So why has stocking density become such an important focus and what impact can overcrowding have on cows?

yeah and that's a it's a loaded topic so to speak we could we could have a whole uh webinar even a day seminar on kind of the effects and and and we've done uh those kind of um trainings in the past but basically really what it comes down to is is cows have a time budget that they need to fulfill in their day they need to spend so much time lying down they need to spend so much time eating um they need to ruminate as well most of that while they're lying down they also need to drink and and as lactating cows they need to milk and and so the reality is that even though there's 24 hours in a day i always say and the sum total of those individual time budget behaviors doesn't even equal 24 hours what we know is that when we overcrowd the resources cows have whether that's resting space, whether that's a lying stall or just square footage on the ground, so to speak, whether that's feed bunk space, water space, even cows per robot, for example, in a robotic milking system, we know that that will have an effect on their behavior.

And typically, again, the research is pretty clear that Typically, that's a negative effect, right? If we put more cows in our stalls, we see a reduction in lying time.

With that, we'll see reductions in rumination time.

There might even be changes in eating time and intakes on cows.

And so all those things work together and we see negative outcomes associated with that.

Probably the most common, like with stocking density of stalls or spaces, yeah, cows spend more time standing, less time resting.

I guess I'm kind of wondering what you think, if you were giving advice to a producer who's kind of going through this process, trying to introduce themselves to what these changes are, what are some of the most important things they should be assessing, monitoring, and potentially redesigning if they do have to from current facilities to make some changes down the road?

Why'd you get in this race? What'd you see when you were running? What'd you learn?

Yeah.

So really it came down to over the past couple years, it just feels like, uh, everyday Hoosiers are being squeezed and struggling more and more each day.

And it just seemed like every time we went to our legislators voicing our concerns, our comments, and our opinions, it just seemed, seemed like they weren't actually listening to us.

And really, as...

Uh, the reason I got involved is, you know, very similar to Dr. Brian.

You know, my church is very heav- heavily involved here locally.

Mm

Why'd you get in this race? What'd you see when you were running? What'd you learn?

Yeah.

So really it came down to over the past couple of years, it just feels like everyday Hoosiers are being squeezed and struggling more and more each day.

And it just seemed like every time we went to our legislators, voicing our concerns, our comments and our opinions, It just seemed like they weren't actually listening to us.

And really, the reason I got involved is, you know, very similar to Dr. Bryant.

You know, my church is very heavily involved here locally.

I go to Livingstones in Crown Point, Indiana, which that may have been crowded to where they're stopping at our church here in July.

Just that, what they were really motivated by here.