And right now, we have more, it's April and he will be giving a talk on Microsoft Teams. Let's hear it out, come on! All right, hi DevCon. Oh, do we have the presentation on the screen? In this HDMI cable. Ah, okay. Oh, you got that. You have it in presenter mode. Perfect. All right, so hi DevCon again. Hope you're all doing well and have a great conference. I want to thank the DevCon team for their work and making such a fantastic conference each year. I'm so excited for being here today and talking about my research freaking 2.0 abusing Microsoft Teams direct routing. First of all, a few words about myself. My name is Moritz Apre. I'm a senior IT security consultant and penetration tester for a German company called Sys. I'm interested and have several years of professional experiences in security analysis of common enterprises IT staff, including hard and software, especially communication systems and infrastructures. In the next couple of minutes, I will show you how Microsoft Teams direct routing can be abused for talk fraud attacks from the perspective of an unauthenticated external attacker. In addition, I will tell you the story about the vulnerability disclosure and the failure of the manufacturer to provide an appropriate fix. I guess everyone knows Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams is a communication platform hosted by Microsoft, including typical unified communication features such as audio and video conferencing, chat, file sharing, and so on. Microsoft Teams also offers the ability to extend it from making and receiving external phone calls, which is a nice feature in many business cases. For example, if you want to provide your employees with a cross-platform software. For enabling this, you have two options in the most cases. The first one is to insert some coins to Microsoft and using Microsoft as a telephone carrier. This scenario is called calling plans. However, if you want to use your existing telephone carrier, you have to choose the second scenario, which is called direct routing. Direct routing requires the operation of a dedicated session border controller, and this session border controller must be reachable from the Internet. This also enables the integration of your existing infrastructure, like a PBX, legacy devices such as fax, or a contact center. The communication between the Microsoft Teams client and the back end is done with HTTPS, secure web sockets, and web RTC. The communication between the Microsoft Team SIP proxies and the SPC is done with the session initiation protocol, which is also the most commonly used protocol by telephone providers. In this talk, we focus on the communication between the Microsoft Team SIP proxies and the SPC. So let's take a brief look at what SIP actually is. SIP is similar to HTTP, so it's a text-based protocol with a header and a body part, a request line including a request method, as well as headers with values and parameters. All right, so how are we going to start? Well, on the team side, you mainly have to configure the full-qualified domain name of the SPC, which must be already registered to your tenant. There are a handful of other configuration options, however, they are not relevant for this talk. So we are mainly done on the Microsoft Team side, but as already mentioned, Microsoft Teams Direct Routing requires a SPC, and this SPC must be tested and certified by Microsoft, and a list of such devices can be seen in the Microsoft documentation. And the very first ones and in my experiences, the more common session border controllers are devices from audio codes. All right, so let's configure it. But to not reinvent the wheel and to follow the recommendations of the certification process by Microsoft, we go to the audio codes website and search for a suitable configuration file. And by selecting Microsoft Teams as the application, we get a list of configuration guidelines, including some carrier-specific guides as well as a general configuration note. In addition, there is a nice configuration result where you can click together all your requirements and finally get a suitable configuration. By the way, this is exactly what one of our customers did. He ordered a session border controller from one of the biggest carriers in Germany, and they said, we configured it according to the configuration guidelines together with audio codes. So what could possibly go wrong? Well, let's take a closer look to the applied configuration. Here we can see the topology overview of our applied configuration, including two sections, so-called IP groups, one for the Microsoft Teams direction and one for our telephone carrier. And if a call comes in, it goes roughly this way, from an Ethernet interface to the applied IP group, which includes a media handler and a SIP interface, and then to the routing engine named IP to IP routing. Based on the configured rules inside this routing engine, it goes likely the same way out to the destination SIP service. So one of the first steps during a security analysis is taking a closer look to the rule set of the IP to IP routing. And there I saw this rule, which means everything that comes in from the Microsoft side goes to the telephone carrier. For example, if you're making a call from your Microsoft Teams client, it goes this way. But before a SIP message is handled by the routing engine, it needs to be classified by the SBC. So this rule tells us that the host name of the SBC must be set as destination host inside a SIP message received from Microsoft. Moreover, other things are required, which are defined in the Teams contact rule. This rule tells us that the static string must be included inside a SIP message at a specific SIP header. In detail, this means that the static string psnhub.microsoft.com must be set at the host part of the contact header inside a SIP message received from Microsoft. And after reviewing the rest of the configuration, no further conditions or indications are required for correct classification for incoming requests from Microsoft. So at this point, I asked myself, is it possible to include the SBC's host name inside a SIP message, send it to the SBC, and get correctly classified? Or in other words, we pretend to be Microsoft Teams and trying to initiate an external phone call to victim's telephone account. But for the successful attack, we need to know the full qualified domain name of the SBC. But yeah, this is a simple task. On the one hand, we can find out the SBC's full qualified domain name if a valid DNS pointer entry exists. And on the other hand, the common name or subject alternative name values in the X.509 certificate of the exposed SIP TLS service can be extracted. So we have the host name, and now we have to define the SIP call flow for our attack. And the idea is to send the SIP invite message to the SBC, and if the destination accepts our call, we will receive a 200-OK response. After that, we terminate the call by sending a SIP buy message. So now we need a tool for handling this specific cost scenario, including all the required information. And a tool which can be used for that is SIP P. SIP P is one of my favorite tools when it comes to SIP pen testing. It's actually not a hacking tool. It's a testing tool to handle specific cost scenarios and testing your phone systems. And these scenarios are defined in XML templates and are highly flexible. Thus, we can write our own XML template, including our call flow for the attack and all the required information. And I've already done this, and the most interesting part of this XML template is the SIP invite message. Here, we define a new key named hostname to set the SBC's hostname. Next, the static string psnhop.microsoft.com is set as the host part of the contact header. The caller key will be our presented caller information, for example, the COS phone number of our target. And finally, the service key will be our destination phone number, which we want to call. All right, so here we can see how we can launch our proof-of-concept script. But because we talked to the SIP TLS service and SIP P then requires a x.509 client certificate, we have to generate a self-signed certificate. Actually, it's not required or regressed by the SBC, it's just to make SIP P happy. So now it's time for short demonstration. So on the right side, we can see our destination phone, which we want to call. And mainly on the left side, our proof-of-concept script, which is executed. And after about, yeah, a few moments, we successfully initiated an external phone call through the victim's telephone account. All right, during the attack, I traced the SIP traffic on the SBC, so here we can see the SIP call flow during the attack. And as already seen in the demonstration, everything works fine and we were able to act as Microsoft to initiate the external phone call through the victim's telephone account. So now you may ask yourself, what's the impact of this issue? Well, there are two major problems here. First, we are not able to act as the victim to perform the off-road or other social engineering attacks. And second, the more worst and common attack is off-road. Hereby, the attacker uses this security issue to perform calls through the victim's telephone account with the destination of a premium phone number. And this premium phone number is under the attacker's control and therefore he gets the money. We had customers who were affected by such kind of attacks, which results in an explosive telephone bill within $10,000. So as a next step, I reported the vulnerability to the manufacturer. And after a few days, I got the response that the configuration guidelines are patched. But when I checked the differences in the configuration guides, I noticed this. The manufacturer added this source IP filter to allow incoming traffic only from this source IP range. But when I saw this, I was a little bit surprised about the big range and therefore wanted to check if this is indeed exclusively assigned to Microsoft. Long story short, it is not. Here we can see a short abstract of the IP address assignments within this range. And, yeah, the smart hack of you already noticed an interesting assignment. It's AWS where we can set up an EC2 instance or other cloud services and maybe using an IP address of this range. So for our luck, AWS has this public exposed JSON file where you can check all IP address assignments in AWS. So you know what comes next. I logged into my AWS account, selecting one of the correct AWS locations and tried to get such an IP address. And after about 20 tries, I finally got an IP address of the wireless IP range. So afterwards, I assigned this IP address to an EC2 instance and again was able to exploit this issue. So I reported my new insights to the manufacturer and after a few days, I got the response and now the manufacturer refers to the use of mutual TLS. So let's take a brief look at X.509 certificate verification in TLS and mutual TLS. I think most of you have deep knowledge about certificate verification in TLS. However, here are some basics. If we communicate to a TLS-secured service like HTTPS, your browser verifies if the requested host name matches the common name or subject alternative name, verifies if the certificate is signed by a trusted certificate authority and checks whether the certificate is valid or not. So the server includes the certificate inside the TLS handshake and the client can verify all those things. If mutual TLS is enabled, the server requests the client certificate and the client sends it back. But due to communication is initiated by the client, the server does only know the incoming client IP address and therefore the server is not able to validate the common name or subject alternative name against this value. So if we move this behavior to our Microsoft Team Style Grouting installation, it means that the SPC does not validate the common name or subject alternative name for incoming requests from Microsoft. So I checked the details about mutual TLS in the Microsoft documentation and this node advises to trust these two root certificates. However, both of them are widely used. I cross-checked this also in the Microsoft in the audio code documentation and there is also pointed out to trust the Baltimore root certificate. But as already mentioned, both of them are widely used. For example, this is the signing tree of the Baltimore root certificate. So getting a correctly signed certificate of these two root certificate authorities cannot be that hard, right? Well, taking a closer look to the signing tree, I saw this one and after some Google work, I found this service provider where you can buy a certificate, ultimately signed by the Baltimore root certificate for about $150. So we can set up an arbitrary host name for our attacker EC2 instance, getting a correctly signed certificate and we are again able to exploit this issue even if mutual TLS is enforced. So I reported my new insights to the manufacturer again and after a few days, I got the response within the following statement. The audio code configuration guides are focused on interworking and only describe the basic security rules. Nevertheless, further measures and fixes were provided. Follow the SPC security and hardening guideline. Filter the incoming calling party number and implement separate firewall rules. All right, so let's have a closer look at these recommendations. First of all, the security guideline provided by SPC manufacturer includes good and proven security recommendation and configurations. However, if we follow this guide, Microsoft Teams Direct Routing will no longer work. So we can skip this. Next, the manufacturer recommends to filter the incoming calling party number, but yeah, we have control over this value and finding out the victim's phone number is not that hard. Quick Google search returns the needed information in the most cases. So let's check the last recommendation. The manufacturer recommends or the manufacturer implemented the additional section configure firewall settings. But keep in mind it's optional. And these firewall settings allowing incoming TCP traffic only from the documented Microsoft TeamSIP proxies, which indeed will prevent this attack, but it's an IP filter as authentication state of the art. And it should also be noted that these firewall settings are also not applied if the configuration result is used. So at this point, I ask myself, what's going on at the oliquid side? Why they don't just implement appropriate authentication mechanism for Microsoft TeamS Direct Routing? And this brings us to the question, is this all olicodes or the SPC's fault? And the short answer is no. And this is just the story about the manufacturer who tries to secure this by the limited hardening measures provided by Microsoft. In general, the described problems are affecting to all Microsoft TeamS Direct Routing installations and the olicodes SPC is just an example in this case. So I ask at Microsoft for implementing proper authentication mechanism, such as the application-specific SIP digest authentication. This would allow to define a long password on both sides for authentication. And in addition, signing the Microsoft TeamSIP proxies with dedicated and exclusively used certificate authority would secure the mutual TLS authentication. But until now, the case is still open. So to give you a few recommendations to secure your existing Microsoft TeamS Direct Routing installation, you can do implement strict IP filters, which is currently the only effective way to prevent this attack. Next, you can configure static subject alternative name filtering, but it should be noted that this is a SPC-specific configuration and it is also neither recommended nor tested by Microsoft or olicodes. And it's not possible in every use case. So moreover, limiting the call duration, deny premium phone numbers, and logging and monitoring are recommended in general. So I come to my final thoughts. Current Direct Routing installations may be vulnerable to toll for the text. I also want to remind you to think outside the box and keep your hacker mindset. This talk is the result in the story of a security analysis of a product that is widespread in use for many years. Be not afraid of big names like Microsoft and even if the manufacturer provides a fix, ask yourself, how effective is this fix? Can I bypass it or is it exploitable in another way? And finally, freak the planet. Thanks.


There's a large amount of people that don't understand this story, and in order to reconcile we need to understand this true history. A mass blanket exercise is a ton of people convening together to learn about and educate themselves about the history of the first peoples of Canada. This mass blanket exercise is a really quick way to make sure that we're all at the same page. When you're going through that history, you really learn it in a different way. We can't undo what happened in the past. All we can do is work on now and look towards the future. We're going to have a true expansion of what the blanket exercise experience really means to Canada. And so these mass blanket exercises will be happening across the country, coast to coast to coast, in virtually every province and territory. If you're ready to help reconcile the past for Indigenous people, then show up.


Today is World Hepatitis Day. The breakfast this morning will join the rest of the world to raise awareness to this group of infectious diseases known as Hepatitis ABCD and E. That's our first hot topic and Nigeria risks US market over uneven Agua utilization. Agua is the African Growth and Opportunity Act. What's all this about? We'll take a look at it as our second hot topic this morning on the breakfast. There'll be off the press. We'll have an analyst join us to dissect the stories that made it to the headlines on some of the national dailies this morning. Hello there. Good morning to you. I am Maureen Menongwese going such a pleasure to have you join us this morning on the breakfast. How are you doing? I hope it's been a great morning so far. It's seven o'clock and here we go with the very first top trending. Unilori rose out palliative measures for students and staff. Well, the management of the University of Ilori has deployed three log zero's buses to convert students and staff of the institution to and from the campus at peak parrots free of charge to cushion the effects of fuel subsidy removal. A statement issued on Thursday by the Institutions Director of Corporate Affairs, Mr. Kunle Akagon, said that the palliative measure, which was in addition to earlier ones, was announced by the Vice Chancellor Professor Wahab Eboale S.A.N. at the end of the 296th meeting of Senate of the institution. Eboale, who expressed management's deep concern over the adverse effect of the exorbitant transportation costs on members of the University community, said that the deployment of the buses was in furtherance to the earlier provision of highly subsidized transportation in which two buses were put on the road in June for a fair of hundred naira per trip. The Vice Chancellor pointed out that the University management, being aware that the cost of transportation was biting harder, decided to deploy an additional bus to the route and make the three buses free of charge for students and staff. Well, that's a good move in the right direction there from Unilori free buses for students and staff to and from. Kudos to you. Second top trending. The federal government has reacted to the seven day ultimatum issued by the Nigeria Labor Congress. The NLC has threatened to embark on a strike if the federal government does nothing to reverse the effects of some of its economic policies that have led to increased cost of living in the country. The Congress accused the federal government of showing enormous disdain and contempt for the Nigerian people. But reacting to the strike notice, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice, stated that should the NLC carry out its threat, it will be undermining a court order which bars it from going on strike. The Prime Minister also asked the NLC to explore other means of negotiations with the federal government rather than resorting to self-help and undermining the orders of the court. Okay, so there you have it. The NLC has been, some would say, gagged, barred. The federal government has gone to court to get an injunction to stop the organized labor from protesting. Is that democratic? Even though it came from the courts, do you think? Share your thoughts with us. Go to our social, different social media handles and let us know your thoughts on this. Shouldn't the NLC be able to express their thoughts on any matter? I mean, this is democracy, right? Is the federal government right in going to court to get an injunction two months into this administration to gag the organized labor from expressing themselves whichever way they chose to? I mean, I've never seen an NLC strike being violent. So what's the problem? But let's have your take on this. That's what it is. They have given their seven the ultimate morning. They are warning the federal government that they're going to go on strike. And the federal government is saying, no, we have a court injunction in place barring you from going on strike. Okay, so those are the top trends this morning on the breakfast. This Friday flex edition of the breakfast will take things a little bit easy on Friday. So relax with your cup of coffee. I have mine. We'll be back in a moment without the press. Stay with us.


This is going to be an interesting, outside-the-box, make-you-think concept, which are bad enough when you've got an hour, never mind, 30 minutes. So we'll see how we go. You all okay? I'm going to read you from Exodus 32 verses 1 to 4, NIV version, and it'll come up on screen if you want to read and follow me with the screen reading. When the people saw that Moses was so long coming down from the mountain they gathered around Aaron and said, Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him. Aaron answered them, Take off the gold earrings that your wives, sons, and daughters are wearing and bring them to me. So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they gave him and made it into an idol, cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Not that phrase, we'll come back to it. Then they said, These are your gods of Israel who brought you out of Egypt. The title of this idea, this concept is going to be called the sin of certainty. The sin of certainty. Because I think that is what's going on here when we get behind the scenes of what is a well-known narrative for us all. I'm sure we've all read this, heard of this, been spoken to about this over the years. I certainly have, but saw something different and new here a couple of months ago that I wanted to figure out to be able to talk to people about around the world because we all know what happened next or maybe what happened next is when Moses and Joshua came back from being of the mountain judgment ensued and thousands of Israelites lost their lives because of this golden calf episode. But the reason God was so ticked off with them I think was below the surface and below the radar of where our attention normally is when we surface read these stories. What was happening for these Israelites if you can understand their plight for a moment and be in their shoes, all their certainty had abandoned them. They had no certainty of slavery. That may sound a strange thing to say to you but oppression and containment and slavery and pain and suffering becomes a comfort if that's the main thing you've only had in your life. This is why people that are struck in an addiction struggle to leave it because they prefer the addiction they know than the freedom they don't know. Freedom is terrifying to people who have never known freedom. And so the Israelites don't have the certainty of the routine and the regime and the non-responsibility taking in life that they had as slaves. They were told what to do. They had a purpose. It wasn't one they chose but at least had a purpose to build the infrastructure of Egypt and build the pyramids for the Pharaohs and for 430 years they had been in slavery. When they got it to the wilderness as you know later on part of their grumbling was we were better off back in Egypt and we rather have the variety of diet of onion, leeks and garlics than this manna every day. It seems a weird thing doesn't it that they would think that the good old days were good when the good old days were so bad. And the reason people thought that way and the reason all of us by the way do the same thing in case we're too harsh with them is that we do. We find a sense of certainty and a sense of orientation and comfort even in seasons of our life that we full well know I'm not living my best life. This is not great. This is not working. This relationship is stuck.  My health isn't good. My attitudes are not good. But we stay in those things long term because somehow it becomes familiar to us. They even got stuck in Egypt and I don't know if I spoke to you about this before it's a two and a half years or so since I was here so forgive me if this is a repeat of what you've heard me say but for the purposes of letting you understand how entrenched they were in Egypt and how adrift they were since they left Egypt is that when Moses and Aaron rocked up and said to Pharaoh let my people go that was never going to be the problem the problem was never going to be would Pharaoh let them go Pharaoh wanted to say go on day one but God made him say no the Bible says God hardened his heart what means is God made him respond and react in a way contrary to what a smart leader would do and Pharaoh was no idiot he was a smart leader in charge of the most powerful nation in the world three plagues in maximum wherever this power is that Moses has it's going to destroy our economy so Pharaoh wanted to say get out of here but he couldn't because God made him say no because God needed him to keep saying no for the theater of the plagues to play themselves out none of the plagues were for God's benefit or for Moses benefit if for the people's benefit because they had formed a Stockholm syndrome attachment to Pharaoh that's what they'd done so Pharaoh letting them go was never going to have a problem them letting Pharaoh go was going to be the problem and when Moses and Erdogan rocked up to Pharaoh and said let them go Pharaoh said I'm going to teach you all a lesson I'm going to make it harder for you and then created a bricks without straw situation that made bad trouble on top of bad trouble and it says they realized they were in trouble when Pharaoh announced that if you need more trouble on top of the trouble you're in to realize you are in trouble it means you've made friends with the trouble you're in which is what they've done they've settled into a comfortable relationship with Pharaoh better the Pharaoh you know than the Moses you don't know seriously is what's going on there so they've lost all that certainty they've lost the certainty of the miracles that had finished way back including the final curtain call of the Red Sea opening and Pharaoh's army had been drowned in the Red Sea all of that certainty had gone the cloud by day and the fire by night but all of the supernatural manifestations of God is with them were kind of over in terms of the miracles the plagues the Red Sea so that certainty has kind of gone and finally what's happened to Moses Moses had been gone for six weeks but of course they didn't know it was six weeks because as you all know people in the Bible did not know they were in the Bible and they didn't think it was six weeks but they didn't know that week five it could have been gone for a year they had no idea what the outcome of Moses' absence would be like many of you have no idea what the outcome of something you're going through will be and you look back on it later and think wow it lasted a month but at the time I thought it would last six months or a year that's their situation so they don't have the certainty of Moses and Moses was no shrinking violet of a leader for Moses to be missing it was huge Moses was the deliverer he was the champion of their freedom he was the one that confronted the power of Pharaoh and Egypt he was the one that at the raising and lowering of his staff miracles happened so to not have that kind of leader was not incidental to their security so all of this uncertainty is in their lives and so they turned to Aaron who was the only remaining leader that was close in Moses' team and begged him to do something about this disorientation this uncertainty and they begged him to to create something to build something and so they gave their gold and silver and it got melted down and they made this idol that came out of the fire that came out of the smelting process and they danced around the idol and began to worship the idol because people like the idea and we do of having a God that we can point to and locate and identify with and align with and center our lives around and all of that uncertainty was what they were riddled with there was none of that left in their lives and so I understand where this desire to have some fixed kind of unmoving target that we can call God when everything was moving I understand where it came from in their humanity it's not a church problem humans in every generation battle with the need for certainty and if they don't have certainty they find ways to substitute it with other things it's a human issue is going on here just in the form of the Israelites and their journey and the creating of this golden idol involved the using of tools that's why I said note that phrase which God specifically forbade them to do 20 and verse 23 God said do not make any gods and if you build an altar of stones don't build with dressed stones do not use a tool this mattered so much because building an altar was permissible you could dig a stone out the ground or pick a stone up from a wall and build into a pile of stones like Jacob did and like Abraham did and others and you could build an altar to mark a significant encounter with God that you had there building an altar was permissible but what was not permissible was to take a hammer and chisel if you like and shape that stone and take off the corners and take off the rough edges and make it smooth and straight God said don't use a tool because the moment you use a tool you are deciding what God looks like you are deciding what kind of altar would God approve of you are deciding what is God worthy of I'm not going to just use rough ugly stones to worship God and to mark this place of encounter I'm going to do something that I think the kind of God that I think he is would want so God said do not use a tool because when you use a tool it becomes about the altar instead of about the encounter it becomes about you and your idea of me rather than about me my idea of you it becomes about the moment it becomes about marking with something that is your human version of commemorating something that God moved on from a long time ago and we humans get stuck in creating things that we think are what God would want us to do and this is where denominations came from denominations are just dressed stones when you think about them in that metaphor no denominations started in the way that they became Methodism and Baptists and Anglicans and Pentecostals and Charismatics and Presbyterians and all the rest of it all of them began with someone having an encounter with God and it was rough and raw and undressed and eventually at some point passed that encounter and someone decided this needs structure it needs systems it needs policies it needs organizing and that was the equivalent of men and women beginning to use a tool of their mindset about God to shape what was a dressed stone of a beginning with God that was rough and that was undefinable and that was messy and religion hates messy so they began to structure it into this systemized ordered form of relating to God and it became a religion it became a denomination and I am all for and this isn't a message about being against being organized and structured and having systems and things that work of course we humans need that that's not the problem here the problem is that they were crossing a line from worshiping and loving God in this messiness of the wilderness years and they decided we need to tidy all this up we want a golden calf and the golden calf represents their craving for certainty that's why I'm calling this the sin of certainty and this isn't about you not being certain that you are saved or that God loves you or that you are going to spend eternity with God in heaven if things not being valid to be certain of I don't mean that what I mean is that the way you think about God and telling yourself that that is the right God our thinking now metaphorically becomes the primary tool with which we shape God into our own mental emotional golden calves and we say this is how we think God would be worshipped this is what we think God would call faith this is what we think God would call belief this is what we think God would call love this is what we think God would call grace and what happens over time is that we get confused between God and our thinking about God and we form a relationship with our thinking about God and our thinking about God becomes God this is proved when God uses someone that you told him he couldn't use when God does something that's outside of your dressed stones when God does something uses someone appears in a form appears in a part of the world behaves in a way, says something does something when God does something outside of your box outside of your dressed stone idea of what it should look like outside of your golden calf mental image of him then you have a crisis of faith because you think your faith is dependent on right thinking and it's not faith is not about correct thinking about God correct thinking about God is a tool with which we use to bang everybody else into shape like we think about God and so what happens I think and why it's a sin of certainty is we so want our thinking about God to be okay and to know it's right that we form groups and the groups identity is not about Jesus and about God though that seems to be our common denominator but when you strip it all down this was the problem for our church by the way almost 20 years in is that I realized when I started bringing people to our church that were different to us when I started bringing in homeless people and prostitutes and transvestites and homosexuals and all kinds of people that our church loved in the lyrics of our songs we were including them all in our preaching until I started busing these people in when I started busing these people in and I started putting the proverbial cut amongst the religious pigeons we didn't know we had a problem until that day and you wouldn't believe the letters I got from good people who loved God who had known for 20 years on all hell broke loose in our church simply because I was bringing people in to our main stream Sunday morning services nobody would have minded if we would have reached them on Tuesday night downtown and we didn't have to sit next to them and I'm all for that by the way that's not a wrong thing to do I believe we should be serving and helping everybody in our community especially the people that are hurting and poor and suffering I get all that and you guys do lots of that I know but I was bringing them into main stream Sunday morning and of course when you bring in these people and I was busing in 500 a week I know it was I think 20 of them would have been enough to mess it up I think a couple of them would have been enough 500 and they're all around the place dropping the F bomb I don't mean faith these guys were just being themselves because we say don't we it's trendy now around the world come as you are that's some of the modern branding of the church come as you are no no no no what we mean is come as we are because if you come as we are we're going to use a tool on you we're going to start shaping you into what we think God will want you to look like and that's what they try to do with Jesus and that's what they were angry with him because he wouldn't do it with other people when the prostitutes at the party and the posh shware and they muttering if he knew who she was this is a bad idea this is going to damage his reputation Jesus set it up in the first place and he spent his life being excluded he spent his life being persecuted and suffered because of who he included you will suffer this church will suffer your friendships will suffer the moment you include someone that is excluded by your group you will suffer by including that person it's not just that person suffers by if looks could kill they'd be dead they suffer to come into a company where they feel everybody's trying to shape them but you will suffer by being the one that reached out to them and this was Jesus's life every day we think of Jesus as suffering and think we mean you know the passion week Jesus suffered every single day when he refused to tidy up people's lives when he walked away and said nothing when all the religious people said you should now be courting bible at these people you should be telling them their life is wrong you should be correcting them you should be rebuking them and because he walked away and didn't tidy things up he didn't use a tool of his correct thinking about God to impose it on other humans and say if you want to be accepted by God you've got to do this, this, this, this, this this tidy this up do that think this way believe this talk that way this is how you worship this is how you pray this is how you read your bible when I became a Christian from day one I was told how to do everything and most of those everything didn't suit me at all because I wasn't I wasn't that way wired I was told get up in the morning and have a quiet time with the Lord get the victory for the day none of that by the way is biblical it's not, it's a tool we've told people that's what God wants God couldn't care less what time it is you talk to him and if you get in the victory in the morning I didn't know you lost it by going to sleep in which case we should all we should all stay awake because in your sleep you are leaking victory in your sleep you are leaking dominion hello


A filmmaker, Idde Chikwe Meka and his friend David Tobi Ninoa have petitioned the police over alleged assault by security aides of music star Davido. The petition alleges that they were mercilessly beaten by Davido's security team at a club in Lagos. They say the assault was eventually halted by the club's management. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Good afternoon, thank you for joining us today for the next session of our Preparing Your Ranch for Drought webinar series. Just a few things before we get started. I'm Miranda Meehan, I'm the Livestock Environmental Stewardship Specialist with NDSU Extension, and I'm one of the speakers today. But a few housekeeping things. All these webinars are recorded and will be posted at www.eggndsu.edu backslash drought. So if you missed something, you can go back and find the recordings for this and any of our other webinars there. Please use the chat to discuss ideas among yourselves. If you want everybody to see that, make sure that you have selected all panelists and attendees when you're typing in there, otherwise only the panelists are going to see what you put in there. And then for questions, make sure to put those in the Q&A box so that we can make sure that we get those all addressed at the end and we'll be holding those questions to the end. And our next webinar is next Thursday, same time March 11th and we will be talking about herd management and reduction strategies. So as I said, we're going to be talking about livestock water considerations today. I'm Miranda Meehan and I'll be speaking and joining me is Dr. Gerald Stucka, our Extension Veterinarian and Livestock Stewardship Specialist. Yeah, thanks Miranda. So Miranda and I are going to switch back and forth a couple times here, but it's good to be with you this afternoon and I think everyone in the audience understands how critical water is for livestock. And so just a couple of statistics here to keep in mind that most of our bodies and the bodies of livestock animals are water. You think about it this way when we look at that third bullet point of 10% loss of body water equals death. We sometimes get scouring calves or calves of diarrhea in the spring and if they're 10% loss even on a 100 pound calf that's 10 pounds of water that they've lost. So think about that as you try and rehydrate an animal that's really dehydrated to that point and how difficult that is and how much water it actually takes to rehydrate an animal. Another issue that comes into this discussion is when we talk about shrink, when we transport cattle and how easy it is for an animal to lose 50 pounds or more just by not having enough water and being on transport. So it's a critical issue for livestock and it's important for understand for us not only health situations but how important water is for the life and health of that animal.  You can see here some references for example a dry cow and have for the difference between when the outside temperature is 60 versus 90. At 90 degrees they're drinking twice as much water as they were when they were drinking at 60 and I'll just drop down here maybe to finishing cattle because this is sometimes where it becomes really critical and again just look at the difference. Let's take a big a thousand pound animal the difference between 60 and 90 again is doubled and one of the things that we see in animals especially in feedlots a lot of times we have these automatic waterers and there's a lot of times not enough space around those waterers for them to drink many at a time and so the issue of that animal being able to get enough water intake when it's really warm and humid becomes really critical when we see how much they actually need and how much water has to be available for several animals at a time. So critical issue this is just an idea of how much they actually consume. So we're talking mostly today though about water quality as it relates to cattle and pasture and many of us have lived and used water. It's an interesting issue in North Dakota we call them water holes. In Texas they call them tanks. In Kansas they call them ponds but they're basically all the same thing they're just kind of a dugout in which water runs off the the hills and into this dugout or tank or pond and carries everything with it. So obviously there can be many different things in that water that's now being consumed not only by by adult cattle but also calves as well and there can be bacteria in there. There can be E. coli salmonella which would be a very important pathogen to consider. E. coli is more of an issue with young calves not so much with adults but salmonella can impact cattle at any stage of life and it's also a human health impact as well. Even leptospirosis which can cause abortions in cattle can be significant in some of these waters. Parasites we think of parasites sometimes we think of internal parasites you know that are on grass but we actually have parasites at me that will have survivability and livability in water as well. Cryptosporidium is one of them and cryptosporidium is usually involved with calf scours again. GRD is another one that can be involved just particularly in young animals again and the one we're going to spend a little bit of time on later is the we tend to call it blue-green algae blooms or cyanobacteria and really what it is it's the toxins that are produced by cyanobacteria that can cause some pretty significant death loss if they're present. So just to approach this issue a little bit I mean one of the we need to provide some context for how you avoid some of these some of those issues that we just talked about from taking place and you know obviously it's providing fresh water and we know that's not always the easiest thing to do but with many of the programs we have today many ranches and operations have upgraded their watering facilities whether it's underground piping whether it's hauling water but the important part of this slide is that when we exclude livestock for example from a water hole or dug out whatever we want to call it when we exclude the livestock and so they're they're not dropping manure and urine and all those different things right in the water then it makes that water much more fresh if you will it reduces E. coli if we treat for bacteria at the same time we can reduce not only E. coli but obviously other bacterial pathogens as well in a significant way and when we're using this fresh water that we're pumping we're not we're not taking all and exclude the livestock we're not taking all those nutrients that are involved in runoff like nitrogen and phosphorus and even for that matter in this what we call the total dissolved solids category so providing hot fresh water excluding the livestock from that pond that we're pumping from can really make a difference on on water quality you know this is a really interesting slide when I looked at this slide and this is Miranda's slide and I thanked her for putting this in because if you think about this let me just focus on clean water increases average daily gains let's look at the calf slide there 0.3 to 0.33 pounds per head per day this slide indicates to us that having clean water is just as important as implanting a calf in the spring I mean that's that's the level of significance that clean water can can bring to these livestock and for yearlings that are running on grass you know a little bit less but they're bigger animals anyway so anywhere from 0.18 to 0.24 pounds per day that is a huge improvement in gain just from clean water alone so and part of that when cattle have access to clean water what happens the intake they eat more okay and cows will milk more and thus calves will gain better so a very important slide to ponder so now we're going to move into what is drought impact in terms of water first thing we'll talk about is availability of water and then we're going to talk into talk about the most common quality concerns that we see in the northern great plains and so that would be total dissolved solids or TDS sulfates and cyanobacteria and so we talk about total dissolved solids that's the salt component or the mineral component of our water and in some places in North Dakota and it's natural it's naturally occurring in our aquifers it's naturally part of our geology so we have a higher risk especially in the southwest part of the state of having high levels of total dissolved solids and also sulfates which is one of those salts that can be toxic and we'll talk about those the specifics of these a little bit further the other thing is that cyanobacteria when we have prolonged dry periods it supports the growth of that that bacteria or that algae that can be toxic looking at our most recent drought here in North Dakota in the peak of our 2017 flash drought at the end of July you see that a lot of the state the western part of state was hit hardest by this drought was reported being very short on surface water and so as we think about this and prepare for a drought we want to think about strategies to make sure that we have adequate water for our livestock out on our range and pasture land and not only is this important just for the livestock having enough water and that quality of water but also it opens up access to forage resources that we might not be able to use otherwise if we don't have water in those in those pastures are on that in that range land anymore and so what are some of those options for making sure that we can still have access to those resources and so thinking about the short-term solutions as we're maybe preparing for a drought this year is as much as we don't want to do it hauling water is an option I know people grown about it but if you can't use a whole pasture because you have no water you're losing a lot more than you are at the expense of time of hauling water and so if we're going to be hauling water we need to think about tanks and barriers to keep those livestock out of those tanks whether those are or another option is portable tanks you can see a picture of a portable tank option on this slide another thing that we sometimes don't consider is clean hauling equipment sometimes we want to use old spray tanks to haul water and we might have issues with the residues in those tanks so making sure whatever you're using to haul that equipment is also safe and clean um some producers I know have used temporary pipelines as well as temporary tanks or portable tanks and so that's another option that we can use and then the last is if we don't have the water there and we don't have another a short-term option we might have to move livestock to a place that water is readily available um I don't know if anyone's on that's use any of those solutions but it'll be interesting I think those of us on would be interested to hear what you've done in past drought so if you want to put those in the drought or in the chat box and we can see some other solutions um looking long term you know putting in that infrastructure I think when we talk about rangeland and grazing infrastructure the biggest bang for your buck comes out of adding water infrastructure it opens up so many different things for you whether it's additional grazing resources um flexibility in your grazing system and obviously we seen in the from the slide earlier that those gains too so it pays for itself in the long run and there's a lot of data that supports that um so whether that's connecting to a well real water are installing pipelines and the infrastructure that goes with that and there's lots of programs out there that will help you um cover help with cost share for these type of this type of infrastructure so now we're going to move in and chat a little bit more about the specific water quality concerns that that we see during drought so again that reflection on 2017 drought and this is just from North Dakota um but if you look on the right there's a or there's a photo from an article and that's from Canada but we seen this was pretty common during that 2017 flash drought in the northern great plains is there was lots of report of livestock death due to to high sulfates in our in water sources and it caught a lot of people off guard it wasn't something they were prepared for and so thinking about that um is what we're hoping people will report more prepared this year if if our drought does progress um so as part of our efforts with an extension to help address the drought and provide solutions we promoted a lot of water screening and testing and so our county agents in 2017 to that drought um collected 126 field tests or field screenings of water so they used a TDS meter similar to this one here which is probably difficult for your see but a handheld TDS meter they're around $100 you can get a decent one to screen to do a field screening and if that field screening reached a certain threshold then water samples were collected we collected 94 water samples and of those 82 of them were toxic for two livestock and the livestock had to be to be moved or another water source had to be developed or found and Jerry you want to talk about some of the other impacts we've seen in 2017 yeah just briefly uh i'm still focused on that sulfate in the water in Saskatchewan cattle and so it can happen in North Dakota as well obviously and so I think Miranda's driving at it we need to pay attention to our water sources especially in these dugouts we get under dry conditions and they get and dehydration occurs in the in these dugouts and now we got more totals total dissolved solids than we ever thought could happen and that's obviously what happened up there in that Saskatchewan the flip side of it is a little bit that when cattle are deprived of water and I actually had this happen to us with one cow a couple years ago we moved a group of cows and one got left behind with I don't know how it happened but with three calves and she went a couple days without water and she was very thirsty so what happens is when cattle don't get enough water and then they're all of a sudden allowed to have water then you can actually get into a salt toxicity issue where the brain actually swells a little bit as well so it it can work both ways and especially when you got heat and high salt content in the water they're not drinking enough it's hot they need to drink more and so it's it's different from sulfates just pure sulfates but salt toxicity can be an issue as well and I also had another case a couple years ago where the cattle had no access to salt this is not so much with water but had no access to salt for a long period of time and then they were fed ad lib just put out a bunch of salt blocks and into a certain number of cattle and we had actually had salt toxicity in those cattle as well because they ate so much salt because they were craving for it so these things can lead to death and cattle that you might not expect so this is it these tables that we talk about are always so interesting and they're not always uniform across every reference you might find but these are certainly recommendations that not not we but that have come up as some guidelines for what we think is safe or not safe so if you're looking at TDS again total dissolved solids and like Miranda defined that for us at the beginning usually we're okay we should be fine when it's less than 3000 when we go to three to five thousand it we probably still aren't going to see a whole lot going on but what you might start seeing when you creep above there you'll you'll have cattle that become loose I mean this it's almost like an osmotic diarrhea that occurs when they're trying to get it rid of these salts it drags fluid out with it as well and so that's when we start getting into trouble and then even beyond that especially if you get heat and cattle are craving water they're going to drink water that's even higher in TDS and that can that's what I was referring to earlier about causing brain damage so over the past couple of years extension agents across North Dakota have been monitoring water sources with a handheld TDS meter and this is some of the data from 2020 just looking at the difference between water sources and so the blue bars are surface water and the red bars are groundwater and you see on average that our groundwater is lower than our surface water in total dissolved solids and then also it remains there's less fluctuation throughout for month to month throughout that grazing period in comparison to our surface waters and so one thing that happens with during the drought with our total dissolved solids is that salt component of our water is always there but when that water evaporates it becomes more concentrated so we see a fluctuation we can see a fluctuation in those amounts of salts during the drought scenario as they increase it's similar to having a glass of salt water and the water dissolves and you still have that salt residue in there because the salts are still going to be there they're not going to dissolve with or evaporate with the atmosphere and this chart it may seem a little skewed this is same from the same project looking at just surface water alone I'm going to point out that this high here in June was just one source so that source was not one one site really threw this off and that's this that site wasn't monitored throughout the grazing period because after we had this really high reading it was it was astronomical but after we had that high reading then the animals were removed from there so we did not continue monitoring that site and so I know we think that we get a little rain and some runoff that if we had poor water quality early in the season that that's going to help and it will help to an extent but it's not going to have a dramatic influence on that overall water quality necessarily so it makes it really important that we continue to monitor throughout that grazing period so how do we monitor I talked about one of the tools and I recommend is using a TDS or electric conductivity meter to screen our water samples or waters and they're affordable it's easy to use and it can give you a baseline and instead of sending a sample to a lab every every month or you can go out as you're checking pastures check your water as well if you have a reading that's over 4,500 parts per million since there can be some variability and some things in our water that confounds the readings within with these meters we want we recommend you submit to a lab for further analysis and the one thing that I really stress is before you start using one for the for the year make sure that it's calibrated properly and that you're getting proper readings off of that and we have some videos that can with it that with an extension and publication that steps you through that process also most meters you have a calibration solution that they come with that that'll help you through that process as well and just as a rule of thumb is that sulfates with when we're looking at our TDS sulfates are typically 60 percent of the TDS but that's not necessarily the case everywhere that's just what we've seen in North Dakota and so I it's and it's not a hard and fast rule so I don't I would there's other methods we can use to look at those sulfates a little closer yes it's to zero in the sulfate issue a little bit more and remember that they are component of total dissolved solids but sulfates by themselves present some unique issues in terms of the health of the cattle and again these are guidelines cattle and sheep total sulfur in the diet should be around no greater than actually 0.4 percent and then we also have different sources of sulfur comes from not only the diet but the water as well I underlined that concentrate 85 percent concentrate ration for a reason and that's because as a rumen pH decreases which it does with a concentrate diet the amount of h2s or hydrogen sulfide gas and the rumen gas cap increases and so that's why the the parts per million and the the diet may be a little bit less in sulfur just so we avoid the those bacteria that that convert that sulfate sulfates into h2s gas so it might it's a little bit different depending on what diet they are and again these are just recommendations concerning sulfates alone less than 500 parts per million in calves and less than 1000 parts per million in mature cattle but again depending on the diet I just want to talk about specifically about some of the issues surrounding it one of the things that we were pretty sure what happens with some of these high sulfate water sources is that molybdenum which is another element combines with sulfate and then it it messes up our messes up livestock's ability to absorb copper and even release copper and so one of the symptoms you might see in it in a group of animals that there might be high sulfates and you're not really notice anything anything but you might start experiencing some issues associated with copper deficiencies and that's health related immune status related even sometimes coloring of cattle is related to copper deficiencies one of the things we talked about and this is not written in stone necessarily but black cattle tend to get a little bit of a reddish tinge to their hair coats now that doesn't tell us that that's copper deficient but it's one of those signs that can result when we have this situation with high sulfates and it combines with molybdenum the other thing too would be loose stools and then finally when some of these water water issues become high enough in part for million with sulfates we actually see central nervous system symptoms and I think the next slide do I have a picture of that I think yeah so just looking at an animal with central nervous system problems you can't always make a diagnosis I mean we have everything from rabies to lead toxicity to thiamine deficiencies to nervous coxidiosis so we're not always sure but and when we when we look at an animal and we recognize make the diagnosis that it's something wrong in their central nervous system which is obviously the brain and we we know that there may be being fed water or or some byproducts that are high in sulfates some of the things that we we think about quickly are a disease we call polioencephalomalacia and that just means that parts of the brain are actually undergoing a little bit of necrosis and what go to the next slide Miranda this is just a little bit of a schematic to how we think this actually takes place now there there may be some that don't necessarily believe in this inhalation theory but when high sulfates are taken in it's it's reduced to it ends up being converted into hydrogen sulfide gas and we talked about that gas cap earlier and so what animals do the rumen and animals naturally eruptate and so they eruptate hydrogen sulfate gas sulfide gas and it's believed that some of that gas is actually inhaled with that eruptation process and goes to the lungs which is rapidly absorbed and hydrogen sulfide gas is extremely toxic to cells in particularly cells that have a high oxygen requirement like the central nervous system and that's why you tend to see central nervous system problems associated with with hydrogen sulfide gas that we have characterized as polioencephalomalacia there's another term we use it's the same term but it's a little bit different thiamine deficiencies also can result in polioencephalomalacia just a little bit different pathophysiology with that one but this one specifically related to sulfates okay this is a and i i intended to put a normal brain on here this is an abnormal brain where i've taken that brain and i've just cut it in half uh from front to back so it's what we call a sagittal section of the brain so you can see all these little divisions in the brain and what what you should see as you go to the outside there in one layer that can't there that layer that layer should be much more developed much thicker and we're actually getting necrosis it's called cortical necrosis of the brain and so that that we now understand why we see some symptoms related to central nervous system disorder because that's what it is so anyway i just thought you'd be interested in looking at brain that that was diagnosed with polioencephalomalacia right so how do we monitor sulfates again the best way is sending a sample to the lab but but a nice easy way that we can a tool that we can have on hand is sulfates test strips you can get a packet of 100 of them for around 40 dollars on amazon i've seen them and so they're they're accessible and it gives you a range it's like using a litmus test strip in chemistry when you're in high school so it gives you a different color depending on the range you're in and we recommend that if you're in that range around that 800 if it's over if it's over 800 parts per million to submit to lab for further analysis just to get a more accurate number for that the other thing we are we're going to talk about is cyanobacteria and this last year we had a number of cyanobacteria blooms across the state of North Dakota and and they started happening a little bit earlier we had warmer weather we think maybe some of the flush of the fall flooding the previous year brought nutrients into some of our water sources and so what causes the cyanobacteria is excess nutrients in that water source specifically nitrogen and phosphorus and kind of like your salts once they're there they're very difficult to get rid of especially the that phosphorus component because that ties into that the soil particles within that water source or the and so once those get stirred up it turns stirs up that phosphorus and it's becomes re-suspended in that water source and so it's very difficult to get rid of those nutrients without putting in some type of perennial buffer excluding livestock because they're adding nutrients as well as just nutrients that are coming in from runoff and so once you have had a cyanobacteria bloom we really want you to monitor those sources closely blooms can develop very rapidly under the right conditions and so we see those hot dry conditions if we have a shallower water source we used to say that around around July the 4th of July is when we would start to see them but we've been certain we've been seeing them mid-June the last couple years so it's monitoring earlier and this this site in particular I was out doing some field research and one day we're no there was not bloom the next day we came back had lunch at the spot and the this bloom was present so they develop very very rapidly and can be toxic to a wide range of animals and humans yeah that's right Miranda and sometimes they're not as dramatic as this even sometimes they can fool you a little bit in fact a couple years ago I remember Lake Erie that that big lake we usually don't see it in big ponds of water do we Miranda we just so I don't know exactly what's happening I guess the message is don't think you're safe just because you have a huge area that your cattle water in because it can occur in large bodies of water as well and it doesn't have to look this bad for you to have a bloom and what we're talking about is these algae we call them blue green algae because that's the color it looks like but it takes certain species of these cyanobacteria to produce toxins and so the time and the the unfortunate part of these this toxicity that you rarely get a chance to even see a sick animal they're usually dead and it's neurotoxins and hepatotoxins which means toxic to the liver and neuro obviously means toxic to the brain so the symptoms are usually dead cattle and if you have even an inkling that there's been an an algae bloom that looks something like this or not even this bad be real concerned the other thing too is that other mammals can be harmed as well dogs in particular human beings so this is nothing to ignore it's a it's a critical issue to always be aware of in these bodies of water that are livestock are watering out of so unfortunately because there's so many different type of algae and not all of them produce a toxin visual observation is really the best way to monitor for a cyanobacteria bloom there are tests for it for the toxins they're very expensive and there's not very many labs that do them I think the the one that we we would use would be in Florida so it's it's pretty spendy the veterinary diagnostic lab at NDSU can look at they'll take if you send in a sample they'll they'll look at it for the presence of the algae species that produce those toxins but we don't know a toxin level that are if that toxin is for sure present we just know the species that produce that toxin are present but due to how rapid these toxins can act it's we don't it's you don't want to take the risk so what we typically recommend is if you see a bloom or you think you have a bloom remove and remove those livestock from from that pasture or exclude them for that water source so they can't access that water source and and utilize a different water source until at least until you can get it tested and know what you're dealing with and unfortunately there's no research on consumption on intake levels of toxins and thresholds so it's really a guessing game and it's not it's not a game that we like to play with I guess so if you are wanting to sample a water source if you've screened it and you have a high TDS or sulfates or you think you have a cyanobacteria bloom there's we have developed this water livestock water testing guidelines to step you through the process this one also has some of the common labs that are in North Dakota and some in the pricing for those labs and what you would ask for because some of them have different screenings that they would use and so we want to be sure that we're sampling we're sending in enough water that we're sending it in a clean plastic bottle so if you're going to use a bottle that you have a water you want to use a water bottle we don't want to use a pot bottle or a power aid bottle because those have electrolytes and things and then that could throw off the throw off the readings and if you're sending a sample and for cyanobacteria we're collecting that sample we want to use caution we want to use make sure we're wearing gloves when we're collecting that and those samples because the bacteria will break down we need to send those overnight on ice and so when we're sending those samples we want to think about timing we don't want to send a sample to the lab and send it out on Friday we want to wait until Monday to send that out so that they get it in a timely fashion and the back and they can still conduct the tests or the analysis that they need to conduct to tell you if those if those toxins could be present and when you get a water testing report back they all look a little different the things is the way they're doing a water test for livestock that we would we want to include or look at is you know the total dissolved solids the sulfates pH you can do nitrates as well nitrates typically aren't a huge issue but they can be if you're next to a place that might have high runoff from from cropland or are from tile drainage potentially there's that potential there so you can you can also run that and then and those would show up this is what you would get so this is from the veterinary diagnostic lab at NDSU of our sample IDs the nitrate total dissolved solids sulfate and pH and this was these samples were taken in southwest North Dakota I think in 2017 is when these were done and so you see that we have some pretty high levels of total dissolved solids and of sulfates on some of these waters sources so alternate water sources needed to be looked into for the for several of these locations this is from a different laboratory you see it looks a little bit a lot or quite a bit different it's a little bit harder to find things on this one compared to the one from veterinary diagnostic lab but so we have our pH here and they had other minerals looked at as well we have our sulfates here and then our total dissolved solids and this one was for a confined a feedlot and so the sulfates well wouldn't be a concern if we're grazing in a grazing situation they might be impacting performance here because of the that lower threshold when we're on a high concentrate diet so just kind of in summary things to think about as we prepare for this grazing season or is you know if we think we have water quality concern we want to restrict or eliminate access to that water until we've at least until we've had a test taken and develop an alternate source if possible I'm providing and using alternate water sources if those tests come back and they're high in total dissolved solids or sulfates and in the long term you know looking into developing a water source that's not only going to improve your water quality but your livestock performance yeah just to follow up a little Miranda too and environmental conditions change so dramatically throughout the grazing season so heat and humidity become an issue the hydration and some of these stock ponds become an issue so it'd be nice to at least have a plan in place what am I going to do if I think I'm getting in trouble and that's what Miranda's trying to portray and communicate here what's what's your backup plan in case things don't go well this summer we hope and pray they do we hope and pray that we'll get some rain but and that makes a difference for us that this water quality issue can't be overemphasized yeah especially when we consider that we had some poor water quality this fall a lot of sites in North Dakota and we had little to no runoff with the snow cover that we have currently so there's not going to be an improvement this spring is so we want to be testing right away this spring before we're putting livestock out on some of these some of these pastures and using these water sources and so and I think we can open up for questions if any if there are any questions and there's jerry's and my contact information before we head into questions I'll just kind of do a quick reminder that our next webinar again is next Thursday at one central time and we'll be talking about herd management and reduction strategies thank you there are a few questions hi this is carl hoppy I there's a few questions that came up in the chat box as well as the question and answer but um one that I like to repeat for you is what might be the epigenetic concerns in the cow bull or future breeding stuff if forced to consume water with tds levels up to 3 000 parts per million did I hear that question right carl say that again what might be the epigenetic concerns in the cow bull or future breeding stock if tds levels are up to 3 000 yeah I got the answer for that one we don't know I mean you know think about this we are just beginning to understand a little bit better about genetic expression and there's a there's an environmental influence on genetic expression and when it comes to water quality alone I would expect there would be one but I I don't know the significance of it I don't know what what levels it would impact genetic expression what you're talking about so but undoubtedly there there is an influence we're just not sure specifically what the impact or what the specific answer would be as to the impact today but yes it's a concern definitely is there's a question that would go to Miranda perhaps and that is where do I go to to get cost share for water developments okay there's several several opportunities ones for that would be more widespread would be nrcs your local soil conservation districts um I know in North Dakota depending where you're at you might qualify for some programs through the the game and fish through the one that I can think of specifically might be the save your save our lakes program and that one I know in some instances can provide 100 cost share so that's a really good program if you can utilize that those are the ones that come to mind right away I do know that some of our NGOs such as ducks unlimited and I don't think pheasants forever has anything that would cover water at this time but those they they might have an opportunity to so definitely reach out to to those folks and don't be afraid to see what they have and usually your soil conservation districts are probably the good place to start because they're aware of those other opportunities and work with those other folks great here's another question so does livestock water well does water quality affect all species in other words sheep and horses are they more susceptible or less susceptible that's the question that was asked um well they're all susceptible to it I mean mammals have kind of the same susceptibility when it comes to these water quality issues I would say that the sulfate issue is perhaps a little bit unique to ruin in animals just because of the production of hydrogen sulfide gas and that and how that's absorbed so that'd be one of those issues that may be unique to ruminants but the other things we talked about cyanobacteria total dissolved solids just water deprivation in in general would certainly fit other species uh there there's we got a few questions and here's another one that talks about a spring well development it has some ruddy excuse me and a spring well development it has some rusty red mass floating in the water tank uh is that safe to drink the cattle don't appear to be having any problems or or better yet what is it is an iron bacteria what can you explain any of that yeah so we actually ran into that this summer um I know one of our county agents worked with the producer that had something like that in that case it was an iron bacteria and that's most likely with that red color but if you're unsure send it send a test a a sample in for further analysis also taking pictures that's helpful when you're sending something in or or reaching out to your local extension agent for more information because that helps us better diagnose what's going on or your veterinarian if you're working with them Carl just let me follow up a little bit with that and in some of these big tanks even that are fed from well water you you'll get algae growth in there a lot of it but if you think about it we shouldn't have some of the contributing factors that go into this algae bloom presumably not high nitrates and not high phosphorus when we were taking it from a well as evidenced by some Miranda's work with well water so you'll get algae growth in some of these well water tanks but it seems doesn't doesn't seem to be harmful at all we just go ahead and take a fork and clean it out every so often and there's some pretty good resources that can step give you some solutions for preventing algae growth in those water tanks one of the simplest ones and that's relatively safe is using household bleach in those tanks are you know some people use goldfish there's there's also some solutions there but like Jerry said that with with those it's not a cyanobacteria concern typically it's just it's just an eligible growth in those tanks I have to ask will the Clorox solution hurt the goldfish well I wouldn't recommend putting them in there together probably you might have some dead fish if you put that in I did have a comment here on copper sulfate that appears to be used a one time in the past is that still viable or is that something that's not recommended now or it really depends on your state and their regulations in North Dakota it we want to be careful because it is a regulated substance and so we want to make sure that we're not putting it on a water body that connects to other surface waters because it kills off other living organisms in that water and not just that bacteria also we run into issues where people use it improperly and I've had a couple years ago I had a producer in one of the counties that had to redig his dug out because yet he added too much copper sulfate and so we want to make sure that we're using it properly the veterinary toxicologist Michelle Mostrom also said you know with caution that she's had many instances where because it kills the bacteria the toxins are actually released when that bacteria dies and so if you put your animals in there too soon we can actually have more death loss because of of that toxicity I think do we run into especially in large bodies of water I mean just the amount you would need was is it gets to be insurmountable so yeah I it wouldn't be a solution I'd look to so for cleaning out the small waters of the drops of the small tanks and use hydrogen peroxide too or is that not something I'd I'd more like Miranda I'd probably just use bleach and you know in the feed yards for example you don't even really need to do that you just take a brush and brush all the crud out as much as you can drain the tank and go on and you know it's practiced much more in the feed yards even sometimes those of us that have automatic waters in our cow herd we kind of ignore those things and we go when we look at them once or twice a year for how clean they are about grosses is out a little bit so I guess I'm reminding our coca producers that even those that aren't used very often can get pretty unsightly and probably the water isn't as nice and fresh as we think it should be and there is another question here it says can water source lead to kidney stones or urinary calculus can it can lead to Uralis yeah and that's assuming the content of the water the minerals in the water not unnecessary a lack there of water yeah or maybe it did include that but urinary calculus can be a problem but I don't think it's related to water source it's mostly related to diet I'll just shorten my answer somewhat did you hear that that I heard thank you very much thanks Carl for moderating this session and thanks Miranda and thanks for everyone that's on and this is a recorded session so you can go back and and look at it again perhaps even during the summertime when it's uh environmental conditions have changed so thank you so much for being part of our program and I'll hand it over back over to Miranda as we as we proceed I guess the big take-home home that we we have here is just you know monitoring and there's some really simple tools to make it easy for monitoring your water quality throughout this the grazing season and I I mean whether or not we the drought progresses I think that it's valuable to continue monitoring our water and the other and and it's pretty simple and it's pretty quick cheap tests affordable so it's well worth the value the other thing I want to remind those those of you that are in North Dakota is that the majority of our extension agents have a TDS meter and several of them will also have sulfate test strips in their office and they have have sample kits to help you collect water if you want help with that so if you need assistance with any of this reach out to them and they're a great resource for you as we move forward through through the growing and grazing season


Thank you so much for being here today and I'm really happy to welcome you to our city and we will do everything we can and to understand that it is liberation, non-occupation. We don't believe that peace comes through a bad voice and rights to make it clear in the next election, whatever that might be.


This is a great day in the life of the youth of the state of Alabama. Our purpose in Alabama 4-H is to provide opportunities and experiences to all children to discover their talents, to build new skills so that they are better citizens, family members and workers. The 4-H Center, as many of you know, it's the cornerstone for 4-H for the entire state. It's a place that has served over 500,000 young people over the past 41 years. The reward is so great when you have young people who can come up to you years later and say, you know, that that camping experience changed my life. Where do we go from here? As long as the youth of this state, future leaders, as long as their needs are out there, this center and the 4-H program in this state needs to continue moving.


Hi, it's Hannah and this video is going to talk you through how to add an image onto wiki data So I want you to make sure that you are logged in So in the top panel in the right corner, you can see that your username will be there. Mine is hir2020 And then choose a wiki data item that you want to add an image to so I've chosen willacume I'm going to choose an image from wikimedia commons to upload onto wiki data So if there is no image statement here, there is an image statement on your wiki data item scroll to the bottom of The statements click add statement and type in image and then continue however As soon as there's already a statement for image on this wiki data item We are going to add a value now type in the box next to the image the name of the image on wikimedia commons, so I want to upload this one, which I took of willacume beach Into the box So willacume beach July 2020 select from the drop down and then click publish and Now you can see that an image of willacume beach has been added to the wiki data item Thanks for watching, and I hope that you add more images onto wiki data