Colleen Martin, a third-year DVM student at the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine, placed first in the 2018 Annual Conference of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners’ Student Research Presentation Competition. She was judged on her presentation style, her content, and how she answered questions. Her presentation centered around her work with the Quality Milk Alliance (QMA), a USDA-funded initiative to cut antibiotic use in dairy cattle by half and reduce mastitis by one third in the next five years.

“It was an incredible honor,” Martin says about receiving the award. “I was beyond excited to just be selected as 1 of 10 students allowed to present, let alone win. I put a lot of hours into the presentation. I couldn’t have done it without the help of Dr. Erskine and my two classmates, Anna Davis and Josh Bukoski.”

Martin feels this project was different than her previous research opportunities. “I remember being an undergraduate research assistant,” she says, “and never having a full understanding of what I was doing. But I helped design this project and produce the results with the help of the QMA team. It felt great to have such a solid understanding that I could answer questions from the crowd and have full confidence in my answers.”

Martin became involved with QMA during her first year as a DVM student. She was one of six students recruited by Ronald Erskine, DVM, MS, PhD, professor for the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the College, for the pilot milk quality course that Erskine’s QMA team was working on. Her involvement grew when Erskine hired her for the summer to evaluate local farms.

During her evaluations, Martin used a device that records milk vacuum pressure to assess the quality of a farm’s milking protocol. By measuring the vacuum pressure, Martin could detect cows with bimodal milk curves. A bimodal milk curve peaks and then drops back to low or no milk flow, and then flow begins a second time. This occurs when the cow doesn’t receive enough stimulation (time spent massaging/stripping the teat) or lag time (time from first stimulation to the time the milking unit is attached), which causes the cow to have a delayed start to peak milk once the milking unit is attached.

“We discovered a bimodal cow leaves behind almost a gallon of milk each milking,” says Martin. “With 1,000 cows in a herd milked 3 times a day, and 50 percent of those cows being bimodal, that adds up to a lot of milk.”

For her research, Martin focused on bringing the ability to detect bimodal cows directly to the dairy producers. “I wanted to see if I could use the on-farm technology to do the same thing as my device,” says Martin.

If a farm has the right technology in their parlor, it enables the producer to assess how well their milking routine is working. “It also provides veterinarians with the ability to get more involved with employee education,” says Martin. “Helping them understand not just how to do their job, but why they need to do it in a particular way.”

Martin and the rest of the QMA team found 11 farms with the specific type of milk meter technology that could be used to measure milk vacuum pressure. While working with these farms, they faced many challenges.

“The hardest part,” says Martin, “was finding results that could help the producer, and then convincing the producer to make the change.” However, Martin and Erskine’s team had good results with multiple farms and worked side by side with the producers, their veterinarians, and the employees to make a change.

For Martin, seeing the change she made was what made all the work worth it. “There is no greater joy,” she says, “than knowing you made a difference. That’s success.”