Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
The Accidental Goat Vet
An introduction to Season 1 of Baa's and Bleat's with Dr. Kelly Still-Brooks and Dr. Michelle Buckley. This season will focus on improving milk quality in dairy goats through records management, mastitis detection, dry-off protocols, colostrum management, and appropriate use of pharmaceuticals.
Questions can be emailed to DairyGoatExtension@iastate.edu
Sponsored by the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture's Agricultural and Food Research Initiative Competitive Program, Antimicrobial Resistance grant # 2020-04197.
Hello, I'm Dr. Michelle Buckley from Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine. Thanks so much for joining us on Baas and Bleats, sponsored by the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners. Just a quick note before we get started, this work is also supported by the USCA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agricultural and Food Research Initiative Competitive Program, Antimicrobial Resistance Grant No. 2020-04197, which funds my research on improving antibiotic stewardship in dairy goats to assure food safety and milk quality. As always, if you have any questions about any of our episodes, please email them to dairygoatextension at iastate.edu. I hope you enjoyed today's show. Thanks for joining us today on season one of the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners Podcast. This season we're focusing on improving milk quality and food safety in dairy goats. Today we're chatting with Dr. Kelly Stillbrooks about what the goal of this podcast is and getting a little background on milk quality in dairy goats. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Kelly. Can you give us a little bit of an introduction?
Kelly:Absolutely. And thank you so much for the invitation to host tonight. I'm really excited to get this podcast off the ground and excited for the collaboration as we go through and talk about dairy goat medicine, health, and husbandry. I'm currently the president for the American Association, the Small Roman Practitioners. Earlier in my career, I started off as an Army veterinarian with a real specific interest in preventive medicine and time working in the international arena overseas, where sheep and goats are a major part of the local economy at the household level. As part of the Army, I was able to go do a small ruminant focused clinical internship at Iowa State University, which is how Michelle, you and I eventually made the networks to get together. I'm currently a livestock and production medicine faculty at Colorado State University, College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, with a specific focus in ruminant practice, including small ruminant commercial practice. Could you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your professional history, and your current role?
Michelle:Sure. I um I grew up in the suburbs outside Rochester, New York. Um I spent a lot of time helping on the crop farm that my grandparents own and operate. I always wanted to be a veterinarian. I was one of those children who just latched onto that from an early age. Um but I initially wanted to do equine practice and equine sports medicine and was kind of intrigued by racing actually and applying for vet school. And I wound up spending six weeks in Clovis, New Mexico at the Southern Great Plains Dairy Consortium, and absolutely fell in love with dairy production. Um I especially was fascinated by how much data we record and utilize in um on American dairy farms, especially the larger scale farms, and how our industry has just grown by leaps and bounds because of uh because of that data and and all the information that we utilize on a day-to-day basis in terms of efficiency, animal welfare, production, husbandry. I mean, we're just worlds ahead of where we were 50 years ago. Um not to mention I love cows and I think they're awesome. So I wound up going to vet school at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California, um, down Southern California. Um, and I was very active in the student chapter of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners and Small Ruminant Practitioners. Um I was president for a year and um tried to get the club more active on campus. Um planned to go back to New York and be a dairy vet after graduation, um, but my plans got a little off track. I met this really great guy during my third year and wound up marrying him. Uh, so I stayed in Southern California for a few extra years. I accepted a full-time offer at a small animal general practice when I graduated, um, but I also saw that there was a need for livestock uh production medicine on a very small scale in the inland empire of Southern California. Um, and I wanted to keep my hands in that side of uh veterinary medicine as well, so I started a practice when I graduated, um, named it after my family farm, so it's called the Hidden Rock Large Animal Service. And um I just really slowly started building up clients in between working my my full-time job and some relief ER shifts. Um, was lucky enough to buy out a practitioner that was um retiring and got a bunch of her equipment um thanks to a loan my parents gave me. And so I decided I better start seeing patients so I could pay them back. And then over the next four years the practice grew and I cut back on my small animal, cut back on my ER shifts, and um essentially got to a point where I was full-time ambulatory. Um that was mid-COVID, so I was doing relief small animal work too, just because everybody was so busy. And I also got involved with teaching at my alma mater. Um I was doing small ruminant labs, wet labs, um hosting third and fourth year clinical rotations, and I also got to do a bit of teaching for um California Polytechnic Institute. But during that time in practice, I was mainly serving small ruminants and potbelly pigs, good mix of uh camelids, dogs, cats, and even a few horses as well. So certainly not the way I envisioned my career when I started out. Um I also got to be the supervising vet for the Los Angeles County Fair for two years, which was a really, really fun experience for me. Um I wound up spending a lot of my time educating the urbanites of Southern California about livestock production and how we care for livestock species. Um, and it was really interesting hearing the way that they perceived livestock production versus my experience in it and kind of trying to meld those two things together in a way that was still approachable for people. Um so that kind of just fostered my love of educating people about where their food comes from and also helped me understand what the general public thinks about where their food comes from and how those are very different in a lot of cases. In 2021, I decided to take on a postdoc program at Iowa State University and continue my mission of bridging the gap, is what I call it, between producers and consumers. Um, so just trying to help producers understand what consumers want and consumers understand how hard producers are working and all the safeguards that are in place already to provide a healthy, wholesome product for the public to consume. So I currently currently am studying under Dr. Pat Gordon, and my major project revolves around improving antibiotic stewardship in dairy goats to assure milk quality and food safety. And I also manage some other projects on dairy cattle, and my work, all of my work pertains to appropriate use of pharmaceuticals in food animals. I'm planning to sit for my clinical pharmacology boards a bit later in my program, but I just finished my first year, so trying to pace myself.
Kelly:Thank you, Dr. Michelle. You know, I think it's pretty ironic that um neither of us made it back to New York to go into dairy cattle practice, which I think was both of our plan A's, but it's turned into such a neat career trajectory and different career trajectory on both of our ends. And I'm really excited to hear what you did. It's making that transition from small animal practice to the ambulatory food animal, is pretty incredible.
Michelle:It's been a lot of fun. It's just a testament to the fact that our career is so flexible, you know, we can do anything, and you don't have to start out doing your dream job or even know what that is in the beginning, I don't think.
Kelly:So, what I really want to know, you know, compared to the cattle dairy industry, even though we have a ton of growth in the small room and at dairy, it's still a really small, tight-knit industry group. How did you get to that transition from cows to dairy goat production?
Michelle:Um, it was completely accidental. And um, my my personal hashtag on Instagram is accidental goat vet because this is not at all where I meant to be. But um essentially it happened through my experience working in Southern California. Most of my clients had hobby farms and were homesteaders and um really had no understanding of livestock production whatsoever, but they had strong opinions about how they wanted their food to be raised and how they wanted their children to be raised and the experiences that they wanted their kids to have growing up. And a lot of my clients chose to raise dairy goats um as part of that process and that belief system that they had, and so I just kind of accidentally wound up uh figuring it out, and I guess probably a little bit of confidence that I maybe didn't deserve to have at the time because I was like, well, I've done a lot of dairy stuff, and I spent my whole fourth year doing dairy production. I can figure out dairy goats, they're like dairy cows. Uh and the more time I spent working on dairy goats, the more I realized they are not necessarily like dairy cows in many ways, and so I was really intrigued by that, and I still love dairy cows, but I also am very intrigued by the differences between goats and cows. And then when this um opportunity came along at Iowa State and they said dairy production, pharmacology, and goats, I was like, okay, where do I sign up?
Kelly:Well, excellent there. So moving from, you know, I can see the clinical practice and engagement with the clients and and all of the opportunities you had for working with the consumer public in the in the fair settings, but what made you latch on and and see have this um idea of starting a podcast on dairy goats?
Michelle:Well, I can take zero responsibility for that idea because it was completely my boss, Dr. Gordon's uh thought. The um the grant that funds most of my research has an outreach component to it um that requires that the information we develop from um from the projects that I work on be shared um in an easy manner with other veterinarians as well as producers and the general public. And so initially that started out as a website. Um that was how it was pitched to me when I first heard about the program. Um and that's still in the works as well. But in a meeting a few months ago, Dr. Gordon's just kind of blurted out, well, maybe we should make a podcast. And I was like, When you say we, you mean me, don't you? Um and I happened to be doing a project that required about seven hours a day of driving that week. And I had a lot of steering wheel time to think about this, and I was like, you know, maybe this would be a good opportunity for me because then I can interview people who are a lot smarter than I am, and I can learn some stuff, and other veterinarians might also have those same questions that I have. Um, so I could share that information, and there definitely is a big demand for veterinarians that are willing to work on small ruminants and especially dairy goats. Um, and I think it can be a bit intimidating to people who most certainly have the mental capacity to do it, they're just not quite sure where to get the resources. So I'm hoping that this will be a jumping off point for veterinarians to uh get acquainted with some folks who have some experience in this field already, as well as some of the issues that producers are facing and the questions that they might ask. Um, and I also want this to be a resource for producers who have been in the dairy goat industry for a while and are working to make improv improvements in their operations. Um so uh my goal is to address some of the major issues that they face, um give some insights, and then also maybe start a dialogue between them and their veterinarians about hey, you know, I heard about this on the podcast. Do you think this is something we should look into on our operation? Um so just kind of helping people get on the same page as producers and veterinarians.
Kelly:That's that's excellent. You know, for an off-a-cuff idea. It you know, it certainly is is perfect, and I'm really excited for these series. So many of our small ruminant practitioners they work on other species too. It's a mixed practice model and and small ruminants, as you pointed out, they're not just small cows, right? Where we wind up extrapolating is usually when we either don't have the information or we haven't had access to the information. And as we get more and more evidence bases for making clinical decisions in small ruminant practice, getting that information out and access to the veterinarians that are using it is is so important. So what are your goals then for this podcast series and and who's your target audience specifically?
Michelle:Well, my goal is to basically um pinpoint some of the basic questions that uh producers face on a regular basis, and then um veterinarians are gonna be dealing with those questions as well, right? Just by default being associated. So things like um utilizing identification, what kind of identification methods um are are useful in dairy goats because you know, in cattle ear tags work great, but in goats uh they're a little bit better about chewing those off or you know, losing them in other ways. They're they're quite creative with that type of thing. So um how do we keep all of our animals identified, especially as the operations get larger? Um and then things like implementing records. A lot of operations, you know, they're still using paper and pencil or Excel spreadsheets. And there's nothing wrong with that, but uh standardizing those things a little bit more um can be really helpful and and even uh, you know, utilizing some digital records programs like we see in the dairy cow side, like dairy cont 305, PC Dart, things like that. Um it really streamlines the way that we take in information and then the ways that we can utilize that as well. Um we're also gonna talk about how to use antibiotics or drugs in general safely in goats because they are a minor species and um small animal vets who are getting asked to work on goats are, you know, they haven't really had to deal with that issue. And large animal, you know, dairy vets that are working on goats, the rules can be a little bit different. Um we're gonna dive into um working your way through that and uh helping people find resources um to get through those types of situations. Uh we're gonna talk about managing um somatic cell counts and how we can utilize um different methods of evaluating somatic cell counts and what that means for our milk quality and milk production. A lot about mastitis um because that's my boss's uh kind of bread and butter. So I'll I'll be putting him on the spot a little bit. So I think we've got a pretty good lineup of episodes here um to talk about some of the basics and improving milk quality. And I think we've got speakers that will make it relatable for veterinarians, large animal, small animal, people who are already a little involved with small ruminants, as well as producers who are already kind of involved in the dairy goat industry.
Kelly:Yeah, absolutely. I I've seen the sneak preview of that speaker list, and if I could take all the best brains that I know and love listening to when I go to meetings and I could just put them in the same room together, I think that's what you have lined up right here, and and that's gonna be pretty, pretty phenomenal to listen to. So I I don't have a great crystal ball, and I definitely couldn't have predicted the derby winner. But I know when we get this started that people are gonna have more questions and they're gonna want more information. So when our listeners have those questions, how can they reach out to learn more about your project?
Michelle:We have an email set up um that is going to come to the working group that works with my the grant that I am working on right now. So um those are all the people that are directly involved with my research, um, and then uh this podcast as well and putting it together. So that email address is dairygoatexten at Iastate.edu. It's all one word. Um and people can send questions about any of our episodes. Um they can ask for contact information for speakers or um get clarification on some of the research that we talk about. We'll try and put as much as we can in the show notes, but sometimes that can get uh people can get a little bit bogged down trying to slodge through all of that. So um, if anyone needs any clarification, it's gonna be dairy goat extension at iact.edu.
Kelly:Awesome, thank you. And before we wrap up here tonight, what other things would you like listeners to know?
Michelle:I guess my my major lesson that I have learned so far in my career is that it's okay to not know the answer to something. It's okay to struggle to figure out how to find that answer. But in my experience, the best way to get started is just to reach out to someone, even if you know they're not exactly who you have in mind or or maybe they're not a complete expert in your area that you have questions in, they're gonna be able to point you to someone who's gonna be able to help you. One thing I really love about the food and animal um community, especially among veterinarians, is that everyone's always willing to help each other. Um and so I've just made so many wonderful connections and learned so much from the people I've met through ABP and AASRP. And so really, I mean, even if you've never looked at a goat before but you're curious about it, you can go on to the AASRP website and um you can look for the board of directors and you can contact us through the uh through the Extension website. Um people are here to help and we're excited to have people joining the force of folks that are working on it. So there's definitely room for everybody here and uh Hopefully we can be of some assistance with this new podcast.
Kelly:I absolutely agree. That's one thing I tell students all the time for this career is you've got to get comfortable working outside of your comfort zone. And you've got to know where your networks and your resources are because at the end of the day, you're going to see something new for the rest of your life in this practice and in this career. So thank you very much, Dr. Michelle Buckley, the accidental goat vet. I'm so excited to see this season get started.
Michelle:Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Stillbrooks. I'm really thrilled that we can partner with ASRP for this, and I'm really excited to see how it goes.
