horizon Organic?

Speaker 1: 01:19

So I work in the animal welfare and milk quality team. So I work as a veterinarian, helping farms with their milk quality. We have a bulk tank culture program that I'm sort of heading at the moment. Really just whatever comes up for our farms, pretty similar to regular practice some days.

Speaker: 01:43

Well, do you just cover farms in Pennsylvania?

Speaker 1: 01:47

So I actually have Pennsylvania and then I have farms out in California and Washington and helping out in the Midwest right now, too. So our company covers almost coast to coast.

Speaker: 02:03

Wow. You spend a lot of time traveling then?

Speaker 1: 02:06

I I do spend quite a bit, about every month or two.

Speaker: 02:12

Well, Amy, during my career as a dairy veterinarian, I  heard many beliefs about organic dairying from people who were not involved in that type of farming. I'm hoping that you can provide us with some facts on organic milk production and possibly dispel some myths. For our listeners, the questions that I'm asking are not my opinion. These are just a collection of questions, ideas, and beliefs that I've heard from people who are not actively involved with organic dairying. So the first question is I think the most common thing I hear about organic production is the belief that all of these farms have really low milk production. Is that true?

Speaker 1: 02:56

So actually, our farms can do quite well. Now, I'm not going to say that everyone's a hundred-pound herd, but we have a lot of producers well into the 70 pounds mark yearly per cow. So if you maintain your forages well, you can do pretty you can do pretty well.

Speaker: 03:20

Very good. So what are the normal forage practices by a lot of your organic farms?

Speaker 1: 03:28

I think we probably have more alfalfa and hay-based diets than strictly corn silage, but I've found that people can keep weeds to a minimum and grow pretty good corn silage. So they're more similar to conventional diets than you think, but there's no monensins, so that's a big one.

Speaker: 03:54

Okay. Well, another belief is that because they are organic and can't use antibiotics, they produce poor quality milk with high somatic cell counts.  Can you share your experiences with this?

Speaker 1: 04:10

So, company wide, we probably run about 200,000 for cell count, but have many farms lower than that. And actually, I don't miss the antibiotics as much as I thought I would, because there's a lot of cases of mastitis that shouldn't be treated with antibiotics, as it is like, you know, gram-negative coliforms, things like that. We focus on prevention, and that's why we started a bulk tank culture program. So farms really, I think the limiting factor is still there's quite a bit of staph aureus and contagious mastitis out there. So if we keep that at bay, we're doing pretty good.

Speaker: 04:58

Well, what kind of management tools or procedures are they using when they do identify staph aureus?

Speaker 1: 05:07

So a lot of separating the cows and culling. So, you know, stapharius, you wouldn't be able to treat with antibiotics, anyways. So just being strategic and sometimes flushing the units in between cows. Um, but they can make a lot of progress in smaller herds pretty quickly. So they are religious about DHIA testing to a lot of our farms. So you have to get right on top of cows with uh high somatic cell counts.

Speaker: 05:40

Excellent. So a lot of your farms are on DHIA?

Speaker 1: 05:45

Definitely a lot. I'd probably like more. We love records as vets, that's for sure.

Speaker: 05:52

Very good. Well, again, this is a myth or belief that I've heard is wouldn't it be better if these farms could use vaccines to prevent disease since they can't use antibiotics?

Speaker 1: 06:06

So luckily, just like conventional farms, we can use vaccines. Some things that I find is like if we have a disease sort of break and that you know maybe we weren't boostering correctly, or maybe using the correct right vaccines for the disease. So that is a huge method of prevention for us.

Speaker: 06:31

Excellent. So so it is actually something that you recommend to your farmers.

Speaker 1: 06:36

Yes, I recommend and will sometimes help with their vaccine plans as well.

Speaker: 06:44

Well, it's another belief. It seems like a bad thing that organic farms can never use antibiotics. Like if they have a calf with pneumonia that's on the risk of death, isn't it bad that they can't use antibiotics?

Speaker 1: 07:00

So that's a that's a really common one. I have had people say, well, what would I do without Draxxin, for example? You know, our calves are generally housed outside with good ventilation, and we really keep stocking density down as much as we can too, and focus on cleaning, cleaning bottles, cleaning their hutches, uh, using chlorine dioxides and things like that. And there's surprisingly little pneumonia, and all of those things are things that I had done in practice on conventional farms as well. And you know, work on total proteins, colostrum.

Speaker: 07:47

So emphasizing that young calf management. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, are there times where antibiotics do get used?

Speaker 1: 07:57

Actually, yes. So if uh if prevention doesn't work, and also we have uh the natural remedies that we use and anti-inflammatories aren't working, then farmers will usually call their vets and get an antibiotic for the animal. But then it would have to go to conventional uh production or you know, beef and be called. You can't come back into the organic production.

Speaker: 08:29

So there's no extended withhold that allows them to come back into organic production then?

Speaker 1: 08:37

Not in the US. I think in Europe they've gone to more towards that uh method, but not right now.

Speaker: 08:45

Following up on that, belief it's not just antibiotics. Organic farms can't use any medications, can they?

Speaker 1: 08:54

So we're actually allowed to use quite a thing, quite a few things, and farms will work with their certifiers to see what products are available. So we use things like Banamine, and actually we're working on um the Meloxicam pain pills for calves and dehorning, hoping that one day that will be allowed for organic. Um, you know, you can your vet could use lidocaine for a surgery, all sorts of things like that. You can use calcium for a down cow. Sometimes people will be like, well, what do I do if I have a down cow? What do I do? You know, so a lot of those products are allowed.

Speaker: 09:38

Well, is there any difference if an organic farm uses Banamine? Are the withhold times the same for organic farms as conventional dairies?

Speaker 1: 09:49

They're usually longer on average, yeah. Which is also something that the farms have to have in their organic plans and protocol books and stuff like that. So yeah.

Speaker: 10:03

So how do how do organic farms find out this information on drug usage?

Speaker 1: 10:10

Uh so usually it's their certifiers. They, you know, have to there's a bunch of different types of certifiers. So sometimes their answers may be a little bit different. So like our farms are using like I think PCOS or Bay State out here. Um and so there's a national list that they base that off of each company. Hopefully, I'm explaining that.

Speaker: 10:43

Well,  I'm not familiar with the term certifier. Is this an independent company that gives like Horizon Organic recommendations? Or can you explain the term certifier more?

Speaker 1: 10:58

So the organic certifier is someone that would come to the farm and make sure okay, are the cows grazing for a certain length of time, kind of do an audit. They also look at all of their feed products to make sure that everything is sourced organically. And, you know, they're looking through their drug cabinets to make sure that everything would follow their guidelines. And they are they are independent companies. It's not directly from the government, but they are they do kind of work to carry out organic uh regulations from the USDA.

Speaker: 11:49

So certifier would could be going to Horizon Organic Farms, but also to another co-op to certify it as well.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Yeah, and they wouldn't just go to dairies either. They would go to other, you know, animal or like fruit producing and uh any sort of organic food, probably.

Speaker: 12:12

Very good. Thank you. Well, I guess on that topic, isn't it almost impossible to convert to organic because it takes way too long to make the transition?

Speaker 1: 12:23

So if you've sprayed your fields, it's going to take longer. It's probably going to take three years to transition those fields. Usually a year to transition the cows  at the end. Sometimes we have people that may have been living almost organically on their farm this whole time and they've been grazing. So sometimes transition isn't as long as you would think.

Speaker: 12:59

Say they were doing their cropland in an organic matter for years, then what's the transition for for the cattle end of it?

Speaker 1: 13:09

A year for the cows. Okay. And that usually so you get that option right when you start to transition a herd. But sometimes I've had people that maybe they bought organic land and organic cows, or like, you know, bought a new farm, something like that.

Speaker: 13:31

Well, with the cold weather and snow in Pennsylvania, how can these cows survive if they have to graze all year round?

Speaker 1: 13:41

So actually, it depends on your geography. So the certifying programs will take that into account.  probably the minimum for most farms is 120 days. But you know, if you live in a warmer place where grass grows longer and the grazing season is longer, then maybe 150 or something like that. So your location really matters.

Speaker: 14:13

Okay, very good. Well, is it true that cows can only eat grass? I mean, is that the only thing that can be included in their diet?

Speaker 1: 14:23

So actually, they can have pretty, you know, they will eat their normal ration of, you know, corn silage, haylage, and some organic grain and things like that, and then also go out on pasture. And we're usually targeting 30% dry matter out on pasture.

Speaker: 14:48

So 30% of their diet is the goal or minimum goal for how much grazing the cow should be doing.

Speaker 1: 14:58

Yes. And some farms will have more. You know, it really just depends on everyone's setup, I would say.

Speaker: 15:07

Well, Amy, you transitioned from private practice where you were doing conventional dairying to organic. Did you find particular challenges in that transition?

Speaker 1: 15:21

So I think one of the biggest differences is that in a niche market, there's a small pool of dairies and feed and land. So sometimes it's not like you could just go to any feed mill and ask for whatever you wanted. So sometimes the farmers  in our network are calling each other and say, okay, do you have any baylage for sale? Things like that. So there's a strong hay demand for hay, and you really have to plan ahead.

Speaker: 15:59

Okay, very good. Well, how do farms qualify to become organic or certified organic? What do they have to do to meet these criteria?

Speaker 1: 16:13

So the USDA has a National Organic Program called the NOP, and that is the label for our products and also the certification, and they'll work with third-party certifiers to make sure farms aren't using antibiotics, pesticides, make sure their cows are grazing in the correct number of days and dry matter percentages and things like that. So it is it's strict, but it's more doable than you think with training and learning from your friends.

Speaker: 16:59

Amy, when I go to the grocery store, how do I know that I'm getting a real organic product?

Speaker 1: 17:07

So on the products, you can pick up you know the Horizon carton and you'll see a USDA organic seal on the product.

Speaker: 17:20

Well, Amy, thank you very much for joining us today. We appreciate your insights here. And I know personally I learned a lot from from the discussion and wish you the best of luck in your new role.

Speaker 1: 17:35

Thank you. It was so good catching up with you anytime, Jim.

Speaker: 17:39

All right, take care, Amy. If you have any questions about today's episode or suggestions for future episodes, please email me at jbl5606 at psu.edu. And be sure to join us next week for the next episode of Bovine Banter.