Maine Farmcast Episode 15: Shades of Green: Cows, Agrivoltaics, and Climate Resilience with Dr. Brad Heins

On the this episode of the Maine Farmcast, Dr. Glenda Pereira, Assistant Extension Professor and State Dairy Specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, has a conversation with Dr. Brad Heins, Professor of Dairy Management at the University of Minnesota. The conversation focuses on the dairy research that is being conducted at the West Central Research and Outreach Center in Minnesota. Dr. Heins grew up in Minnesota and obtained his Animal Science degrees at the University of Minnesota. Based in West Central Minnesota, Dr. Heins conducts research on topics including organic dairy production, crossbreeding in dairy cattle, calf rearing, precision technology, and renewable energy systems.

Episode Resources

Transcript

Glenda Pereira: 00:24

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant extension professor and dairy specialist for the University of Maine, as well as an assistant professor within the School of Food and Agriculture. Today, I have a special guest on the Maine Farmcast because Dr. Brad Heins was actually my former graduate advisor from the University of Minnesota. So a lot of my training that I use in my career today is due to the mentorship that Dr. Brad Heins provided me. So now that I’ve put you on a pedestal, right, no big deal, can you give us an introduction about yourself and tell us where you’re from?

Brad Heins: 01:08

Sure. Thanks, Glenda. Happy to be here today. Glenda said I’m actually a professor of animal science at the University of Minnesota, but I am at a research center in the western part of the state about two and a half hours from Minneapolis and Saint Paul. So I’m out here in a small town.

Brad Heins: 01:27

I’m at the West Central Research and Outreach Center, and we have a, I don’t know, 300 cow dairy. We’re a pasture based system where I do a lot of my research here. So it’s, and Glenda did you did a lot of your research here as well. So it’s, yeah, a great place to be and living in a small town and being able to be out where the cows are and and do lots of good things for farmers?

Glenda Pereira: 01:50

Best sunsets, hands down. I mean, the time that I spent there on pasture and in that you know, working with that herd, I sometimes still have to remind myself that I’m no longer at the University of Minnesota. Because for a long time, when I would answer the phone, I’d say, you know, Glenda Pereira, University of Minnesota, and then and then I’d be like, wait. No. I’m at the University of Maine.

Glenda Pereira: 02:11

But but, no, the WCROC, the West Central Research and Outreach Center definitely is, you know, full of opportunities. And if folks that are listening, maybe students are listening, if they are looking for an internship. That’s kind of where how we got connected, and I started as an intern out there at the WCROC. So I’ll drop the link in the show notes so folks can check it out if they’re more curious about it. So you have quite a unique background like we all do.

Glenda Pereira: 02:41

You know, we’re pre-vet track as undergrads, and then we kind of maybe learn a little bit about research, get our feet wet in research. But kind of talk you know, you know, walk us through what your upbringing and how you got into the dairy space.

Brad Heins: 02:57

Well, I grew up showing jerseys and 4-H, did dairy judging, FFA, dairy judging and all of that. So, you know, I I liked the cows. I liked working with registered animals. So I decided I to go to the University of Minnesota for my undergraduate in animal and plant systems. So it was different.

Brad Heins: 03:21

It was not a total animal science major. It was we did a lot of agronomy stuff and soil. So it was more of a holistic type major than just a strictly animal science, even though I had a dairy emphasis. And, like you, Glenda, I moved to California during my undergraduate time period and interned for worldwide sires and, you know, worked in California and, you know, fell in love with California dairy industry and still have quite a, you know, a heart for the California dairy industry today. And doing genetics, at worldwide sour still got me very interested in doing, you know, graduate work.

Brad Heins: 04:03

So then actually came back to the University of Minnesota and did my graduate work in, animal science with Dr. Les Hansen and worked on crossbreeding in dairy cows and with herds in California. So I went to California a lot that I was working with farms out there. Some were grazing, some were confinement. 1 was organic. So that’s, you know, and really fell in love with doing the research and worked a lot with cross breeding and farmers in all of those projects.

Brad Heins: 04:34

So it was it’s been a long, fun career, I guess, spending lots of time on farms and working a lot with cows.

Glenda Pereira: 04:43

Yeah. And that really helps you in your role because you do have a split appointment research and extension. But, really, and this is something that I was able to do throughout that you offer throughout my graduate career as well, I was always involved in extension programming during my graduate career, which obviously helped me in my career as well. But, something that I think is unique to your your research program, Brad, is that a lot of your questions are fueled by farmers. Right?

Brad Heins: 05:15

Well, yeah, you know, most of my research is based off of questions that I get from farmers or ideas that farmers ask me or, you know, what sort of relevant for farmers in the industry. That’s no doubt about it. I’m very into applied dairy cattle research and everything that I do translates to something that a farm can do. You know, we’ve there’s been a lot of things that have happened here in in my last, I don’t know, 12, 13 years that I’ve been here at Minnesota from, you know, grazing studies, you know, Glenda can tell you the horrors of collecting 1,000 of cash per sample for a a grazing study that I was doing, when when she was actually one one of my interns here long ago. That’s how we that’s how we met.

Brad Heins: 06:07

And from from lots of grazing studies to lots of studies on fly control, so organic fly control, we’ve done a lot of organic fly control. We still continue to do cross breeding work with lots of different breeds, and also working with calves and heifers, looking at calf housing systems, and how to raise, calves more efficiently and do a much better job at calf raising and also, starting to get into, you know, renewable energy aspects of of dairy production with solar production on on farms. So it’s we I’m not really a specialist in anything, although I still have a heart for genetics and still do a lot of, genetics work and breeding work, but I do some other stuff that I I like to do too. And so genetics, calves and heifers, and renewable energy is probably what I focus on the most in all of my research and extension programs now.

Glenda Pereira: 07:13

Yes. There’s a lot of buzz around climate change, climate resilience, and how dairy fits into that space. And you get interviewed a lot to talk about agrivoltaics. And for the folks that might not know what that word even means, let’s start there. What what is agrivoltaics?

Glenda Pereira: 07:36

And I do wanna give a shout out to another colleague of ours, Kirsten Sharp, because she’s been a a part of this work in space too. So shout out to Kirsten. She’s part of our our dairy dream team. So, yeah, talk talk to us about agrivoltaics and what that that all entails.

Brad Heins: 07:55

Well, we really got involved in agrivoltaics in about 2017 or 18. You know what? It really stemmed from a long, I don’t know, history of doing renewable energy work here at our research center. And we really started with monitoring energy on dairy farms, so that was probably our first thing was to see how much energy, water usage, all of that were being used on farms. And then then trying to figure out how we can reduce the energy load on on farms, you know, with either solar or small scale wind or anything like that.

Brad Heins: 08:33

So once we we did that, it was like, well, how do we do this? You know? So we’re thinking about solar and and how we can put solar up. We have actually some solar on some barns here at our research center, and, you know, they come with their advantages and disadvantages on a barn. But in some of these aspects, I’ve I saw people even in Minnesota here that were grazing sheep under these solar panels.

Brad Heins: 08:56

And there’s a lot of sheep that have you know, even in the northeast.

Glenda Pereira: 09:00

Yes.

Brad Heins: 09:01

There’s a lot of people that graze sheep. Well, there’s not a lot of sort of sheep in Minnesota. There are some, but, you know, a lot of them get processed in Colorado. You know, there’s not a huge market here. Maybe some in in the Twin Cities, but it’s a very small industry for Minnesota.

Brad Heins: 09:20

Minnesota is a dairy state. So my Don’t

Glenda Pereira: 09:23

tell the poultry people that.

Brad Heins: 09:25

Yeah. Exactly. Well, yeah, we are number 1 in Turkey and and and some egg layers too, but we’ll we’ll claim it’s a dairy state. And it is. It’s one of the, I don’t know, top 10 dairy states.

Brad Heins: 09:35

But I thought, well, why why why grace sheep under there when we don’t really have a sheep market or not very many sheep in Minnesota? And there’s a lot of cows. There’s a lot of beef cows in Minnesota too. Why can’t we put cows under there? So that’s sort of where we started in 2017 was putting cows under you know, we so we we we got some grant money from Minnesota legislature to do some agrivoltaics work.

Brad Heins: 10:04

So that’s, you know, solar and livestock together on the on the land and put up our first solar installation in 2018 to put cows under it. And I guess we haven’t looked back. We haven’t looked back.

Glenda Pereira: 10:21

Yeah. And I remember that project. There was a lot of doubts about how this would all integrate because, you know, and and I still get some questions about this when I talk about your work in agrivoltaics. You know? Oh, do the cows, like, rub on the poles, and how do they not knock it down?

Glenda Pereira: 10:38

And and so there was a lot of doubt. But if I learned anything from Brad, it was that, you you know, peep people can doubt, but you’re gonna show them how it’s done. And I think your research center and the work that you’ve been doing, like we’ve mentioned, is at the center of that, you know, showing how we can maybe do something, you get you know, have a vision, and and implement it. And so can you talk to us a little bit about how the solar and and shade grazing works? So the cows can be underneath it.

Glenda Pereira: 11:08

And like, were there some key factors that helped you in succeeding to integrate cows in solar shading and grazing too?

Brad Heins: 11:19

Well, there was always naysayers, you know, that said, well, we can’t do that. You you know, the cows are gonna wreck the the solar panels. They’re gonna wreck the system. It won’t work. It won’t work.

Brad Heins: 11:29

You know? And we had some solar developers tell us that’s not gonna happen. That’s not gonna work. You know? We were sort of at the forefront of of doing this.

Brad Heins: 11:37

And and the problem I shouldn’t say it’s a problem is it’s a little bit different design because you have to put the solar panels up. We we put them up at 8 feet high off the ground, and it was sort of nonscientific how we did that. I basically went out and found the tallest cow in the herd and determined how far it could reach in the air and and said, oh, it’s about 8 feet. Let’s put them at 8 feet. So now I’m sort of thinking, well, why do I have to put them at 8 feet?

Brad Heins: 12:09

Can I put them at 6 feet and put them lower? And will the cows bother them? I don’t know. We’ll find out. So that’s that’s what we did.

Brad Heins: 12:16

We we put them up at 8 feet. Obviously, you know, there was a little more structure to it. At the time, the cost was not any different. You know, this was in 2018. I think today, if you were to show there might be some additional cost to putting the panels up a little bit higher, but we we didn’t have any additional cost.

Brad Heins: 12:37

One thing though that we did with we put the solar inverters on the outside of the fence. So that’s, you know, what converts the power from the solar into the into the grid. So some places I’ve seen the inverters on the inside of the fence where the animals are, and then you gotta fence it and do a whole bunch of stuff like that. But Right.

Glenda Pereira: 12:56

So

Brad Heins: 12:56

we decided just take that out of the equation. We put them on the outside of the fence, and, you know, so our our solar panels are close to the perimeter fence, just because of where the inverters are located. And it’s been a a good thing. We haven’t had any issues with with it at all with with the cap. Like, 0.

Glenda Pereira: 13:21

Yeah. Yeah. No. I remember. And, obviously, the area underneath it can be, you know, sacrificed because during days, especially during the summer when they’re being heavily u utilized, they become like a, you know, a heavy trafficked area because cows are spending a lot of time underneath.

Glenda Pereira: 13:39

But there’s potentially some solutions to that. So how have you found to utilize that space underneath that and sort of what’s what are what are some of the work that you’re doing to, you know, get more use than just maybe the shade out of it? How do you renovate that area underneath?

Brad Heins: 13:56

That’s a good question. You know, we we’ve we’ve been looking at some ways to increase forage production and looking at alternative forages. I should say, we we did not find when the cows went out there, they don’t wreck the grass. You know, we we put the solar panels up. The grass grew back underneath just fine.

Brad Heins: 14:16

You know? It it was probably stunted because you go in there with heavy equipment and put up solar panels, you’re gonna have some, you know, land that might get disturbed. But the grass grew back just fine. No issues. We didn’t do anything with it.

Brad Heins: 14:31

It it did grow back. But we were also looking at, you know, different forages and legumes that we could put under the it grows best under underneath solar panels for for cow grazing. And so we completed a a kind of 2 year study where we looked at lots of different grasses from cool season grasses and legumes to warm season grasses, to see what did best underneath solar panels. And, you know, the cool season grasses, us, meadow fescue, and orchard grass work the best. They have the best growth rates and and really worked out well for growing underneath solar panels, you know, incorporate a little red clover in it, just like any pasture.

Brad Heins: 15:17

It’s really a a a pasture mix that seemed to do best under the solar panels. So, some of the other grasses were stunted a little bit. Warm season grasses didn’t do as well because of of the shade that, you know, solar panels cast on the ground. So

Glenda Pereira: 15:33

Right. Yeah. That was the

Brad Heins: 15:36

big difference. Certainly depends on the farm, really.

Glenda Pereira: 15:39

Right. Yeah. But solar solar grazing is not the only thing that’s happening on the farm right now. So kind of going back to this research center has the potential to do quite a quite a bit of different projects and diversity of projects, but that are all encompassing related to climate change. So there’s a project that you’re doing right now where you’re feeding seaweed.

Brad Heins: 16:09

Yes. You know? So we’ve we’ve gotten into the looking at, you know, methane emissions from from our cows, and we actually completed a 6 month study where we fed basically red seaweed, to our our dairy herd over a 6 month period and, to look at, you know, methane reduction. We probably saw 30 to 40% reduction in in methane across across the study. So, you know, we we showed that we can utilize some of those things.

Brad Heins: 16:39

We have some pretty cool methane collection devices here that we can use to to get methane from the cows. It’s called green feed systems. They, you know, a lot of researchers have those. Some commercial farms actually have them too. Yeah.

Brad Heins: 16:57

So it was kind of fun kind of moving into a little bit different space as far as methane emissions. And and now I have 2 of the systems out there. They’re collecting methane. We’re doing some breed comparisons. So comparing Holstein cows versus our some of our crossbred cows for methane emissions and and kind of seeing what’s happening as far as methane based on breeds.

Brad Heins: 17:22

So it’s we’ll we’re kind of working on that, and we have some future projects working in, calves and heifers, looking at methane, in in those animals. So it’s, yeah, kind of a interesting time to be moving into some new research with methane and trying to see where where where we go with it.

Glenda Pereira: 17:42

Yeah. Any sort of inklings where that research is headed or or, you you know, what what are the results looking like? I know we can’t share anything until we’ve done the analysis and we’ve crunched the numbers, but what’s what’s it you know, give us sort of maybe some predictions of what the brief comparisons could look like.

Brad Heins: 18:04

You know, I I think methane is always a tough one because if you just say, you know, give you a methane value, it doesn’t tell you anything about what the cow’s eating, how much the cow is eating, what her breed is, what her milk production is, anything like that. So it’s always hard to say, you know, cow you know, this cow has lower methane than that cow, which we we see that. You know, there’s a lot there’s a lot of differences in cows. You know, some cows have higher methane, some cows have lower, but we don’t until we know a lot of other factors, we can’t really determine it. So, you know, trying to figure out, you know, methane per, you know, pound of milk or per pound of body weight or something like that is sort of where it will go.

Brad Heins: 18:48

That is interesting. Kind of early stuff shows that, if you look at methane per pound of body weight, the cross spreads do a little bit better than the Holsteins. But, you know, it it really depends. I haven’t really found a lot of differences. Right now, I have almost 20,000 methane measurements, so we’ll be looking at some of that stuff into the future.

Brad Heins: 19:10

It’s always hard to tell you say it’s early results, from those studies.

Glenda Pereira: 19:16

Right. Right. Yeah. There there’s a lot of factors to consider. And, you know, I think farmers really won’t have one silver bullet to to sort of, you know, continue to improve their methods to reduce impacts of climate change because they already have so many strategies that they’re do they’ve been doing for so many years to obviously, you know, work towards main you know, maintaining carbon neutral or or working towards that.

Glenda Pereira: 19:43

But this is just gonna be another piece or tool that they can potentially use maybe understanding how breeds and maybe body weight even it seems like might impact methane production. So is there you you know, as you you’re thinking about this research, what is the impact you hope that this research will have to dairy farmers in Minnesota or even in other states?

Brad Heins: 20:13

Well, you know, I think there’s it it is interesting because I think we’re you know, I I don’t know how you’re sort of getting pressured from the industry to lower our carbon footprint by whatever year or things like that. So, you know, obviously, methane mitigation is one way to do that. And so we’re trying to find ways that are helpful to farmers to figure out what to do. Most of it right now is is feed additives. You know, if you think about, you know, even sort of yesterday as as we’re recording this, Bovaer, which is a a 3 NOP product, got approved in the US.

Brad Heins: 20:54

It’s a feed additive that can reduce methane, you know, 30% or so. So that might become quite popular. I was talking with another company that’s got another product in it, and some organic farms have fed it. It’s called Agilent. All tech has it.

Brad Heins: 21:09

And so we’re talking about feeding agolin here to you know, you only get 10% reduction in methane, but maybe get a couple pound boost in production with it. You know, it’s really gonna come down to economics. And is it worth it to feed this stuff? Will farmers get paid more for their milk? Which probably not right now.

Brad Heins: 21:34

So it’s really it it a lot of this stuff is sort of chasing carbon credits and, you know, some payments to farmers. So, you know, those farmers that are feeding these kind of things will be sort of capitalizing on on some carbon credits. When I was talking about ag lend, I think is like $8.50 per cow per year on a carbon credit that, you know, a farmer can get in some sort of payment. So, you know, will it offset things that, you know, I don’t know. I think that the economics are really, what’s gonna drive this into into the future.

Brad Heins: 22:08

At least that’s what I think.

Glenda Pereira: 22:11

Absolutely. No. I definitely agree with you. And folks in the northeast or maybe folks here in Maine have actually heard of Agilent because it it’s been mentioned as a way to, you know, enter the space of potentially decreasing their carbon output. But you’re right.

Glenda Pereira: 22:26

I think money will be at the center of this, and it’s gonna have to obviously be cost effective for farmers to implement something like this. You know? It’s it’s kind of the driver of all things, and it has to be factored in to our cost of production, on a farm. And it obviously has to make sense. If it if it’s too costly, then it’s obviously, you know, hindering the use of a feed additive such as Eglin or any other feed additive on the market.

Glenda Pereira: 22:54

So thanks for that insight on that. I wanted to just end our chat today with an an ask of, is there a free tool or a a skill that you recommend for farmers to utilize regarding, you know, agrivoltaics or anything related to climate change, maybe? Is there some yeah. I know you’ve been working with, obviously, grazing and organic farmers. Is there something that they can, you know, utilize or implement even on their farm that is free and won’t come at a cost?

Brad Heins: 23:30

That’s a good question.

Glenda Pereira: 23:32

It’s a loaded question. I know. But as I learn more, you know, and try to build my toolbox, and and as I speak with more folks, I’m always like, you know, is there something that we can add to the toolbox that farmers maybe haven’t come across? And, you know, it can be, you know, an app where, I I don’t know, they they’re looking at what the carbon credit market is like or even a resource that you’ve come across?

Brad Heins: 24:00

Actually, I you know, there’s not really a lot of good resources on this stuff. You know, you can find a lot of things on on the Internet related to that. We actually have some stuff on our our research center’s website that talks about agrivoltaics and looking at renewable energy and how, you know, you might incorporate some of that stuff in into, you know, a system. But it’s a lot of the stuff is so early in the research that it’s, you know, there there’s not a lot out there as far as really helping, you know, farmers determine economics or things like that. You know, we’re just trying to help get the research out there, that shows that, you know, this stuff works and you can do it, and and shouldn’t be afraid to do it.

Brad Heins: 24:49

So, sorry I don’t have a better answer for you.

Glenda Pereira: 24:53

I think that was good, though. I think what you what you

Brad Heins: 24:56

Right. Yeah.

Glenda Pereira: 24:57

I think what I heard was that you’re a resource. And if folks have more questions to reach out to you and you can maybe help support them in their decision to implement agrivoltaics or a feed, you know, feed out of feed additive or learning more about feeding seaweed. I think that’s that’s I I that’s what I got from that answer.

Brad Heins: 25:23

You’re right, Glenn. And I’m I’m willing to help, you know, any farmer, that calls or emails or whatever and and wants to have a conversation about it. I’m I’m more than willing to help. You know, that’s part of my in my extension role too is to is to help farmers kind of understand and and help them to, answer questions. So, yes, I’m more than willing to help out in in any sort of different way.

Glenda Pereira: 25:48

And now, do you wanna drop the like, where folks drop your Instagram handle or drop information regarding where folks can reach out to you. And I’ll also share this in our show notes, but where can folks reach or learn more about the work that you’re doing?

Brad Heins: 26:02

Well, you can either, you know, visit our our website. I think it’s wcroc.cfans.umn.edu. There’s lots of stuff on there related to a lot of the research we do from dairy, renewable energy, and and our swine and horticulture program. You can certainly follow me on Instagram. I think it’s umnwcrocdairy on Instagram.

Brad Heins: 26:27

I post kind of some of the things that we’re doing in research and and, you know, there’s agrivoltaics and lots of different things on there too. So there’s lots of different ways that, you know, we can follow to to see what we’re doing and and and what we’re up to.

Glenda Pereira: 26:42

And lastly, Brad also has a podcast, so you can learn more about the ongoings of his research program over at The Moose Room. It’s a great podcast. I listen to it regularly, and I enjoy that content as well. So with that, thank you so much, Brad, for, you know, giving our listeners a little bit of insight into the research station and and the types of projects that you’re conducting. And it’s always great to catch up and learn more and continue to learn.

Glenda Pereira: 27:16

So even though I’ve graduated, I still continue to learn from you and the folks out at University of Minnesota.

Brad Heins: 27:23

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here and happy to share, what we’re doing.

Glenda Pereira: 27:29

Alright. Thanks so much. See you

Brad Heins: 27:38

later.

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