Today’s episode was filmed at the American Dairy Science Association Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Joining us are researchers with abstracts of interest chosen by the Balchem technical team.
Guests: Omid McDonald, Vodkow; Andres Ortega & Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University; Matheus Santos & Dr. Eduardo Ribeiro, University of Guelph; Dr. Faith Reyes, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Mariana Marinho and Dr. José Santos, University of Florida; and Dr. Alex Tebbe, Purina Mills
Today’s episode was filmed at the American Dairy Science Association Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Joining us are researchers with abstracts of interest chosen by the Balchem technical team.
The first guest is Omid McDonald, founder of Vodcow, the chosen drink at tonight’s pubcast. Vodcow is made with a dairy byproduct called milk permeate. The sugar is fermented and turned into alcohol, with which they make vodka and blend it with Canadian Cream. (4:11)
Our second guest is Andres Ortega and Dr. Mike Van Amburgh from Cornell University. In Andres's research, to represent mp, they tried to show metabolizing all proteins and break that down into the individual essential and nonessential amino acids. They created two diets; one that met all of the MP requirements and one that didn’t. Based on the difference of MP there, they knew how much they would infuse. (12:07)
Andre's presentation is titled: Abomasal infusion of essential and non-essential amino acids to evaluate energy and amino acid utilization, productive efficiencies, and metabolism in lactating dairy cattle.
Next in our lineup are Matheus Santos and Dr. Eduardo Ribeiro from the University of Guelph. Matheus’ research found that lower feed intake and greater body weight had a less positive energy balance. A negative energy balance can lead to high immunosuppression and development of clinical disease. (24:14)
Matheus' poster is titled: Prepartum feed intake level is associated with transition metabolism and subsequent milk production in dairy cows.
Our third guest is Dr. Faith Reyes from the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Faith said that in dairies, we would like to see decreased competition. Previous literature has shown a linear relationship when you increase the stocking density leads to increased competition. In her research, Dr. Faith found that there was the most competition at a two-to-one stocking density. (35:02)
Faith’s research is titled: Individual feeding consistency across stocking densities and feed efficiency in lactating cows.
Joining us now is Mariana Marinho and Dr. Jose Santos from the University of Florida. Mariana mentioned that more efficient cows have improved rumination per kilogram of intake. More efficient cows also have lower pH and more concentration of ammonia nitrogen. With the findings from her research, Mariana suggests that the site of digestion plays a more important role in differentiating more efficient versus less efficient cows. (52:45)
Mariana’s presentation is titled: Associations between residual feed intake(RFI) and digestibility or hepatic mitochondrial respiration in Holstein cows.
Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the additional highlights from the 2023 ADSA Annual Meeting in future podcast episodes.
Lastly, we are joined by Alex Tebbe from Purina Mills. Alex is focused on transition cows, both the dry period and fresh period and how they are so influential to the cow’s long-term performance. Alex said that we could hone in on the nutrition of dry cows and fresh cows to produce a lot of milk in the future. (59:52)
Alex’s presentation is titled: Dairy nutrition to improve feed utilization - Recognizing the contributions of ADSA Fellow Dr. Bill Weiss beyond prevention of metabolic diseases: Feeding transition dairy cows for optimal performance.
If you want one of our new Real Science Exchange t-shirts, screenshot your rating, review, or subscription, and email a picture to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Include your size and mailing address, and we’ll get a shirt in the mail to you.
Scott (00:00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pubcast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell here with my co-host once again, Dr. Clay Zimmerman. Clay and I are here at the ADSA scientific meetings here in Ottawa, Canada. And what we're doing this week is gonna be a little bit different podcast. Clay and his team has selected 10 abstracts of interest that they thought was interesting. And we're gonna be recording about 10 minute segments of each of those. And we're gonna stitch those into a podcast, actually two podcasts. So this is gonna be the first of two, so be sure to listen to the second one that comes a bit later. Clay, wanted to ask you real quick so I don't know how many abstracts were presented here, but a lot, you narrowed it down to 10, what was the criteria you used in selecting those abstracts?
Clay (00:01:03):
So, certainly abstracts that would be of interest to our listening audience. That's probably the first criteria. Okay. so abstracts that we, you know, think have some take home messages for our audience. Certainly, you know, very nutrition focused as far as what we're looking at and as applicable as possible. Yep. For our audience,
Scott (00:01:28):
Can you kind of give us a flavor of maybe 2, 3, 4, some of the topics that they'll be hearing about?
Clay (00:01:34):
Yep. So there will be there as typical with us, there will be a few related to choline.
Scott (00:01:42):
Okay.
Clay (00:01:44):
Certainly, certainly were basic in that. So some a little bit of follow up work to, to some that were presented a year ago. There are some amino acid related topics which is certainly a big increase of ours. And some few related actually to the dairy beef sector. as that's certainly growing in, in interest as, as another income stream for the dairies.
Scott (00:02:16):
Great. Looking forward to that. Clay, our loyal listeners will know that our pubcast takes place in a virtual pub with real drinks. What they don't know that when it comes time to pay the tab, Clay's got these little short little alligator arms and I end up having to pay the tab, but that's not gonna be a problem tonight. We have a guest with us here who's promised to pick up the tab. Right. And, and that's Omid McDonald, and he is the founder of VodCow. And so that happens, he's, we are actually enjoying some vodka cow tonight. So I'm gonna ask you first, clay, what's in your glass tonight?
Clay (00:02:54):
I have some Orange VodCow. Okay. So it could become a new favorite here. Supplanting the the hard cider.
Scott (00:03:01):
Right. Do you have a hard cider flavored VodCow? No, not yet. Not yet.
Omid (00:03:05):
That sounds, it sounds,
Scott (00:03:06):
Tastes, no, that would be a good one. And what's in your glass tonight, Omid?
Omid (00:03:10):
I’ve got the Coffee VodCow Cream
Scott (00:03:12):
Coffee, and this is actually my second chocolate. This stuff is dope. I'm telling you. Omid, what I'd like you to do is just kind of give us a background. How'd you come up with the idea that, to, to create these drinks?
Omid (00:03:24):
So, I wanted to open a craft distillery and never really found an idea that I thought could become a business. And one day my cousin had come back from his uncle's dairy farm and was talking about milk being dumped. I was like, Hmm, can we turn that into booze? And so with some research discovered, it's been done, going back to the Mongols Genus Con would drink a fermented mare's milk, which apparently wasn't very tasty, but it worked for him. And in the seventies, people actually fermented milk sugar to make fuel for cars. And so I was like, okay, let's see if we can do that. So I tried, I had to find a source of sugar and was able to do so.
Scott (00:04:02):
Oh, this is, this is good stuff. I usually drink bourbon, but I'm staying with this stuff from now on. Yeah. So how many different flavors do you have?
Omid (00:04:11):
So, well, first we start by making our VodCow Vodka. That's where we started as the base for all our cream liqueurs. And so we take this dairy byproduct called milk permeate. So after they've taken the proteins and the fat of the milk, they have all the lactose left over. And normally that just gets fed to pigs or, or dumped in a digester. So we take that sugar in, ferment it and turn it into pure alcohol, which we make vodka with. And then we take that vodka and blend it with Canadian cream, and we make it lactose free as well. And so tonight we're trying our chocolate, which it seems that you really enjoy. It is 17% alcohol. So may I might explain it. We have our coffee here, which I'm enjoying. And both these products, we work with our makers in our hometown of Almont, which is 40 minutes from here. So welcome you guys to Ottawa and if you ever have a chance to come out to the distillery, I encourage that. And then we have our new orange cream liqueur, which is great for the summer.
Scott (00:05:10):
Also, understand that you guys have some sort of adventure going with some folks down in Michigan. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Omid (00:05:17):
Yeah, so as we learned about this Permian, we discovered that this problem of excess lactose is a big one for dairy. As people are eating more cheese and yogurt and drinking less fluid milk, there's more and more lactose leftover. So we said, okay, well what are the big applications? And one of that is fuel taking the ethanol and blending it with transportation fuel. So about two and a half years ago, the Michigan Milk Producers Association reached out to us. They were originally interested in vodka, and we're like, well, with all your permeate, that'd be 47 million bottles of vodka, that's a bit much for us to sell. How about we make biofuel? And so last month we publicly announced this project that we'll be making 2 million gallons of biofuel from the milk permeate.
Scott (00:06:01):
Oh, excellent. Listen, appreciate you coming here tonight. Can you tell us how people, if they want to look into this further, how can they contact you? You have a website. Yeah.
Omid (00:06:10):
You go to vodcow.com to learn about the spirits or dairy distillery.com to learn what we're doing on the ethanol side. We don't have a full distribution in the US yet. We're working on that. But for all the visitors here at the conference, they could come to our little booth and try some out and pick up a bottle. And then hopefully we'll get distribution in the US in the coming year. Awesome.
Scott (00:06:31):
Thank you for joining us. Cheers. Tonight cheer and to a successful ADSA cheer. Cheers
Scott (00:07:04):
Welcome back, everyone to the ADSA here in Ottawa, Canada. Joining me today as co-hosts for this session is Dr. Clay Zimmerman. Welcome Clay. And our guest is Dr. Mike VanAmberg and Andrea Ortega from Cornell University. Mike, Andrea gave us an oral presentation earlier today. Would you mind just telling us a little bit about him?
Mike (00:07:29):
Oh, sure.
Mike (00:07:34):
So Andrea he's a fun, he's a fun guy. He came to Cornell to be a veterinarian, born and raised in Miami. Wow. No, not a lot of cows.
Scott (00:07:43):
Not Miami, Ohio.
Mike (00:07:44):
Yeah, not Ohio. No, not Ohio. And anyhow, he came into the lab and started, you know, working and helping us with all sorts of things. And he started asking harder and better questions to the point where he got really interested in amino acid metabolism and, and chemistry. And I said, Hey, let's give you a project. So he did an honors project on amino acid recoveries that has partially been published, but he's extended that a lot. And then he decided not to go to vet school. And I said, well, I'll, I'll upgrade my system for amino acids if you'll stay for a PhD. So here we are.
Scott (00:08:25):
Nice. Nice. Excellent. Very nice. Andrea. She gave a presentation today called Amaal Infusions of Essential and Non-Essential Amino Acids to evaluate energy and amino acid utilization, productive efficiencies and metabolism in lactating dairy cows. Now, Mike and marketing, we try to communicate in small sound bites. Evidently you guys don't operate under that same paradigm in this scientific community, how the world's you come up with that. Sorry about that. That you almost didn't get it out there. I was worried about you guys. I'm not worried as well.
Andres (00:09:04):
No, it is pretty long.
Scott (00:09:06):
Andreas, tell us a little bit about your presentation today.
Andres (00:09:09):
Yeah, so this was a study we ran last year, which was actually pretty interesting. It was very intensive cause it was amino acid infusions, right? So we had the cannulated cows and we were infusing directly into the almaso. And so we have been thinking a lot about MP metabolize protein, which is both essential and non-essential amino acids. And I started reading a lot of Dr. Woo down in Texas A&M and he doesn't work with ruminants now, but he's very focused on non-essential amino acids and all these functions that no essential amino acids play within the body. So I got really interested in finding now more about that in lactate, in dairy cow. So, okay. With Mike, we came up with this study where we would try to see if we, what will be the effects if we were starting to vary both the essential non-essential amino acids, a mixture of both of them.
Andres (00:10:03):
So in this study, we infused only essential, only non-essential in a mix of essential and non-essential amino acids. But then we took that a step further and we refused essential amino acids and twice the amount of non-essential amino acids. And the idea behind that was that we know the essential amino acid requirement, but we know that some of that requirement is used for the production of non-essential amino acids. So we were able to provide that. And these essential amino acids do not have to then produce the non-essential amino acids. Then we should see an efficiency of use change there. Some of those amino acids being used for other substrates. And hopefully we would get a production efficiency there. We unfortunately did not see the production results that we wanted because as we know, we work in a dairy cow farm.
Andres (00:10:54):
So we ran out of the conventional corn silage that we were feeding, and we had to switch to a bmr. Okay. Which of course, that increase our digestibility, increase our MP supply. So the diet that was supposed to be efficient in protein really wasn't as efficient that we would've wanted it. But although we didn't see the productive results that we wanted, we did see some really interesting metabolic results in which that treatment that had the higher amount of non-essential amino acids it was pro it was, it showed a significant increase in the amount of insulin, which is telling us that all of these amino acids were probably being used for these other purposes, producing other metabolites that then increased the amount of insulin.
Clay (00:11:37):
So what stage of lactation were the cows?
Andres (00:11:41):
So we started right after peak, so around 60-70 days in milk. And then we ended up the last few cows that ended were probably at 180-190 days in milk. So mid lactation cows.
Clay (00:11:57):
And how did you come up with the cocktail for the essential amino
Andres (00:12:05):
Acids? Yeah.
Clay (00:12:06):
Essential amino acids.
Andres (00:12:07):
That was the other, the other problem that we had, right. Most of the abma infusions that have been done with amino acids, they've always taken casing milk protein. Right. As the basis for how much they were gonna infuse. But we know that any amino acid or protein that we feed the cow, it's gonna go through a bunch of these other processes and whatever ends up in the milk is not exactly what we're feeding the cow. So we wanted to actually represent mp, the metabolize all protein and break that down into the individual essential non-essential amino acids. So we formulated two diets, one that met all of the MP requirements, one that didn't. And based on the difference of MP there, then we knew how much we were gonna infuse. And the essential amino acids, that was really easy cause the the CNCCPs is able to tell us the individual essential amino acids, but the non-essential amino acids, we had to use some data from our lab where we did multiple time hydrolysis on feeds and microbes in order to come up with a profile for the non-essential amino acid portion of that.
Clay (00:13:10):
So when you, when infused a higher level of non-essential amino acids, you reduce the level of preform fatty acids in the milk. Right,
Andres (00:13:18):
Right. Yeah. Well that was the other really interesting part. So associated with the whole insulin response, right. We know that insulin's it's a potent lippolis, it lowers the amount of lipolysis. So there was a lower amount of fat that was being broken down. And as we know, performed fatty acids either comes from endogenous fat or from the diet. And since all these cows were being fed the same diet that decrease in the preformed fatty acids was probably coming from that decrease in like policies being caused by probably insulin or any other metabolite that was being produced from the non-essential amino acids.
Clay (00:13:58):
So what are the, what would be some, what would be some takeaways from this work and what are the next steps?
Andres (00:14:05):
Yeah, so I think one of the main takeaways from here is that we haven't really explored non-essential amino acids. That hasn't really been done in a by, I think we showed some really important interactions here between amino acids, all of them, essential and non-essential, and also fatty acids and other metabolic responses. So I think we should start to look into these non-essential amino acids, maybe start to incorporate some of these into nutritional models to see if we can better predict the amount of MP that this cows are seen. That's one of my takeaways. Mike, I don't know if you have another one.
Mike (00:14:46):
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I think, you know, we just came from another talk where they infused some other non-essential amino acids and saw pretty big responses. Right. And they did it with just one amino acid, and they started prior to calving and into 21 days of lactation. So I think, I think we, we couple things there, clay, where should we go? One of the, one of the positives in the negatives of his study is that we had cows, you know, early on running 52 kilos of milk Right at 4, 4, 4, 5 fat. So we had these crazy high performing cows, which we thought should help us kind of pull them apart. But it didn't happen that way probably because the diet that corn silage made enough more microbes that we were just insensitive to some of our treatments. But I think framing it out on the model. And then the other part is probably starting in a phase where we know there's some true metabolic deficiencies. Right, right. And maybe in established lactation, that's harder to do. So we probably have to back up and, and get in those, you know, that prepartum period through the, you know, 21 to 42 days of lactation.
Clay (00:15:56):
So the,
Mike (00:15:56):
That's where I'd go.
Clay (00:15:57):
So the period there were 18 day period,
Andres (00:16:00):
18 day periods. Right.
Clay (00:16:03):
So how'd you determine the length of period?
Andres (00:16:06):
Well, we wanted to give enough time for the new treatment cause the cows were gonna receive this treatment. Right. So we wanted enough time between treatments where we wouldn't have that carryover effect from one treatment to the next. And it seemed from the literature that most of the papers if you provide that adaptation period for up to like 14 days Okay. Which is really adaptation period. That was enough to prevent any carryover from the last treatment. So it was 18 day periods, the first 14 days were adaptation, and then 15 through 18 we got the samples.
Clay (00:16:43):
Okay, thanks.
Mike (00:16:44):
But that's that question. You know, one of the things that we're still struggling with, right? There's no study that's perfect. Right.
Mike (00:16:54):
And, and it's because they, each cow had a unique sequence.
Clay (00:16:58):
Right.
Mike (00:16:58):
Right. So I'm trying to figure out can we, can we map this out in a slightly different way and see if we can find something? Cuz we're, I'm still not sure that we've, you know, it doesn't look like we have carryover effect. We've tested for that, but there may be some other aspects to it that we just haven't figured out how to pull the data apart yet. Right, right.
Scott (00:17:18):
Andreas, where are you in your PhD journey?
Andres (00:17:21):
I am almost done. This is, I have a couple more months here. I'm just wrapping up a project in the lab with amino acids of course. And I hope that probably by September I'll be defending my dissertation and then I'll move on to my next step. Not sure what it is yet. No,
Scott (00:17:37):
No. Going to go back into academia, maybe start off with a postdoc.
Andres (00:17:42):
Yeah. I think my plan right now is to start with a postdoc. I love doing research. I love what, what we do. So I think I want to keep exploring some more research doing some different things. As Mike mentioned, I've been working with him for almost eight, nine years. So, and I'm really appreciative of everything that, that, that he taught me. Right. But I think I need to see other types of research and what else we can do. Yeah.
Scott (00:18:07):
Well, you're a bright young man. You've got a great mentor. I, I'm sure the future is very bright for you. And I want to thank you for joining us this afternoon. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Appreciate. Thank you, Andreas. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.
All right, welcome back, everyone here to the ADSA joining me for this session as my co-host is Dr. Jeff Elliot. Jeff's a technical support person here at Balchem Corporation. Our guest here for this session is Dr. Eduardo Ribeiro from Guelph and his student Matheus Santos. And Matheus, I guess you did a poster today Dr. Ribeiro, would you mind introducing Matheus for us?
Eduardo (00:18:48):
Yeah, of course. Of course, of course. Thank you so much Scott and Jeff for having us. It's a great pleasure to be here and participate in this podcast conversation.
Eduardo (00:19:00):
Yeah. And Matheus so we're working on Guelph in the Animal Biosciences department. Mathues is a master student in the lab. He's close to the end, he's finishing this summer and so generate a lot of interesting data during the last two years. And it's focusing a lot on the Prepartum period and how that can affect things in the early postpartum period. Then I'll let him do the conversation here.
Scott (00:19:30):
Yeah, no, sounds good. Before we get started, I should have asked you to maybe introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you and what you do there at Guelph.
Eduardo (00:19:36):
Of course. Yeah, so I'm originally from Brazil. I, I did vet school in Brazil and then I moved to University of Florida to do a master of science and PhD working with Jose, San Jose,
Scott (00:19:51):
Of course. Yeah.
Eduardo (00:19:51):
Yeah. And when I was finished the PhD, there was a open position in Guelph that fits really well with what I had done so far. And decide to apply, got the position there in 2016 I started as assistant professor and it's been great to being at Guelph. There's a lot of great colleagues there. A very interesting industry around us that support us in the Dairy Guelph program. So it's been really good. Most of my research is on the reproduction of dairy cows, but over the years I start to see the importance of health and nutrition on reproduction. And then I start to do more and more transition work, a little bit of nutrition and train with Jose. Yeah, you kind of get a bit dangerous in those areas as well. So that's how we work today in transition management of animal health and reproduction. And Matheus specifically is more focused on the transition management transition
Scott (00:20:59):
Health. Good. Well, Guelph’s got a good one. Thank you for joining us today. Yeah. Matheus, why don't you tell us a little bit about your research study that you did.
Matheus (00:21:06):
Okay. So as Dr. Ribeiro just said I've been working in with transitionary cows specifically looking at prep program tremor intake. So I think it's quite excited because last period, the essay I had a opportunity to present a different poster that we're looking at magnitude of decline in prepartum, their intake. And it's kind of widely known that like their cows have depressed my intake during the last weeks of gestation. And that directly impacts like their postpartum health. And we are like interestingly, like by exploring this and see which one is more important, like the drop of feeding intake that it cow undergo during the last two weeks of postpartum or like keeping lower or high level of tremor intake during the last six of gestation. And that's what we brought this year. So we were looking at the level of prop intake during the last few weeks of gestation looking at how it impact on the transition cows like metabolism and also performance. And I think we got some quite interesting results.
Jeff (00:22:21):
Yeah. Go ahead, explain some of those results to us. We talked this morning, but just give us a quick overview of what you found.
Matheus (00:22:28):
Yeah, yeah, sure. So basically we are working with data set from 273 cows from a research dairy farm. So we have data information feeding intake for all these cows was several like blood metabolized at different time points. So we were like interested in, as I said, looking at the prep preparer intake. So we classified cows like in low, moderate, or high level of prepartem intake. And then we in fact saw there is this cows with like a low level of repair bearing intake. They start having like this low bearing intake six weeks before they give birth. And even after preparation they still have a low feeding intake compared to cows that had a high level of prepartum filling take. And that was quite interesting as well because we saw there doing the prepartem cows that were eating less they were heavier.
Matheus (00:23:25):
They had greater body condition score which is reflecting their like fat compared to the other cows, to the other groups. And also we saw that these cows they deferred for like their energy balance. Quite interesting, in the last week we partnered, we saw their cow with a low level Marti. They even reach like a negative energy balance. We did not have to the other two groups. We also saw that like after Calvin they had the like the most severe negative energy balance and they also saw some like, reflect on that, like on those blood biomarkers. And
Jeff (00:24:05):
Yeah, I would, I would encourage the audience to look at that energy balance drop cuz it was dramatic. But what do you think is the implication of that?
Matheus (00:24:14):
Yeah I think it's a good question. It's, I result of like lower fitting take and also greater body weight. So that's why the, they had like the, the less negative, the less positive energy balance. And there has a lot of implications that might be even started like during the prepartum before giving birth. So negative energy balance can lead to like high immunosuppression and then subsequently to development of clinical disease. Even though we did not assess like disease prevalence in disease study we saw that cows with a low level during intake. They also had low rumination time during the prepartum. It's quite nice because then we can see like how we can use this behavioral data, these sensors to try to find a way to, to see these cows that are like undergoing a low level feeding intake.
Matheus (00:25:12):
And try to establish like some protocols to avoid the consequences. Because we saw, for example, that are during the transition, they had higher concentrations of nefa of bhb. We also saw their cows with a low level intake. They had like a low activity of oxidants. Tase, which is an antioxidant. And like plays important role in controlling like oxidative stress in transition cause so, and also we found that these cow have like lower albumin with like a negative marker of inflammation. So I think it's, it's quite interesting to
Eduardo (00:25:55):
You tells yamas has a lot of data in those animals and he's using some interesting methods to try to understand a little bit better what regulates feeding tank prepartum. Because we, we, you look at the literature we don't understand that very well. So when you try to explain dry matter intake with the variables we have, it's very small percentage that we explain. So a lot of that variability, we don't know where it comes from. And not an interesting point from the industry is that people have this notion that prepartum intake will be important for postpartum health, but in general, people think about this drop, right? And, and that's what the first study that matheus presented last year look at it. And it seems to be relevant that drop. But people forget that before the drop, there's a certain level of intake that is also important and apparently even more important than just the drop.
Eduardo (00:26:58):
And those two things, they're not very correlated. So you have cows that are eating well and they drop a lot, some don't drop much. You have cows that not eating much and they still drop close to partition, others don't. So there's a lot happening. And I think the two studies that Matheus did help us to understand a little bit more the implications that he has for the transition metabolism, the performance of those animals later on. And I would challenge Matheus to comment a little bit about his second study, which is in commercial farms. Oh
Matheus (00:27:32):
Yeah, that's nice. And just like mentioned while I'm working about this to previous study as Eduardo said, like most people have been giving attention to this decline in dryer intake. And in that first study, we, we found out that there was like no effect on the production for cow that have like a large decline in dryer intake to compared to cows that had a moderate decline or cows that had like a more stable prepartem intake. And in the second study that I just presented here at the dsa we found out that cows with a low level of prop preparer intake they in fact undergoes some like consequence of milk production. So they produce less milk and also they produce less energy correct milk over the first 13 weeks of lactation. And that was at a commercial farm? No, no, no. This is, that's still the second one. Okay. The second one that's still
Eduardo (00:28:27):
On the research farm. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Matheus (00:28:30):
Talking about the, another trial that we did on a commercial farm unfortunately feeding takes something, something feasible to be measured on a commercial farm. So we are trying to explore and like use like this sensor data like rumination time and activity and saw and see how we can like leverage this data to identify groups of cows that are lack in high risk of developing postpartum disease. So in this first and the second study that I, I just mentioned that was conducted at the research station, we saw that those cows under undergoing like the large drop in feeding intake and also having a low level of prepar feeding intake, they ruminate less during the, the last week prior to percreation. And then we are looking at the rumination that incurvalve and also classifying how so into like siles and seeing how like they're transitioning.
Matheus (00:29:32):
And quite interesting. In this study we found out these cows are like ruminating less during the last week they undergo more inflammation because we found out like higher levels of haptoglobin lower levels of albumin. And in this case it was also quite nice because we could look at the incidences of disease. And we found that for much per cows, cows that ruminate last in the last week, they had higher incidences of subic, sorry, of clinical disease, uterine disease, non uterine disease which supposed to be clinical disorders as well. So that was quite interesting.
Jeff (00:30:15):
So, there's still a lot of unknowns, but how would you take this to a nutritious and apply it on a dairy? What would be your take home message?
Matheus (00:30:25):
Well I think there's so many approach that we can take it because it is still important to have white cows having that drop in dry mare intake. But looking at like the producer perspective keeping them at a high level during the preponderances should be more important because we saw difference in the production in that second study. And also if you're able to identify this cows cause with a low level of the intake looking at rumination prep, prepare rumination data and other data as well. And if we can propose like an intervention that we can kind of prevent this cows undergoing through data like impaired metabolism and maybe the consequence make production, that will be another approach. And also in terms of nutrition if we can work with like supplements which have like more like antioxidant properties or like in inflammatory properties also working with our boats where you can craze improve the feeding intake can encourage cow to eat more. So I think there's much plot boats. What, what do you think? I don't like,
Eduardo (00:31:40):
I think, I think you did you answered very well, Matheus. So definitely promoting that feed intake prepartum seems to be important. And some, we know a little bit of what controls feeding tape prepartum, but one that we know that has an effect is body conditioning score. So avoiding those fat cows dry off also important. And in the future, hopefully it will be able to develop some tests to classify housing high risk and low risk of postpartum problems. And then at that stage we can propose some new interventions. Yeah. Hopefully
Scott (00:32:20):
An important talk topic. Indeed. And I want to thank you guys for joining us today. This has been quite enlightening. Appreciate all the hard work you're doing. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you.
Matheus (00:32:28):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Scott (00:32:37):
Welcome back here to the ADSA here in Ottawa, Canada. With me for this session is Dr. Pete Morrow. Pete's a technical service manager for Balchem Corporation. Pete, I understand you are a bit of a neighbor to our next guest here. Would you mind introducing her for us?
Pete (00:32:52):
Yes. This is Faith Reyes. She grew up about 20 miles from where I currently live and practice from during my practice days. So yeah, live in one of these small world moments, you have to come halfway across the world to meet your neighbor.
Scott (00:33:06):
Yeah. You know, and understand Faith. Welcome, glad to have you here. That your professor wasn’t unable to make it a little bit of flight delays. You want to tell us a little bit about Dr. Vanos?
Faith (00:33:15):
Yes, so I've actually worked with her for about four years at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She's a professor in dairy animal welfare, and my focus has been a lot in adult cows and competition at the feed bunk, but she also expands research with calves as well in the thermal stress portion. And so she is very excited in trying to create practical, practical applications for the industry that involve from a welfare perspective that we can implement to help dairy producers.
Scott (00:33:47):
So you had mentioned competition at the feed bunk, and that's what I understand your research was. Any, would you mind telling us a little bit about that?
Faith (00:33:55):
Yes. So a lot of my research was involving adult cows in that peak lactation, 50 to 150 days in milk and looking at competition specifically at the feed bunk. So in this case, not looking at the resting stalls, but feed bunk only. And manipulating that stocking density to see how it impacts competition and then how does that relate to the feeding patterns that we're seeing and how, what can we do to think about implications with increased competition and change feeding patterns.
Scott (00:34:23):
Okay. Interesting.
Faith (00:34:25):
So, and so we actually looked at, in my particular study, three different stocking densities. So what we call one cow to one bin and I say the word bin. In this case we're working with instant tech bins or roughage intake control bins. And so each cow can specifically be assigned to a certain bin. And this allows us to calculate things like individual cow intake and eating rate and multiple types of feeding pattern variables. And we were able to compare a one-to-one stocking density to a two to one stocking density all the way up to a four to one stocking density.
Scott (00:34:59):
All right. And did you find it is competition good in this case? So
Faith (00:35:02):
In a general sense, we'd like to see decreased competition. And a lot of previous literature has showed that usually there's a linear relationship, increased stocking density leads to increased competition, if you will. And what the interesting thing we found is actually there was the most competition at the two to one stocking density, which was actually higher than the four to one stocking density. And so here again, we weren't quite sure what to expect. That kind of surprised us a little bit. But I think it goes back to individual cows and their own strategies on how they approach competition. And so perhaps they knew I might not win the competitive interaction to be able to eat at the bunk right now. So she chose to just avoid that situation. That's
Pete (00:35:44):
Awesome. That's interesting. Yeah. So from production standpoint, how did the higher levels of stock necessity change the net effect or net dry matter intake?
Faith (00:35:58):
Good question. So in our case, we did a two hour feed deprivation beforehand to be able to consistently try to control, if you will, for that feeding motivation. And then we tested each of the cows in a one hour testing period. And so it is a little bit of shortened. It wasn't over across a 24 hour period, but within that one hour we did see that there was a decrease in dry matter intake across as, as stocking density increased dry matter decreased.
Pete (00:36:26):
So in, in a linear fashion, or.
Faith (00:36:28):
Correct, in a linear fashion, yes.
Pete (00:36:30):
Do you think that it was a significant, you know, may have been statistically significant? Do you think it was biologically significant for milk production?
Faith (00:36:37):
We have the milk production data. I did not bring that with me today, so we're still working through some of that. But it was statistically different, the biological part here. I mean, it was a couple kilograms, but in a general sense, I think it, we do have to keep in mind that it was measured within a one hour period. And previous research has shown that over the course of a day, a cow will adjust and try to react, you know, readjust and be able to intake that feed, even if it's at a different time of the day. And so I also think it'd be interesting to look at this in a longer period to see does the cow change her strategy that if maybe they can't eat feed right away, but they'll go, come back to the bunk later on.
Pete (00:37:21):
Do you can you look at the stocking density in your treatments and correspondent to a, a stocking density in a, in a traditional barn, whether it be inches of bunk space or,
Faith (00:37:34):
Yes. Great question. So the syntech bin design is a little bit different than a headlock. So it's a gate system that comes down. But there has been literature that's showing that there are similar patterns between both systems. And so from a research standpoint, we find it really helpful to have those individual cow intakes. And so again, it's slightly different from a headlock, but there are similarities in what we've seen with the data and even from the stocking density standpoint. The one-to-one is kind of considered the ideal, if you will and then that around, I've seen all the way up to about 120% in a headlock setting and sometimes higher from an anecdotal sense. And so that syntech bin is about, I think 0.8 meters and for, for space. And so the 0.6 is usually that benchmark that they're looking for. And so depending on how you define that at the feed bunk with the headlock system or not, that can vary. But then Syntec system is comparable.
Pete (00:38:32):
So but this wasn't a factor of crowding the pen in terms of cows still had each had one bed per cow or
Faith (00:38:40):
So actually in these testing scenarios, because it was only for an hour, we locked them over to just a feed bunk part of the pen. So they weren't able to lie down, they just had water access Oh. And an area to be able to remove themselves from the feed bank if needed.
Scott (00:38:54):
So you had talked a little bit about Cal's strategy. I'm just kind of wondering how much of that, is it strategy or is it just social adaptation, you know, kind of getting used to each other?
Faith (00:39:04):
That's a good question. And so again, we're, I was only able to look at this one hour period, but I really do think that comes into play, especially over time. We already know that cows have a social hierarchy and that higher dominance to lower dominance is something that we can look at. I didn't look at that specifically, but the strategy part plays into potentially how dominant an animal is or how much she wants to compete at the feed bunk. And so part of my other work was actually looking at individual cow strategies related to how consistent they are. So if an animal is a higher level of competition at the one-to-one, does that remain the same at a two to one? So if she's competitive at one stocking density, does that remain consistent? And we actually found that it's a little more complex than we expected. And so some animals are more consistent, other animals not so much. And we're still working on what, what can that tell us? Because what we really don't know yet is consistency, good or bad. And it's definitely something we're still diving into. Right?
Scott (00:40:06):
Yeah. More research needed as always. Yeah. Yes. You know, kind of another question I've got is, so is four different than 50 right? And do cows kind of find their own little cliques within larger groups? And how does that, I know that's probably wasn't part of your research. I'm sorry, I'm just going off of the deep end here, but yeah, any thoughts on that? So,
Faith (00:40:28):
Yeah, I guess it's interesting, and I guess to clarify too, the groups that I was looking at were 16 cows, so four to one being like 16 cows to four bins. So a little bit bigger groups but definitely not as large as, but you might see in a commercial farm. And so there has been studies where they may rank cows based on their dominance level. And even when they take out the dominant cow, the most dominant cow that can still make a difference, but ultimately, you know, they still restructure, right? So each group kind of is fluid, if you will, if staying together for a longer period of time, they readjust. And so I think it's something we could look further into is, is this group size making a difference? Because it makes a difference for potentially the available space at the feed bunk and the management side of how much space do you need to physically have for a larger group versus a smaller group. But that type of angle is, hasn't been investigated yet.
Pete (00:41:24):
How do you feel that your research impacts the industry in a practical standpoint?
Faith (00:41:31):
Yes, great question. And I think it helps us provide insight to specifically that individual cow strategy. I think a lot of the data streams today, it boils down to an individual cow basis but also knowing how to interpret that and then use it on farm. So understanding that all cows might not approach feed the same way, and how can we change management practices to adjust for that? Whether that's reducing competition at the feed bunk, is there a way we can feed in that way? I can't, don't have a full silver bullet answer today. But I think it helped add to that knowledge and understanding that, again, those higher stocking densities still have negative implications. And the ideal situation would be that lower stocking density.
Pete (00:42:17):
Okay. What are you gonna recommend to the dairies that you visit?
Faith (00:42:20):
I would say ideally that one-to-one stocking density is what we're still working towards. But I also understand that certain farms, you know, they have very high management protocols and they're working within their realms and they can actually utilize higher stocking densities for very positive outcomes. And so I think it's a combination of facility and management when it comes to stocking densities. And there can be success stories at those higher just not recommending that four one extremely high stocking density. That one so far has been negative implications.
Pete (00:42:54):
A little scary at that level.
Scott (00:42:56):
Well, Faith Helena, thank you for joining us today. This has been quite, I should say actually, Dr. Faith, I understand you got your PhD recently. What, what's your plans going forward here?
Faith (00:43:09):
Yes, thank you. I'm actually staying within the University of Wisconsin system working at, in the division of Extension as a statewide dairy outreach specialist.
Scott (00:43:19):
Alright very well. I'm sure you'll be successful. Thanks again for joining us today. Thank
Faith (00:43:22):
You both. Thanks Pete.
Scott (00:43:31):
Welcome back to the ADSA Scientific meetings. Joining me today as co-host is Dr. Marco Senobi. Marcos is a technical service manager at Balchem Corporation, and there's a theme here. We've got a bunch of University of Florida people here. He got his PhD there at the University of Florida. Also joining us is Dr. Jose Santos and Mariana Marinho. I got, I know that's close enough. All right. Jose, I'm not sure you need an introduction but why, why don't you just tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
Jose (00:44:05):
Well, I'm a professor at the University of Florida where I conduct research and extension primarily and do some teaching. All right. Primarily with dairy cows.
Scott (00:44:15):
Okay. And would you also then introduce your yeah. Student
Jose (00:44:19):
Placement and Mariana is a second year PhD student. She completed her master's degree at the University of Florida. She's originally from Brazil. She completed her veterinary degree in Brazil, came for an internship. We retained her for graduate school and now she's halfway through her PhD program and I'm sure she's gonna tell what she's doing.
Scott (00:44:40):
Yeah. Very well. Yes. And we'll, great segway. Mariana, we're going to would like to have you talk a little bit about your talk. I understand you're gonna give a presentation tomorrow. Give us kind of an overview of what the presentation will entail.
Mariana (00:44:54):
Well, the presentation tomorrow, we are gonna talk about feed efficiency. We have been working with feed efficiency throughout my masters where we have explored some important questions. The way that we check the feed efficiency in dairy cows is true residual feeding take and residual feeding take is a way of measuring feed efficiency, where we account for important energy sink, such as milk production if the cows are losing or gaining weight the maintenance requirements for these animals. And we account for the cohort they inserted. So the, some of the important questions we have explored before that led us to this prison project here was if selecting for these animals, it's a problem because now we are selecting for animals that eat less to produce the same amount of milk and no differences in energy or body energy change. And for this study now we are seeing what makes those cows more efficient than the other ones. Cuz that's one of the important questions want to see.
Scott (00:45:59):
Oh, interesting.
Marcos (00:46:01):
So can you tell a little more bit more about what you are gonna present tomorrow?
Mariana (00:46:05):
Sure. so for this, for this study now, we having rode 117 cows. We checked them for 140 days and they entered a study with around 61 days postpartum. And throughout this time we have checked them for in two periods for feces urine. We have collected feces urine for total tract adjustability, ruminal fluid. So we could check the microbiome diversity as well as some factors in a ruminal fluids, just pH, ammonia concentration, short chain fatty acids. And we have done hepatic tissue collections for assess mitochondrial respiration. And I'm gonna talk a little bit more of these results. I'm just talking about what we have done for this study. And with all this together for 140 days, we have daily dry matter intake, milk, meal composition, twice a week, body condition score activities, some behavior traits that, that were important for us to check.
Mariana (00:47:09):
And what we hypothesized was that more efficient cows, the ones that I was mentioned before, that those ones that eat less to produce the same amount of milk we hypothesized those, those animals, they improved nutrient digestibility. So that's why they can eat less and produce the same amount of milk. And previous studies we have showed that even though they're eating less, there's no detrimental effect in health or reproductive performance or, or body condition score chains. So that's why now we want to see what makes them more efficient and we hypothesized that nutrient digestibility would enhance mitochondrial respiration will be bigger or greater for those animals too chains in microbiome diversity as well as behavior. And this is based on our studies and others too.
Marcos (00:48:04):
So I have a question. You will explore or you explore actually mitochondrial Yeah. Respirations. Have you read about that in other species that this could be a possible cause of feed efficiency?
Mariana (00:48:20):
Yeah, well there's some beef cattle studies that they have done that checking residual feeding tank. They did see respiration like we did, which is how much of oxygen being consumed linked with ATP production. And they did see differences where more efficient cows have a greater link with ATP production. They also see differences with some gene expressions with genes that have been related with antioxidant activities for in the liver tissue for beef cattle, I'm not aware of no one that have done this in dairy cattle. And also the poultry, I know the microbiome they have in, in gut, but I'm not sure about the mitochondrial respiration. I know more the beef cattle and that was one of the reasons we decided to see if that would be true as well for dairy cattle.
Scott (00:49:15):
Jose, I know you guys have been profiling the genetics you're heard for quite some time now. Do you see any genetic similarities in understanding what, what traits or genetics impact feed efficiency?
Jose (00:49:31):
Yeah, so this is a component of collaborative effort with multiple universities that are part of the national evaluation for feed efficiency. So in terms of national evaluation, the trait is called Feed Saved, which is expressed as pounds of feed that you save per lactation on a given cow. So one of those components that make Feed Saved is what Mariana just mentioned residual feeding intake. So given that a cow will produce the exact same amount of energy corrected milk, she have exactly the same change in body tissues. Some cows eat less and some cows eat more. So this trait is already available. So we genotype cattle, anybody who genotypes cattle will get a breeding value for that. Okay. So they have that when you buy semen, you can select for sis that result in progeny that is superior for feed efficiency.
Jose (00:50:30):
I guess what's really interesting is what makes this cow produce same amount of this cow, but this cow eats five, six pounds less feet, right? So that's still a lot, there's still a lot of unknowns to that. So we know very little about the exact mechanism. So we are exploring, Mariana is exploring some of them. But to be really honest we have hypothesis, but it's not very easy to confirm those hypothesis Right. With real data. Right. So yeah. But the information is already available. People can select for that. There are genetic genomic markers for that available today, and there is a good agreement between genetically superior animals for feed efficiency. And when we measure intake, they are actually, they save feed. So it's an important improvement. It's been, or it's a, an important, I should say development in the genetics world.
Marcos (00:51:39):
Thank you. So coming back to the results that you will present tomorrow I think that you have pretty exciting results.
Mariana (00:51:47):
Yeah. Well, we have some results then. I think we can, we can talk about like Dr. San to start talking about that. We see the relationship. One of our goals was were to see if in fact the cause that we are call, we are calling more efficient based on their residual intake measurements at the farm. When we look at their genomic breeding value, if in fact they're more efficient and we see an agreement with that, we did see a correlation. So, which is a good point because in fact the cows we're calling efficient there they are being selecting to be more efficient efficiency. That's the first point. And we checked that we could see this. Another point was, okay, what makes those cows more efficient? And all the things that I have mentioned before, all the collections we have measured and we have seen a major results was that more efficient cows, they have improved rumination per kilogram of matic intake and kilogram of NDF intake.
Mariana (00:52:45):
They have improved some factors related with ruminal digestibility such as microbiome diversity differs where they have less diverse microbiome, which could mean that they have, could mean that they have a micro, a more homogeneous microbiome. We did see that more efficient cows, they had lower pH and more concentration of ammonia nitrogen, which could suggest that more fermentation or more digestibility could be happening all but we didn't see difference in total tract digestibility or the mitochondrial respiration with those groups. So with we have so far, we suggest that more of the rumenal digest or maybe the site of digestion would make more important. It would play a more important role for differentiate more efficient cows and less efficient cows than the other factors based on our results. And in fact, other professors and I saw a lot that in the 80 same they talked about microbiome composition, they did see pretty different differences in high differences in low and, and high residual fitting take house regarding to microbiome. So I think it's something that we could explore and then that's where our results were going towards too.
Marcos (00:54:00):
Yeah. So you, me you mentioned pH in the rumen, but also you have higher butyrate, right? Concentration. Do you have any speculation of that?
Mariana (00:54:10):
Yeah, well so we had different spirits of collection and the butyrate actually, when we look at the two periods where we have collected, we didn't see more differences is this we have an interaction and it wasn't a very big of a difference. So the short chain fatty acid concentration, we didn't see a big of a differences. However we didn't measure production, which could very well differentiate among design models. So we know the concentration, but we don't know, we don't know how much they actually produce, which will be nice to see. So we could see if the residual fitting day have differences on that.
Scott (00:54:50):
Mariana, you've got a couple years left with your PhD. Are you gonna continue to pursue this line of study? Well,
Mariana (00:54:57):
I would like to, I really liked this fit efficiency and all the studies I have been doing throughout my program. I think they're very relevant and that's one thing that I would, I would enjoy to keep doing and, and contribute somehow. Yeah.
Scott (00:55:11):
So when you do graduate in a couple years, what's your plans?
Mariana (00:55:16):
Work for Balchem?
Scott (00:55:18):
I'll tell you why. Well, you correct. Done deal. Nice. Excellent. She can be in sales too. You see how she just ask that order. Well, listen, I appreciate, I appreciate you guys joining us today. This has been fun.
Scott (00:56:11):
Welcome back to the ADSA Scientific sessions. With me today as co-host is Dr. Clay Zimmerman. And in this corner is Luke Lines. Our guest today is Alex Tebbe from Purina Mills. Alex, welcome. Would you mind giving us just kind of a little bit of background about yourself and yeah, let's start with that.
Alex (00:56:30):
Yeah, well thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm a frequent viewer of it. You guys do a great job. And so my background originally from southern Illinois grew up there and in a dairy populated area. That's kind of where I got my interest. Went to the University of Illinois
Scott (00:56:51):
Far south, like down around Effingham?
Alex (00:56:52):
Yes. Yeah, I live about an hour straight east of St. Louis. Okay. And Clinton County, Illinois. Yeah. The home of ski. Yeah. It, it and also the most dairy farms in Illinois. There's not a lot of dairy cows there, but the most dairy farms. And, and I, I got my interest to go off and seek nutrition. I was at a meeting for DHI and met my Hutchins there. And then I got to University of Illinois and that's where I was very fortunate to get mentored by George Fayhe. Who really challenged me to go to grad school versus vet school. I really enjoyed nutrition, but I liked dairy nutrition. And George focused more on pet nutrition. So I said, George, what, what do I have to do next? And he said, well, go to Jim Ley, who's a nutritionist at, at University of Illinois as well. And
Scott (00:57:56):
They had him on the podcast earlier. Oh, okay. Yeah,
Alex (00:57:58):
Yesterday. Excellent. Excellent. And he said ask him for a list of names. And I was very fortunate that Bill Weiss's name was on that list. And I emailed Bill and sent him my resume and said, I'd like to be your, your master student. And within five minutes he had replied back to me and said, sounds like Bill, let's, let's set up an interview. And from there on the rest is history. I went to Ohio State. I did my master's and my PhD with Bill there.
Scott (00:58:33):
You were up at Worcester?
Alex (00:58:34):
Yep. The whole time. Yeah. Well, I started in Columbus spent two semesters there. Then went up to Worcester where Bill was located at the O A R D C research station and spent four years up there with him doing research.
Scott (00:58:51):
Yeah. And now you're with Purina?
Alex (00:58:53):
Yeah. Yeah. So now I'm with Purina. I do tech support and consulting for the company. I cover Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. So a lot supporting local, local guys as well as some of our own consultants. And then I work with some clients myself.
Scott (00:59:13):
Yeah, I'm sure you know Dwight Roster.
Alex (00:59:14):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Also another mentor of mine. It was truly an honor the year I graduated, Bill of course got inducted into the Hall of Fame, but so did Dwight. two guys. I looked very highly up to.
Scott (00:59:29):
Yeah. Dwight and I were dorm mates back in the day.
Alex (00:59:32):
Oh, really? Three years ago. Yeah.
Scott (00:59:33):
Actually, he's one of my favorite people's a great guy. Yeah.
Alex (00:59:35):
He, he's the one person I don't have dirt on, so maybe we can
Scott (00:59:37):
Talk later. I don't think there is any dirt.
Alex (00:59:39):
Yeah, I don't think so either.
Scott (00:59:41):
I agree. So you're given a presentation tomorrow, I believe it is. Yeah. Can you kinda give us what the, the, the objective and, and the content of that talk's gonna be?
Alex (00:59:52):
Yeah. So it's gonna focus a lot on transition cows both the dry period and that fresh period. And we're, I'm really gonna focus on talking about both periods, but how both of those periods are so influential to that cow's long term performance. I'm not gonna focus a ton about health is kind of what Bill challenged me to do, but more so on the milk production and that side of how we can really hone in on the nutrition of dry cows and fresh cows to produce a lot of milk in the future of those cows.
Scott (01:00:37):
Very well turn over to Clay and Luke.
Clay (01:00:41):
So Alex, so you know, related to your talk tomorrow, what you gonna hit on? Will you hit on some specific topics, maybe nitrogen amino acid nutrition?
Alex (01:00:54):
Yeah. Yeah. So that, that will be a portion of it. I was only given 35 minutes to talk about a pretty broad and an exciting area, but I'll focus a little bit on protein and amino acid nutrition. Really trying to understand more of the differences between first lactation and mature cows. Both in that dry period as well as the post fresh period and how influential meeting their protein demands of those cows are, but also balancing for amino acids.
Clay (01:01:33):
Great. Great. And, and the symposium tomorrow? Is in honor of who?
Alex (01:01:40):
Yes. So it is in honor of a truly influential man to the world of applied Nutrition, Bill Weiss. So very honored to speak on, on his behalf. He's truly a very legendary person, I think in our field. Yes. And I might be biased, but he, I think he is. You would agree.
Clay (01:02:01):
I would definitely agree with that.
Luke (01:02:03):
Absolutely. Yeah kind of, kind of interesting, I was one of his first grad students and, and you were, I think his last grad student.
Alex (01:02:10):
I was the one that made him retire, I guess.
Scott (01:02:14):
Luke. Now, I didn't introduce you yet. Why don't you go ahead and do that? You've introduced yourself as, as Bill's first grad student, but what else do you do?
Luke (01:02:21):
Not quite Bill's first grad
Scott (01:02:22):
Student first, but one of the first.
Luke (01:02:23):
But I think I was either second or third.
Scott (01:02:25):
You didn't discourage him from retiring at that point?
Luke (01:02:27):
No, I must have done Okay. Cuz he had a lot of grad students after me, so but I'm the, I've been with Balchem for 11 years and I'm the eastern regional manager for Balchem. And it's, I think it's due to Bill Weiss that I got into this industry and I've been doing it now for 28 years. And, I remember when I first started I didn't know anything real about dairy and Bill took a kid that grew up in, in the urban, urban setting of Columbus, Ohio and, and taught me a lot. So,
Alex (01:03:03):
Yeah. Yeah. He, he's, he mentioned you when I was a grad student as well, Luke. And, and I'll, I'll tell you this when he talked about, and I asked about his previous grad students and stuff, he said that you were the best one Wow. That he's had. So
Luke (01:03:20):
He's a good liar. He's a good liar.
Alex (01:03:23):
And in all seriousness, he said that, that you were the hardest working. And so yeah,
Luke (01:03:27):
I may have been the hardest working, but probably not the best. Yeah, yeah. No, he gave it, I mean, it was just he, he knew that I didn't have a dairy background and he was like, Hey, Luke, I'm gonna set you up. You're gonna manage ATI Dairy Farm, you're gonna get that, that dairy experience. And then, you know, the on research at the OARDC, the, the you know, the total collection digestion trial site there that was just, I mean, he was just such a great person to work with. He participated with you. He was in there with you. He was milking the cows with you. It was truly a great experience. Yeah.
Scott (01:04:03):
You know, we're quite fond of Bill here at Real Science Exchange. He does our journal clubs for us.
Luke (01:04:08):
Wanted to ask you if you had any favorite Bill Weis story.
Alex (01:04:13):
Favorite Bill Weis story. But before that, I wanted to touch on one thing with Bill and, and, just how fortunate I was to work with him. Luke, he touched on it, that no matter how busy he was, I mean, I watched that guy do three international trips in one week and probably hadn't slept 12 hours in that week no matter what. He always had time for his grad students. And, there was a kind of funny story that I, I talk about sometimes that he prepared me so well. When you're doing your masters, when you're doing your PhD, you have your final exam basically, that you, you take and your committee members ask you a bunch of really hard questions and to prepare me for that. Every Friday leading up to those, he would bring me to his office and ask me really hard questions for two hours. And Oh man, I just, there was days that I just was at wits end and I was like, I am going to, this guy's driving me crazy. Right. But in the end, I was so prepared for those because of his grill sessions that he had with me and, and just always, he had time for his, his grad students and, and teaching them to be prepared for whatever they wanted to do. Yep. So very thankful for him in that. But funny Bill Weiss story
Luke (01:05:51):
How about a car story, maybe racing out to the dairy barn in one of his, his race cars?
Alex (01:05:58):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, Bill was a very, always a very simple man, but he loved his cars. That was his, that was his one thing. That was his passion.
Alex (01:06:10):
His passion. Yep. And so my, I think it was my second year he bought a Porsche, a Cayman, oh my goodness. A red one fanciest car on OARDC campus by far. And you know, like you said, he would always be active in the sample process and stuff like that. So I think it was a Saturday, you know, I come to the office at, at 8:00 AM he's already probably been there for two hours, and we hopped in his Cayman and went to the OARDC farm, pulled some blood samples, got our our shoes with some manure on him, hopped back in and drove back. And that was, that was the journey. But wow. He never let me drive that car though. He let me drive his truck, but
Alex (01:06:59):
Not the car
Luke (01:07:01):
I had that same experience except I was early on in his career. It wasn't a Porsche, it was a Firebird TransAm, a red one, either that we raced out to the OARDC facility. And, and he, he went from there, I think, to a BMW, to a Porsche. So he upgraded every year. Yep.
Alex (01:07:20):
Yep. Yeah.
Scott (01:07:22):
Listen, Alex, you've been a great guest and enjoyed the time together here. Looking forward to the presentation tomorrow. Certainly be there and maybe Bill will be here if we can get him rounded up tonight from Newark.
Luke (01:07:34):
Give him a fast car. He'll be up here. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Scott (01:07:37):
See Bill, rent a Porsch. Exactly. So, yeah, no, I really appreciate spending your time, spending time here with you today. This has been a good, good one to, to end our first day on. This is the end of day one. There will be another one here coming up. Anyway, appreciate you guys spending some time with us today. Also, appreciate our audience for spending time as always. We hope you learned something. We hope you had some fun and we hope to see you next time here at Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 4 (01:08:10):
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