 Good afternoon and welcome to this session of our drought management series for your ranch. Today we're going to talk about herd management and calling and with us are Dr. Janna Block. She is the extension livestock specialist at the Headinger Research Extension Center. We're coming live to you from Headinger today and so we appreciate Janna and the crew here for hosting us. Dr. Jerry Stucka is our extension veterinarian and livestock stewardship specialist at NDSU on campus. And then I'm Lisa Peterson, the extension livestock specialist at the Central Grasslands Research Extension Center near Streeter. Please type your questions in the Q&A. Miranda, Mary and Kevin will monitor those and we will ask all the questions at the end of the session. We are an equal opportunity institution and we have made every effort to make this available for all audiences, regardless of race, religion, creed, any of those type of things. So with that, our leadoff presenter today is Dr. Janna Block and she's going to talk about some nutritional type considerations for during drought. And for some of you watching, I can't see where you're all from, but for some of you watching those, you've been in drought for maybe a year and for some of you watching, we're just starting into that. And so we're going to look at the broader view and then I will follow up and we'll talk about if we get to the point that we need to actually cull some cattle, some culling strategies and then Dr. Stucka will talk about animal health during your drought. So with that, Janna, and thank you for getting our technology going. Okay, so through this whole series and today we're going to keep bringing you back to goal setting, writing things down, because we all know that when you're actually in the throes of a drought, it's very difficult to make an objective decision because there's a lot of stress. There's emotional stress, financial stress, every kind of stress we can think of which we will be addressing next week in the webinar. But what we really want you guys to be able to do is sit back and take a look at things ahead of time because that really kind of takes the emotion out of things and helps you make better decisions. In previous sessions we've talked about making sure that we're not going to have long term impacts on forage production and rangeland health. So we always want to keep that in the forefront when we're making those those goals. And then of course we have to think about all the risks that are facing us and trying to maintain that financial health of the operation, always a key goal. We've talked about preparing for a drought and we have talked about some of these before. Again, a lot of this is just writing these things down, even if you think you don't need to it's really helpful to just have things written down so that you can refer back to that when you're trying to make some some various decisions and you don't have to try to wreck your brain for those numbers so just knowing numbers and your different production groups whether that's bulls mature cows yearling heifers whatever that happens to be having an understanding of your what you're need needs are going to be and what your options are and then even looking forward into winter feed needs just assuming that our forage production is going to be impacted this summer. In terms of infrastructure development, obviously that's going to be a financial burden. So maybe at this time that's not the best idea, but it's something to think about for future years, just in terms of things that might help you kind of mitigate some of those drought issues so some water development which we talked about last week, just providing some shade maybe cross fencing a few pastures. And then like I mentioned, I'm preparing your drought plan a written drought plan. It's not fun, but it's necessary. Having some of those trigger dates and we do have a really good publication on our NDSU extension website that lists out those trigger dates that are specific to our state. So that's really helpful. You're raising plans. What's your calling list. You've got your, your top list of calls and then if you have to go deeper that's going to be a different list and Lisa like she said we'll talk about that more in detail. Acting early is always the key during drought. So the sooner that you can decide what you're going to need and get those feeds in, you're likely going to be able to lock things in hopefully at a better price, and you're not competing with a lot of people that are in the same situation. That last bullet point there again maybe this year is not the year to do that. If you know it just depends on your financial situation but it's always good to think about maybe just maintaining a certain portion of our herd. If we're cow calf focused. Maybe we have 20% or 30% of that are total carrying capacity that's maybe yearlings or something that's more easily liquidated than cow calf pairs. Because we are facing drought nearly every other year truly in our situation so just something to think about for the long term in terms of being able to maybe make those calling decisions a little bit easier. So kind of these are just some strategies that we have in terms of managing the cow herd and I will talk about a few of these things in more detail but just in general. Kind of the way to manage our feed needs just reduce the total feed needs so again maybe getting rid of some of our livestock on hand. Trying to reduce the nutrient requirements of the animals that are there. And we'll talk about that in more detail and then of course substituting or supplementing our forages. So we'll talk more about culling as we go, but usually the old and non productive cows are kind of going to be first on that list. Second bullet point here shorten the breeding season early preg test so there's kind of a couple different schools of thought here, and your strategy is really going to be specific to your operation this is just something to think about. A lot of times during drought, if maybe our cows aren't in the best condition. People might want to actually lengthen their breeding season to just give more cows, an opportunity to get bread. But if you think about going the other way and maybe going to say a 45 day breeding season, followed by preg check 35 to 40 days after the end of the breeding season, your end up you're going to end up really reproductively efficient with your cow herd. And again maybe that helps make some of those culling decisions a little bit easier. Then of course there's option of relocating all our portion of the herd. If you're looking at a portion of them. A lot of times the best thing to do is think about those groups that have really high requirements so growing stock like calves or yearling heifers. Those would be good ones to think about getting off the ranch versus our mature cows, maybe we early wean and those have the lowest requirements. So options here leasing in other locations moving to a custom feedlot or maybe you're thinking about investing in some pen space, or developing a lot on some sacrifice pasture that you could maybe renovate after the drought is done, which is hopefully suit. Just some considerations when you're thinking about moving cows. Make sure you have a good written signed lease agreement. Very important. We know what happens when that doesn't exist. These are just some of the points of agreement that we need to come to thinking about. Are those cattle locked in as far as timing like beginning and end dates of that lease or is there an option for maybe bringing some of them back if conditions do happen to change. Just things to think about and then also of course who is going to be responsible for checking cattle water fences you want to get all that laid out ahead of time. Also, if you're working with someone that you're not familiar with, it's a good idea to get some references and check around so you don't end up in a wreck. If your cows are having to go out of state looking at kind of this being a regional issue and maybe our neighbor or closest neighbors are affected as well. It's a really good idea to learn a little bit about the area, the types of forages we have and think about things that maybe we haven't experienced before in our area and just how to manage that. And then of course there's just the actual relocation itself looking into those health and ID requirements for moving those cows. And then Dr stuck will talk a little bit more about biosecurity plans, but it is really important to think about how you prepare our cattle to leave the home place. Do they need some additional vaccinations. How are we going to manage quarantine when they come back to the ranch after they've been possibly commingled with other cattle. Okay, so looking at reducing the nutrient requirements of the cows on hand that first one is just, I mean, it's fairly simple. I'm not going to get too mind blowing there but it's just something that maybe we don't think about just in terms of heat stress on those animals in the summer months. Usually over 80 degrees would be kind of a moderate heat stress and then as we get above 90 that's that's going to be fairly advanced so you see panting. The cows will try to find shade they're going to bunch up change grazing patterns and production can be impacted at that point so even those cows the ability to find some shade will help lower that core body temperature and reduce the overall maintenance needs that they have. Ionophores are something we typically think of in relation to cattle feeding, but we can definitely use them with mature cows either in a dry lot situation, or on pasture, and essentially what those do is just change the amount of that room and environment and make it more efficient so they're able to maintain body condition on less feed and add a benefit of ionophores is some prevention and control of coxidiosis so that's a good thing to think about and they're fairly cost effective. The range kind of depends on how you're including it might be mixed into a TMR or included in a supplement or mineral package. I'm going to talk a little bit more about early weaning. But when you think about cow requirements we've got requirements for maintenance, we've got requirements for growth if they are still young cows. And of course there's lactation requirement. So the only one that we can really truly control is the lactation requirement. So thinking about extending and utilizing forages to the best of our ability. We kind of the bullets that are in italics here those are ones we've kind of talked about before making sure you have a good idea of what you've got on hand. So this is where our nutrient analysis is going to be extremely important so that you can use forages efficiently match those forages up with the production groups. Based on their stage of production feed the highest quality forage to those groups that have the highest requirements, and then anything you can do to reduce waste processing feeding one day's feed at a time. There's a lot of different hay waste factors that go in there, and we have found that hay waste can be as high as 30 to 40%, just based on traditional feeding strategies so anything you could do to reduce that will definitely be a benefit. Carl Hoppe talked about some of our options for different feedstuffs that we can think about in these diets I'm not going to focus too much on that and then we we've also talked about annual forages crop residues just maybe seeking out of the box and using things you haven't used in the past. And I will also talk a little bit more about dry lot and creep feeding as ways to extend forages. So when we're thinking about feeding supplement out on pasture. We have a couple different scenarios here and this is from Clay Mathis. And so he sets up a couple scenarios the first one is where we have unlimited forage and our crude protein is adequate and our energy is also likely adequate. And so unless those cows are in a low body condition score for some reason, we probably don't need to supplement so obviously during a drought this is probably not a scenario you're going to encounter. But it's one during a normal production year that we would expect the second scenario where maybe you've you've managed your grazing so you have some forage reserves were not too worried about supply at this point yet. But maybe the grass is kind of brown and dry hasn't been utilized and so those cows are going to really benefit from a high protein supplement that's going to help them utilize the fiber in those dry forages. The third scenario, maybe we're a little bit limited on forage but crude protein is adequate and we could use an energy supplement to substitute for some of that limited forage. The other option is thinking about reducing our stocking rate again always going back to what's going to be our impact on our on our forage base. And then scenario for this is kind of our double whammy and one that you might be facing depending on where you're at. We do have limited forage and maybe crude protein is also inadequate. Those cows are going to need both because they don't have enough forage to meet their energy requirements and the crude protein is also inadequate so in this situation it's often difficult to actually meet requirements through supplementation. It just gets kind of hard to manage in terms of actually getting the feet out there and that and that amount that might be needed. So in that case we're going to need to consider just getting the cows completely out of the pasture into a dry lot or relocating. So regardless of where you're at when we think about supplementing, you want to compare not on the cost per ton but in the cost per pound of the nutrient that you're looking for, whether that's protein or energy or both. And then think about all those other costs that come into play and there's a lot of tools online that you can use to calculate your total cost per pound of nutrient. So these are just a couple of ways and we've talked about these strategies in the past. I think it's just really important during drought that maybe a little more vigilant about monitoring what the cow condition is like and when what their nutrient status is and so body condition scoring. That's what we talk about all the time right and so there's kind of five key times during the year where it's really helpful to kind of write down some condition scores if you're not writing them down at least kind of subconsciously be assessing what those scores are. So late gestation, a lot of a lot of cows in the state are in that stage now or into calving late gestation is kind of our last opportunity to increase condition before we hit calving. And that body condition score at calving is going to be one that's really important in determining how those cows are going to reproduce the following breeding season. Of course, body condition score at breeding is also important. And it's time to think about what are what's our forage situation looking like. Do we need to early wean to move some of those thin cows past their anaster state get them cycling and get them bred up. And then I guess just based on your typical weaning date maybe a couple months before that start again kind of assessing things. So are the cows looking a little bit thin, do we need to supplement, do we need to early wean and supplement just kind of depends on what things are looking like. And then at weaning, we're thinking about, again, this is the point where we're going to remove that lactation requirement, the cows are going to be at their lowest point for nutrient requirements, really good time to add condition. So it's really important to think about what your weaning date is in relation to calving. And so are you going to give your cows enough time to fully recover prior to their next calf being born. So that time point in between weaning and calving is going to be really important, especially in a drought situation where forage is going to be an issue. I have a couple pictures there those are from SDSU extension. Just kind of taking a look at manure consistency is one way to kind of evaluate what the protein situation looks like if you see distinct rings we likely have a deficiency. You can see the photo in the middle there doesn't have a lot of structure the folds are flatter, not stacked up quite so high. In most cases this is going to be adequate but if we're looking at lactating cows they're going to need more around 11%. So there's still an opportunity to supplement some of those production groups just depending on when you're calving and when lactation takes place. And then if you see that bottom picture no structure protein is likely in excess and you don't need to worry about supplementation. So those are just a few things to keep an eye on feeding cows and dry lots. So this is, you know, an option that a lot of people have utilized over the years. It can be, it can kind of stretch us in terms of how we think things should be done because most of the time we're going to be thinking about a limit fed high grain ration. And so we do have a minimum amount of forage that we want to include there just to maintain room and function. So typically that's 0.5% of the body weight. So obviously considerations with, you know, if you're dry lotting cows on your own place you got to have the right equipment need to have adequate bunk space that's really important especially for limit feeding because there will be a lot of competition, and also thinking about total pen space do you have the ability to sort out some of those young cows, and maybe feed them separately just to kind of eliminate that recognize that their behavior is going to be a little different. So this is the first couple weeks. Some people put out some low quality forage just to kind of provide a little bit more fill and keep those cows, just a little bit more satisfied. This is a good opportunity to consider estrous synchronization programs and AI. If you are using natural service, it's a good idea to kind of put a put a corner or something where some calves can get out of the way if you are if you do have bulls and cows in the same lot with calves. So think about managing those calves. We often talk about creek feeding and early weaning, but they, and in many cases we use them in the same scenarios with limited forage availability, but they will kind of result in different benefits so I just wanted to go through this. So to start with creek feeding. If we have maybe a little bit of limited forage availability but but our cows can still be out on grass. This is just a way to kind of reduce that grazing pressure of the calf. It's not going to result in a whole lot of changes from the cow calves will still prefer milk over creep, and they will but they will also prefer creep over forage so they're going to eat more creep feed and a little less forage. So you might be looking at maybe our milk production is kind of dropping off maybe in those couple months before weaning in our younger or older cows. And so maybe there's an opportunity to feed just a portion of our herd rather than all of them. And then just kind of a general rule of thumb, if the price per pound of calf is greater than 10 times the cost per pound of creep, it's usually beneficial to provide that creep. And the feed conversion of most creeps and there will be a little bit of variation there. So you can see some of the benefits that I mentioned decreased forage intake by calves, we usually see an increasing weaning weight that can vary from 10 to 60 pounds it just depends on the type of creep intake all those things so typically 50 pounds would be a good goal. You can get a better uniform calf crop, maybe bump up some of those calves whose dams didn't have adequate milk production like I mentioned in some of those groups above. And then this can also be a really good way to kind of transition some of those calves headed into weaning get them eating some high quality feed, going up to a feeder, learning how to eat out of a bunk. So again, it can have a lot of benefits. So just to kind of watch and make sure the calves aren't getting too fat, especially when it comes to your heifers or potential replacements. There can be some impacts on reproductive efficiency and milk production later in life if they do get too fat even during Catholic. And then of course is always a risk. Maybe they don't gain as much as they should, and you just ends up with a lot of increased cost. So talking about early weaning. So really early weaning is anytime before you would normally wean, but typically 45 to around 170 days of age. This will really the timing will really vary depending on your goals forage conditions, what your cows look like. But again, it's really important to have a good plan in place. Are you going to feed those early wean calves. Are you going to sell light calves. You have to look at your marketing strategy and make sure you're not going to end up in a bind there. There are a ton of benefits to early weaning there's been a lot of research done on this strategy. You get forage savings, because obviously your cow has now you've taken away that lactation requirement that we talked about. One study that was done between North and South Dakota. They weaned spring calving cows. Some were weaned in August and some are weaned in November. And so those calves that were early weaned those mature dams had forage intake about 74% of what the calves with cows with calves at side had so about a 25% forage savings there from reducing the requirement of that cow. You do see an increase in cow body condition by removing that lactation requirement because that lactation requirement is very high on the priority list. So this is really a quick way to increase body condition in cows. And then, depending on when you're doing this. You can get those cows starting to cycle. Part of that is by removing that lactation requirement and also breaking that maternal bond with a calf will definitely reduce that an estrus period that occurs in in a post calving cows. And there's also some research saying early weaned calves have increased feed efficiency and even and even tend to have a higher quality grade when they're harvested. There's always risks, different kinds of market risk. And then of course, a lot of increased management and labor you've got to make sure those calves can reach the bunk and waterers. Your typical pen is not going to allow you to do that depending on the size of the calf and when you're weaned. You also have to make sure you have a lot of high quality feed on hand those calves are not going to be able to utilize low quality forages. They have to have a really nutrient dense diet in order to gain efficiently so those are all things to think about. I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you, Janet. Excellent discussion and I'm going to lead us into culling and and operations that I think have really advanced the quality of their cows culling is an everyday event they they actually have a strategic calling plan in place and so I ask what your culling criteria and no operation is different if you ask Jana what their calling criteria it is that they're ranch. She would say something different than Dr stuck with it his ranch and something different than our ranch and so I think it's really important that for your ranch you identify what your calling criteria are and before calling above the obvious set some goals for your operation. What you want your cows to be what you want your operation to be long term and then use some records to help you make decisions and on the screen there's a picture of our producers. They have a caving book and you'll see that there's notes along the side so they've actually in this operation they body condition scores cows and calving they give them other scores they give them feet score so that they can make better culling decisions and that in this operation. They actually call cows out so that they don't get bread and have the opportunity to stick around. And so they make some pretty strong calling decisions and if you aren't keeping some good production records calving is the perfect time to start and then our spring calving herds that's occurring for most of our operations. So reasons to call beyond what I call the three ohs the three ohs of old open and on our shortages of feed economics and then what I call traits beyond convenience I don't think any of us are getting any younger and certainly labor is a such labor shortages and on our farms and ranches and so getting cows in to mess with their others or deal with their feet or whatever the story is today is not a convenience thing those are things that take time out of our schedule. And so I have here a scenario of two herds that have the same breed of cattle they actually are neighboring herds neither one of them is mine I just know both of these operations. I actually learned from one of these operations because I noticed annually, they always sold heifers for such a high price and I wanted to know why that was. And so I got to know these operations and the top operation and heard one has a very disciplined calling program that started about 30 years ago, because they understood that there was a value to raising replacement quality heifers but they knew to do that. They needed to have replacement quality cows. And so I, they have a strong calling program they call cows based upon body condition score at weaning they call cows based upon mature cow weight actually, and they also call cows based upon feet and other and disposition. And so when we compare these two herds they have it relatively the same time. The top herd sold heifers this past November sold 91 of those six weight excuse me 91 six weight steers for about $963 ahead. They sold 104 six weight heifers for about $990 ahead so in their herd. You can see that heifers outsold steers by about $28 $29 ahead, and they actually had two or three drafts of steers I just picked the biggest numbers of draft size, a number sold. In the second herd they actually sold within five head of the same amount of cattle that day. Same sale same breed a different herd they sold 85 head of six weight heifers for about $851 ahead. And so between these two herds that utilize the same breed have pretty much the same management in terms of feed and range, and all those things. There's $111 per head difference heifers versus heifers. And so why is that. Well, a lot of it is in that second herd, they don't have nearly as strict of a culling program or herd sire selection for that matter is the first herd. And so what it has allowed the first herd to do is to have a lower culling rate and retain more cows. That was pretty good deal for them when replacement heifer calves were selling for $1500 ahead, and they had a replacement rate of 5% they could sell more heifer calves. And so, in the past year heard one had a replacement rate of 8.4% and heard to had a replacement rate of 23%. And so it's a long term strategy to improving profitability but I also think it gives your herd more resilience as you go into these tougher times. So as we look at culling decisions, the easiest is certainly getting rid of your open cows. Don't skip preg checking. This is not the year to do that. In fact, I would do it earlier rather than later. But after culling your opens, our decisions become more challenging. In my operation in my herd and I think probably Dr. Stuck is in Janice, probably the next creatures to go are the honorary ones. And so disposition is a human safety issue. It's a heritable condition. We have decreased profitability, it impacts carcass quality, it impacts rate of gain and feed yards, it impacts conversion. And it's a livestock safety issue and it's an animal health issue. And so you can see in this picture that somebody sold a cow is a third, third caver turned out to an angus bull says wife is scared of the cow, the husband scared of the wife, the cow has to go. Well, obviously, if everybody's that scared of her, maybe she should have gone a little while ago. And so again, this is a good time at calving if you've got a cow that you can't even get near her calf. Maybe now's the time to think about getting rid of her because it's not worse somebody getting hurt. When we look at bad feet. You know, we don't really seem to notice our bad footed cattle until they have to really start walking to get water to cover more range. Maybe if they're in a wet lot situation if it's a really wet period but bad feet are a genetic thing typically. It's in terms of structure lots of times we have vertical cracks like you can see on the left hand side corkscrew claws and long toes and all those things affect productivity and profitability and it's a well being issue and you know I never being raised in the mountains of Colorado where there were rocks everywhere I never knew cows could have bad feet. When I moved to North Dakota 22 years ago, probably eight out of the 10 first questions I got for several, several months was about bad footed cows and I can never understand that. And I think it's more as not only a genetic issue but it's also an environmental issue where you are. And so maybe this is something in your herd you want to work on is something with structure and bad feet. Along with that, bad udders there. This is again often genetic I encourage producers to look at the maternal grand damn of fires that they're purchasing to look and check out their feet and their udders, because lots of times that transfers on to the bull that you're, you're buying to produce your future replacements. Bad udders equal bad clostrum, and that's a calf health issue. We know that those calves that don't get good clostrum have a higher chance of being sick they don't gain as much they're unprofitable, and they have more disease issues and others dragging the ground we also have increased incidence of disease. To me it's a labor and management issue. And it's a definitely an issue if you have to get that cow into suck and you know I think about our operation when I met my husband is he and his brother might have to get a cow in and his grab had a pretty short term memory. And his brother, my husband and his brother say don't you think we should call that cow. Oh my gosh look at the cash you weaned off well yeah but you didn't have to mess with her at calving time. Again mark that out in your records she's a good candidate to go down the road. And then our sins, especially when in comparison to other cows of their same age and same type cows and poor body condition score they have a tougher time reading it's going to take more nutrition to get them back into shape. We would like to see our heifers at least in a body condition score of six at calving time. And I think all of us would agree that we'd like to see our cows pushing six to seven at calving time as well. Now late breads Jenna talked a little bit about this, but depending on your days that your cows have been exposed to a bull late cavers. We know that calves of the born in the first 21 days and that would be the first cycle as we would call it, or more profitable off the cow in the feed yard and on the rail in the packing plant. They offer more weaning weight than their contemporaries. The replacement heifers tend to be more product, more productive and have more longevity in a herd and higher percentage of cows will have back in that first cycle. So if you have a lot of late breads in your herd this year. If you've been fighting some late breads and opens I think it's a good time to ask yourself is your system feeding fitting your environment. Why are we having these late bred cows. Why are we having a higher percentage of opens. Is it because we've gotten ourselves into a situation of high milk and our genetics. Are they not able to fit in really well in a drought situation or limited forage what's that look like and so I will also ask if we have another wet spring and yes it will rain someday. Do you want to be dealing with planting and calving at the same time, and I can't answer that for you, but for our operations that are very much integrated livestock and crop that might be a good question to ask. So some strategies for tightening up your calving Jana talked about synchronizing and AI and, you know, sometimes for some of our operations we don't have the manpower to do that we don't have the knowledge to do that. So we can also utilize synchronization in a natural breeding situation with a bull. And so we can increase the number of females that are pregnant in that first 30 days. We can get similar pregnancy rates in that first cycle, as you would to AI sink in some of our protocols you can actually induce cycling and cows that aren't cycling and that's particular in our Cedar protocols. And it'll give the majority of our cow herds more opportunity to be bred in the first 90 days of the calving season. And so if that's something that you're really interested in talk to your local county extension agent. They have these resources we have these resources and we can help you out with that. So protocols can be effective, we effectively use to tighten our calving seasons but you really need to plan. This is not something that you decide to do today, when you normally turn your bulls out tomorrow you need to have some back planning. Our conception will be improved if our, if our females are in the correct body conditions six to seven and cycling. However, again if they're not sometimes our Cedar protocols can help that conception. So the economic value to all this is having more calves born in a shorter calving season. We can go through and look at our broken mouth cows I think we, we tend to think that our older cows have worse smells and our younger cows. That's not always true and so it's a good reason to mouth your cows especially if you're in a tight forage situation. Because if those cows don't have any teeth left there's no sense in turning them out on forage that's pretty minimal. You know we can mouth them for that soundness. We can do this at the same time that we're doing our feet and leg, leg feet and legs and utter criteria. And we know that typically a cow has to be seven to eight years old before she becomes an income instead of an expense. And then finally, and probably if it was in my operation near the top of the list poor producers. But we have to have those records to identify those cows and so unless a cow has a good reason that she hasn't raised decent calf let her go to work for somebody else. Everybody has to earn their keep and then finally, don't forget the bulls in your operation. You know I think sometimes after we've pulled bulls we tend to forget about them and tell we have to turn them out but make sure all your bulls are going to pass a breeding sound this exam there's no reason to run a bull that's not going to get a cow bread or doesn't have a high probability of getting a cow bread. Or a bull that has bad feet or whatever the story is so apply similar calling criteria to your bull battery. And if you're planning on calling your bulls I'd encourage you to do that sooner rather than later. I certainly know that we can't call our entire herd if we don't think our cows have good enough others we can't call them all, but I established some criteria and start working on that it's always a work in progress. And so with that Dr stuck is going to talk to us about drought in our health systems and considerations for managing your cows. Very good. Very good. I hope everybody can hear me. I was thinking about what Lisa was talking about mouthing cows and looking in their mouth and so I used to work at an auction. Life stock auction where I had to mouth cows. It's a funny thing cows never appreciate going to the dentist. They don't appreciate the fact of what you're trying to do for him. So if you're going to mouth cows, maybe need to do it at break check time have your veterinarian help you mouth some cows. At least have a squishy shoe with a headbender or some way to control that head because they they just don't appreciate it at all Lisa. So yeah. So let's just talk a little bit about growth and health and and you know going back to something that Jana said about biosecurity and sending your cows to different places one of the things I. Probably need to mention the further south you go. There are some diseases that can show up when you bring them back. So for example some of the blood sucking insects that exist in other parts of the country that don't exist here because of our wonderful winters. Anaplasmosis for example even blue tongue to to some extent but anaplasmosis is one of those things that actually can be transferred with a blood sucking insect. When you bring it back to your to North Dakota you almost you may have anaplasmosis show up and anaplasmosis is a disease that infects the red blood cells. So you get tremendous hemolysis of red blood cells and a cow becomes anemic and so it's a nasty thing so it's important to think about where you're sending those cows. What might come back that I didn't have in the first place and so all those things that need to enter in your and you're thinking when you're sending cows into a different area. One of the things though I thought about this drought. It compounds so many things that everything becomes a little worse. I mean we Jana talked about nutrition stress. Miranda last week talked about water quality and quantity stress. Then we get into heat stress that leads to other things as well and finally I'll just finish up a little bit with some internal parasite stress that we don't tend to think about as much in the northern plains. So all of these pictures I think I took the same year and it may be it may have been 2006 I'm not sure but all of these were in North Dakota. And one of the things I'm trying to illustrate on that image on the left hand side of the screen is that no matter what you're growing whether it's forage or cash crops. You've got reduced grazing and feed resources so it's not it doesn't impact just the native pasture you're on. But it impacts the other feed resources you were counting on. The image on the on the right just talks about heat stress and I don't know if you can see it real well there but I'm trying to portray that these cattle here are trying to seek shade in a pasture doesn't have a whole lot of shade. And then there's some water close by and that brings up a set of issues that almost makes things worse so I got heat stress and trying to find shade. I don't have very good water the cattle are bunching up now I get more fly pressure. Now I got greater transmission of things like pink eye and even for that matter sometimes respiratory organisms and even foot rot cases. So it's as I said when I started it compounds everything else that in a normal year of average rainfall you may not see some of these things show up. As we talked about last week water quality and quantity or impact. They not only impact health and there's some severe issues that can run that we can get into with water quality. For example we talked last week Miranda and I about blue green algae blooms and high sulfate waters and the things that can result from that but not having enough water to drink and good quality impacts forage intake as well they won't eat as much. On the right hand side of this it has an impact of course when they're not eating enough on body condition score calf weaning weight and then potentially even immune status. And sometimes that relates to that middle picture that because of lack of forage and if we haven't supplemented or we haven't moved these cattle cows and calves grace closer to the ground and closer to manure patties. And when they do all of these things when they congregate in these moisture areas you increase your stocking density compared to what you think you were doing they graze down to the roots. And then what happens is they actually get exposed to more parasites than they would under normal conditions. And so you've increased the worm burdens. They're eating grass that's close to the mirror mirror patties and one of the things there's two things that happens with internal parasites internal parasites suppress the appetite. It's not like the parasites are actually stealing nutrients from the cow. That's not the case. They actually suppress the appetite of animals that are parasitized, which compounds things even further. And then the other part of internal parasites is that it has a negative impact on the immune response. So if I'm, for example, let's say I'm even early weaning and I've got pastors that look like this carpet in this room or that image on the right. I'm probably going to have a little greater impact or greater parasite burden. And so now I got to think about is my vaccines that I'm going to administer will have the same immune response if those calves were less parasitized. So that that's the issue of drought of drought or parasites. And it's the issue of all of these things tending to compound one of the one of the each other and really resulting in things that we see that in a normal year, we wouldn't. Just a couple comments on on heat stress. I don't you probably can't see that image as well as you'd like in the middle but that's that old famous temperature humidity chart that I've actually borrowed this from from the University of Nebraska. And anything in the red there indicates that there's a great deal of potential stress on those animals and then you go to golden yellow and slash stress. And then it's difficult the times to ameliorate heat stress. Shade is beautiful. The wind breaks that we created for winter feeding become a problem, because now we're not getting wind speed that it kind of ameliorates some of this heat and humidity. And if and we a number of years ago we haven't had animals out on pasture that we're suffering from severe heat stress so it can have it most often happens in confinement. But it can happen out on pasture as well and that's where you got to be mindful of having providing enough water enough water space to drink. And the other thing is think about when you're going to handle cattle, whether it's in the feedlot or whether you're early weaning and you're doing it out on pasture let's say. Think about when you handle these cattle and how you're processing if you're going to go into a time where there's too much heat stress, don't do it. Just plan for another day. If on the other hand you're kind of constrained by time and help you're going to process make sure you do it early in the morning to at least take advantage of some of those cooler mornings that we get into. By the way that calf on the left on that image that's I will tell you that's not a North Dakota calf in case you hadn't figured that out already. There are animals that tolerate heat stress much better than our English and continental breeds do. You know maybe just a final comment and maybe I'll turn it over to either Janna or maybe Lisa to just sum up but this is a slide that Lisa and I actually she put the brochures together about stop the truck. But the message here is that you and I have a stewardship responsibility to the animals and the land that they run on. And so this isn't just about managing through a drought. This is about managing the resources that we have responsibility for. And I thought this this one is such a good one anytime cattle leave our place. We need to know we need to know not only who they are but are they healthy leaving our place and are they healthy coming back or if they're going to slaughter. Are they healthy for the people that will consume the products of beef cattle. So I thought this was a good one to end on. It's always a stewardship or responsibility whether we're in a drought or whether in a normal year. So maybe Lisa you just want to sum up a little bit or Janna do you want to sum up a little bit about all the things we talked about. So in our session today we talked about some strategies for utilizing your nutritional resources the best so whether that means that you're going to minimize the numbers of head that you have on those resources. Whether you're going to supplement how you're going to manage that then gave you some strategies for culling beyond your old's opens and and honorees. The three O's and then finally talking about some animal health situations that we need to be aware of as we move into these and certainly not skimping on our parasite control in a year of drought. So again with thank you will answer some questions if there are any. So first one is for Janna. So energy requirements and protein requirements you talked about both. How does the timing of drought influence which one would be appropriate or what supplement may be needed. It's going to be a timing and a duration of drought issue and it's actually really difficult to characterize what's going to happen with forage quality it's going to be really variable depending on the species that you have previous grazing management all those factors that go into that. In some years if the drought is fairly moderate. We can see that as long as there's adequate forage available. We can see cattle perform fairly well because some of those grasses tend to concentrate nutrients, and they're actually fairly high in protein and energy, maybe, maybe more, maybe higher in energy than protein if they're if they're brown and dried out but we can see calf weaning weights. You know fairly high maybe higher than we might see in a normal year, but again it's just so variable. It's kind of looking at, you know, typically if the grasses are brown, you're going to be in a protein deficient state. If forage quantity is the factor, we're going to be looking at an energy deficiency, and then in some cases we're going to need both. And so I know that you know sampling standing forage is is not a typical strategy but in some cases that might be really the best way to kind of assess what's going on then the only way to really get a very specific number about what you're dealing with. Lisa, you visited quite a bit about body condition scoring. Do you have any recommended resources for the folks that are on in terms of guides for body condition scoring? Sure, Miranda. Thank you. So we have several resources available. I think at least Jenna and mine, our favorite would happen to be a body condition publication from the University of Wyoming. We think that that's the easiest for producers to understand. We've also talked about body condition scoring in several of our previous webinars, and those are available on our NDSU website as well. I'd also encourage you to talk to your local county extension agents along with your veterinarians. Get another set of eyes on those cattle because when you see cattle every single day, you don't see the changes that occur within your herd. And we see that day in and day out. And so talk to your county extension agent, talk to your local veterinarian. They can help you with those resources as well. Thank you, Lisa. And we'll try to get the find that link for that for that publication. Put that in the chat box for you guys. Dr. Stuckey, you touched a little bit on some health concerns. What are some other, are there any immediate other ones we should be thinking about as we're starting into this, this freezing season knowing that we're drier this year and and the forecast isn't looking very favorable. Are there any other things that people should have in their mind? I know we, which this is a little ways off, but potentially, but we hear a lot of cases of dust pneumonia potentially during drought. Is that something people need to be thinking about now? So yeah, we talk about, this is another one of these compounding issues. So let's say I'm on a passive rotation, it gets really dry and I got to move cattle two or three miles and then we're obviously going to walk them to the next pasture. And what happens is the cows usually lead and the calves get strung out behind. So they're following in all that dust and it's always hard to prove that dust pneumonia is real. But I think what it does, it setups the conditions for a calf to be more susceptible. So if I'm, if I'm standing and walking, walking along distance, I'm a little bit exhausted as a calf, I'm trying to put myself in that situation. Now I'm breathing all that dust and I'm overwhelming some of these natural defense mechanisms that keep me healthy. And so it does make sense that when we do that and we're doing it for the right reasons, but we may end up with a greater risk of, for example, respiratory disease. And so, so what do you do about that? You still have to move the cattle, I'd say move them slowly move them early in the morning, maybe when there's a little do out there at least, and then be very watchful of things happening. This requires a lot of commitment because in these bigger pasture takes a long time to find every animal, but when an animal is off by itself or you see the mother and you don't see the calf, you see the mother and she's got a full bag. I mean those are little sentinel cases that you better start looking and see what's going on. And sometimes unfortunately the first thing you find is a dead calf or one with its ears down and it's got a rectal temperature of 107 and it's usually due to respiratory disease. So yeah, that's that's one of those things that we need to be mindful of when we're moving cattle long distance in the heat of the day, dusty conditions, it just can compromise the health of those calves that's for sure. Thank you, Dr. Sucka. One more we have here is in this product, maybe for both Janet and Jerry is what are your thoughts and we touched on a little bit but not we didn't go in a lot of great detail is the versus the health and maybe just the economics even of having cows out on pasture and you're like this versus moving them to a dry lot situation. Here's the I guess the big thing overall, whenever I put cattle into confined space. The first thing that happens to cattle that haven't been in a confined space is they actually develop a little confinement anxiety. If you start sorting those pairs or their calves and there's there's anxiety from not being with the rest of the group. But what happens is when you put cattle in a smaller space is that and they're a little bit stress from changing to a new diet and changing to a new environment that the transmission of some of these pathogens, whether it's viral or bacterial is increased a great deal. The other thing that you'll notice to in confinement operations. It's not just the things we can't see like back to your environment says but now you've got other vectors or fomites if you will like starlings that start presenting a problem. So now you got contaminated feed and maybe it's the feed that's in the feed base someplace that that are it's not very secure but or maybe it's just a feed in the bank that now there's Starling droppings on them and things like that so there's a lot of issues that crop up when you decide to dry lot and yet having said that sometimes that's the only solution that there is one one interesting story I thought it relate to you is that one of the feed yards in southwest Kansas decided to not feed cattle down there in other words feed out cattle, but to turn it into a cow calf operation. And I think that lasted one or two years and the reason the biggest reason that they stopped doing it was because of disease pressure. You got a young population of animals, the newborn calves, for example, that have a difficult time handling that much exposure when you're confined in a in a lot situation so I mean that's the biggest reason that we put cow that we kind of have and sometimes and put cows on a native range it spreads them out and and let them live a life that's a little more natural to them. One other interesting tidbit and this is related to animal behavior is that they turned the heifer calves that were yearling heifer calves out on on irrigated quarter sections and the calves did not eat grass. They had only eaten from a bunk their entire life and it took them about three days to figure out that they didn't have to follow the wheel track that looked like a bunk but they could actually eat the feed that was growing in the in the irrigated pasture so cattle are our subject just like we are to the environmental influence that they grew up in and so being confined unless your feedlot animal is a little bit unnatural for the cow calf operation. So I I'm going to start with my disclaimer that I am definitely not an economist. So those people are really good contacts and resources to have but it kind of depends on the year right what our commodity prices are doing most of the time forage is going to be your highest in terms of cost per pound of nutrient year in and year out but you have to look at what grain prices and co-product prices are doing but typically a dry lot situation will allow a little bit of cost savings just because the diet ingredients are more nutrient dense and we're limit feeding so they're not getting as much as you know they're not eating to full capacity. So a cow that might eat 30 pounds of dry matter out on forage is going to maybe get 18 to 22 pounds in a dry lot and so typically as far as the economics go, it should result in some cost savings but again there's a lot of tools out there to kind of help you analyze you know do a partial budget and make those comparisons and it really depends on you know the stored feed that you have on hand how far you have to go to get to a dry lot and just a lot of those different variables. Let me jump in here a little bit too just think about a ration that's $100 a ton that's five cents a pound and a cow that's if she eats 30 pounds at the $1.50 a day and there's always a yardage feed and there's a little more markup on feed. I mean it's I don't know how you'd feed a cow for less than $2 a day it's more probably it's probably going to be more than that so it's a good idea to have some of those numbers in mind. And if you're going to a custom feed yard. I mean that they need to tell you what it's going to cost to feed this cow on a daily basis including everything. So it's a really important to have that in mind but sometimes that is the best solution. Either that or you sell cows the unfortunate part of it is if you're selling cows in a drought that markets not very good either. Especially if it's nationwide if it's just an isolated area then there are other places that will take some of those cows a lot of things to think about this. This thing is a pretty complicated system and one decision that affects so many others. Thank you. So I think we're wrapped up with questions. Why don't we go around to all of our panelists we can start with Lisa and just some summarizing thoughts to take home thoughts for folks. I think you know I would tell you to always be planning for a drought in your operation night. The only place in North Dakota that I think hasn't seen continual drought you know on a pretty regular basis so you know every other year every two or three years is probably the Red River Valley. And you know even to them they've probably seen drought to the rest of us who live west of them that we don't see it that way. And so start now on planning continually for drought. I think all of us would probably agree I can't speak for Dr. Stuckin-Janet but the operations that seem to weather these events the best always plan for drought. And so whether that means that they carry over hay some extra years whether they cull extra hard you know they've built some resiliency into their operations to get through these tougher drought and dry years. And so I would think I guess my encouragement is is to start doing that today and then always do it just don't do it when it's kind of dry because it gives you so much more flexibility in your operation. And you know I live by the motto that you plan for the worst and hope for the best and I would encourage folks to do that you know it will rain someday. I mean there's no doubt about it and those will be glorious days but we have to plan for the ones that might not be that great. You know some of the things that are talked about I think one of the hardest things to adjust to is doing things that you haven't done before. And early weaning calves I mean if you look at the dairy industry they don't keep calves on milk or place or whole milk very long. So that rumen does start to develop and you can wean calves at a really early early age for most of us it goes against our goes against our nature. But it can be done and you're going to have to prepare your facilities if you want to wean really at a really young age because your fences won't be built right your bunks are too high. You're going to have to change a lot of things but under conditions where you're out of feed sometimes you have to do those things and you will be amazed I think that once you set your mind to it that you can actually get it done. Maybe just one other thing related to you know Lisa to use the term resilience and I like that term. Sometimes you have to have resilience built in your cowherd to that and that means some genetic resilience. Not just nutritional resilience because the two go together actually but what can she stand or have you built a cowherd that's kind of a 426 hammy kuda Plymouth you know that has to have high octane fuel every day of its life. Or if you got a cowherd that's a little bit more moderate and a little bit more resilient that can run on 85 ethanol. And so think about those things because North Dakota does not have the same weather from year to year and having a little resilience will allow you to be to stay in this business longer and so it's it's almost a philosophical shift in some of our mindsets in order as we think about this drought and how can we get to that. So if I can say something about early weaning our operation early weaned in 2006 not because of a lack of forage but because we had lost our whole place to fire. And I was talking to Dr stuck in Jani yesterday that it was amazing how great those cows were that had come out of that early weaning situation and how long they lasted in our herds and so my short side of this is yeah maybe it takes a little work but I think that there's some benefit. To it as well and if you're in the spot that you need early weaned we have resources within DSU and there are producers in North Dakota who have done this before that we can help you with that and so don't be scared of it. Look at that as an option if it's something you think it might work for you let us help you out with that. No you guys have done a great job of kind of wrapping things up. I guess you know just looking back in the last couple weeks and and all the topics that have been covered I mean this is a complex situation and it's it's not a fun situation and I hate that we even have to talk about this but we. We are talking about early to hopefully kind of stimulate some of these processes moving forward and giving you guys time to create some strategies so that you're not in a bind when this thing does hit because it does look like it's going to. So getting those written plans written down. Looking at the different resources that are out there not only from you know within our extension system but other ones as well. And then just you know thinking of how some of these strategies you know you could maybe tweak a little bit and just use on a portion of your herd or combine them with something else and I think it's always really valuable to talk to each other talk to your neighbors and. If any of you guys have unique strategies that you've utilized over the years we'd all love to hear about them because. You can always learn a lot from each other to you guys are in the trenches and a lot of you have been doing dealing with these things for a lot of years and and so reach out to each other. Don't be afraid to seek help is what I guess I'd say. Exactly yep. Thank you for those final thoughts. Thank you everyone for joining us today. The today's webinar and all our webinars have been recorded are available on our on the NDSU extension drought website. Next week's our last webinar we are going to be talking about one of the most important resources on your farm and ranch which is yourself and this and how we can handle stress through these type of situations so please join us for that discussion.