Glenda Pereira: 00:05
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant professor at the University of Maine and the dairy specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. For today’s episode, we have a repeat guest and an awesome colleague, Maddy Philbrick is with us again today in the studio, and we’re gonna talk about the Maine Cattle Health Assurance Program that happened here recently and what she learned. For folks that don’t know what MeCHAP is, it’s a program that was organized in previous years.
Glenda Pereira: 00:44
My predecessor, Gary Anderson, was actually part of the effort to bring this group together. And the focus is on obviously cattle and bringing educational opportunities and people together to improve animal health and welfare, specifically with beef and dairy cattle. So it brings a lot of service providers together, as well as veterinarians into a space where they can just share more and think about what’s happening within the state of Maine and learn from each other. So, Maddy, what would you say was your experience attending… well, this was your first MeCHAP meeting you attended? Yeah.
Maddy Philbrick: 01:29
It was my first MeCHAP. It was a great experience. I remember I was sitting there and about halfway through, I was like, wow. I know so many amazing people. I talk with them casually all the time.
Maddy Philbrick: 01:41
But then seeing them up there passionate and talking about their research, I was like, these people are cool. It’s great to know them.
Glenda Pereira: 01:48
I love that. Because most often when somebody speaks, they’re maybe homing in on a topic that they’re an expert in. And we don’t really have that conversation. But in that presentation style format, you usually get to see the people build the story about a topic. Right?
Glenda Pereira: 02:08
And in our world, we’re always learning. Always. Always learning. So MeCHAP is also a continuing education opportunity for veterinarians in
Maddy Philbrick: 02:18
the state. It’s a chance to get in-person CE credits for some of our large animal vets that struggle maybe to go attend a conference that’s a couple days. It is a really great opportunity. But just the fact that a lot of my colleagues were presenting, it was just a really great opportunity to see them because a couple I’ve never seen them actually talk about their passions. I talk to them day to day about different things and different topics, but not about what makes them go as a person.
Maddy Philbrick: 02:47
Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 02:48
Yeah. And so Maddy specifically speaking about the speakers that were at the session. This happened in November 2025. So the keynote speaker was Dr. Pete Erickson, which Pete’s a great resource to us and a fantastic colleague.
Glenda Pereira: 03:05
Dr. Pete Erickson is a professor and the extension specialist at the University of New Hampshire. His expertise is in calves. He’s been doing twenty five plus years of calf research. And he talked about practical nutrition applications for calves and heifers, which really is the foundation of our dairy herds.
Glenda Pereira: 03:25
In addition, Dr. Dana Hill, who has been on the podcast before, is the director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab here at the University of Maine. She talked about what she’s been seeing through the lab, cases, dilemmas, had a lot of discussion about what she’s been seeing in the past couple of years. Dr. Jessica Motta, another colleague here at the University of Maine, who has recently been on the podcast,
Glenda Pereira: 03:51
talked about her expertise in fertility and specifically applying the hormone to maximize embryo production. And then the last presenter was Dr. James Rhodes, who is a veterinarian at IDEXX Laboratories. And he focused in on bovine viral diarrhea virus, or some of you may know this as BVD. So like you mentioned, a lot of these people are people you work together with on a day-to-day basis.
Maddy Philbrick: 04:22
Yeah. Dana’s presentation went in-depth on what’s going on in the lab. I always enjoy watching her do a case study. It’s cool to see how a pathologist’s brain works. So just her working through like, this is what I get for a history and then this is what I see under the microscope and coming to the final diagnosis is really an interesting thing to see through slides.
Maddy Philbrick: 04:45
It’s always different species too. So I’ve seen her present on black bear cases that are like super weird parasites or something. This one was mainly cattle because it was a cattle conference. Targeted. The
Glenda Pereira: 04:56
audience was the Maine Cattle Health Assurance Program.
Maddy Philbrick: 04:58
She really got in-depth on what the VDL is, what services they can offer. She had a poll question that asked how necessary do you think it is to have a lab in the state? And pretty much everybody was like, it’s very necessary. Right. At the very least, to have the necropsy services that she offers to be able to get answers for producers in a timely manner because you’re likely not going to ship a large animal across state lines
Maddy Philbrick: 05:26
to get a necropsy. So having that service available is just invaluable for people.
Glenda Pereira: 05:33
Yeah. And something you said, so necropsy. And in your current role at DACF, you’ve been working with some farms on biosecurity plans. And as part of that, you’ve been able to potentially offer some additional testing and necropsies. And you’re suggesting for some folks to even be able to work with Dana
Glenda Pereira: 05:57
and to, like we mentioned before, try to potentially figure out why did this happen. There wasn’t any… you know, we’ve scoured everything else. And this kind of seems to be the last thing we wanna do to then try to find a potential solution to why this happened and prevent other cases like this from happening on that producer’s respective farm.
Maddy Philbrick: 06:18
Yeah. The biosecurity part of my work is huge. We have a grant that does offer some testing right now for producers that are enrolled in the grant. And some have gotten answers that I don’t think they would have otherwise. Just limited funds or just not ability to invest in those kind of answers.
Maddy Philbrick: 06:36
Which has led to the management changes as well because they’re able to get the answer.
Glenda Pereira: 06:40
They’re able to figure out what went wrong. And now how do we prevent it from happening in the future? Which is great work on both sides. And as the quote states, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And so more testing can potentially provide or guide you in the next management step.
Glenda Pereira: 07:03
So we talked about Dana’s presentation. Do you want to talk about… do we want to keep on UMaine colleagues, folks, then
Maddy Philbrick: 07:12
move on to external UMaine folks. So Dr. Jessica Motta presented on ways to potentially improve embryo production. I have actually not had the pleasure of seeing her present on her PhD work yet. But it reminded me of my repro class and my repro roots.
Maddy Philbrick: 07:31
If anybody listening has ever gotten to listen to Jim Weber on his repro talks, I was right back in repro class. She presented on what she’s found for ways to increase embryo production, but also how to predict what animals are going to be better embryo transfer candidates. And you can actually, based off her research, determine if a cow will be a good transfer cow at 200 days of age. So before breeding has ever even been considered. You can say, this is going to be a higher production embryo cow.
Maddy Philbrick: 08:08
I should be able to select this one with the caveat of there is definitely a market there for farms that want to do embryo that’s maybe they’re just all good cows or they’re not looking to necessarily have top genetics, but they want to put embryos in from what they have of good cows. Right. And there’s a lot of potential there with that research. And just not something I’d ever even considered for us being able to do that. Right.
Glenda Pereira: 08:35
Yeah. And I know that’s just a sliver of what she talked about. But a lot of components go into fertility that we forget sometimes. Right. The animal has to be in the right body condition, the right weight, the right stage of reproductive life.
Glenda Pereira: 08:51
They have to reach their puberty age, their breeding age and weight, especially in height. That’s important too. But then they have to have all the groceries and nutrients for it. And so really, her research controls for a lot of these factors. But then
Maddy Philbrick: 09:07
also the thing with embryos too is they’re born with the cells that they’re gonna have. So to her point, and again, I maybe hadn’t fully considered this, you can do an embryo flush before you would necessarily breed that cow. So they don’t necessarily have to be breeding age, but you could already be harvesting embryos, which may be a forgotten fact in the back of my brain. But I was like, oh, that’s kinda neat that you could potentially harvest embryos from a younger animal, put them into a recip cow that is of correct breeding age and potentially be getting those
Glenda Pereira: 09:44
genomics into your herd faster than even waiting the year before you can breed. Increasing our genetic progress quick. So getting there quicker is definitely a potential opportunity. Some farms are already there and they wanna maximize that. They can certainly take advantage of that.
Maddy Philbrick: 10:00
It was great to watch her talk. And then just seeing somebody that is a newer faculty member be so passionate, and she gave such an engaging presentation. That was great. I was cheering around from the front row.
Glenda Pereira: 10:12
But now we’re moving into calves. Dr. Pete Erickson led the team in talking about calf and heifer nutrition and really sort of setting them up correctly for success to enter the lactating herd. Right? And that’s everybody’s goal is to how do we give these calves the best chance at entering the herd in that two-year time period?
Maddy Philbrick: 10:37
Yeah. So he talked about everything under the sun. Most of it was his work in calves and heifers, but some of it even branched out. Jeff Dahl from the University of Florida, he talked about some of the heat abatement and heat stress and how that can affect the calf and heifer through their life because the dam was put under heat stress. Which was interesting because I knew who was standing in front of me and it was Pete Erickson.
Maddy Philbrick: 11:01
But I actually attended a talk that Geoff Dahl, Dr. Dahl, had given on that topic. So seeing somebody else presenting it was also a great three sixty, I guess, back to that previous talk. And then Pete went on about his recent research, the differences between Jerseys and Holsteins a lot too, because he’s done a lot of work between the two breeds, between the two farms at UNH. And yes, he gave us his life’s work in those three hours. We covered everything under the sun.
Maddy Philbrick: 11:32
And yes, Pete, we will always give good colostrum.
Glenda Pereira: 11:35
Yes. Yes. He’s very passionate about colostrum. But I think that’s important. And I think something that was advantageous is that there are so many… and maybe why you even picked up on Pete mentioning Geoff Dahl’s work was because that closes the loop on some of the things we’ve been wondering about.
Glenda Pereira: 11:54
Right? So in genetics, we always account for maternal effects because why? The dam is carrying that animal and whatever that dam’s experiencing in gestation is directly impacting that lifetime performance for that animal. Right? So Geoff Dahl’s work, and specifically what Pete was mentioning, was that dams who were more heat stressed during gestation had calves that had lower birth weights.
Glenda Pereira: 12:23
And then those calves, because egg production actually in females happens at the time that they’re in utero, and then it picks back up again during puberty, which is kind of really cool. So when those calves that were negatively impacted by heat stress effects during gestation had calves, those calves had those prolonged long-term effects from their grandma. So from their grand dam in this case. And so heat stress in Jeff Dahl and his team’s research was a long-term impact that we hadn’t accounted for. We hadn’t really put the puzzle pieces together, connect the dots.
Glenda Pereira: 13:06
And that’s where colostrum starts. Right? Gestation has colostrum impacts. And then colostrum, if you do it really correctly, try to manage everything, kind of kicks everything off. I think it’s exciting that we kind of closed the loop on some of the impacts that gestation has on calf performance.
Maddy Philbrick: 13:24
But there’s still a lot unknown too because he definitely touched on the fact of colostrum production and why are some cows just not making… is that all heat stress versus not heat stress? There’s breed effects. Breed effects as well.
Glenda Pereira: 13:40
For his student, Tess Stahl. She looked at Jersey data, which we don’t have as much data on as we do for the Holstein breed.
Maddy Philbrick: 13:47
But Pete’s saying that he’s hearing more about it in Holsteins now too. So it’s not just the Jerseys. He said maybe there’s some more squawking from the Jerseys, but we’re seeing it in the Holstein breed as well, which is always really interesting.
Glenda Pereira: 14:01
And another thing that Pete, I don’t wanna forget this, harbors on is water access. So calves, it’s really crucial that they’re exposed to water all the time. But calves need water more so because calves right around the time when they’re four to six months of age are going to develop their rumen. And one of the big things that we need for rumen development is water intake because water moves all of the nutrients throughout the body. So if you think about, you know, yes, feed’s important, calves need feed, but water is really what’s doing the transportation of a lot of those nutrients to the body.
Glenda Pereira: 14:38
And so as the rumen’s developing, that calf’s going from having predominantly the abomasum be their way that they’re ingesting and breaking down, the rumen is gonna be that next transition phase for them and become their main way that they break down all their feed. So water is really crucial, especially during the pre-weaning and, of course, during the post-weaning process.
Maddy Philbrick: 15:01
Yeah. He said that his lab was one of the first ones to measure water intake in the calves in some of the studies that he was doing. And yes, he did harp on water. He was like, it’s the nutritionist in me. It was one of the first things taught to me when I came out of school was if they don’t have water, it’s the biggest limiting factor for your feed intake.
Maddy Philbrick: 15:19
And that does still apply when they’re on milk. So yeah. Make sure there’s water in front of your cows.
Glenda Pereira: 15:23
And so our last speaker of the day and last calf topic was BVD. So Dr. Jim Rhodes from IDEXX, which is actually a lab that is based in Maine, which is pretty cool. It’s down in the Westbrook area if you’ve ever been. And you might know them because they have these rapid tests for pregnancy checks that you can do on the farm super quick. You can take a blood sample and find out if that cow is pregnant or not.
Glenda Pereira: 15:54
So that’s probably where folks have interacted mostly with IDEXX. But Jim Rhodes talked about bovine viral diarrhea. And what were the takeaways from what he presented yesterday?
Maddy Philbrick: 16:07
So he was talking about potentially trying to get an eradication effort in for BVD. It’s a very costly disease. It’s almost a silent disease if you’re not paying attention and looking for it, which was one of my big takeaways of sometimes if you’re not looking for it, you’re not necessarily gonna know it’s there. The chronically infected calves get infected in utero and the dam can still end up being negative even though you have a chronically infected positive calf. The calf, in order to have that chronic infection, has to be infected
Maddy Philbrick: 16:45
at like fifty-ish to a hundred and forty-ish days in utero. Yep. And those are gonna be your carrier calves that are then going to keep that disease at your farm. So it’s really critical to test in order to find out is this disease here. One example he talked about was pregnancy rate.
Maddy Philbrick: 17:04
So BVD can affect your pregnancy rate. While many of these animals that are infected will die before they turn two, the disease can have some background effects. It will cause abortions. And you just won’t know that they’re slipping the calf before thirty days. So it can be very costly.
Maddy Philbrick: 17:22
We don’t really have a metric to be able to put a dollar amount either because it can affect in so many different ways. Right. So it was great to learn about the testing options available and learn really the effects of that disease and how to have a conversation with producers about this disease. So if you do test your bulk tank or you do screen your animals, what do we do from there? Most folks probably vaccinate for this.
Maddy Philbrick: 17:52
Or if you’re
Glenda Pereira: 17:52
not vaccinating, you might also know this product as Bovi-Shield. So probably a lot of farmers are already incorporating this into their vaccine program. But one of the ways to potentially prevent and minimize the future impacts of a disease is to vaccinate, and there is an effective vaccine. Of course, management always throws things you can’t control at it. But if you can work in concert with good management practices, good nutrition, as well as vaccinating and finding out what your vaccination program looks like…
Glenda Pereira: 18:27
Like Maddy said, you know, maybe you start with testing to understand what are the diseases you have present within your herd, and then
Maddy Philbrick: 18:33
you incorporate a specific vaccine. So you’re actually able to vaccinate for this and be sure to have a discussion with your team and with your veterinarian. Vaccination’s great too. The disease is a tricky disease as well. So we wanna make sure that we vaccinate with compliance to the manufacturer’s directions.
Maddy Philbrick: 18:54
It is a modified live vaccine. If you mix it up, it goes down in efficacy for the next four hours. So making sure that if you’re vaccinating cows, you’re vaccinating them as quickly as possible after mixing it up. I was always taught twenty minutes from the time you mix a modified live. So only lock up as many cows as you think you can vaccinate in twenty minutes.
Maddy Philbrick: 19:17
I mean, things go sideways. But just keeping that in mind of compliance and making sure you’re actually getting the biggest defense into those animals.
Glenda Pereira: 19:27
Maddy, thank you so much for giving us insight into what you learned at the MeCHAP meeting. I hope folks can listen to this and potentially look for an opportunity to attend a MeCHAP meeting or reach out to the folks we mentioned because they can be good resources for you if you’re dealing with any issues on your farm. With that, if folks have future topic suggestions, comments, questions, be sure to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.