Livestock Wala'au

S4 Ep 08 - Safeguarding Herds: Biosecurity Strategies with Dr. Julia Herman

• Melelani Oshiro & Shannon Sand • Season 4 • Episode 8

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What if there were simple steps you could take to safeguard your herd and secure food supplies from devastating diseases? Join us as Dr. Julia Herman, a respected beef cattle specialist veterinarian from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, shares her wealth of knowledge on livestock biosecurity. Dr. Herman's journey through the world of veterinary outreach and education reveals the importance of effective communication with producers and the creation of dynamic biosecurity plans tailored to the ever-changing landscape of agricultural operations.

Discover the invaluable lessons Dr. Herman learned from her experience managing foot and mouth disease in Uganda, which highlight the power of straightforward yet effective biosecurity measures. We explore how continuous evaluation of biosecurity plans—accounting for factors like animal movement, visitor tracking, and environmental changes—can make a significant difference in preventing disease outbreaks. The critical role of biosecurity managers is underscored, along with the importance of leveraging external resources such as veterinarians and extension specialists for a comprehensive approach to disease prevention.

Tune in to learn practical strategies for livestock producers, from cleaning and disinfecting equipment to protective gear usage and understanding the risks of common diseases like salmonella and E. coli. Dr. Herman emphasizes the necessity of controlling interactions between wild and domestic animals to mitigate disease spread, especially in the face of challenges like avian influenza. By focusing on proactive biosecurity measures, you can ensure the health of your herds and the safety of our food supply, one step at a time.

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Speaker 2:

Aloha. Today's episode is sponsored by the Livestock Extension Group out of the University of Hawaii Manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, the Center for Ag Profitability out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

Speaker 3:

Aloha and welcome to the Livestock Bala'au, a podcast aimed to provide educational support, information, guidance and outreach to our livestock stakeholders in Hawaii and the US. We are your hosts, mele Washiro and Shannon Sand, and today we will be talking with Dr Julia Herman, our beef cattle specialist veterinarian with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, or NCBA. Thank you, dr Herman, for joining us today.

Speaker 4:

Excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, we're excited to talk and learn more about yourself and your position and talk more about some biosecurity things that we can share with our producers. I guess, maybe if you want to just start to share a little bit with us about your background and your kind of current position.

Speaker 4:

Sure. So, julia Herman, I've been with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association for the last five years as their beef cattle specialist veterinarian. I do a lot of the education, development and veterinary outreach for the producer education team and one of those major programs we have on our producer ed team is the Beef Quality Assurance Program which Mellie is very familiar with since she is one of the Hawaii state coordinators. But my background is a little bit of everything. I have a wildlife background prior to getting into vet school, so some research behind that.

Speaker 4:

I studied infectious disease for my master's, studying brucellosis and epidemiology prior to getting into vet school, graduated I guess all three of my degrees are from Colorado State University. And then I went into private practice in Kansas, primarily working on cow-calf in the cow-calf industry. Came back to CSU to the vet school and taught as a clinical instructor in the livestock section, so teaching vet students mostly. And then in my current role I'm still in an education role but it's to the entire beef industry which is really exciting. So anyone from producers of two head to over 100,000 head and then the veterinarians and the industry stakeholders that all play a role in that. So it's pretty exciting. I get to. I get to say that my, that the beef industry is my client.

Speaker 2:

So I was gonna say it does sound like you like, based on your career trajectory that you enjoy doing education or training or facilitation of some sort.

Speaker 4:

So yeah, and that wasn't something that I really even realized until, like in hindsight. You see all these different things You're like, oh, education is a piece of every aspect of what I have done, as in my career, not just as a veterinarian, but as I was even as that two-way education. I love learning from the producers and then, you know, hopefully we can share information, going back and forth, and help them get better in some way.

Speaker 2:

Honestly, some of my favorite articles and just the things I get the most questions on are things that, like I never would have thought to ask, but producers brought them up to me and I was just like, oh OK, like I'm going to research this more and then, like, talk about it, and I think that's sometimes that's what happens. I love the two-way street.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think the place where I learned the most right is in those conversations with producers and I think where Shannon and I thought about the podcast being a way for us to kind of do that right, and I think we've learned a lot. Having different people on and panels and and whatnot, whatnot it gets tough when you have more than you know three, four or five, I forget what the total we had six people, I think at one point, but that was a lot.

Speaker 3:

But it's great because you do. You have that, that two-way learning ability between yourself and the producers anybody you're talking with, so very cool. Well, I think we're here today to talk a little bit about biosecurity and and with our beef cattle as well. So I think, julia, do you want to talk more? I think we talked about biosecurity before, but I feel like there's so much to it.

Speaker 2:

There's a lot to cover. We could probably do a whole like year long series on it.

Speaker 3:

quite frankly, probably do a whole like year long series on it. Quite frankly, yeah, and I mean I don't want people to feel overwhelmed, but it's something that I think you can, you can think about in every day. Right, we have to think about it every day, we have to think about it as a big plan and maybe you can help us figure out a better guided way to deal with biosecurity and build that plan for our own herds.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely, yeah, biosecurity. Sometimes it can be daunting when you're thinking about all the different ways that you can implement biosecurity. And so I start off with a definition so everyone knows what I'm talking about, because depending on the audience or the group, biosecurity might have a little bit different definition. But I think about preventing diseases, or the germs and the pathogens that cause those diseases, from getting onto your operation. But there's also a layer of that of biocontainment, and so if, say, you have sick animals on your farm, you want to make sure that it's not spread to other animals on the farm but also off your farm. So biocontainment is, if you have that disease, you're protecting animals or you're keeping it as contained as possible. And so I think a lot of the things that we talk about with biosecurity, especially in our livestock, I'm going to I'm going to broaden it to livestock, because a lot of the principles apply. Whether you have beef cattle, dairy cattle, poultry, pigs, anything, all the principles apply. But a lot of it is understanding the different routes of transmission of that. Different diseases can can get on, so and then you try to basically interrupt that that pathway of that disease coming onto your farm. So some, I think in the beef cattle industry. Some of the examples that I think are very pertinent and some producers are likely doing on a daily basis already. You know, maybe they are quarantining their new animal, their new incoming animals, keeping those new animals separate from your home herd because you don't want them introducing anything to your herd. But it I'm going to pull the two-way street thing you also don't want your home herd getting your new animals sick either, and so quarantining animals separately when they come onto the farm is a really important way to decrease those diseases coming onto your farm. Vaccination or, you know, having a herd health plan with your veterinarian, that's huge in biosecurity. There's a lot of overlap between that herd health plan and the biosecurity plan.

Speaker 4:

There are a lot of vaccines, a lot of diseases that we can vaccinate against that have like near like very great immunity. So like, think about our clostridial vaccines. Those are very, those are very effective in preventing clostridium, as long as you do, as long as you follow the label and dosage and make sure those vaccines are handled appropriately. There are other vaccines that they may not prevent the disease completely but they decrease the severity of the disease. So that's all of our bovine respiratory disease pathogens. So vaccination is one piece of it.

Speaker 4:

Nutrition, like the nutrition of what you're giving those animals, is also part of biosecurity. Because if those animals are, if there's poor nutrition or, you know, not high quality feed that's not allowing their immune system to be as strong as possible, then they're not able to fight off whatever they might come into contact with. Nutrition is huge. Bqa talks about low-stress cattle handling or low-stress handling period. The more we can decrease stress, the better those animals are producing, they are doing their job and it also helps them heal if they happen to be sick.

Speaker 4:

So biosecurity is not just and I haven't even talked about cleaning your boots or washing your hands Biosecurity is all-encompassing and it touches a lot of different ways, a lot of different aspects of raising cattle. So cleaning and disinfecting equipment, maybe you're moving from your you don't go from your adult animals to your young animals. You start with your young animals because their immune system isn't as strong, then you go up to your adult animals. You start with your young animals because their immune system isn't as strong, then you go up to your adult animals. So there's these different patterns that you can, that behavior patterns that you can do to improve biosecurity on a daily basis too.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I have a real quick question about the quarantining. So I live in Nebraska, so quarantining new animals from your existing herd or existing animals would be super easy. Just because most people out here have large swaths and chunks of land, what is the recommendation for spacing? Because I think of like Hawaii, right, yeah, much smaller land mass and most, most people I'm thinking livestock and cattle, but even poultry again have much smaller spaces. So how much space for quarantining needs to be? Do they need to be apart?

Speaker 3:

I was like maybe that's a silly question. Separation no, that's yeah. Separation, yeah. What's the distance that they should be separated from?

Speaker 4:

yeah uh, uh, sorry to put you on the spot. No, I it's a great question Because I mean we do. There are a lot of diversified operations where it's not just you're not just dealing with one species, yeah, and I think a big piece to it, even if, like, ideally, they're, you know, not nose to nose contact. So maybe it's, you know, something as simple as five to 10 feet. I think about it. I think about it like on dairy operations when we have calves and hutches. Those hutches are a certain width apart, because one, we don't want them touching noses, but if they cough we don't want that, those aerosols to be going very far. So I mean, it could be as simple as three to 10 feet. But even if we can just prevent nose to nose contact, make also make sure that there's not, they're not sharing a water source or a feed source.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that makes sense. It's kind of common sense things, but sometimes I still need them pointing out. Well, it's and it's.

Speaker 4:

I think we underestimate sometimes how easy certain pathogens or germs can spread, and fomites or those inanimate objects. So that could be your equipment, your needles, your trucks and trailers, your boots, your clothing. But even on feed or in the water those can be ways that diseases get transmitted, and so just keeping those things separate is very helpful. And even if you're, I mean biosecurity isn't perfect and you do have to adapt it to whatever your situation is. So maybe if you do have fence line contact, maybe you know, maybe you put a board up in between those fences or something so you can't have that nose to nose contact. Or if you have to share a waterer, maybe you keep one side of it empty while you're quarantining the animals. So there's some different, there's some different ways that you can incorporate it. But yeah, it depends a lot on the environment. That's there, the resources that are available. But it also like I mean resources as in equipment, but also resources as in people too. I mean, you don't want it too hard on the people.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've known of folks that have just areas that are like trees or shrubs or whatnot in between too, and that's typically their, their quarantined areas that they would use and, you know, have that separation. I mean they might've been closer than three feet, but having the bush in between at least you know, it's pretty thick and bushy in some of those areas that I'm thinking of.

Speaker 2:

So I was like that's a that's a lot of work for a cow to get through, if they really wanted to.

Speaker 4:

Well, and we talk a lot about, so biosecurity. When you implement those practices, you're lowering risk or you're mitigating risk. There's no such thing as zero risk. Zero risk is, if you know I think of like bubble boy, you know, like it's completely separated the air, the water, nothing is getting in or out. That's not possible in the livestock industry, as much as our like our commercial poultry and our commercial swine comrades have tried like they try to, it's really a minimization.

Speaker 2:

So, like one of my colleagues actually owns a poultry barn and I mean I know the steps they take and it's a lot, but it's still not like it's not zero. Yeah, yeah, and what you think about, you talk about the steps they take and it's a lot but it's still not like it's not zero, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And when you think about you talk about the fomites, and you know we might think only about the brushes, the buckets, the boots and stuff, but then you have the varmint that go through, right, I mean, you might have mice, you might have other birds or rats and, like here, a mongoose is the one thing. You know that that can go back and forth between things. So, yeah, it's not yeah. So yeah, we will be able to completely keep everything out, but the more we can do the better. So, um, I know BQA has an NCB, has lots of resources. Um, what? What if someone was deciding, you know, trying to work out a biosecurity plan for their operation, sort of where can they go from a resources and what would be the steps that they should take and where should they put that first amount of energy right into? I mean, if they're limited on their physical people that can help them, what would be the best options for them to start to build their plan?

Speaker 4:

Sure. So right when I started here, biosecurity became one of the major things that BQA really wanted to provide those resources for cattle producers I'm going to say livestock producers, because I mean you know people who have sheep, goats, whatever you can's called the Daily Biosecurity Plan for Disease Prevention, which is a long name, but it walks through different topics or different areas of your operation that you can be paying attention to. It's a point in time plan, so it's just evaluating. The day that you do your biosecurity plan is the day that you evaluate it. Biosecurity changes. It can change on a daily basis, depending on what you know. Rain changes your biosecurity plan so.

Speaker 4:

But it goes through like who is your biosecurity manager? Who's on the operation? Who's in charge of educating and training people about biosecurity procedures? It's about animal movement. How are you tracking that animal movement and recording it? What type of people? Like a visitor log, what people are coming on and off your operation. So like a feed yard has a feed yard or a dairy might have a lot more daily visitors than a cow-calf operation. But are you recording who's coming on and off your property that might be bringing you know that might be a disease risk on and off your property that might be bringing you know that might be a disease risk. And then it has a number of other things, including wildlife and pest management, but also developing a premises map. And so what this does is it looks at your entire operation and you are able to say if, or, you know, provide a line of separation around the border of your operation. And what that does is, if you are, if your farm is in quarantine due to a disease outbreak, where is the clean side and the dirty side, to where you keep your animals protected from anything coming onto the operation? And so that's the idea behind this biosecurity plan is what are the things that you're doing now to protect yourself, and what can yourself and what can we be doing better? We can always improve.

Speaker 4:

Bqa talks about continuous improvement in all aspects of how we raise animals, but also remember that biosecurity is a verb, which means it's always changing. It's always adapting, changing, it's always adapting. So you know if you get a new puppy onto your farm, that's a new biosecurity risk, because that puppy might be running back and forth to other farms, you know. So we recommend people walking through this biosecurity plan with someone on their resource team, so that could be their herd veterinarian, it could be an extension specialist. Just getting those outside eyes onto the operation helps, I guess helps people look beyond their blinders on what they're doing on a daily basis. But we recommend people doing this at least once a year, but maybe you do it once in the summer and once in the winter because those two seasons are going to be very different.

Speaker 4:

So BQA has that, has a few resources. We have a BQA biosecurity resources page that we'll link in the show notes but that has a video on how to build a premises map. It talks about a premises ID number, identification number and why that would be important. It also has the BQA biosecurity plan and then all those logs that we talked about, all those record keeping documents. So animal movement log, people log, et cetera. All of those are also on that page so we have it in a one-stop shop for you. We partner a lot with other programs. So even though I know there's not a lot of dairy in Hawaii, but the National Dairy Farm Program also has a really great biosecurity platform that you can learn from, and so a lot of our the barnyard partners, so swine and poultry also, and sheep, sheep and wool also have biosecurity resources, so you can check out all of their websites for the same thing.

Speaker 2:

Nice and I think you make a good point with, like being able to revisit it, like throughout the year. But also, I just think of like if you think of the news that has come out within the last couple of years, there's just been a myriad of things coming in, come out within the last couple of years. There's just been a myriad of things coming in. So I was like being able to, what like when that happens, recheck your plan and make a new plan or update it.

Speaker 4:

So yeah and just, uh, I mean it doesn't have to be. Um, when I'm walking through biosecurity plans with with folks, I I mean it doesn't have to be you have to change 10 major things all at once. It's. Maybe it's you, uh, you know, maybe you designate a parking lot for visitors on your operation, so they are, they only have access to one piece of your property. Maybe it's you have a sign-in sheet for your visitors. Maybe you provide overboots for visitors, so they're not, you know, so they're not bringing, they're tracking things onto your operation. The example.

Speaker 4:

So one of the really unique experiences I got to do right when I got to NCBA was I traveled to Uganda to study foot and mouth disease in an endemic country. So foot and mouth disease is always there, and so how do we learn from them on how they manage foot and mouth disease on a daily basis? Because foot and mouth disease is a foreign animal disease that's not found in the US. It hasn't been here since 1929. Yeah, um, we don't want it here. Yeah, uh, but we, but we can learn from them, and one of the lessons that I that I uh learned from.

Speaker 4:

So we were evaluating an outbreak at farm. A farm a was had sick animals. So farm b and farm c came to help, because we are all like everybody in ag wants to help each other. Yeah, farm B and C ended up taking foot and mouth disease back to their home, their back, to their animals. So I think about, I don't know, do you guys brand in Hawaii, yep, okay. So that's what I think about. Like, when you have a branding, how many different operations are present at one branding, and did they come in clean clothes? Did they wash their shoes before they came? Did they clean off their horses and their tack before they come the top? But in in the situation with foot and mouth disease, that was a very easy way that that virus went from one farm to the other. And so I think there are ways that we can just rethink our daily, our daily activities and just do really quick things that could decrease the risk of spreading that disease spreading any diseases by orders of magnitude.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm glad you you brought that up because I always, you know, I never thought about it growing up. You know we just went, you went, you went and helped somebody at the branding, you did whatever you know and whatnot. And now that I've spent more time in the position I'm in and thinking about the different risks and I think risk now for different diseases and viruses are there's more out there than what there was 10, 15, 20 years ago. But you know that's a big thing here in Hawaii. I mean, everybody goes to help each other's families on brandings and you know we try to continue to share.

Speaker 3:

But it's important, you know people to think about just basic things of you know, picking out your horse's feet at your home before you pick it out at someone else's property. And we have another invasive species or spittle bug on one part of the Big Island where I'm at in Kona. That's only on the Big Island right now and that was the one thing we were talking about was because, you know, is there potential for the eggs from this spittle bug to transfer in the hooves of the animals? We don't know, you know, and unless we do something to go out there and study this, we wouldn't know. So just be cautious about things. And that was one of the things we had told people was you know, pick your animals, feed out before you can go on. Before you load them into the trailer, you'll leave that stuff at your home property.

Speaker 3:

Um, we had a problem or we had a breakout of strangles at one point a few years ago and it was, you know, um, spread over at a I, I believe it was from a rodeo and you know, people shared bits and you know all those types of things that you know that we may not think about because we're just like, oh, you're just being nice to help someone, but then you know, in the, in the end it can, you know, can hinder some other things. So it's a good thing to think about before you go. I mean, spray your boots, if you can, you know, clean your horses, clean your tack, make sure, you know we, um, with the spittle bog on the big island, we making sure to tell people if you're throwing your tack on the ground or your bags. Just make sure you shake it out before you go so you don't have any hitchhikers in your bags when you go.

Speaker 4:

That's a big thing and you all, uh, I mean because you're an island, yeah, you're. I mean, the risk of invasives coming in is so, is so high, and so I think, um, I think your producers likely already have an idea of how to protect their operation, but it's again just thinking of how can we apply that from your island? You know, not just a state, but each island has its own biosecurity, yeah, but then also your own ranch has its own biosecurity within that island, and so there's a lot of different levels you can take that to. But, yeah, that's really interesting.

Speaker 4:

And, yes, livestock exhibition events, petting zoos we talk about this not just from animal to animal transmission, but animal to human transmission. So zoonotic diseases are ones that we can, that humans can get from animals, and this is another thing where I think we in ag uh, sometimes don't protect ourselves as well as we should. Um, because you're just like, oh, I'm in poop all the time, no big deal, and I was like, well, you can still get. I mean, there's a lot of bacteria and viruses that live in in our animals, uh, even healthy animals. So even you know, salmonella and e coli is still in a healthy animal, and if your immune system is not strong, you could still get that disease. Um, but other things we think about, like uh, do you guys have rabies in hawaii?

Speaker 4:

no, we don't okay, well, that's that's fantastic. Yes, um, but that's a that's like a zoonotic disease nightmare that we have that when I'm talking to people stateside, because rabies shows up as anything and that can be something that's really scary. There's a lot of you know. I mean that's that's one reason we pasteurize dairy products there, because you prevent that zoonotic disease transmission there, for anything from listeria to Q fever, coxiella there's a whole slew of things that we can get from unpasteurized milk. So, like I guess I'm challenging our livestock producers and our ag folks to remember that we can get sick from the animals too. One of the biggest things that I and this is from a veterinary side also, and I was bad about this in practice in hindsight again, you learn a lot of things in hindsight, that's life in general.

Speaker 4:

Right, but any of our animals that are calving or lambing or kidding, um, there are a lot of diseases that we could actually get from those birthing fluids if you have, uh, if you're, if your animal, or if the animal's aborting, or if they have a stillborn animal. So, um, leptospirosis campylobacter.

Speaker 4:

There's a lot of things that we can get from those birthing fluids, and so I tell people if your hand is going anywhere near an orifice of an animal, so the mouth, the rectum, the vagina, you need to have gloves on, because it's just one way to keep yourself safe. So, again, so that's not something very challenging to do, you just implement make sure you're wearing gloves. If you have an aborting animal, maybe you know, maybe you throw a mask on and some goggles just to make sure that those fluids don't get into your, your eyes or into your mouth, cause those are ways that you can get infected. So there are some simple things that people can implement on a daily basis that, uh, could really be protective in the long run.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, and I think sometimes we do just kind of brush it off cause you're always in it, right that you just like, oh, it's okay, I don't need to do that right now, but yeah, in the in the long run of leptospirosis is a big thing here, um, and I I know that a few veterinarians that and technicians that have got it, as well as brucellosis. So you know, it's not something that we all think about and I think those that have gotten it now are a lot more cautious about things. So, yeah, protect yourself when you can. You know, I mean it's always best to do that. But you know, and I think you know talking about zoonotics.

Speaker 3:

I think that brings us to another another point and maybe we wanted to touch about, because we, you know, recently had gotten even influenza identified here in our state, and so that's another point. It's tough in biosecurity when you're in a cow calf sort of operation and even with our poultry, because majority of them are outside in little you know, yards and whatnot. I know your background is in beef, but we've been talking about it right in the beef industry and whatnot.

Speaker 4:

Do you want to touch a little bit about high path and all those things that we can do yeah, I mean, I think highly pathogenic avian influenza is a really good example on what happens when biosecurity fails and it's not just and I guess it's it's sort of two separate situations. So I'm thinking about like on the or on the state side. You know, we we have avian influenza going through dairy cattle at the moment and we have for the past eight months, eight or nine months, um, and that that was from one single spillover from wild birds and but ever since then it's been spread just within dairy cattle and so that's either animal to animal or fomites. So all your equipment or milk or anything like that. For the recent outbreak in Hawaii, that sounds like it was from migratory birds because of the strain. So we have to pay attention to the strain of these, these avian influenza outbreaks, but the strain is from a wild bird and so it's really it's challenging because you can't control wild birds, right, yeah, so I talked to people about what can you control, and so maybe some of those things that people are controlling are that access to food and water. So maybe during the outbreak maybe you keep your poultry fenced into a small area or maybe even housed inside, if you can handle it, to try to prevent that wild bird interaction. Maybe it's preventing nesting areas on your operation so those wild birds aren't building nests and getting close to your animals. We talked about feed and water.

Speaker 4:

I think that's a huge piece where we protect. We can protect from not just wild birds but you said it earlier, with wild, with, with pests. So it could be the mongoose, it could be the, the rats or the mice, but also stray cats and dogs can spread, you know, and Maybe it's creating, you know, the more we can create barriers between those wild birds and our operation. I mean, that's where you minimize. You can't control them migrating over you, but you can try to control how much interaction they have and how much they can spread the disease to whatever equipment or whatever animals you have. So it's what you, it's what you can control again, uh, another uh, and I'm going to go off of um, well, some of this comes down to also hand hygiene, um, and just protect, again, protecting yourself, right?

Speaker 4:

So if you're working with your poultry and doing anything well, making sure you're paying attention if they're sick, if they start coughing or if they stop eating chickens and poultry or other poultry can get diarrhea, so, like, if you see any of those signs, you need to call your veterinarian to make sure you're figuring out what it might be and if and if it's something that humans need to be worried about.

Speaker 4:

So a lot of this comes down to knowing your animals, protecting feed and water and their exposure to wild birds or whatever other diseases.

Speaker 4:

You know other diseases you're worried about, but really having that great relationship with your veterinarian, that veterinarian client patient relationship is really key to not just the veterinarian coming onto your farm, evaluating your farm, providing treatment and providing herd health plans, but if something's, you know, if you have another flock that does get high path, we need to report that as quickly as possible because we don't want that spreading to other people or to other, to other farms.

Speaker 4:

So lots of layers that we can, lots of layers of lessons that we can learn from a high path outbreak and apply that outside of the, outside of poultry. I mean, we know that poultry or that high that avian influenza can go between species and so in our farms, where we do have multiple species again, maybe that's where we separate the poultry from, you know, the goats and the sheep, so that they're not sharing the same water. You know, trying to protect your other species also. So it's lots of steps that you can do that theoretically don't take a lot of energy, but it does take some forethought to make sure that we're doing it appropriately.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and it's a good point. You know, we got to work within the means that we have and the abilities that we have, you know, and use that to develop sort of the plan that we have, you know, to be able to mitigate the risk and in our flocks and in our herds, and that's a good point, you know, if you have, you know, a lot of times we house our poultry with our sheep or our smaller ruminants, and you know, separating them and then maybe working through your small ruminants before going into your poultry is just another, another way for you to mitigate that risk. And yeah, it's a good, good, good point. Well, I feel like we could just go on about biosecurity and stuff, because there's lots to talk about, but is there anything else you wanna touch on or talk more about?

Speaker 4:

You know, I think I do think that biosecurity is I mean, and I'm biased, like I talk about biosecurity all the time so I obviously think that biosecurity is I mean, and I'm biased, like I talk about biosecurity all the time so I obviously think it's important, but it really is a cornerstone to a healthy herd and even healthy humans. And so the more that we can understand, the more you understand your operation, the more you can understand what are practical and implementable ways that you can improve biosecurity.

Speaker 4:

Again, you don't have to create a castle all the way around your operation, but maybe you can do little things to decrease that risk and making sure that you're using all your resources. I know University of Hawaii has a great extension network Working with them, working with your veterinarian, working with your industry partners so NCBA, beef Quality Assurance or any of our other barnyard folks we all, like all of us, have the goal of a healthy animal, good welfare, good food supply. So we're all working together to try to help people move in that direction. So I would tell producers to start small and then just work your way up. And don't forget the training piece to this. I think, training everybody on the operation to understand what the biosecurity expectations are on your operation and then remember biosecurity changes. So maybe having an annual training or annual events to where you are learning something else that you can be implementing.

Speaker 4:

Bqa has that biosecurity resource page that again, we will add to the show notes. But we also have some continuing education online modules that are focused on biosecurity, and then we've also improved both our BQA certification modules and our BQA transportation modules with improved biosecurity tips. So if you aren't already BQA certified, I'd recommend checking that out. It gives you that foundation of not just biosecurity but all those other aspects of caring for your herd, but I think we can. Again, focusing on that continuous improvement, we can always be better and I mean, if there's any way that I can continue to help both of you or any of your producers, that's what our producer education team does. So we're we're open to ideas. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah Well, we appreciate you taking the time to to talk with us today and share cause. I think it's a. Biosecurity is an important, important aspect. Is Kenny becoming to be more important, more important, you know, in these days, with more things coming in, unfortunately?

Speaker 2:

I think, no matter what your livestock is, biosecurities just more and more, yeah, yeah, the forefront, yeah, higher importance. So, yeah, all right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, julia. We really appreciate it. Thank you, yes, and we hope our listeners. Julia, we really appreciate it. Thank you, yes, and we hope our listeners found this informative and that it will be useful to them.

Speaker 3:

That's right and make sure to follow us on our social media pages.

Speaker 2:

The Livestock, Bala'au and Livestock Extension Group, If you haven't already be sure to visit the UHC TAR Extension website and our YouTube channel listed in the show notes For additional information about this topic. See the show notes of the podcast in the description box of our YouTube page. Thanks for listening to the Livestock Vala'au Before we go. Show some love for your favorite podcast by leaving us a review anywhere you listen to this and then stay tuned for next month's episode.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks again to our sponsors the Livestock Extension Group of the University of Hawaii, manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, the Center for Ag Profitability of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. Mahalo for listening, a hui hou. A hui hou.