In an effort to take better care of their cows, prevent antibiotic residues and ensure their rights to use various treatments, two dairy producers have taken on a more dynamic approach in working with their veterinarians.
Both producer-veterinarian pairs are voluntarily participating in the Food Armor program, a HACCP-based plan at the farm level to ensure proper drug use, reducing the risk of violative residues and resulting in safe meat and milk.
“There is increasing pressure from many different angles to deal with the issue of antibiotic resistance. Many times as farms and vets work through the six different steps of building a HACCP plan, they recognize decreased treatments in general, being more selective in the application of antibiotics in particular, so there is certainly an opportunity to mitigate the potential risk of antibiotic resistance,” said Dr. Jon Garber, practicing veterinarian at Valley Vet Clinic in Seymour, Wisconsin, and chairperson of the Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association (WVMA) Food Armor Committee.
In addition, he said, there is “tremendous cost savings as we eliminate treatments that are unneeded or less likely to be successful.”
For Keith York, co-owner of Merry-Water Farms in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, that savings amounted to a $27,000 decrease in medicine purchased the first year in the program and $38,500 the second year. That is a 16 percent and 22 percent savings, respectively, for his 1,500-cow farm. “That’s quite an advantage,” York said.
He cited two reasons for the reduction in drug use. First, he found “labeled drug use actually works.” Second, “all cows are not curable.”
York and other members of his farm team fell into the habit of using extra label drug use to treat their cows. When a treatment wasn’t working, they opted to increase the dose, which then became the standard treatment.
“When you get back to the real reason you did it, it was probably a cow that wasn’t curable,” he said.
In acknowledging that they simply can’t cure everything, the farm now makes a decision to treat or not within 24 hours of a cow getting sick.
“We don’t have to keep all of our cows,” York said. “Some cows are better off going towards beef.”
He doesn’t send a cow to market unless it has a body condition score (BCS) of 2 or more. “Our standard is if you wouldn’t buy that cow to eat, why do you expect somebody else to do that?” York said. They have a pen on the farm where they keep these cows on feed to add a little more condition.
He said they also euthanize more animals than they used to, but the farm’s death loss, if you include the euthanizing, is not any higher than before. “We actually lowered our death loss, because we made a conscious effort to pick out those low BCS cows out of the milking string and try to put a little more condition on them,” York said.
When they do decide to pursue treatment, extra label drug use is only for one cow and an exception to the rule. They must have first attempted labeled drug use and then must have approval from their veterinarian, Dr. Tom Strause of Stateline Veterinary Service in Darien, Wisconsin.
“It’s very seldom that we will use a label drug use then go to extra label drug use because it’s probably not curable,” York explained.
In following the Food Armor program, Marty Hallock also cut back his extra label drug use. Hallock is a first-generation dairy farmer, who milks 900 cows with his wife, Becky, and their son Jonathan at Mar-Bec Dairy in Mondovi, Wisconsin.
He wasn’t a believer at first, but after running the numbers and following certain cases, Hallock said, “Off-label does not necessarily mean better results. I think it’s better if we try to stay on-label.”
Like York, Hallock now uses extra label drug use on a cow-by-cow basis with approval from his veterinarian, Dr. Paul Quarberg, who is also from Mondovi.
Quarberg did caution that a wrong dose is also considered an extra label use. “If [the cow] weighs 1,400 pounds and you’re dosing her for 1,800 pounds, that’s an extra label use.”
He keeps an eye on his clients’ drug usage by reviewing their purchases and records of use.
“We pull up the events, look at what’s been treated, how many cows get RPs [retained placentas], how many get mastitis, and see if the drug usage is appropriate for the disease conditions we see here. In most cases, it is. If it isn’t, we discuss it,” Quarberg said.
Veterinary oversight is part of the Food Armor program, and both producers now meet regularly with their veterinarians to review herd records.
“Oversight is probably the most important thing we do,” York said. “Every week we sit down with Tom. We go over the records. We go over what the treatment was. We look at the successes and the failures of every treatment.”
Strause said, “When I’m there, I look at DairyComp records. The first thing I look at is cull cows, and I look at death loss. On the cull cows, I’m looking at why we are culling most cows. I’m looking back to see if they’ve had any recent medicine given to them and make sure that we’re following the withholding time. Death loss, same thing, I just want to know why cows die.”
The farms must keep accurate records as part of the program. They each have written and computer records that date back at least three years.
For Hallock, record keeping starts within 15 minutes of a calf’s birth when it is tagged and entered on record.
“If you’re going to make it work, you can’t make it complicated,” he said. They have notebooks in the fresh pen and calf barn for employees to make notes throughout the day. By 5 p.m., the books are on Hallock’s desk so he can enter them in the computer. Every night he prints a report, binds it and puts it in a folder.
“The reason I like that is because if I go to sell a cow and I go back to DairyComp and I pull up a cow, it’s going to show the milk withhold and it’s going to show the meat withhold. There’s no guessing,” he said.
With every treatment there is a record of who did it, how it was done and when it was done.
York stated that only the herd manager, owner and one other person are allowed to treat animals on his farm. This is listed in the farm’s standard operating procedures (SOPs), which are required as part of the program.
Every drug used on the farm is also required to have its own protocol. Each farm has its own drug list. In developing the list, both producers shared that they had drugs on their farms that had dust on them and hadn’t been used in two to three years. They quickly discarded any drugs they no longer needed to prevent any accidental treatments.
All SOPs and protocols must be reviewed annually and at any time a change is made.
Strause gave this example: “We weren’t achieving the dry cow cures we wanted to achieve, so we did some evaluation of records. We looked back at some things that we could change. We had a meeting. We discussed the changes, and we implemented the new plan. It didn’t just happen without consulting the entire team.”
After discussing a change at Hallock’s farm, the new SOP or protocol is typed, emailed to everyone and placed in a book so “everybody’s on the same page,” he said.
Reaching a consensus on farm protocols can be difficult, especially when getting them established at the onset of the program.
“Standardizing the protocols became a challenge because there are lots of people on a farm that have lots of opinions,” Strause said. “To come down to one decision, that was a challenge, but we managed to get through that, and I think it’s very much for the best.”
He added, “I’ll be the first to admit that the time commitment is not short. It does take some time. But, if you’re going to get value out of this, you’re going to have to put time into it.”
While there is a time commitment required, the added value of working more in tandem with a veterinarian is worthwhile.
“One of the most unused assets on our farm was the veterinarian,” York said. “We had him come do the health check. We had him come to give us advice on things, and we never really sat down with him and went over the SOPs and protocols on our farm. I think as an industry we don’t utilize the veterinary community. They are our partners; they are the ones who are going to assist us to make sure that we are doing the right treatments.”
Participating in the Food Armor program has allowed both of these dairy producers, with the aid of their veterinarians, to tighten up their treatment plans, take better care of their cows and help ensure that the meat and milk that leaves their farms is as safe as the consumer expects it to be. PD
This article is from a panel discussion held at the PDPW Business Conference on March 16 in Madison, Wisconsin.
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Karen Lee
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PHOTO: Dr. Paul Quarberg, left, and Marty Hallock, right, talk about how they work together to review protocols and make treatment decisions under the Food Armor program. Photo by Ray Merritt.
