Making Culling Decisions on the Farm | Dave Loewith

Hello, and welcome to another episode in our short podcast series on Caldary Cattle in Canada. My name is Steve and Roach, and I'm part of a team that's helping the dairy farmers of Canada develop what we're calling the Caldary Cattle Education Project. The focus of this project is to try and help Canadian dairy producers make informed decisions about Caldary Cattle. As an industry, we know we need to improve Cal Cal management, and we know decisions aren't always straightforward. So we're developing a toolkit or a series of educational tools and resources to help those that are looking for extra guidance. The short podcast series reviews the management of Caldary Cows from a variety of perspectives. We'll be touching on producer, veterinarian, research, and government perspectives as we walk through this series. Our hope is that each conversation is going to provide producers with some useful information they can apply back home on their farm. Our next discussion takes place with Dave Loweth, a dairy farmer from southwestern Ontario. Dave is part of a strong team working at summit home hostines. He's also been a strong advocate for a number of important issues in the Canadian dairy industry, including transportation. We sat down with him to discuss his perspectives on Caldary Cattle, some of the keys to consider when making calling decisions, how this has changed over time, and his advice for others in the Canadian dairy industry. So let's jump in! Okay, so I think we'll get going. Thanks very much, Dave, for being here. We really appreciate it. It was my pleasure to host you. Well, it's exciting to be here on the farm, and I think for many of our listeners, they're not going to have the opportunity or the privilege to be able to tour around the farm. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, Dave, and where we are today? So we are in southwestern Ontario, just outside the city of Hamilton. At the present time, we're milking up around 475 cows three times a day. The total herd comprises around 1,050 head. It's a partnership between my brother Carl, his son Ben, and myself, and plus we have an extensive staff as well. And how long have you guys been around? We have been on this particular farm for over 70 years now, started with my parents back in 1947, with 15 cows, and we've been here ever since. So today we're going to focus really in on calling, and we're trying to give Canadian producers right across coast to coast a better sense of what farmers are doing on farm to improve calling decisions and make sure those animals get to where they're going to end up as healthy as possible. And so we thought we'd start, Dave, on just getting you to tell us a little bit about what are some of the main reasons that you're calling cows off your farm? The number one reason for cows leaving our farm is reproductive failure. And then that would be followed probably by foot and leg issues, and then mastitis or metabolic issues after that. We have a very, very low call rate on this farm, which I attribute to really a lot of cow comfort. And so we can be in that in terms of voluntary call rate of about 15%, and we're 15 to 19%. So it is very low. We have a very old herd. Well, usually 50 or 52% of the herd is third lactation or more, but reproductive failure is the number one issue. And those generally aren't that difficult in terms of calling decisions in terms of where they go. Usually they're sound cows, and they can go to the local auction, which is about 30 miles from here. The more difficult ones are the cows that are compromised either metabolically or particularly lameness. And those ones are a little harder to decide, and we're lucky that we have a local abattoir that we can send direct to slaughter. So yeah, Dave, you brought a really good point. You kind of segue into our next question here. So we've chatted with a lot of sale barn vats and a lot of inspectors that work at sales barns and abattoirs and that sort of thing. One of their biggest concerns is call cows. They're conditioned on arrival. Often when they take like a second look at these cows, there's usually some sort of underlying issue, like a lot of the issues that you brought up today, that cause their deterioration when you're transporting them. So a lot of the time these cows shouldn't have left the farm, and if they did, they probably should have gone straight to slaughter. So you mentioned you'd take a closer look. So what are you doing when you're assessing your cows before they leave the farm? Well, we're looking at them more and more critically all the time. The veterinarians on site at the local auction barns are very, very strict now and rightfully so. And you're completely right. Sometimes there's an underlying cause. It's almost always two reasons why you call a cow. Either she's not milking enough and long days in milk or she has some other issues. It's really, really difficult. And if we have a cow, we do not send any cows out that are displaced. We do not do that. If a cow is displaced and we don't want to spend the dollars on surgery for her, we don't think she has a much chance of profitable recovery. We will send that cow direct to slaughter. But we certainly do not send a cow that's displaced and make the decision to send her to a local auction. And we're also very critical now of the cow's gate. And if she's compromised at all in terms of a sore foot or if she has a big swollen quarter or something like that, a cow that's really not feeling well, then those cows we do not send either. It's been a big change. And certainly for the better from the animal point of view, we're lucky that we have close by to us local abattoirs that can take these cows within a half an hour sort of thing. I do feel for the people that are much further in remote areas where they don't have that option. You mentioned that there are some like direct to slaughter options in this area. So what was that like for you? Did you develop a relationship with anyone in particular? Yes, we've had two that we worked with now for the last little while. One had been around for many, many years. But we've now more recently switched to another one. I think he runs just a little better show in terms of the way he handles animals and his premises in general. And because of that, I think he's also able to remunerate us somewhat better. I had one question. So you mentioned you attribute a lot, you know, your lower rate of calling to cow comfort. And related to that, more and more, even pro-actions requiring farms to think about protocols for cow handling and even walking, getting them ready for that process. Can you walk us through what that looks like on your farm, Dave? What are some of the things you're focused on? Well, we're really focused on calm, quiet handling of cows. Nobody else at cows here. Nobody beats on cows. The cows are, you know, if you would walk through our herd, you can really walk through very calmly. And we do all our pregnancy checks just out in the barn. We don't have to have any kind of restraints. We just walk them into the free stalls and do the pregnancy checks there, and that kind of thing. We are a sand bed at barn, and that helps with both the comfort of lying down and ease of getting up, and also some traction in the alleyways themselves. So cow comfort is really a top priority for us in terms of the overall department of the cows, where they live, and plainly. So Dave, if you can think back to a time you had a difficult time deciding on what you should do with a cow, and it was kind of like gray area cows, what are some of the challenges you faced when you made the decision? Where did you go when you were trying to make the decision? Could you walk us through that process? Yes, it is a tough decision, and in one hand, it's getting easier to make that decision. It's aware that cow goes because, unless she's perfect, she's not going to a local auction where she may go to Pennsylvania, or New York, or Quebec, or something like that, where she's going to be on the road for several days. This cow has to be either young cow, or cow with great feet and legs, and good body score, and perfectly healthy. Otherwise, maybe just couldn't get pregnant. Those would be the vast majority of cows that we can send to the local auction. Otherwise, everything else pretty well has to go to a local avatar, and we're getting much more strict, and the other thing that we're dealing with more and more all the time is euthanasia on the farm. If a cow is compromised and has had an antibiotic treatment, and how she's holding the meat for 10 days, or something like that, and those cows, unfortunately, will put down. We're doing more and more of that all the time. Again, we're lucky. We do have a service to come and pick up dead stock. Again, if we were in a more remote area, you'd have to look at our on-farm composting or something like that, which is time-consuming and difficult, and especially when you get into the winter months when everything's frozen and that kind of thing. We have an advantage of being closer to urban population, or some of those services that other people don't. You mentioned a couple of times as we've been chatting, that things have changed quite a bit. What do you think is euthanasia is clearly one, but what else has changed for you in terms of when you think about calling? Well, we make decisions quicker on these cows. Does this cow have a really good chance of responding to antibiotic therapy or not? Then maybe we'll say, we're not. We tend to try and hang on to cows, but there are cows. We say, we're not going to put this cow on any antibiotics, and we're going to send a direct to slaughter today in order to minimize the pain she's under, just basically stop the bleeding and cut our losses instead of going through a whole protocol of antibiotic therapy and this type of thing and still lose it at the end of the day. That makes sense. Can you speak to David? You mentioned, I think, before we started a little bit about that, the concern about what decisions are going to be made on the other side if you don't send a direct. Is it sort of a dog's breakfast? You don't feel like you always know what it's not clear? What's going to be what you'd hope would be a. Yeah, it really isn't clear. If a cow is still bright and eating, that's a cow that has some potential. We do pump them with water and we do what we have done probably more in ourselves and as an industry, a lot more analgesics just to minimize pain on these cows. They are not inexpensive to use, but we really do try to minimize as much pain as we can. Any cow that has an issue, be it a case of mastitis or something, even if it's not that severe a case, then we will give that cow an insid or something like that, just a less in the pain and give her a better chance of eating and drinking and recovering herself. Years gone by, you did not have that at your disposal. Maybe you had aspirin or something like that, but nothing that was as effective as some of the products that we have now, the metacams and those type of things. We are much quicker to use those type of drugs to help a cow through and maybe in some cases depending on severity of things, that may be all we use. We are not into an antibiotic, but just some therapy that will help the cow fight things herself and support it with fluids and that type of thing. Are antibiotic uses become much more judicious in terms of what we think is effective or would be effective? A lot of the research says if you get a hot gram negative case, you're not going to do anything with antibiotics anyway. So you really just support the cow as the best therapy that you can make her comfortable, give her water, and hypatonic saline or something like that and give yourself a fighting chance, but not use antibiotics that are not going to be effective. So where do you think as an industry, the Canadian dairy industry, what more do you think we need when we're talking about calling cows? Is there anything do you think we need to support our decisions? A treatment tree would be a good thing that everybody should have on farm. Treatment tree is the, this is what the cow is showing for symptoms. Is she going to recover or not? If she's going to recover, what are we going to do? If she's not going to recover, what are we going to do? If she's not, if she's ambulatory and fine and looks okay, where do we send her? If she's more compromised, where do we send her? Those kind of decisions at least they help. Every case is somewhat individual, but at least as a general guideline, first of all, what's best for the animal? That's hard to do, but that's what we really try to do here. What's the best for this animal? Sure. And then what's best from an industry standpoint, from the consuming public standpoint? Anything you think needs to be done by industry government to make sure we continually improve? Well, the Ontario Farm Animal Council and those type of organizations, try to get the word out to the industry first and foremost. It's difficult to educate the consumer because a lot of the time the consumer really has no concept of what goes on anyway and you may end up opening up a can of worms if you say, we're doing this and this for downcows and people say, what's a downcow? Wait a second, they go down? We didn't even know that problem exists. And now we put this red flag in front of them. That's hard. But I think really people have to first and foremost think what's best for the animal. And it's going to get difficult as margins get tighter because some of these things are, you know, an economic loss and that kind of thing. And you try to minimize those and as margins get tighter, those are going to get harder decisions to make. You may end up making decisions that are not necessarily in the best industry of the animal or the industry. Any last bits of advice that you give? You've been around for a little while. The industry is getting better on all levels. We are much more cognizant of animal welfare and we do have some options as to where to market these animals that are compromised in one way or another. And with talks like this and with good veterinarians and the whole industry, we are making progress in order to have these animals end up where they should in a timely and compassionate manner. Awesome. Great. Well, thanks very much, Dave. So we appreciate you talking to me in your thoughts. It's great. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the dairy farmers of Canada's pro-action podcast series. The focus of this project is to try and help Canadian dairy producers make informed decisions about animal care on their farms and support them in striving for continuous improvement. For more information, please visit the dairy farmer of Canada website dairyfarmors.ca and don't forget to like and subscribe for more content. This podcast was narrated, edited and produced by me, Stephen Roach. Thank you to our guests and to you for listening. The project is hosted by the dairy farmers of Canada and partly funded by the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a five-year federal provincial territorial initiative. Thank you for listening.