Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Dairy Goat Sustainability with Jenn Bentley
Join us for a discussion about a collaborative research project currently in the works headed up by Iowa State University. Jennifer Bentley, a dairy field specialist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, discusses the aims of the current project including assessing prevalence and treatment options for common diseases affecting dairy goats, developing financial assessments and benchmarks for goat dairies, and improving kid survival rates.
The Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Dairy Goat site can be found here: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/dairyteam/dairy-goats-sheep
Veterinarians may contact Jennifer via email at jbentley@iastate.edu to discuss participation in data collection for this project.
Learn more about Ms. Bentley's extension and outreach programs, visit her ISU staff profile: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/staff/jbentley
Learn more about Dr. Amanda Kreuder's research, visit her faculty page: https://vetmed.iastate.edu/directory/pub/info/akreuder
Review the results of the 2020 Iowa Dairy Goat Survey: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/dairyteam/files/documents/2020_dairy_goat_-_august_nwl.pdf
If your company or organization would like to sponsor an episode or if you have questions about today's show, please email Office@AASRP.org
Hello and welcome to the next episode of Baas and Bleats, the podcast produced by the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners. I'm super excited today. We're talking to an old friend of mine. We're talking to Jennifer Bentley, who is a dairy field specialist for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. Hey Jen, how are you?
Jenn:Good morning. I'm doing well. And we're not old, Sarah.
Sarah:So pardon me. Jen and I, so I have a master's degree from Iowa State. And while I was at Iowa State, Jen and I worked in the same lab, right?
Jenn:Mm-hmm.
Sarah:And you were an undergrad, right? Yep. Yeah. Yep. So we were actually, we should talk about that lab because it was so interesting. I love the work we did there. We worked for a woman named Dr. Wendy Powers. And I just, I loved her because her whole mission in life, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, Jen, was she was all about the environment, but from the farmer's perspective. So she wanted to make farming more environmentally friendly, but help the farmer make money doing it. Would you describe her like that?
Jenn:Yeah, definitely. I think her values and mission to do that were just really cool to see.
Sarah:Yeah, I I loved the work we did in that lab. We did a lot of playing with poop in that lab. That was basically what we did. We would go out and like do feeding trials, and then we would take poop samples and we would look at their phosphorus content. I mean, that was my project. I'm sure we did other things.
Jenn:Yeah, I mean, we did a lot of work out at the APC calf research center too, right? Yeah. Where we did a lot of the calf feeding trials and yeah, that was really fun too.
Sarah:We had baby calves that we got to play with on the daily. That was super fun. But yeah, so Jen and I go way back. That was like the early 2000s when I was there. And so, as you all know, my producer and sometimes host, Michelle Buckley and Jen worked together at Iowa State, right?
Jenn:Yeah, we we uh collaborated on a grant project a couple years ago on the milk quality side of things.
Sarah:Okay, and so Michelle approached me and she's like, I know you know Jen. I know you guys went to school together in the past and she's doing this really fun thing for dairy goats. We should talk to her. And I was like, Okay, let's do it. And so we've been it's been a long time that we've been emailing and trying to get this set up. So I'm excited about it. So why don't you just start by giving us a little bit of background? We already talked about how we went to Iowa State together, but just give us a little bit more about your degrees and kind of how you got to where you are.
Jenn:Sure. Yeah, well, I didn't start out with dairy goat as my background, dairy goats work in my background, but I grew up on a dairy farm in north central Iowa, and right now my brothers are still operating that dairy, so they milk about 300 cows. But that's kind of where I got my love of dairy was just growing up on the farm, youngest of five kids. So I got to do the jobs that nobody else wanted to do, which included feeding calves. Although, come to find out, I really loved feeding calves, so that was kind of my passion was young dairy calves. And so I went to Northeast Iowa Community College, which had a dairy farm and had a two-year degree in dairy herd management. So I went there and worked on a farm while I was working or while I was at college and thought I was gonna return back home to the family farm. And then I realized I really like education and wanted to further my degree. So I transferred to Iowa State and got my Bachelor of Science of Dairy Science degree. And that's where I worked with Sarah there in my undergrad work. And then I returned back to that community college and as part of the ISU research and demonstration farms. I was hired there as a calf manager and research technician. So a lot of the projects that Iowa State was doing, we were collecting data on that farm as well. So I did a lot of projects with Dr. Howard Tyler on calf feeding trials. I worked with Dr. Leo Timms on some of his milk quality trials. So it was really a fun time to be working in that space and be working with those people because they were just great researchers and people that were advocates for the dairy industry. So it was really fun. But during that time, I was also going back to school for my master's of agriculture degree, and so I did that online through Iowa State University. And in 2010, the extension position came open, and so I moved into that position and now working with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach as a dairy field specialist. So I've been doing that since 2010, and in my work, I focus a lot on young stock management. We also get into a lot of other dairy herd management practices, and then I would say probably five or six years ago, maybe dairy goats started to really become more, I guess, in the forefront of I guess we were getting more questions on it, and we weren't really having a lot of answers for producers. So then our Extension Dairy team kind of got together and was like, hey, we should maybe direct some of our educational focus towards our dairy goat producers, because at that time we were number two or number three in the United States for dairy goat production. It was like, you know, kind of the lost world of nobody knows these people are even around. So they need some resources. So we started to dive into ways that we could help them, whether that was through getting resources out to them, some newsletters, some in-person meetings, and doing some webinars now. But I would say in the last few years, like we partnered with Dr. Michelle Buckley on her milk quality grant that she did at Iowa State there. So our part of our job was to take what Dr. Buckley was doing or other researchers were doing and get the message out to the producers. So that was our outreach part of the project was you know, Iowa State was doing the research. Now let's get the, you know, the what's the useful information back out to the producers.
Sarah:Okay, okay. And so that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today. But let's back up a little bit. So I was shocked when Michelle told me that Iowa was like one of the top dairy goat states. Who is the top? Do you know?
Jenn:California. Okay, and Tex Wisconsin, Texas now is number three, and Iowa moved to number four.
Sarah:Okay. What is is it just a range of the dairy breeds that Iowa has, or like do they focus? Like, is there one breed that the islands love? Oh,'s or the Nubians, or what do they love out there?
Jenn:I feel like it's it's really mixed depending on what what your focus is, right? So we have a lot of show people, so they might be more into the mixed breeds, but if they're focused on milk production, it might be more of the the sonens. Okay, yeah, yeah.
Sarah:So I was president of the small room in a club and vet school, and we went out to a couple dairies, and they were almost all Nubians, but that may have just been a coincidence around Madison. I have no idea what's like the most popular beat breeds around there, but they are so cute, those Nubians with their ears. Oh my goodness.
Jenn:Yeah, yeah.
Sarah:Um, and that's the problem with La Mancha, they have no cute ears. But their milk is good. Their milk is amazing. Okay, so so kind of what we're gonna talk about, and my goal for this episode, as is a lot of episodes, is that our primary members, the small ruminant veterinarians, have a resource to give to their clients. And so that is basically what we're gonna talk about. Jen and her team, including Dr. Buckley, have been working on this dairy goat sustainability project funded by the USDA. So Jen's gonna tell us all about this. And so if you're a veterinarian out there, I just want you to kind of have a takeaway about, you know, different things that you can kind of give to your dairy goat producers and different ways for them to get more education and like just do better at what they're doing and like help them with the things they're struggling. So you guys wrote a grant for the USCA, right?
Jenn:Yeah, so I didn't actually write the grant. This came from uh ISU vet college. So at the time, Dr. Paul Plummer was the project director on the on the grant application. So this came from from the vet college, but there's a lot of working components to it. So they asked us to be a partner with the grant and kind of take the extension lead. And so yeah, I guess I did help write the extension component of the grant. So, but during that process, once the grant was accepted, Dr. Paul Plummer is now the dean at the vet college in Tennessee. So he's still on the project, but we moved project directors to Dr. Amanda Croider. She's with the ISU vet college, so she's kind of taking the lead of the overall project, overseeing it and doing a lot of the day-to-day things with the project as well.
Sarah:But there's a lot of people on it. Like I saw Dr. Rosie Bush from Davis, who's also been on our podcast, is on your team too, right? Like it's like kind of nationwide.
Jenn:Yeah, this is kind of a multi-state grant, which makes it really cool to work on because we're we're learning a lot about different resources and different specialists in in the US who can help us answer questions. So I think that's been really cool. So yeah, Iowa State University, University of Arkansas, UC Davis, and then University of Tennessee are the universities involved with the project.
Sarah:Awesome. Awesome. So what year was it that you wrote it and got the grant? How long has this been going?
Jenn:Well, it was accepted in 2024. Oh we're really just due to like transfer of people and job changes. We really started launching it here in 2025, getting it off the ground and kind of getting the components put together. But the overall goal goal is to improve the sustainability of dairy goat production in the US. So that you know looks different for different things, right? So the health component, the environmental side of it, the production, the market access, those are all kind of the components that fit into the sustainability part of the grant.
Sarah:Okay, okay. So how are you guys going about it? How how are you making it sustainable? Tell us, Jen.
Jenn:Okay. Well, we're still learning too, but I would say we're we're working in kind of different components of it, right? So I got this, we have a brochure that we were giving our producers. So I'm gonna kind of walk through that, talking about the different aspects of it. So one is the animal health side of it, so addressing high priority health challenges to dairy goat production. So Dr. Amanda Croider is leading this part, and she's really investigating the causes of respiratory disease in dairy goats and helping to identify appropriate antibiotic and non-antibiotic treatments to help prevent both respiratory disease and mastitis. So I know she's working on getting some her diagnostic toolkits out to producers so we can start taking a look at what types of respiratory disease producers are actually facing, and then working with them on the diagnostic side of that. So I would say if any veterinarians are interested in that component or know of producers that would want to participate in that, she is actively looking for participants. So please reach out and we can get you more information on what those tool kits look like and the information on that part of it.
Sarah:And as always, when the podcast comes out, Michelle will put all your contact and stuff in the notes of the podcast. So whatever tool you listen to podcasts on, you should be able to find Jen's contact and probably some other like they have a great website, I should say, where they're as they develop stuff for this project, they're putting it up on that website. So everyone's contact will be easy to get.
Jenn:Yeah. So the other component that that I've probably been working more on lately is the financial assessment. So my coworker, Dr. Larry Trannell, has a dairy, he started with a dairy cattle financial analysis. He calls it a dairy trans analysis. And and so in the past few years, we've actually converted it to a dairy goat financial analysis to start creating benchmarks of profitability for a dairy goat enterprise. So looking at, you know, what should benchmarks be for milk production, labor efficiency, some of those types of things, looking at income and expenses, your assets. So at this point, we're starting to gather data from the farms. So we've collected data in Iowa. So we've been, I think Larry's been on 20 or 25 different dairy goat farms. Then he traveled down to Tennessee and collected data there. And then I've I went with him to California. So Dr. Rosie Bush loaded us up in a in a truck, and we traveled the state of California for a week and got to visit some farms there. So that was really interesting, but really trying to help them understand where they are profitability-wise, and are there areas that they could maybe look at to improve profitability. And so at this point, we're kind of collecting all that data to create the benchmarks so that we can go back and people can use the tool to kind of assess their own operation.
Sarah:Okay. So yeah, where you'd be where most of the big cow dairies are, the goat dairies are also in the same area. Yes. Yes, that's my homeland. I grew up like 30 minutes or 45 minutes north of Fresno. So you were down in a beautiful area. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think most of the country has different beauty, but if you were there at the right time, it was beautiful. If you were there in August, you would have a different tune, probably.
Jenn:Yeah, I we were there the first week of June, so it was it was starting to get dry brown, but then as we got along the coast, it started to green up and we got to dip our feet in the ocean, so that was good. So got to experience that. So yes, the Pacific. Awesome.
Sarah:Okay, sorry, I was just being nosy.
Jenn:That's okay.
Sarah:Okay, and so what breeds do they have out there?
Jenn:They had mostly saunen, la Mancha, Nubian. I would say those are probably the main ones that I saw. Okay. Yeah.
Sarah:Yeah.
Jenn:Yeah.
Sarah:Okay. All right. So on our package of sustainability, we're looking at health, we're looking at money.
Jenn:What else? Yep. So, and then also life cycle assessment. So, this is going to be led by Marty Matlock with University of Arkansas. And so he's trying to provide dairy goat production with some of the same resources available to beef and cow dairy producers. So, kind of looking at the system as a whole, the entire production system, looking at profitability and climate adaptability, how how dairy goat operations impact environments based on their production systems. So it's kind of looking at the broader view of what does dairy goat production look like as a whole to the environment and long-term effects.
Sarah:Do you feel like a lot of dairy goat producers are cow dairy farmers turn to goats as something different, a little bit easier to deal with, maybe even a little bit more profitable because goat milk is, you know, still kind of a novelty in this country.
Jenn:Yeah, I think we ran into that a little bit. We run into that in Iowa. When we did our dairy survey, dairy goat survey in 2020, that was a lot of it was producers were saying they were dairy goat or they were dairy cattle producers, and just based on land base and availability to them, feed, you know, feed availability, they found that dairy goats was a little bit more easier to manage, not easier, but you know, sustainable for them, right? When we went to California, it we had herds that were managing a dairy goat operation as well as dairy cattle operations. So that was kind of interesting that they, you know, might have two different enterprises or two different ownerships of of dairy, or they were using facilities that were originally dairy cattle facilities and they converted them to dairy goats. Yeah, interesting.
Sarah:Sorry, I just have all these side quests that I would like to talk about while we're going through this. Okay, back to the topic. Go ahead, what's next?
Jenn:Okay. And then the other one is community capitals assessment. So this is led by Maria Wersinger from Iowa State. And she so she's looking at more of the community aspect of it and the market aspect. So community support and potential for market growth. So she's going to be doing more of a questionnaire with producers and looking out at entrepreneurial potential in dairy goat products and looking at business planning and goal setting for scaling your operation. Because you know, a lot of these farms, I would say are more niche farms, right? So they're creating specialty products, maybe, maybe they're not creating consumable products either. They could be creating soaps and lotions, or they're creating specialty niche products, ice cream, gelato, cheeses, specialty cheeses that that are unique to them. And so looking at those different opportunities of how how do we make them sustainable and and profitable in the dairy goat realm as well. Awesome, awesome. All right, so then we have what we have one more component. Can I talk about that one?
Sarah:I think you do. I won't interrupt you. Yeah.
Jenn:We are busy, so we're also focused on the youth side of it too, because again, that's gonna be one way we're gonna get people interested in dairy goat production, right? So taking a look at how do we get youth educated. So our main focus with that is developing youth curriculum during the American Dairy Goat Association national show. So this is coming up in in a couple weeks, actually, in Omaha, Nebraska. And so they're gonna go through a four-hour workshop. We have some pilot curriculum that we're gonna offer this year, so focused on milk quality, clostrum testing, feeding and nutrition, and then having a producer panel just to kind of get them exposed to some of the topics that they would be, you know, involved with as they go into dairy goat production, or maybe they're you know, they might be already raising their own goats. So these are things that they're gonna run across. So important aspects of just taking care of their animals. So we're gonna pilot that this summer with that youth component. And then Dr. Plummer and Dr. Croider are also offering continuing education sessions during the American Dairy Goat Association National Convention. So they'll they're gonna use components of our project and put those into breakout sessions for people that are. Attending the convention. So that's another focus area of the of the grant. So yeah, a lot of working parts with this grant. So trying to, I don't know, Dr. Kroder is doing an amazing job. It's kind of like herding cats, right? So we we have to be on calls every every month with this project team to understand who's doing what and what's the next plan of action. But I think it'll be a very successful project.
Sarah:Yeah. And so yesterday I was looking at the website who, whoever your web designer is, is doing a very good job. It's a very easy website to, and I was excited to see links to Boz and Bleats. Thank you very much. But there's, I mean, I know the project is just starting, and you guys are like definitely in the like collecting data stage. And in the next coming years, I would guess, I wouldn't say months, right? This is like gonna be a long thing. You'll have so much more up there. But there's already a ton. Like, there's a bunch of videos that Dr. Buckley, for one, and other people have put up. So there's already good stuff for us to like push out to our dairy goat producers, right?
Jenn:Yeah, so the the video modules that are on there right now were focused on producing high-quality dairy goat milk. And so this was actually the grant that Dr. Buckley was working on previously. And so we had a website, she actually built that website and uploaded that content. And now that we're starting this project, we decided to merge the two because why send people to this place and this place? Why don't we just put it all in one? So we took those components of the milk quality grant and put them into this website as well, so people could kind of have a one-stop shop, right? So the video modules are you know helping to understand operating procedures, you know, why is it important to have a vet client-patient relationship, taking a look at utter health, milking hygiene, just a lot of different topics focused on milk quality. And they're fairly short. We try to keep them, you know, less than 10 minutes so that people could quickly pick a topic and learn more about it and move on to the next one. So I think they're really good videos for anybody that's looking at milk quality.
Sarah:Awesome, awesome. And they're on there talks about the webinars your guys are offering, the stuff for the youth. There's a few coming up soon of different things. Are most of those virtual?
Jenn:So on the website right now we have the youth component listed, the youth workshop that's happening in Nebraska.
Sarah:And then that one's not virtual.
Jenn:That one's no, that one's in person. So that's that four-hour workshop that I was talking about. And then the the other ones listed there are the ones that we developed for web as our webinar series. So I have been doing this webinar series since 2020, but now I'm kind of transitioning it to topics that are focused more towards this grant, right? So you'll kind of see that transition here in the fall and into 2026. More of the topics are gonna be related to the data that we're collecting and and hopefully some of those management practices that we're learning about. But so we're gonna kick this the webinar series back up on September 17th. So understanding health and managing mastitis, Dr. Buckley is gonna be on October 14th, talking about animal welfare for dairy goat producers. I do have a few more. They must just have but the first two on there, but I have a I have one more in November and one more in December as well. So and once people register for the the webinar, they're you're registered for the whole series.
Sarah:Okay, okay. Yeah, so these are these are great. Like I said, as vets, we should definitely be, you know, pushing out education for our our dairy goat clients. And you know, there's so little, and for so many years, anything that we have had has come from other countries, right? That are much further along in the small ruminants stuff than us. And so I'm super excited that more and more we have people interested in small ruminants, interested in doing research for them. Maybe someday we'll even have medications that are labeled for goats. Right. That would be new and exciting, wouldn't it? And so, so yeah, I just like I think this is so needed. I'm really glad the USDA also recognized that. And you got some big, big wigs, some stars on your team. I mean, I think it's just like rock stars, all of you.
Jenn:Yeah, they I mean, the people in our grant are really the forefront people doing the research and have been in the small ruminant space for a very long time. And so we're very fortunate that we could we could you know bring this all together and kind of pool all the resources and get the information out.
Sarah:Yeah, yeah. What else, Jen? What else do you want to tell us about this?
Jenn:I I think that pretty much covers everything that I mean it's a lot, right? So I'm like, oh, what else should I add to it? But that's really, I would say, you know, people listening, go out to the website, check it out, and if you have questions or maybe you have input on, hey, this is something you should think about to put into the project. We're always looking for different, you know, ideas, things that you're hearing produce producers have concerns about. Maybe there's a way we can incorporate some of that into our work that we're doing.
Sarah:Yeah. Or you have a farm in your practice that you think would be great for some of your guys's research. You know, I'm sure you don't have anybody in New York.
Jenn:Well, should we sign you up, Sarah?
Sarah:Sign me up. I don't have any big areas though.
Jenn:Well, they don't have to be big either, right? So I I should say that like Iowa, we I mean our herd sizes are less than probably 300 doughs, milking doughs. Okay. The ones I've we visited in California were ranging from 50 to 3,000. So there's quite a range. Yeah.
Sarah:California likes to do things big. That's just how they roll. Okay, so like I said, look at look down into your podcast notes. You'll find a link to the website, Jen's email, and pretty much everything can go from there. Okay. This is my final question that I ask everybody, and maybe maybe you don't have an answer, but I bet you do. Okay, so what do you see as the next problem that researchers need to think about and address in small ruminant medicine? I'm actually excited to ask you this because you're not a veterinarian. You kind of are coming at this from more of an extension perspective. So when you look at the small ruminant, and maybe it's primarily dairy goes for you, like is there like a big thing that you see we don't know about enough about that's like super missing?
Jenn:I did read that question and I'm still pondering it, Sarah. No, I I don't know. I guess in in visiting with the farms that we went on so far, I mean, there's just a lot of unknowns of health issues, right? So, like you said, antibiotics that they can use to uh make sure that they are staying healthy, right? So that's a big challenge. There's a lot of education that needs to happen or research that needs to happen around kidding challenges. You know, you still see high high death loss in in kids. So, how can we help producers minimize that so they can become more profitable? Genetics is a huge thing too. I I mean, looking at, you know, how do we improve genetics so that we're getting the most robust dairy goat to produce milk and stay healthy, I think that's something that can be explored even further to kind of advance the industry.
Sarah:Yeah, I think, I mean, I think you hit it on the head for all of those. It's definitely true that unfortunately, especially with antibiotics and with the the the breeding and the kidding, you know, that's one of the benefits, right? Of of doing goats is that you can have 200% birth rate, and uh where in cows, you know, you're not even gonna get 100%. And so, you know, if you're not doing that, then you know, you're you're you're not getting all the benefits from raising goats. So yeah, all those things are huge for sure. There's so much to do, it's like almost a brand new industry, even though it's not at all. Right. You know, and I look at unfortunately like genetics, it's just you know, we haven't we we haven't figured out the AI stuff as well as we have in the dairy cow world. So it it helps or hinders, you know, our genetics, depending on how you look at it. But no, I think, you know, I think you have a good grasp on the industry, Jen. I think you definitely like understand, you know, what we all are seeing out there also. So I think that was a great answer. Did we do it?
Jenn:I think so.
Sarah:All right. Well, I need to get back to Ames. Well, you don't live in Ames. I was gonna say, I need to get back to Ames and visit everybody, but you're not by there.
Jenn:If you're gonna be there, I'll be there.
Sarah:All right, that's fair. We loved our years in Ames. It was a really fun place to live. I have I have nothing bad to say about Iowa. That's good. All right, well, we are gonna say goodbye for our next episode of Boz and Bleats, and we will see you guys next month.
Jenn:Thanks for having me. Have a good day.
