H5N1 Red Flags, Risk Mitigation and Being Ready to Take Action

Know your opponent. Peggy Coffeen has heard this statement from dairy producers before. It’s all about evaluating a threat at hand, managing the risk and being prepared to act with urgency. The opponent Peggy is talking about is the one that is on everyone’s mind: H5N1. If you want to hear from someone who has been helping dairies deal with this disease since the very beginning, what to watch for, ways to reduce risk and what to have in your arsenal to be ready to action should your dairy be facing the fight, listen to this episode of the Uplevel Dairy Podcast.

From the frontlines of H5N1, Randy Tapia has been assisting dairy producers in the Southwest and now across the country, as they deal with the disease first hand, or are preparing themselves for the potential of sickness hitting their herds. Randy grew up in the Texas dairy business, with his father at one point running 9,000 cows on three dairies near San Angelo, and he also spent many years as a dairy manager up in the Panhandle. An early adopter to rumination monitoring and other technologies, Randy stepped away from management to work in dairy tech before joining Amarillo-based Micro Technologies in the dairy solutions role he is in today.

In this conversation, Peggy asks Randy to put on his dairy manager hat, as he walks us through what to watch for: Rumination red flags, reducing risk factors around waterers, fast action to adjust the ration, and treatments and immune support. And Randy speaks of how he would be preparing his team and what would be in his med room if he was a dairy manager right now.