Lynsey McAnally (00:04):

Angus at Work, a podcast for the profit-minded cattleman. Brought to you by the Angus Beef Bulletin, we have news and information on health, nutrition, marketing, genetics and management. So let’s get to work, shall we?

 

Hello and welcome back to Angus at Work. One concern that can keep any cattle producer hopping? Cattle health. Whether preventing the issue before it has a chance to begin or monitoring the health of fed cattle across the larger operation, ensuring cattle are living up to their full potential takes time and resources that can both be hard to come by.

 

I'm Lynsey McAnally and on today's episode we're bringing you two interesting interviews from CattleCon 2025 thanks to our very own Shauna Hermel. First up is Eric Moore, director of technical services with Norbrook Inc. to share insight on efficient parasite control that won't harm existing beneficial insects.

 

Shauna Hermel (01:22):

Hello and welcome to the Angus at Work podcast. This is Shauna Hermel, editor with the Angus Beef Bulletin, and we’re here talking today with someone who’s become a regular on Angus at Work. We really appreciate him bringing us some good information every time we get together. Dr. Moore, could you tell a little bit about yourself to some of our listeners? Give a little bit of your background and a little bit about Norbrook and what the company is all about?

 

Eric Moore (01:49):

Absolutely. I’d be honored to. So Dr. Eric Moore, I’m the director [technical] services for North America for Norbrook. Norbrook is a family-owned company out of Northern Ireland. We’ve been in business since 1969, and we’ve specialized in pharmaceutical manufacturing and sales. So those drugs you use to keep the health and wellbeing of your animals, of your herd, is what we try and make for you.

 

On a personal note, I am a second-generation veterinarian, and my daughter is now in [veterinary] school at Kansas State. So, we’ll have three generations of Kansas State veterinarians …

 

Shauna Hermel (02:23):

Wonderful!

 

Eric Moore (02:23):

In about three and a half years. So, we're going to keep going down that pathway. But yeah, so we've kind of grown up in the business. Grandfather had a ranch, dad was a large animal veterinarian, and I have a daughter that's going to be a large animal veterinarian, as well. So, this is kind of our life! Talking about this type of stuff and working in this field.

 

Shauna Hermel (02:47):

You bet. You bet. Well, we might have to run over to Manhattan and talk to your daughter. We need to have more vets coming into the industry.

 

Eric Moore (02:56):

We do. There's always a need. It is having people that want to go out to rural [areas]. She's actually going to rural Kansas to practice. So, having people like that out there is something that is a prime asset anymore.

 

Shauna Hermel (03:11):

You bet. Well, today we wanted to talk about something very practical. This time of year our cattle start losing some hair and scratching and getting a little bit uncomfortable. What can we do about that?

 

Eric Moore (03:24):

If you look at lice and you look at those types of problems we have, it's important. Remember, it's all about timing. And so we have to match and control the lifecycle of the lice and what they do. And so when you look at this type of year … We have products we can administer, you have to look at the type of products you use. So first of all, you're going to have cattle commingling. Mixing animals. That's always a key factor and the lice outbreak. But if you look at why we do it, where we'll start out first is there's a definite cost to life and animals from hide damage due to scratching and to weight loss. I mean, you can have a pretty substantial — in today's market — cost to you with a lice infection. So you have …

 

Shauna Hermel (04:11):

And a facility cost?

 

Eric Moore (04:13):

Oh, that's the other one. When they start destroying pens and buildings and everything they're rubbing on, those are all things that you have to be aware of. So what you want to do is make sure you get ahead of it when you do that. We see it happen in the fall as we bring them together. Our temperatures become low, we bring cattle together, we congregate them and they start spreading lice. No different than head lice in school children, right?

 

Shauna Hermel (04:44):

Where does that first one ever come from?

 

Eric Moore (04:46):

Yeah, that's the whole thing. They're always there. I mean, if we look at the interaction of animals and wildlife that we have, there's always a source for something. So, you may not have brought an animal into your herd, but they've been exposed somewhere down the line from animals coming through. So if we want to prevent the damage to our facilities, prevent the hair loss, prevent the hide damage, prevent the weight loss or lack of gain, then we need to make sure we do that up front. There's a couple different types of products that we can give for lice. Understanding those products is key. So a lot of people do macrocyclic lactones like Ivermectin pour-on. So if you go with an Ivermectin pour-on like our Noromectin® pour-on is one that we will clean up lice if we don't have a recontamination. So that's of all the things we have. There's other classes that are just topical treatments for lice, and then there's some internal products that get half the lice.

So if you look at the internal Ivermectin, if you give an injectable Noromectin^® vs. a pour-on Noromectin, that injectable Noromectin will get sucking lice or lice that feed on blood and secretions, but it won't get the biting lice that just feed on the hair. So you don't get all the types of lice, but what you do in lice control is essential to time it and not mix animals. When you do pour them, make sure you apply it correctly. Just that one squirt down the back — because it has to be a topical application — doesn't do good is getting the [product] from the withers to the tail head.

 

Eric Moore (06:38):

Those are things that we really look at and think about when we talk about lice control, but the main one I think that we see is people not staggering their lice treatments and infecting their counterparts as they commingle, bring cattle together.

 

Shauna Hermel (06:56):

[Does] not doing the calves [cause] problems, too?

 

Eric Moore (07:01):

Treat them all. I mean because what you're looking at is they're exposed to lice, they're going to spread it and [the issue is] going to start to grow. So it's really about knocking that population down and making sure you don't have an issue.

 

Shauna Hermel (07:15):

You said on timing, we start seeing some of the hair loss usually in December/January. In that time, when do you actually need to start treating to prevent that?

 

Eric Moore (07:25):

I always will tell you to talk to your local veterinarian because you're a nationwide breed and some places have different timing. So talking to your local veterinarian, finding out when they see the most risk based on the temperature, based on your environment is critical in the process. So I make general recommendations, but knowing that Florida is going to be different than Colorado which is going to be different than Texas and can be different than Ohio ... That's really meeting with your local veterinarian and utilizing that as your team member to make sure you get that taken care of.

 

Shauna Hermel (08:04):

So now are any of those products a one-time application or everything? Pretty much a two-time application.

 

Eric Moore (08:10):

There's multiple ways you can go with those products. Some will be a one time that will have coverage as it goes over the animal. You can put up different things in oilers and some different mechanisms to do that. Again, it's got to fit your operation and it's got to be able to use in the right time. And so …

 

Shauna Hermel (08:29):

About fly control, right?

 

Eric Moore (08:31):

What's that?

 

Shauna Hermel (08:32):

I said about fly control, right?

 

Eric Moore (08:34):

Absolutely. With Norbrook, we have a couple different products that we use. So if you're deworming the cattle and want to get internal parasites, as well, then a pour-on like Noromectin would be one to use on that. But it just depends on what your operation is and where it should be part of a total parasite control program within your herd. So having that, I don't necessarily need to do worm for internal parasites every time if I don't have a parasite loading those animals and you can conserve and preserve the ability of that dewormer to work if I just have to treat the external parasites. So you really need to work within your herd on what your program.

 

Shauna Hermel (09:27):

Now, one of the things that we kind of looked at as far as which product to choose, we talked about some dung beetles and how that plays in? Let's talk a little bit about those critters and what they can do.

 

Eric Moore (09:42):

Absolutely. So when we look at ecosystems and as stewards of the land and how we manage our herds more and more … Just like fly control, deworming used to be easy. Ivermectin came out in the 1980s. We knew if we gave them an Ivermectin pour-on or injection, it would kill everything. It was good. We thought that was the way we look at it. And so as we moved forward in time, we've been exposing those populations of parasites to compounds that we use to deworm over and over again over the years. And that has created different populations of parasites than we started with.

 

The other thing we do is want to make sure that we take that into account. So, now we've looked at the unintended consequences of using those products over time. Not only have we exposed those parasites, used those compounds, we've made those animals have a slightly different population than we have to address. But we're getting more and more modeling now to look at the unintended consequences. And one unintended consequence is what those do to our ecosystem. So we talk about the ecosystem, it's a holistic approach to everything in the pasture to the animal. Now we think about that for a minute. A lot of times when we look at a pasture or forage, it says what nutrient value does it have? And so as we've thought to incorporate unintended consequences, now we start to think about what services does the ecosystem provide. And there's some recent research out of Florida that looks at dung beetles as an service within the ecosystem to put it mildly. Another example of that would be bees as pollinators. We know that bees pollinate plants, but we also know that we've never done modeling to see what the economic impact would be if we killed all the bees.

 

Now, if we kill all the bees, it's going to be bad. And so once there's been more work done, what's been done in some little limited studies, and then utilizing AI and modeling, they've been able to look at what are some of the economic impacts that dung beetles or lack of dung beetles have could have on your ecosystem. And one thing that we look at, what a dung pat or a fecal pat does, when that's passed and lays on grass, of course it covers that grass. So you take that out of the picture,

 

Shauna Hermel (12:21):

Cows won't eat in that area where they sit.

 

Eric Moore (12:23):

No. And actually the research from back in the 1960s say you take the area of that fecal pat and you go six times that area and they won't eat that way around that. So you've taken that out of your grazing pasture.

 

Eric Moore (12:37):

Now put that over whatever grazing period you have for your area and multiply those fecal pads, you start to build that out. And so if we look at the benefit of the dung beetle is the research is some high prevalence or lack of a dung beetle abundance can actually reduce dung degradation 30-70%.

 

Shauna Hermel (13:00):

Oh wow!

 

Eric Moore (13:00):

And so you have this dung pad on there that has a purpose to be recycled, produce nitrogen when it gets broke down by the dung beetles, and that you take that efficiency and you change it by 30-70%, and that dung beetle is totally focused on, I mean, that's his life. He goes in and tears apart that dung pat, that cow patty, and that's what they do. And so that's their goal. Everyone has to have a job. That's theirs, right? That's theirs.

 

So you have that in there. And why it may not seem like a lot, if you multiply that over multiple head and multiple fecal pats, that eventually adds up. And we know the type margins we run on the cost of what we have in our resources. It gives us another mindset to look at as addressing unintended consequences of the warming practices we do. So the key is that if we go down to the bullet point, it would be that dung beetles have a purpose and that some of our practices, some of our products have a negative effect on the dung beetle.

 

Now, we've launched Tauramox™ which is moxidectin (a macrocyclic lactone dewormer) injectable dewormer for a cattle and non-lactating dairy cattle. And it is one that will, because of the way it's made, be dung beetle friendly and earthworm friendly. So it doesn't have the unintended consequence of decimating the dung beetle population. So, if you look at the deworming products you use, you could actually talk about is this something that it would be better for me to use because it doesn't have the unintended consequence of decimated dung beetle. And with that, we're now starting to put value around that in some of these models that there's probably enough value to make that a part of your decision process in your deworming program.

 

Shauna Hermel (15:02):

Really. So now do dunk beetles, are they more prone to the south? Are they, how big of a region do they claim?

 

Eric Moore (15:11):

They're everywhere. And then the work was done in the south just because it was easier to build traps and they had both a natural population and a treated or managed population so they could make the comparison. But if you think about it, when you look at what we have, I remember back working my dad's veterinary practice back in the 1980s when the Ivermectins first came on board. And so that's when we first started seeing in those loafing pens and those calving pens, the fecal pads not breaking down.

You could drive around and look at pats, and some of us with grayer hair and lesser hair than most, we can tell you we didn't think about it at the time. We never got that complex in how we evaluated our program. So it is not going to be an end all, save all. I'm not a range scientist. I'm not claiming to be, I'm a veterinarian. What I'm looking at is how we look at our products and make sure we're doing the right thing and everything we provide for the customer. And so we want to make sure we're thorough as a company. And that's what kind of prompted us to dig into this a little bit deeper. And then we found out there was some research on it. So that's when we started going back and saying, does it matter if the dung beetles decimate or not? And there is an outcome that you can affect by using products that don't decimate the dung beetle.

 

Shauna Hermel (16:39):

Excellent. Well, and on the earthworms, I hadn't heard that part of it - that it was safe for the earthworms too. I mean, everything we're looking at now is looking at the benefits to the soil and protecting that soil and what that does to help protect our forage base. And that's the only way we can keep cows.

 

Eric Moore (17:00):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is just taken another depth of examination of the resource you have that you're growing your cattle on. And it is just the beginning of the conversation on what else we can find, what other things that can have an effect. And once you start to build up all those small improvements, they're, it's going to equal into a big impact somewhere down the line. I've talked on programs before, summertime robber flies and looking those that detract from your performance in the summertime. This is another way to look at a positive impact that you can have on that. And so like I said, the main thing is work with your local veterinarian. Work with your local range scientists. Work with local teams you have that understands the environment you have. But also ask yourself, are there any unintended consequences of what I'm doing and is what we're doing the most beneficial thing we can be doing for our cattle and for our customer? And have a different thought once in a while.

 

Shauna Hermel (18:10):

Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us for Angus at Work. We appreciate your input! We always like to end our program on that high note, on sharing a highlight, personal or professional. So do you have something to share?

 

Eric Moore (18:26):

Well, I'd go back to the beginning and having, although right now I have four kids in college, having one in [veterinary] school to follow in my footsteps is a big, big highlight in our life right now. And having all our kids out of the house and being empty nesters, we're just proud. We're proud of what they're doing and what they're going to do in the future.

 

Shauna Hermel (18:46):

Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you very much.

 

Eric Moore (18:49):

Thank you.

 

Lynsey McAnally (18:57):

Next up, we're joined by Jason Nickell, director of insights and outcomes for Merck Animal Health, and Ross Havens, marketing director for Nichols Farms, to talk about the science behind SenseHub® as well as insight on how SenseHub performs in the real world.

 

Shauna Hermel (19:24):

And we welcome you to join us today for a follow up to a podcast that we had done previously talking about SenseHub Feedlot. We're going to do a recap of what that technology is. We have an Angus breeder here who has some experience with the product now and so we're going to get a product review as well. So first off, Dr. Nickell, if you could kind of introduce yourself and what you do there at Merck?

 

Jason Nickell (19:52):

Sure thing, Shauna! Yes, so Dr. Jason Nickell. I'm the Director of Insights and Outcomes for Merck Animal Health. I spend a lot of my time doing data analytics, both from a clinical trial standpoint, but also at the customer level. And so the goal there is to support the customer in their learnings and adoptions in our own internal learnings of the SenseHub Feedlot system.

 

Shauna Hermel (20:19):

Ross, could you tell us a little bit about your role there at Nichols?

 

Ross Havens (20:22):

Yes, I've been at Nichols Farms for 30 years as the marketing coordinator, and it's transpired over the years from just sales into helping establish our breeding program and our marketing program.

 

Shauna Hermel (20:37):

Give us a little perspective of what Nichols Farms encompasses and how many cattle you produce in the feeder-calf program.

 

Ross Havens (20:47):

Okay. So we're a large seedstock operation in southwest Iowa, consisting of about 1,200 mama cows with three different breeds, Angus, black Simmentals and black, polled South Devons. We market about 500 bulls a year and work real hard with our customers to help them market their calves out of our bulls.

 

Shauna Hermel (21:12):

And you just had a bull sale here a little bit ago …

 

Ross Havens (21:14):

Just a week ago, we had 480 bulls available. Our process is a little different. We don't want to sell them all that day. We sold half of them, about 240 bulls with the other 240 available on a first come, first serve basis through the rest of spring.

 

Shauna Hermel (21:31):

And we're here today to kind of have that follow up on SenseHub Feedlot, which we had discussed ... How many years ago was that? Two years?

 

Jason Nickell (21:39):

It might've been two years ago, roughly.

 

Shauna Hermel (21:41):

When the product was unrolled. And can you kind of explain what the product is and how cattlemen can put it to use?

 

Jason Nickell (21:47):

You bet. So big picture, the goal of the product is to provide 24/7 monitoring assistance on those animals. It does so by through means of a wearable technology, Shauna, with an ear tag. What that ear tag is collecting, it would be kind of like a Fitbit for humans.

 

Shauna Hermel (22:11):

I’ve got mine on.

 

Jason Nickell (22:11):

Yep, exactly. So it basically is the same thing. So we are collecting both activity and body temperature from that animal all day, every day, multiple times a day. That information then is sent to our cloud platform where we utilize different forms of artificial intelligence methods to analyze that information. And basically what we're looking for are animals that are outliers. Outliers from not only their own data, but also from the group that they're a part of. And when those outliers are identified, the user is notified once a day through an email. They receive a pull list that tells them the identification number of that animal or animals that have been alerted and the pen that they're in. And then the tag itself then illuminates and blinks for several hours to help them identify that animal.

 

Shauna Hermel (23:17):

So it lights up?

 

Jason Nickell (23:18):

It lights up. Illuminates and blinks rapidly.

 

Shauna Hermel (23:23):

And so that would be checking for outliers and temperature, but how would you describe an outlier?

 

Jason Nickell (23:29):

That's a great, so the definition of an outlier would be an animal that has significantly deviated from not only their own historical data, but also from the data of the group.

 

Jason Nickell (23:45):

We understand that cattle as a species, they have that herd mentality. And so each animal in that group or that pen really are not independent of the other. Their dynamics are dictated by the group. And so we've learned over time that just knowing if an animal's data differs from its own historical data really is not enough. We also have to know how's it in relationship to what everybody else is doing. So, as an example, temperature is one of the pieces that we collect. If it's July 15 and everybody's hot, then it's not really an outlier.

 

Jason Nickell (24:30):

We've learned over time that we have to be mindful of a lot of different things.

 

Shauna Hermel (24:36):

Is there, I guess, a proper way to include them in a group? I suppose doing a whole pen of feeder cattle as they go into the feedlot would be the approach.

 

Jason Nickell (24:50):

So it's not only the individual, but the group that it's a part of too. Generally whatever that group is, the size of that group, everyone in that group would have a tag.

 

Shauna Hermel (25:01):

Okay. And you say daily reports, how are those received?

 

Jason Nickell (25:05):

They're currently received through email, and so it's a daily email that’s part of that. What's included in there is again, that alert list or pull list or whatever the right terminology is for that. It's a list of animals that have been identified by the system as being an outlier. The system will also include if there are any problem tags, issues out there, also give an idea of what else needs to be addressed from an infrastructure standpoint.

 

Shauna Hermel (25:36):

Ross, how have you used the tags in your operation?

 

Ross Havens (25:40):

So ours is pretty unique compared to just a feedlot, but what we're doing is trying to find phenotypes for animals that get sick with bovine respiratory disease (BRD). And so we need time. Every animal gets a tag put in it, and for the next 90 days, we track those animals and collect phenotypes of animals that get sick and have BRD at Nichols Farms. We've established a program with EPDs to come up with animals that are resistant to BRD. So we're using the tag to identify those animals.

 

Shauna Hermel (26:22):

Now, tell me, during that time you're getting daily emails that tell you what calves you need to look at. How do you plug that into a system that you can use for EPDs?

 

Ross Havens (26:34):

So through their system that we'll go back and once we pull those animals, everything's treated or not treated based on our criteria. It's plugged back into the Sensehub system on treatments. And then at the end of it, here in the next few months, as soon as all the animals are off test through all their measurements, we'll send all that data back to Jason. We'll be going on our third year of benchmarking that data and looking at it. For example, we compare bulls that got sick and their semen check, things like that. But once we get those phenotypes out, that system, then we work with Neogen and send it through their genetic evaluation side to come up with EPDs for resistance to BRD.

 

Shauna Hermel (27:25):

So you're connecting that to a DNA type as well? And DNA is plugged into it also?

 

Ross Havens (27:29):

Yes.

 

Shauna Hermel (27:32):

So now would that be looking for a single marker or are you finding that that BRD immunity is based on a multi-marker platform?

 

Ross Havens (27:42):

Well, hopefully. We haven't found the marker yet, but hopefully down the road we'll find a marker that identifies that.

 

Shauna Hermel (27:48):

So, after the 90 days, do you take those tags out of those calves and reuse them in another animal for next year?

 

Ross Havens (27:59):

Yeah, the tags, this would be the second year on this set of tags. So hopefully we get another year out of it.

 

Shauna Hermel (28:10):

So how easy is it to, or how well I should say, do the tags work and finding those sick animals?

 

Ross Havens (28:18):

It works so good that I have a gentleman that's been at the farm for 43 years that kind of heads up all the outside operations. He still likes a pencil and a paper, but - Jason can attest to this - we have a meeting with him every year and Bart says this thing works.

 

It is a labor saving deal. So the guys come in and gets the pull sheets and ride out in the pen instead of having to go in and search for them. And the other thing the tag does do, we kept phenotypes visually for several years and we know we missed some. We don't miss them now.

 

Shauna Hermel (28:53):

Okay. You're pretty confident in that?

 

Ross Havens (28:56):

We’re pretty confident, yes.

 

Shauna Hermel (28:57):

Okay. Now you all also do a lot of feed efficiency testing there at Nichols Farms. Do you tie those together?

 

Ross Havens (29:04):

Yes. So both systems are running at the same time. We only have the feed intake system in one barn, not the whole herd. Those cattle are in there with that feed intake. We try to help identify those ones getting sick, their intake will go down along with the tags.

 

Shauna Hermel (29:20):

Now how long have you said you've been using the product? The tags?

 

Ross Havens (29:23):

I think we've been using them since 2019 or 2020.

 

Shauna Hermel (29:32):

And the cost to put a tag in?

 

Jason Nickell (29:35):

So as Ross mentioned, the tag is reusable and we generally think we can get that two to three year lifespan out of those tags. And so if we assume that we can get a couple of turns over a two year lifespan and including all the other hardware, it's in that $11 per head range.

 

Shauna Hermel (29:57):

And you basically need the tags and the tagger. Is there any other system that you have to put?

 

Jason Nickell (30:04):

Yeah, so aside from the tags, the only other hardware on site is an antenna and the base station that it's attached to. And we was purposeful in that we didn't want there to be a lot of hardware. And so the antenna that we utilize can cover anywhere from one to two miles depending on the kind of antenna. And so we can generally cover a lot of space with small amount of hardware.

 

Shauna Hermel (30:30):

So how many antennas did you need to buy?

 

Ross Havens (30:33):

We have three. Three different sites and we've got antennas at each site.

 

Shauna Hermel (30:39):

And then once those antennas are up, you have the tags in the cattle and you're set to go. You get an email every day. Any other things that producers need to know as far as tag retention or

 

Ross Havens (30:53):

Tag retention's been real well. I mean, over the last four years, I don't think we've lost two or three tags out of the cattle.

 

Ross Havens (31:00):

They're very durable.

 

Shauna Hermel (31:02):

Are they heavier than a regular tag or … ?

 

Ross Havens (31:04):

Yeah, a little bit. But it goes in the total top lobe of the ear and up where the ears real strong.

 

Shauna Hermel (31:11):

As a seedstock producer, you wouldn't want to draw the ears down.

 

Ross Havens (31:15):

Well, and we got EID tags in them. All that, regular tags, these tags. So no, it works really well.

 

Shauna Hermel (31:24):

As far as looking at those bloodlines, are you finding that there is more immunity in certain bloodlines than others?

 

Ross Havens (31:32):

Like all trades, you're finding lines that are more susceptible and some more resistant. And between breeds too.

 

Shauna Hermel (31:42):

BRD is definitely one of the big focal points for Merck Animal Health. What are some of the new initiatives that are going on in that area?

 

Jason Nickell (31:55):

So as we continue, it's an extremely interesting area because as we learn just a little bit more than the flood gates open for all kinds of new questions that we didn't even know to ask before.

 

Shauna Hermel (32:08):

Isn’t that always the case?

 

Jason Nickell (32:09):

It is always the case. So really then it's the question of, alright, how do we prioritize those questions? And so it really comes down to individuals like Ross and other producers say, okay, where should our next priorities be that is going to provide the greatest return on investment for them? And so that's the process that honestly we're going through right now is to say, okay, over the last two to three years we've identified this and we feel comfortable with where we're at here, what is the next step to that? And so admittedly, Shauna, that's where we're at right now is trying to decide how do we take that next step to bring more value to the cattle industry?

 

Shauna Hermel (32:54):

How do we find out when we're dealing with a respiratory problem, what product we should use? I mean, it is complex. Different drugs work better on different bugs. How do we go about that initial search for the most efficient way to get that animal back to hell?

 

Jason Nickell (33:17):

Yeah. Do you want me to go ahead and take that?

 

Ross Havens (33:20):

I can take it. You bet. You bet. So I'd recommend working really close with your veterinarian, which we do. And we have a very good one in Dr. Nate Hansen, Anita, Iowa. We sit down every year and look at the vaccines we use and we come up with a protocol for the animals have different ranges of temperatures and sickness. So we look at those products and which one will better help benefit that animal and follow that protocol.

 

Shauna Hermel (33:50):

So you choose what treatment protocol you're going to have by the temperature. Okay, so how does that fluctuate? They have two degrees of temp and you use one product if they're two to four degrees of temp …

 

Ross Havens (34:04):

It's something similar to that. It's very simple. If they're over, they're up to 103 and below, we just use one product. If they're over 103.5, we use another product. It just depends on the level of sickness.

 

Shauna Hermel (34:19):

So have you found that it does cut back on the number of treatments and the number of pulls you have to make?

 

Ross Havens (34:24):

It's a learning curve, and we've found that it looks like maybe over the last couple years that maybe we should have went ahead and used the stronger product to start with.

 

Shauna Hermel (34:34):

Okay. So do you culture any of the bugs at all? Or is there a protocol there that you follow?

 

Ross Havens (34:40):

We haven’t. Jason could probably answer that better than me on the technical aspect.

 

Jason Nickell (34:45):

Yeah. No, we don't. Admittedly, Shauna, we don't chase that a whole lot. Admittedly big picture across in our own clinical trial data and in the customer data, the goal of the system is to find those animals earlier and more accurately than what a human can. And it's nothing against the human, it's just cattle. They're much more adept to concealing disease than we are at finding it. Right. And so what we have found, honestly, is that by doing so, the consistent thing that we see is reduction of mortality. And in my mind, all of the drugs that we have available to us are highly efficacious. If they weren't, they wouldn't be available to us. They've all gone through roughly the same registration pathway. But when we can apply therapy in a more timely and accurate manner, we just give them a much more higher probability of working. And so that's what we've seen over time is that by doing so we can reduce that mortality. And in Ross's case, you've heard that they're utilizing that for other value propositions as

 

Shauna Hermel (36:03):

Well? Well, labor is getting to be quite a problem on farms and ranches, and especially finding some of those people who can read cattle who are definitely a prey species.

 

Ross Havens (36:18):

But it's still difficult even if you have the ability to do that. As Jason said, those animals have a instinct to hide that. And for instance, we had a bull up, the bunk eaten and you went and thought he was sick and we pulled him, he had 105 degree temperature. So their instinct is to hide that. So the tags really helped that. And then the aspect of it is finding those sooner, just like Jason said, so that you can get 'em treated and they have a better opportunity to get healthy.

 

Shauna Hermel (36:51):

So if you looked at what your return on investment might be,

 

Ross Havens (36:55):

It's pretty high. Haven't actually put numbers on that. But just for an instance - last year in all 1,250 head - we had 700 treats.

 

Shauna Hermel (37:08):

Okay.

 

Ross Havens (37:08):

This year, we had 240 treats, so it dropped by two-thirds. And we're starting to stack the generations of selecting for that. And it's a low heritability, but there is a heritability to it.

 

Shauna Hermel (37:26):

And so now you're attributing that drop to being more of a genetic than a treatment pull relationship vs. management weather and other precipitating factors?

 

Shauna Hermel (37:39):

It’s all of. It's still all of it. It was pretty good fall this year. It was cool. It wasn't real hot. And then we didn't have a lot of mud this year, did we?

 

Ross Havens (37:52):

But it makes us better stewards of the animals having this technology.

 

Shauna Hermel (38:01):

So is it a product that you're going to continue working with here in the future?

 

Ross Havens (38:05):

Oh, most definitely, because not only for what we're doing, but my labor force believes in it. They're younger people, they're into technical stuff. They're the point. They beat me to work now to go check that and participate using that product. I mean, it's pretty cool.

 

Shauna Hermel (38:25):

That's a good feeling. What else do we need to tell our listeners?

 

Ross Havens (38:32):

Just that the Sensehub crew, the Merck crew, are really good to work with. Helping me benchmark that data is really neat. It's slowly helping us become better at what we do. It is a good partnership.

 

Jason Nickell (38:50):

And Shauna? The only thing I would add to that, and Ross has alluded to it, but it is a little bit of a paradigm shift at first. It's changed when you're used to looking for sick cattle in a particular way, and all of a sudden a system is identifying an animal. And that's the point! I've identified it earlier and more accurately, so those animals look different. For a moment there, there's a little bit of a shock factor that I'm supposed to go treat this animal that in my eyes looks perfectly healthy. But, as Ross mentioned, once they actually bring it to the chute, put their hands on it, they can then see that there's just some things that were being missed. And again, nothing against the person. It all has to do with the survival tactics of the bovine. But again, that's the whole point of the system.

 

Shauna Hermel (39:49):

You bet. You bet. We always like to wrap up our Angus at Work podcasts with a highlight of something good that is happening in your life, whether as professional or personal. So would you care to share something that

 

Ross Havens (40:04):

Sure. So I'm on the National Beef Checkoff Board. I interviewed yesterday and got on the executive council for the Beef Checkoff.

 

Shauna Hermel (40:15):

Congratulations!

 

Jason Nickell (40:19):

Yeah. Well, from my standpoint, my wife and I, our oldest is a senior in high school. So we're going to be moving our first child out of here soon. So you talk about paradigm shifts, we're going to be going through a big paradigm shift here in a few months.

 

Shauna Hermel (40:35):

What university?

 

Jason Nickell (40:36):

Well, we're still targeting that down.

 

Shauna Hermel (40:41):

Well, good luck.

 

Jason Nickell (40:42):

Yeah, we'll see how it works.

 

Lynsey McAnally (40:50):

Listeners, for more information on making Angus work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and the Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. You can subscribe to both publications in the show notes. If you have questions or comments, let us know at abbeditorial@angus.org, and we would appreciate it if you would leave us a review on Apple Podcast and share this episode with any other profit-minded cattlemen. Thanks for listening, this has been Angus at Work!