Glenda Pereira: 00:09
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an Associate Professor of Animal Science and the Dairy Specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. For today’s episode, we have Dr. Owen Cortner with us again, who is the Livestock Specialist for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.
Glenda Pereira: 00:31
And it’s exciting to have Owen here again today. We’re gonna be talking about what folks should be considering if they are exhibiting animals this summer. And Owen, in your role, you sometimes go to fairs. You can give viewers your lens when you’re going to a fair as a regulator and how you approach that.
Owen Cortner: 00:52
Hi, this is Owen. Thanks for having me back on the Farmcast. You never know if you’re gonna get asked back somewhere.
Glenda Pereira: 00:59
Always welcome.
Owen Cortner: 00:59
Thank you. I usually say this: I like coming on here and talking to folks. I’m doing this as myself, and that counts for today too. What I say doesn’t necessarily represent the policies or stances of the department and the Animal Health Program. So just keep that in mind.
Glenda Pereira: 01:18
So Owen, this conversation started because you created a really nice fact sheet that outlined some of the considerations during heat stress events when folks are exhibiting at the fair. And this goes for all livestock animals. I will share that infographic with folks in the show notes so they can go check it out. That conversation then led to having you on the podcast, and maybe we can make that audio content too. So we were talking earlier, and we were saying, well, there are all these fairs coming up.
Glenda Pereira: 01:50
Fryeburg, the biggest fair, is coming up. You had mentioned that you’ve been going to some fairs recently. So we said, let’s sit down and just talk about it. And here we are.
Owen Cortner: 02:03
I’m glad you did and that you asked. Yeah, I was really excited when I started to learn about the fair culture here in Maine. It’s really cool that there are so many of them, and each one has its own unique character. I’ve only been able to visit two so far, but I’m looking forward to several more before the end of the fair season.
Owen Cortner: 02:25
Basically, we folks in the Animal Health Office kind of rotate and try to attend most of the fairs if we can. We communicate with livestock superintendents and fair directors throughout the year. And then we try to have an in-person presence to talk with folks when the fairs actually occur. Like you said, there are obviously some regulations that we are looking out for, as well as just general things at the fair. As you mentioned, we made that document for preventing heat stress in animals.
Owen Cortner: 02:58
Other things that we look for at the fairs: we are responsible for making sure that animals have the proper official ID. Tagging your animals is really important. We think about biosecurity with the fairs because you have a lot of animals moving around off-farm, being in close proximity to animals from other farms, and also a lot of members of the public. Fairs are really important venues for people to practice good biosecurity. You can encounter us at fairs and so forth.
Owen Cortner: 03:23
At the two I’ve been to this year, I had a fantastic time, and both were very, very well run, as far as I could tell. We typically are in contact with the livestock superintendents of those fairs ahead of time, and then we come by the fair and like to walk through the animal barns. We look at some of the events. Depending on the schedules, maybe we’ll go to an animal weigh-in, particularly for pulling competitions and things like that. We’re looking at animal housing.
Owen Cortner: 03:51
We’re looking at elements from the heat stress checklist that we released a little earlier this year: whether animals have shade and good ventilation in barns. We encourage people not to exercise animals during the hottest parts of the day. The same goes for transporting animals, if the fair schedule allows. We encourage people to do it in the evenings or in the mornings when the weather’s cooler, and also to think about ventilation in your trailers while you’re moving them and about making sure animals always have access to shade and water wherever they’re housed.
Owen Cortner: 04:25
And the good thing is that that’s pretty independent of the species of animal you’re dealing with. So just a little thinking ahead of time and planning out your fair season can make it less stressful for your animals, for you, and for everybody.
Glenda Pereira: 04:40
And thank you for highlighting that. So you had mentioned that you guys walk the barns and you have your mental checklist of things that you’re looking out for, predominantly related to nutrition and management, really. Right? And there are obvious things: water, feed, a clean space. People who show take a lot of pride in maintaining a really clean space throughout the entire time that they exhibit animals.
Glenda Pereira: 05:02
And, like I said, you had a nice checklist here on your heat stress best practices infographic. And I kind of just wanted to talk through some of that. We talked about shade, water, airflow, feeding, handling, and transport. And the specific thing I wanted to talk about was some of what you mentioned about heat stress. If you’re an exhibitor and you’re starting to see some of these signs, and we’re gonna describe them now…
Owen Cortner: 05:26
Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 05:26
It’s a good time, right then and there, to reach out to the superintendent or a director and the fair veterinarian. So there’s always a veterinarian on staff, and you should contact them right away. There are, like, early signs of heat stress, and that’s where we should be intervening before it gets to this emergency case. And so you had created this, and I don’t know if you want to share some of those symptoms with us.
Owen Cortner: 05:53
You definitely want to notice it as soon as it starts so that you can intervene at an earlier stage of heat stress before it gets more serious and requires more intervention. Right? Typically, if you are feeling hot or anticipate that it’s going to be hot, it’s probably going to impact your livestock and animals the same way. An increased respiratory rate, or seeing the animal looking kind of tired or lethargic, those are early signs. Panting, open-mouth breathing.
Owen Cortner: 06:23
If they are not as interested in feed as they normally would be, those are some signs that they’re probably starting to get heat stressed, right? And so at that moment, when you see signs like that, you would run through your checklist and be like, oh, are they able to get to shade? Or, like, maybe there was shade earlier, but now the sun angle has changed. Yeah. Is the water too hot, or maybe it got dirty, or they flipped a tub?
Owen Cortner: 06:48
Those are the kinds of things that you might start looking for at that point. Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 06:52
It can progress to an increased heart rate or respiratory rate, and you had persistent lethargy here, which I really like because I know so many exhibitors know their animals. Right?
Owen Cortner: 07:04
Yep.
Glenda Pereira: 07:04
You’ve been spending so many dedicated hours with your animal, getting them prepped for the show or being with them when you’re at the fair, that you know whether they’re tired or they’re just, like, tired that day from transportation, or they’ve moved and now they’re in this space. So you know the type of tiredness, and you can just keep an eye on that. Yeah. And I often recommend referencing your fair guidelines and the materials that they provide. Keep a note somewhere.
Glenda Pereira: 07:35
Write this down. Have a record sheet for yourself if you can. It doesn’t have to be anything intensive. Just write on paper, like, hey, I checked my animal this morning.
Glenda Pereira: 07:44
I checked my animal this afternoon before I headed home, whatever. Here are the signs that I noticed. And make some general observations. So it doesn’t have to be that you have to write this super-nice, fancy record…
Owen Cortner: 07:55
It doesn’t have to be an intense table or a spreadsheet or something. I’ve said this to folks at fairs before. I’m like, you know your animal best. Even if I’m walking through, or the superintendent’s walking through, or even a veterinarian is walking through, you know what your animal has been doing, you know its general health considerations and its life stage. You know whether it had a difficult competition yesterday or didn’t like the trip for some reason. So you’re in a position to make those judgments.
Owen Cortner: 08:24
And so this is just information to help you with that.
Glenda Pereira: 08:27
Yeah. I will note, however, that this is stage-of-life dependent. I’m saying this specifically for dairy cows. They’re lactating. They’re gonna require more water and ventilation.
Glenda Pereira: 08:41
So just please be mindful, again, of the stage of life. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t prioritize water and feed for other animals, but animals that are lactating, in general, have higher energy, protein, and water requirements. So just keep that in mind as well. They should always have access to water, if possible, twenty-four hours a day. Whereas if you have, for example, a heifer that’s six months of age, they might be fine with water provided four to five times a day, versus a dairy cow, which should always have access to water continuously.
Glenda Pereira: 09:15
And then you talked about biosecurity in the beginning, and this one is like an onion. It has a lot of layers because it really starts before you even come to the show. And there’s a lot for you to consider before you bring your animal to the show. Right? And I just wanna note that you’ve spent all this time getting to this point.
Glenda Pereira: 09:34
And so following these guidelines, I think, is why you might have your best chance at a really good and fun fair season with the best outcomes possible. One of the things we were talking about earlier is that if your animals are sick, best practice is to leave them at home.
Owen Cortner: 09:51
Sure. Things that we look for, and if you see any of this in your animals before coming to the fair, we’d encourage you to leave that animal at home. Simple things: if they’ve got a cough, if they’ve got more diarrhea than usual, if they have any scabs or new skin lesions, definitely no open wounds, things like that. Lameness, if your animal’s favoring a foot, that’s something to notice, and you definitely wanna check it out. I also think about something that maybe people don’t automatically associate with health, which is, like, the body condition score of your animal.
Owen Cortner: 10:27
It can be both an indicator and a contributor to the animal potentially picking something up if it doesn’t have the best body condition, which might relate to a nutrition issue, a parasite issue, or something else going on. But that can both be a sign of a problem and contribute to being more susceptible to a problem.
Glenda Pereira: 10:47
And the goal of bringing your animal to the fair is to enjoy the fair and have a good time. But in order to do that, we need to make sure that our animals can be healthy coming in and be healthy going out of the fair. But something that we had briefly discussed was animal identification.
Owen Cortner: 11:04
It is the law in Maine that every animal has to have official ID if it leaves the farm. And there are reasons for it, though. Official ID helps us. It can be used as a business and record-keeping tool, for one thing, but in the animal health world, we really rely on people properly identifying their animals so that if there is any issue, it makes it easier and quicker for us to do a disease trace and response. And whenever we’re dealing with disease, whether it’s in people or animals, typically one of our biggest factors is time. And so the ID programs for animals help reduce the time it takes to figure out where a disease came from and where it might be going.
Owen Cortner: 11:46
And that allows us to try to put a damper on that, which, in the end, ultimately helps avoid stress, pain, or death for animals, as well as stress and emotional issues for livestock owners and the economic impacts that could happen. The animals I’ve seen at fairs have been in excellent shape, and I really have loved meeting people at the fairs and talking to them about their animals. And I think that animal ID is probably the thing that gets overlooked the most often. That’s why I’m happy to talk about it and try to make people aware both of the requirements and that our office, in particular, and probably your Cooperative Extension, are willing to help you figure out how to make it happen.
Glenda Pereira: 12:27
Yeah. So while we’re at the show, there are a lot of other things to consider. And we actually created an infographic that I will be able to share in the show notes as well. So you don’t have to remember all of these things, but we recommend that species have their own areas, if possible. So we’re limiting species interactions.
Glenda Pereira: 12:51
Your dairy animals hopefully can stay within one area, your poultry and other fowl in another area, and then, if possible, ruminants, equines, etcetera, because we wanna minimize the sort of disease transmission that might occur between them. And you don’t have to invest in anything really expensive. Tarps are great.
Glenda Pereira: 13:16
A physical barrier with some plastic is great. Definitely minimize the sharing of feed, water, feed areas, grains, etcetera, between those species, which can be difficult. And, of course, manure. So that’s the other one for us to think about, right, containing the manure from each of our species and then, obviously, cleaning as frequently as you can to remove that manure so that it’s not getting on other species or even other animals.
Owen Cortner: 13:47
Right. Yeah. And I think some of that can be managed by exhibitors at a fair. And some of that, you have to adjust a little bit to what the fair can do. And I appreciate that the fairs work really hard on a lot of this.
Owen Cortner: 14:02
And many of the people who work at those fairs are volunteering their time to do so. So yeah, we do encourage trying to separate by species as much as possible and reduce the overlap of feed and other resources. You have to work with a particular facility and how it’s set up, and these places might’ve inherited a certain layout. I think it does help, though, in some of the management and flow of that, to have it separated by species because you can put species-appropriate food over here in one place and so forth. And I think just a little bit of planning about how stuff’s gonna move in and out of pens is helpful: the animal, the food, and then the manure at the tail end. Having an idea of good routes for that is helpful.
Owen Cortner: 14:49
And it doesn’t just contribute to biosecurity, but it can make things run more smoothly during fairs, which have enough hectic stuff going on.
Glenda Pereira: 14:58
Yeah. It’s a very busy time. And these are just things that anybody can forget. It’s very easy to forget. You’re doing a lot at once.
Glenda Pereira: 15:06
You’ve got a lot on your mind. Your animal needs to be ready for the show at this specific time. And that’s sort of the focus. So these are things we may not give a second thought to because we’re busy. If you are milking animals, it’s really recommended that you minimize equipment sharing between different animals.
Glenda Pereira: 15:28
It’s really important to sanitize equipment between your milking animals. Yes. But keeping the bedding of milking animals really clean helps too. And then again, if your animal has a pathogen that you don’t wanna share, keep that animal at home if you can. That’s just the best management practice.
Glenda Pereira: 15:51
Another thing is just trying to minimize shared use of equipment between animals. But if you have to, again, try to wash it between animals. And we’re talking about potentially shovels, forks, feed scoops, and tubs, clipping and fitting supplies. Would you add anything to that as well?
Owen Cortner: 16:11
I don’t think I’d add to that. I think what I’m hearing is that things like milking equipment are probably some of the higher priorities.
Glenda Pereira: 16:20
Yes. Yes, they…
Owen Cortner: 16:21
…are. Obviously, you should try to do it as much as possible with all equipment. But I think, particularly with stuff that contacts an animal’s skin or a lactating animal, the more intimate the tool or equipment, the more you should prioritize cleaning it.
Glenda Pereira: 16:37
And then you’re gonna be exhibiting your animal in a public space. We wanna try to minimize contact between people and animals.
Owen Cortner: 16:45
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s just, you know, if you think about potentially sending kids off to school and how many other people or surfaces they come in contact with, and just sort of good social hygiene, extend that out to the animals that you’re taking to the fair as well. And that is something that we can help support in animal health. We do have a lot of signage available for both fairs and even potentially individuals that encourages and helps communicate to the public, “Please wash your hands before coming in and after leaving.” Depending on the particular fair and livestock barn, we don’t necessarily say whether or not livestock can be touched by the public, but we are there to support the best practices that the particular exhibitors and fairs want to enforce.
Owen Cortner: 17:35
And generally speaking, less direct contact is better in terms of reducing disease transmission.
Glenda Pereira: 17:41
Yeah. And if you do have an animal that becomes ill, consult the veterinarian on staff. So every fair has a plan for isolation. Isolate that animal according to the instructions provided by the animal health veterinarian on staff and the fair director.
Owen Cortner: 18:03
From what I understand, I don’t know whether every fair has the capacity every year to have a veterinarian necessarily on staff. But I think that most people who are helping run fairs, a lot of livestock superintendents, probably know a veterinarian. We also maintain a list of large-animal vets at the Animal Health Program in DACF, which we’re happy to share with folks if you don’t already have a relationship with a veterinarian. If you really are at a loss, you’re always welcome to call our office, where we have three assistant veterinarians, as well as the state vet, on staff.
Glenda Pereira: 18:39
All right. So we’ve exhibited our animal. We’re looking good. We had a fun time.
Owen Cortner: 18:44
What happens after the show?
Glenda Pereira: 18:46
Yes. And we already talked about some of that. So isolation and quarantining.
Owen Cortner: 18:51
Yep.
Glenda Pereira: 18:52
If you have other animals at home that are potentially gonna come into contact with the animal that was just at the fair, it’s a good practice to isolate that animal that was just at the fair for at least thirty days. Yes. So, you know, if you have the capacity, create a different pen where they cannot touch your other animals for at least thirty days. Owen was talking about animal traceability, and sometimes diseases don’t show up until one or two days after you get home. Or, right…
Glenda Pereira: 19:23
There’s an animal that started to exhibit some symptoms at the fair. Now your animal’s sick, and now you’ve brought that home. So quarantining for at least thirty days provides that buffer to prevent disease transmission at home.
Owen Cortner: 19:36
Definitely. And often, if you have the capacity, building a separate pen or something like that is helpful. And I think an important note there is that it might not be a good use of your time if you build it right next to your other animals and you have maybe one of those panels, you know, that animals could still contact each other through. And so typically, best practice is that you actually have a space buffer between those animal holding areas, a double fence, or maybe just a separate pasture that’s off to the side. And then when you’re caring for those animals after they’ve returned home, in your order of operations, you typically want to move from healthy animals that haven’t gone anywhere and then finish with the ones that have traveled or that do have symptoms or something. Yeah, you want to deal with those last so that you’re not moving disease into healthy individuals.
Glenda Pereira: 20:31
And I know exactly what you mean. You mean if I’m gonna go feed in the morning or do chores. Yeah. I’m going to visit with my healthy animals first. Yep. And then move to my quarantined or sick animals, whether you went to the fair or…
Owen Cortner: 20:45
Not. Exactly. Yeah. That applies in any case, including if you are quarantining an animal after a fair. Yep.
Owen Cortner: 20:53
Maybe we could say isolating an animal. Yeah. The other thing I do wonder, and maybe you’ll have some insight on this: if somebody is doing fair season big and they are taking their working steers, say, to multiple fairs, what do you think is a good strategy there based on the kind of checklist and general ideas we’re offering here?
Glenda Pereira: 21:17
What is their current vaccine protocol? Because we need to address that first. Right? But I think if you have healthy animals and you’re gonna be traveling a lot with them, they’ve gone through their vaccination protocol, ideally based on the current disease trends that you see within your state or region, and you’re keeping up on feed and water, you should have healthy animals throughout the entire season. But things happen. It’s inevitable, and you’re just gonna have to, I think, play it by ear in that case.
Glenda Pereira: 21:52
But I do agree with you on some of the things that we talked about. Right? If you have different animals at home and those steers are continuously moving, always isolate them. That’s an easy one.
Owen Cortner: 22:02
Right.
Glenda Pereira: 22:03
But I think maintaining really good nutrition, water intake, and ventilation for them throughout the entire season, not just when they’re at home and not just when they’re at the fair, goes a long way because those animals are less susceptible to potentially contracting a disease when they do come into contact with another animal that’s sick.
Owen Cortner: 22:24
If they’re in good condition, it’s almost like an athlete during that sports season or whatever. You wanna always think about nutrition, adequate rest, and taking care of any issues, you know, whatever they might be, so that you stay healthy.
Glenda Pereira: 22:38
And what you mentioned, right? Moving or working animals outside the noon to 3 p.m. window each day, or trying to avoid those times of the day when those animals are gonna be heat stressed, when there’s gonna be a lot of humidity, because it’s just gonna take a bigger toll on them. So trying to work them and move them outside of those hours is a good consideration, as well as actually letting them rest. So there was somebody, I can’t remember where I picked this up from now, but there was somebody who was working cattle during the night when it would be cool.
Glenda Pereira: 23:19
However, that was really their only reprieve from being heat stressed all day. Right?
Owen Cortner: 23:23
Ah, yes.
Glenda Pereira: 23:24
So their veterinarian would challenge them to think about, well, they’re cooling down and kind of decompressing from the entire day during the nighttime as well. So it might not be that you wanna be working them at night, even though it’s cooler. So maybe, like, finding a few hours right in the morning, you know, to do that. Then they have the entire day and, like, the nighttime especially to cool down and decompress from that heat stress event. Considering when you’re gonna be scheduling your chores with your animals, I think, was a really good suggestion that you had made. And then transportation, having good and adequate transportation, not leaving out water, not leaving out feed.
Glenda Pereira: 24:07
I think that covers it all. Yeah, nearly.
Owen Cortner: 24:11
You know? And obviously, I think people learn or retain information in different ways. I like talking through it, and it is nice that you have great resources. DACF has some nice resources as well. We have a whole fair packet on the animal health website that talks through a lot of this in a structured way in case people find that more accessible.
Owen Cortner: 24:34
I think if folks are taking their animals to other states in New England, one thing that you definitely want to make sure you’ve got is your certificate of veterinary inspection, or CVI. I think that there is essentially, like, a New England kind of CVI agreement on what different fairs in New England expect, and it’s more or less harmonized, or at least there are descriptions that are in one place for you to figure out what you need. In addition to resources that you might find from Cooperative Extension or DACF, read through the things that the lovely fair staff put together that tell you what is needed at their event. Yep.
Glenda Pereira: 25:13
Yeah. Certainly. And I know a lot of the exhibitors are really attuned to what their needs are leading up to the fair. But one thing that I think we should note, and maybe we covered this, is that there’s a lot that goes on before the fair, before the show.
Glenda Pereira: 25:28
And it’s really just creating that timeline for yourself. Right? For example, when am I gonna vaccinate my animals leading up to the fair? Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 25:35
Then they can be at their healthiest because they’re gonna be traveling, and we’re not really gonna have that time for them to get vaccinated, rest, create their antibodies, or whatever immunity they need to then be ready for the fair and the show. Maybe travel to the fair only when you have your show and then travel out. So then you’re minimizing your time there and your contact with other animals, which reduces your chances of exposure. And then disease testing. That was one that we didn’t really mention. But if you’re curious, make sure you know what’s going on with your animals at home, test them for disease, and then test them after if you have concerns.
Glenda Pereira: 26:16
Everybody’s gonna have to make their plan based on what their risk analysis is. Right? Everybody takes different risks. And so, you know, exhibiting an animal comes with certain risks. But if you have the capacity, you could do some disease testing and find out for yourself.
Owen Cortner: 26:33
And I think I’d like to point out one thing that our office offers all the time, which is… I think several times this episode, we’ve mentioned the word biosecurity. And I think that has definitely gained more widespread understanding in the ag community, certainly compared with ten years ago. I don’t know whether that many people would have been talking about or familiar with the word.
Glenda Pereira: 26:56
I think that’s because it showed up in different ways. So prevention. Right?
Owen Cortner: 27:00
To me, it might have been packaged in other ways.
Glenda Pereira: 27:02
Yes. Prevention is, in my opinion, a way to implement biosecurity. Right? Preparedness. Another way.
Glenda Pereira: 27:11
Right? I’m prepared. My animals are in good health. I know their body condition score. I’ll run through all these things.
Owen Cortner: 27:17
So yeah. Again, I’ll say that there are lots of resources already in existence. We have a biosecurity page that I’m working on updating on the Animal Health website. But even the resources that are there now, I want to try to tweak them a bit, but there’s still good stuff there to give you a sense of some of the practices. And usually they don’t cost a lot or anything.
Owen Cortner: 27:41
They’re just things to think about when your animals are moving around or when people are coming by. So, you know, we have steps that are fairly easy to execute to reduce some of the biggest risks. The other thing you were mentioning was testing your animals for disease. That is something that our office has been able to offer through USDA grants in the past, and we hope to do so again in the future. But we have tried to set up a nice partnership with the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab that UMaine operates.
Owen Cortner: 28:12
So we hope to, in the future, offer some cost sharing with diagnostic testing as a means to support people in that. More to…
Glenda Pereira: 28:20
…come. Always learning and always adapting. But, Owen, thank you so much for sitting down and having this conversation with me.
Owen Cortner: 28:27
Absolutely. Thank you.
Glenda Pereira: 28:29
If you have questions, comments, or future topic suggestions, be sure to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.