In this episode, we dive deep into the challenge of identifying the root causes of herd health performance issues. Among a complex web of factors impacting herd performance—including genetics, management practices, environmental conditions, nutrition balancing, and more —it’s all too easy to overlook the presence of toxins until things don’t add up.
Tune in as we uncover the importance of early toxin elimination in simplifying the diagnostic process and expediting solutions. Premier Select Sires Product Manager, Jeff Hostetter will share actionable strategies for defending and safeguarding animals when toxins are a part of the equation, ensuring they’re treated with the value they deserve.
If you would like to discuss this topic further, contact us. Contact us.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr
All right. Welcome everybody to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host Scott Zehr. And today I am joined by a close friend of mine. Jeff, you’re somebody I consider a close friend at this point in our lives. Jeff Hostetter, he works for Premier Select Sires and resides down in Southern Lancaster County.
I’ll let him tell a little bit more about himself. But today, Jeff we’re going to dive into a conversation that you and I, I think have a lot in a lot of different ways. This idea that two plus two equals five. And we know that’s not right. But how do we get it to go back to four? And so, you know, today’s conversation is going to bounce around some ideas of, you know, when we think about what’s going on on the farm.
I’m probably going to talk specifically a lot of this conversation about dairy, but it’s applicable to really all beef operations as well. There’s things that sometimes go on that, we just can’t put our finger on, you know, maybe it’s nutritionally, we can’t put our finger on it or performance based metrics like milk production, reproduction.
Maybe it’s calf scours, maybe it’s who knows what, and there’s like a whole litany of things, Jeff, that can go on on a dairy, right? So you and I both get to travel around different states, see different operations, beef operations, dairy operations. And, we get asked a lot of these questions of what the heck is going on.
And so Jeff before we dive into that just quickly you know, who are you? Where are you from? And what’s your role at Premier Select Sires?
Jeff Hostetter
All right. Thank you, Scott. Like you said, my name is Jeff Hostetter. I have kind of a unique experience within the dairy and beef cattle industry. I started out working as a nutritionist for about five years and then moved into the genetics world.
And I’ve been with Select Sires, Premier Select Sires for about 17 years now. And I feel like I’ve got kind of a unique perspective because I’ve seen that nutrition puzzle that we’re all trying to put together to maximize the genetics. And now I’m on the genetic side and I can, you know, we can deliver great genetics to our customers. And like you said, sometimes two plus two doesn’t equal four and so it kind of fascinates me that whole troubleshooting, maximizing that genetic potential puzzle.
And so you and I like you said, I’ve been a great, we’ve been great friends. We bounce ideas off each other. We troubleshoot together. So it’s fun to share some of those experiences today.
Scott Zehr
Jeff, you have an interesting take on genetic potential. You want to share that analogy? Cause I think that’s a neat way to look at genetic potential.
Jeff Hostetter
Yeah, thanks, Scott. I think many times through the years we’ve heard the term like bottlenecks. What are, we’re always trying to figure out what is the most limiting factor, what’s the bottleneck on the dairy or beef farm.
And I’ve taken kind of and switch that around and I like to look at the day that that calf is conceived in the cow, in the dam. What are we starting with? That’s our starting point. That is our bag of 100 gold points that we start out with.
Scott Zehr
That’s our genetic starting point, right?
Jeff Hostetter
That’s our genetic starting point. You know, that, the, the value of that genetic calf, the day it’s conceived, is at its highest point. And as it goes through gestation, as it’s born, and then as it’s raised up into the milking herd, things can happen that can lower that genetic potential.
So I look at those as they’re holes in that, that bag of gold coins, that hundred gold coins. The gold coins can leak out if we have too much heat stress during the dry period, while that calf is still in your utero. So we’re probably… That’s just, for example, we’re only going to have that cat born with 95 gold points and those gold coins represent that gross revenue that can come back to the producer.
So what can we do from a management, from an environmental, cow comfort, mycotoxins, what can we do to minimize the holes in that bag of gold coins? What can we do if there is a hole repair that hole? So that that’s kind of my how I envisaged it in my mind and how I attack. You know, helping people reach the the genetic potential that they’ve invested in that next generation.
Scott Zehr
I love that. I love that because it’s so, it’s so visual right you can you can kind of see it and, I think on some level, you know, whether you’re a dairy or beef producer farmer out there that’s purchasing frozen semen from a stud or you’re purchasing you know, bulls for cover. You do that on some level because you believe in genetics.
You believe in enhancing that next generation of livestock. It’s so easy to have just something happen. Right? And unforeseen things, weather events, I mean, I, when I think of weather events, I’m programmed because I spend my time in dairy predominantly to think of heat stress or cold stress, but, you know flooding. You know, stuff like that we’ve seen in the beef world. Heat waves coming through, knocking out a bunch of cattle, wildfires, flooding, there’s things like that we can’t control.
Right? And I, I think more today, I want to focus on the things we can control. And so, let’s go through that list, you know, cause, you know, You and I get asked to go out on farms with, with different folks. And sometimes we go together. And I’m a big believer on the fundamentals.
You’ve heard me preach fundamentals and, and one of the reasons I keep actually it’s on that side, I keep Vince Lombardi behind me is as a reminder. So Lombardi has a great quote, basically, I’m going to paraphrase a little bit. “If you don’t master the fundamentals, you don’t have crap.” So Jeff, talk to us about that because there’s a lot of things that can kind of fall into that fundamentals category, but like, what does that starting process look like when two plus two equals five?
Jeff Hostetter
I feel like there are certain foundational fundamentals that, that need to be right. And a lot of farms are great at those fundamentals. You know, comfortable cows, good feeding management practices. Things like pushing up feed, heat abatement is a big one. We’re learning more and more about the effects of heat abatement on inflammation and genetic programming effects.
But that, that’s a big one. That, to me, that’s a fundamental. But you know, over the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking more and more, should mycotoxin protection be considered a fundamental aspect that we should take care of? That we should just take it off the table. It’s not something that’s going to put a hole in the bag or make the other holes bigger. It’s something that we can just take it out of the equation and focus on other aspects that might not be as easily fixed.
Scott Zehr
So I, I have a theory. When we get into these kind of talks and I call it my 99 problems theory. And you know to your point, there’s certain things we can control and they can be devastating at the very maximum and they can be frustrating at the minimum. I’ve been blessed to be on a number of different farms throughout a number of states in this great country.
And oftentimes it’s trying to figure out what the problem is. And so often Jeff, when we, when we, we get in these situations, the problem is supposed to be like way up here, right? And then it’s oftentimes a lot further down the list towards that fundamental kind of thing. But the 99 problem theory I kind of think about and come up with is when a farmer wakes up in the morning, dairy or beef, I look at it like there’s 99 problems or 99 things that could be causing an issue on their operation today.
And the more of those problems that we can get under control, the less stressful it is. So then, right, we can allocate our time and resources elsewhere. But when we get into this diagnostics conversation, you know, it’s how many times does it feel like as a, you know, Jeff, when you were a nutritionist, it’s like we’re throwing darts at the wall, blindfolded, hoping we pop the balloon.
And, then something does change, right. And then maybe it gets better and we don’t even know why. And then, so then we rationalize it away. Well, we started into some better haylage or we got into some better corn silage and it might be true, it might be marginally true. It’s an interesting take on the mycotoxins.
Because one of the most frustrating things, Jeff that I’ve learned about mycotoxins over the years is the only thing consistent about mycotoxins is their inconsistency. They’re not distributed evenly in the field. They’re not distributed evenly in the storage pile.
They’re probably not even distributed evenly in the feed bunk. You know, so kind of part of this conversation was spurred me to bring you on and visit about this is I want to ask you a question back to your, well, just repro days, nutrition days. Doesn’t matter. How many times have you been in a situation where it’s like, we have exhausted all other options.
We have no idea what’s going on. And then somebody says, “well, did you check for toxins?” And sometimes that question gets asked within the first, you know, two, three days of diagnosing what’s going on. Sometimes it’s months.
Jeff Hostetter
That’s right. That’s right. And you know, when I worked in nutrition, that was 17 years ago, we didn’t know a lot about toxins, mycotoxins at that time.
And so many times in the last year or two, I can think of specific herds where I had this amazing ration on paper. You know, we had, we even did, we had an amino acid balance. We had, you know, our energy fractions, our fat starch digestibility at all those pieces of the nutrition puzzle on paper.
And I thought to myself, they must not be mixing this ration, right? You know, the feeder must be screwing us up. And, you know, you talk to the feeder, you’d go out, you’d watch the mixed feed, you’d even, you know, you’d do TMR samples and you just, there must be something wrong with the water. There must be a disease.
And sometimes I wish I could go back and say, we should have checked for toxin, we should have tested the feeds. You know, we had binders available. We’ve now learned a lot more that, you know…
Scott Zehr
There’s better ways.
Jeff Hostetter
Yeah, there’s, there’s better technology. And it’s kind of funny to just think back and, and wish you had some of the tools available back then that you have now.
So I you know, it is, I think one of the biggest frustrations of a nutritionist is that rational paper does not equal the production and the reproduction and the health that is being exhibited on, in the, in the herd. And like you said, the 99 problem theory, you can take one of those bottles of problems off the table, off the wall, and do it easily. And know that it is taken care of. Man, that is, that is so reassuring from a nutritional standpoint.
Scott Zehr
You bring that up and I, you know, you’re going back to, thinking about stuff from 20 years ago. And, throughout my career, I can look back on some situations and kind of see something similar, but I’m going to share something more recently because you, you hit on something when you talked about, they’re not mixing it, right?
Okay? So this farm I visited recently, and I’m going to say within the last few months not to be too specific, but the conversation I had leading into it before I ever made it on the farm with the herd owner was “I’m to the point now where I’m starting to question my employees and their dedication to my farm. And these are employees that have been with me a long time, and I know they do a great job.”
But, like you said, on paper, everything is pointing to the direction that, they should be making X pounds of milk. They should be, you know, running 45, 50 percent conception rate. And, it’s like, I think back to all these, these times when I did repro analysis for premier, how many conversations I had.
And it was like, well, are you sure you’re giving every shot? Are you using an inch and a half needle? And I don’t want to degrade the importance of the fundamentals. Lombardi sitting behind me. But this concept of being able to move mycotoxin mitigation over to the fundamental side and take it off the table, turn that into that employee that you never have to check in on.
You never have to check up on, they just always do their job. To me, I think that’s why we’ve seen people over the years rely on DTX. And because it, it’s there, it’s working. Like you said, binders have their limitations and I’m going to tell you, I’m not necessarily anti binder.
I just think they have their role in certain conditions. Aflatoxin. I’ll be the first one to tell you if you’re in the South and you’re dealing with aflatoxin, you know, you better be putting in a binder, a clay binder to help with that problem. And not that we don’t help with that, but it’s, they’re very effective in that, in that scenario.
But yeah, so I want to jump back into the on farm portion of it, Jeff because, what does it look like when we walk onto a farm now and we know mycotoxins aren’t part of the discussion, like where do we start then? We have DTX in the herd, we know that it’s mycotoxins are being taken care of, now what’s the stuff we can go focus on?
Jeff Hostetter
That is a great way to look at it, Scott, because once that’s taken off the table, you can do things like a genetic audit. You know, what is, what is our current genetic value? Are we making progress? We can compare core tiles within the herd and do things like genomic testing and develop a genetic plan moving forward.
You can look at things like beef on dairy. Maximize the value of those, black calves. The fundamentals of good forage quality, good cow comfort good cow handling, those are never going to become less important. And we don’t want to talk about mycotoxins and act like those things, we can’t solve mycotoxins and then everything else just takes care of itself.
You know, those are always going to be timeless fundamentals. You know, we got to take care of these girls so they can take care of us. But so, you know, I, I look at genetics, I look at forage quality. I look at cow comfort. I think those are probably the three pillars of, of fundamentals.
Once I have that peace of mind that mycotoxins are taken care of, that’s kind of how I break it down. And it takes a lot of experience. It takes a lot of awareness. It just, yeah, it’s not an easy thing or everyone would be doing it, right? There’s people that really understand that art of feeding cows.
Because, like we said before, you got a piece of paper. There’s probably a lot of people that could go on a computer and input the nutrient values of all the feedstuffs, the forages. And spit out a nice ration, but it’s really that eyes wide open on the farm. You know, are the cows comfortable?
Is the forage quality good? Is the water good? Those are some of the, the main fundamentals I like to look at.
Scott Zehr
The science of feeding a cow versus the art of feeding a cow. And you can’t teach the art. I’m not a cow whisperer, Jeff. I wish I were. But, I love talking to cows. And hearing what they have to say because they just don’t lie. The only time we think cows lie is when, we’re not hearing what they’re saying.
Jeff Hostetter
Yep.
Scott Zehr
And…
Jeff Hostetter
They’ve got to learn to speak their language.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jeff Hostetter
Listen to their language.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. You know, you reminded me of something. I, I have a lot of theories, Jeff. I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any means. I have a theory that I call my dirty fan theory. You’ve heard me talk about this before. You’re laughing at me.
I think most of the time you think I’m crazy. My dirty fan theory. And again, I’m going to go back to the fundamentals because I can’t tell you how important the fundamentals are. And it’s so easy to overlook them. They’re the first thing that are succumbed to protocol drift fundamentals guys and girls listening.
But, when I get invited to a dairy I like to walk through the barns and observe what’s going on. Try to go out and see what the cows are telling me, how do they look? How’s their hydration? How is their manure look? What’s their locomotion score? Body condition? But oftentimes it’s like, you know, you’ve never been here before.
You don’t know who the folks are that are on the farm. You don’t have relationships with them yet. You’re trying to get a feel for their management style. You know, are they lax on their fundamentals or not? Because it’s really hard to try to provide advice from a 10,000 foot view, if you have to question the fundamentals.
And so the dirty fan theory. When I walk into a freestall, one of the very first things I look at is the amount of dust that is built up on the fans above the cows.
It’s been my experience over the last, now almost 11 years of my professional career, that if a farm routinely cleans their fans, especially during the cool season. Like it’s one thing to make sure the fans are clean during the summertime when you really, really need them.
But it’s another level of attention to detail on the fundamentals that matter when it’s, I’m going to say February, March, and we may or may not need those fans, but they’re clean and ready to go if we do. If those fans are dirty all the time, and especially if they’re dirty in the summertime, one, right, that, that dust can reduce the airflow by up to 40%. Two, what else are they not doing, Jeff?
Jeff Hostetter
It’s an indicator.
Scott Zehr
How are the water troughs, Jeff? How’s the stall care? How’s the headlock care? They put enough sand in the beds? Yeah, it’s an indicator for sure. So that’s my dirty fan theory. It’s worked the other way to where it reinforces, you know, if, if the fans are clean, especially in like February, March it reinforces to me that I probably don’t need to spend a lot of time talking about beds, install maintenance and that kind of stuff. They’re doing the job. And that’s my soapbox story for today’s podcast.
Jeff Hostetter
The dirty fan theory that’s really interesting, Scott, because you can almost like, compare that to mycotoxins and then, are we walking onto a farm that has, that understands the negative effects that mycotoxins can have? And did they clean those fans? Did they clean those fan blades?
Are they using good technology like DTX to take that off the table? It’s probably an indicator that they’re doing a lot of the fundamentals right. And I think that, it’s something that as the years go on, more and more of our well managed herds, not only are they aware, but they know how to fix it.
They understand that even if, like you mentioned earlier, cows don’t lie. They always tell the truth. There’s probably a little bit of a caveat to that, because when I look at the, our DTX research, we looked at those cows in the control group, and we probably could have walked onto that farm, looked at the control group, which we didn’t know which was the control group or not, but we would have said, these cows are saying life is good.
They were milking well, 115 pounds. But you know, a clean fan theory would say, well, that herd took care of the mycotoxins. And we saw from the research, two and a half more pounds of milk when we cleaned those fan blades. In other words, when we took care of mycotoxins with our DTX technology. So I think that yeah, I just think as we learn more and more about these cows, I think that bag of gold coins has more coins in it than it’s ever had before, you know?
Scott Zehr
Oh, the genetic potential is crazy nowadays, right?
Jeff Hostetter
It’s insane. It’s what some of these herds are doing 90, 100 pounds of milk, four or five fat, three… eight pounds of, of components per cow per day is…
Scott Zehr
It’s not far away.
Jeff Hostetter
It’s really close.
Scott Zehr
It’s not far away. It’s like yesterday we were at 6. You know, and today we’re at, I was on a dairy this week, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5; It’s not far away, Jeff. But I, you know, I think you’re right. It’s the peace of mind, right? When you master the fundamentals and, and this is what excites me about what we at Agrarian do and believe in and talk about with our cell wall deficient bacteria, our L forms, DTX, we’re now making it an option for livestock owners across the globe to handle mycotoxin mitigation, just like they would having a protocol in place to keep the fans clean.
And it can be a fundamental, it can be one of those things we can control and have peace of mind about. And so I think, if you’re a herd manager, herd owner, cattle rancher, nutritionist, veterinary, listening to this, that’s got to mean something. You know, for me as somebody that gets to walk on farms and, and be a quasi consultant, it means an awful lot when I have that peace of mind and it tells me where I don’t have to look.
And that’s really, that’s really the best way to describe how I feel about that 99 problem theory, is number one, where do I not have to look? Because if I can reduce that down to maybe 5 problems instead of 99 with a snap of a finger, we can get results a lot faster. So I love it. Jeff, I hope to bring you in on another podcast call. We’ll figure out something to talk about. But I really appreciate you taking the time today.
And just as an homage to you, Jeff, I did want to point out to you, that is the Select Sires impact sires of the breed canvas behind me.
Jeff Hostetter
Thank you, Scott. It means a lot to see those impact sires from Select Sires and appreciate you having me on the podcast. I love chopping it up with you, Scott, and we just happened to record it today, but it’s a lot like a lot of our conversations through the last few years.
Looking forward to doing it again sometime.
Scott Zehr
Absolutely. All right, thanks everybody. And we will see everybody soon.
