Video 26 Optimising biology in farming systems
This idea has become the foundation of what I do when I approach and talk about animal health in farming systems.
In the video above I talk about what this means and how the idea has evolved.
As someone who is devoted to learning, these ideas will only evolve and are far from the finished article.
The beginning
I started in practice thinking about improving animal health. I discovered I could have a huge impact by assessing animal health through simple risk assessments. By looking at the seasonal nature of farming and intervening at key times of the year to influence flock and herd health.
Much of my early focus was on infectious disease (therapeutics), vaccination, and parasite control.
This evolved to understanding nutrition and management practices better. I began to incorporate these principles together on disease control programs.
When I completed my cowsignals training I began to focus more on optimizing behavior and the needs of the animals in the farming systems.
All this knowledge came from learning and a huge number of conversations with experts in animal health.
I began to look at disease management and animal health in a very holistic way
I realized that the main drivers of good animal health were
- Nutrition balanced to meet the productive needs of animals at the stage of their production cycles. Balancing energy protein and minerals
- The environments the animals worked and lived in were having a huge influence on their performance
- Handling and human interactions played a big role in this
- Disease then was often a manifestation of stress within the system. Immunity then became the key pillar of control in infectious disease. This is where vaccines and parasite control became important.
- Biosecurity and hygiene then become key drivers to reduce down infection pressure.
Understanding animal behavior within systems is very important. The gregarious and precocious nature of cattle and sheep will influence heavily their behaviors within farming systems
The system can be broken down into the 24-hour routines of animals and then over longer periods like a year in their production cycle. In that production cycle, there are very important times where immunity is challenged, like calving and lambing time.
Then within the farm youngstock and replacement animals coming into the farm must be managed to optimize their health. This next-generation becomes the future potential of the farm.
The signals of success
Going onto the farm looking at the animal signals (cowsignals) influenced how I assessed the risk of disease.
Looking at the animals to assess normal biology and behavior. Then looking for stress gaps where this wasn’t being met. Working to reduce the stress gap becomes the objective of most of my animal health programs.
To do this I had to break down methodically risks around different diseases.
As a very basic starting point with an infectious disease, I go back to the seesaw principle of balancing immunity and infection pressure.
Assessing the basics
Everything must have a foundation and animal health for me is built around the basics of
- Feed to meet the requirements. Easily accessible in a way that meets production demands and maintains good rumen health
- Water as a base nutrient managed well
- Space is important particularly where we house animals in production systems
- Fresh air is another base we must optimize indoors. Outdoors we also must be mindful of animal husbandry and look at extremes of weather as big risks in farming systems
- For ruminants, particularly cows rest (rumination) is also very important
The ideal day
When assessing farming systems looking at 24 hours in the production system is important. If we know what animals want walking through that day in detail becomes key to looking for bottlenecks.
An example of this is looking at calf housing through the eyes of a calf. We end up building better systems when we see bottlenecks for the calf.
Bottlenecks are times or management practices that become risks for increasing stress and affecting animal performance and behavior.
In grazing systems that can still be important even though we are optimizing the normal conditions that ruminants like to live and work in. An example of this in dairy cows is very long walking distances or very long milking times. It is important to look at animal handling at these key times when looking for risks for lameness. Remember a cow moves at 3-4 km/hr, pushing her past this speed can increase the risk of lameness.
In the video above based on cowsignals principles, I look at the ideal day for a cow in 24 hours. This is based on time budgets, 2 hours milking is based on 1 hour morning and 1 hour in the evening.
When assessing specific diseases it is also important to look at the 24 hours. This is where hygiene during routine procedures like milking and the environment play into assessing the risk.
Human-animal interactions
With stress a key component or risk factor for any disease. Human-animal interactions become very important to make sure they are ok.
Animals like cows are slow-moving and their behaviors as in below must be clearly understood when we interact with them.
Happy cows will lead to happy farmers
As this process evolved I began to see the bigger picture.
The animals we produce food with is for a marketplace. The basic nutritional needs of a population met my good farming practices.
At a time where people care so much and know so little about where their food comes from. I believe this animal-centered approach and optimizing biology is the path forward.
While it can be argued right now that food security is the key driver in farming systems. Post our coronavirus crisis consumers (our markets) will continue to look at how and where their food comes from.
This, in my opinion, is an opportunity we must harness. They will be more than ever focused on their health. They will want healthy safe food, guess what we do that very well.
We must embrace this opportunity after this crisis as people again realize the importance of food and farming. My vision is to create farming systems where the animals, the farmers, and the consumers buy into the system.
This is the core of what I believe is optimizing the biology and behaviors of farming systems. At every level, this approach should help make farming better.
For the animals, by understanding their behavior and biology better we can make them happier while continuing to be productive.
For farmers working with animals to keep them productive and healthy means, they are more profitable.
If anything isn’t economically sustainable for farmers then it simply won’t work
For industry, it means we are producing safe and healthy food for the consumers of the future.
Farming is in the business of human health. Now more than ever we can embrace this opportunity to farm in a way that works for everyone.
A final note
The big challenge for our ruminant farming systems of the future will be to embrace this animal-centered approach with that of climate change. Ensuring we farm in ways that enhance and work with nature while still producing the volumes of safe and healthy food to feed the world.
There must be as much emphasis here on consumers as there are in farming systems. This can only work if consumers appreciate and understand where their food comes from.
Less food waste is the quickest and easiest short term thing we can do to support farmers and our environment.
Having animals working in production systems for longer means greater efficiency and less greenhouse gas emissions.
This is my vision and is the basis from which I work. This is what I call optimizing biology in farming systems and fits with my vision of trying to help make farming better.
Thought for the day
Saying thanks. I have learned a lot over the last decade as I began to understand farming better, I could only do that because of the people I have met and the knowledge and research they have shared with me.
Thanks to everybody who works to make agriculture better through research, practical application of science and teaching. As a communicator of some of this knowledge, I often feel like I shout a lot about it , while all I am doing is standing on the shoulders of giants.
Huge thanks to Nettex in helping support me in making this series for more information click the link here http://www.net-tex.co.uk
Happy safe farming