Topping that list is: “Consider postponing on-farm research activities that require more than one person or interaction with farm operators whenever possible until provincial health guidelines relax physical distancing recommendations.”

If conditions are put in place to ensure the safety of researchers and farm personnel, “then we recommend proceeding but with extreme caution.”

Among the many specific recommendations:

• Consider postponing research activities that require close interaction between people.
• Familiarize yourself with local public health guidelines, exemptions for agriculture in your province and monitor conditions as they change rapidly.
• Have a game plan for how the activities of the day will unfold.
• Only the required research team members should participate on farm, however, consider additional help if the farm owners are in a high-risk category and not able to fully assist.
• Assign tasks (vaccination, castration, dehorning, branding, and drawing blood) to the same people and avoid switching tasks whenever possible.
• Clean and disinfect equipment and supplies frequently.
• The visiting research team should provide personal protective equipment and hand sanitizers for themselves as well as farm workers who will be assisting with the activity.
• Provide dedicated restroom facilities that have been sanitized prior to the arrival of the research team and after they depart; providing soap, water, and single-use towels.
• Where travel to field sites is required, do not share vehicles.
• Food and drinks should not be provided. Visitors should be encouraged to bring provisions with them. If food or drinks are provided, it should be prepackaged and not prepared on farm.

The full list can be found in the BCRC blog at beefresearch.ca.

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The funds announced are to help create a completely new cow-calf and heifer research facility next to the current beef research station, and a new cattle finishing facility after the demolition of some of the current buildings.

Research on genomic testing of cows will also be funded by the money announced during an event Thursday at the research station near Elora.

Jeff Leal, Ontario’s minister of agriculture, food and rural affairs, announced $12.4 million in funding for the project.

“This new facility will develop new methods and best practices for more efficient and sustainable beef production, bolstering what is important to us all, the economic competitiveness of Ontario’s beef sector,” said Leal, lauding the groups and organizations that worked to make the beef research facility happen.

“Ontario will continue to be an international leader in livestock research,” he said.

Stewart Cressman, chair of the Agriculture Research Institute of Ontario — which owns and funds agriculture research facilities in the province — said he knows how difficult it is in other parts of the country and the world to get livestock research facilities funded.

“We are very privileged to have a government that invests in livestock research,” he said, adding that such investments are important for the future competitiveness of Ontario and Canadian agriculture.

Such facilities are also necessary for the university to continue to attract leading researchers from around the world to Guelph, said Daniel Atlin, the university’s vice-president, external.

“This facility will have impacts locally, across the province, nationally and around the world,” he said.

Bringing in top faculty, with top research facilities also attracts students, said Rene Van Acker, dean of the Ontario Agriculture College.

It’s a challenge for the university to attract students to its agriculture programs — despite multiple jobs awaiting each graduate — and facilities like the beef research station will help, he said.

Lawrence MacAulay, federal minister of agriculture and food, announced $2 million in support for a genomic project with Beef Farmers of Ontario to profile cows in Eastern Canada to improve feed efficiency.

A one per cent improvement in feed efficiency can result in annual savings of $11.1 million for the beef sector, he said. It also helps reduce costs at the farm and reduces methane and manure volumes.

In the long term, the facility will help farmers who are dealing with more public pressure on environmental practices, said Joe Hill, vice-president of Beef Farmers of Ontario.

“As an individual farmer it is harder to address these things, but at a research scale, we can sort out where the issues are and how to best manage them at a farm level. It is going to save farmers a lot of time and energy trying to sort through what their options are and how to meet these challenges.”

The facility will help beef producers remain competitive and able to take advantage of trade opportunities, he said.

The beef facility has been many years in planning and is the second major livestock facilities investment at the university, after the large dairy research facility which opened in 2015.

Work is expected to begin this fall on the beef cow research facility, with the feedlot facility after that, and completion expected by sometime in 2018.

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

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They’re participants in a “living laboratory” experiment that is advancing knowledge about the health of the western herd in a host of ways.

“We have a mixture of small and large herds, somewhat representative of the number of different herds in the different areas of the provinces,” said project leader John Campbell, a vet and professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine.

There are numerous projects at his university and elsewhere where researchers need a representative sample of western Canadian cattle, and that’s where the Beef Cattle Surveillance Network comes in.

Now in its third year, the initiative enables researchers to learn more about the health of Canada’s cow-calf herd out in the field.

Researchers and technicians at the U of S, its counterpart at the University of Calgary, and at the Western Beef Development Centre take the herd data and analyze it, and also survey their owners three to four times a year on topics as wide ranging as productivity, calving, winter feeding, mineral management, antimicrobial use, and marketing.

This past year, local veterinarians collected about 20 blood and fecal samples from each herd during preg. checking.

“We’re in the process of testing those for a variety of things,” said Campbell. “We looked at trace mineral status of the cows, so we should have some good data on the different areas of Western Canada and trace mineral status.”

Connecting the dots

Since researchers have details of antimicrobial use from the surveys, they will be able to track both mineral challenges and the development of antimicrobial resistance on cattle farms.

That sort of information could be critical in two different ways.

The first is on the health front.

“We’ll know the prevalence of copper deficiency and how many cows are low in trace minerals,” said Campbell. “We’ll have the data put together this year, and we can look at geographic differences. We know a lot of the health issues that we deal with are associated with trace mineral status.”

As well, having this knowledge can be very useful in marketing efforts.

“Because we’re an export industry, there are often questions about the things Canadians do,” noted Campbell. “This gives us evidence to show what we’re actually doing and how we deal with it, whatever the case may be.”

And as the past has shown, disease issues can burst onto the scene in a heartbeat.

“You can imagine that in 2003, when BSE was first detected in Canada, it would have been nice to know what percentage of producers had meat and bone meal in their ration,” said Campbell. “There’s no easy way of knowing that, and it would be hard to get that information quickly. But right now, with a surveillance network, I could find that out in a matter of weeks. I could do a quick survey, send it out to our producers, and we could get answers fairly quickly.”

Many applications

Researchers have created a serum bank from the samples.

“If someone sees a new disease or problem in cow-calf herds and wants to see if it was around a few years ago, we can actually pull that blood out of the freezer and test for it. We can compare and sample them again in a couple of years.”

The blood will also be tested for Johne’s disease, the Neospora parasite, and other production-related diseases.

Since the researchers have been collecting data on calf losses and abortion rates and other production information every year, they will be able to figure out where they can make improvements.

“We can put some economics to that down the road,” said Campbell.

The program has opened doors for all kinds of research projects, he added.

“Most of the credit has to go to the producers and to the local vets who collect samples for us. Producers are giving us ideas for projects and what we should be looking at next. As we continue to roll out the surveys, we find we have too many topics to ask about. We can find out what’s going on in the industry and how people are dealing with these issues. We can get really good data that way.”

The network, which is funded by the Beef Cattle Research Council using Growing Forward dollars, follows the model of the U.S. National Animal Health Monitoring Service.

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“Ever wondered if you can feed faba beans to pigs?” asks website co-developer Miranda Smit. “Or camelina meal to poultry? Interested in using synchronization protocols to improve your dairy herd’s reproductive performance?” Those questions are answered on the website.

Each research group has its own page with information on who they are, projects they’re working on, presentations, published results, fact sheets, and other information.

Visit the website at agriculture.alberta.ca.

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But Harold Lehman, who manages the facility, had a good reason for it.

“Most people will see these pictures and not have any context about what’s going on,” he told the group of urban and rural media. “We’d rather people come here and learn for themselves.”

That’s understandable when you’re talking about dairy cows with holes in their sides.

Fistulas (as I learned the holes are called) are one of the uglier — but necessary — sides of livestock research, he said. Researchers surgically create them in order to measure feed efficiency and digestion.

• More from the Alberta Farmer Express: New study aims to improve protein efficiency in dairy cows

Animals chosen for the procedure are usually high performers, and fistulated cows are both quite healthy (often living as long as their on-farm counterparts) and comfortable.

As Lehman walked us through the facility, introducing us to newborn calves who sucked at our gloved hands and showing us a high-tech feeding system, his care of and passion for his charges were clear.

“If you don’t love your cows, we don’t need you here,” he said at one point.

No, ag research may not always be pretty. But the commitment these researchers have to bettering their piece of the industry is pretty remarkable.

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