Joining around the pub at World Dairy Expo to discuss the latest research about environmental factors and the effects it has on specific dairy cattle breeds are Dr. Bill Weiss and Dr. Michel Wattiaux.
Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University; Dr. Michel Wattiaux, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Co-Host: Dr. Jeff Elliott
Joining around the pub at World Dairy Expo to discuss the latest research about environmental factors and the effects it has on specific dairy cattle breeds are Dr. Bill Weiss and Dr. Michel Wattiaux.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux, Dairy Systems Management Professor at the University of Wisconsin led the conversation by introducing the recent publication in the Journal of Dairy Science and authors M.E. Uddinn, O.I. Santana and K.A. Weigel. 2:28
What was the main reasoning behind the research and the treatments selected? Dr. Wattiaux said with help from the entire research team, they wanted to measure and compare methane emissions from two cattle breeds and evaluate the nutritional consequences between various fiber sources and concentrations. 3:55
He noted that another key motivation was an earlier research paper showing that jersey cows may in fact, be more environmentally friendly when compared to environmental impact per unit of cheese yield. 4:30
With breeds, forage levels and various forage sources at a focus, Dr. Wattiaux said they first looked to see if there was any interaction between variable fiber types, level of fiber on methane emissions, cow performance and digestibility. 5:30
He said the research encompassed only first lactation cows, adding the various forage NDF and alfalfa silage corn NDF rations used. 6:45
Given methane is a major contributor to the carbon footprint, Dr. Wattiaux said they first measured and compared methane emissions between the holstein and jersey breeds and then evaluated the green feed system, its specifics and system measurements. 9:45
Dr. Bill Weiss, Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University, asked about the production impact the two breeds had from the various diet treatment studies. 16:18
Dr. Wattiaux added there was no variability between the two breeds in terms of production differences. He added that the more cows consume, the more fermentation and, ultimately, the more methane produced. 18:45
But how can we know we are standardizing our comparison between the two breeds? Dr. Bill Weiss then asked that question. 20:10
Dr. Wattiaux mentioned the research paper showed methane emission as the only factor affecting the overall carbon footprint. He added that animal efficiency is ultimately not related to methane production per day but rather an energy law ideally used to make milk. 21:15
Additionally, he mentioned the study showed very little difference in manure composition between the two breeds as well. Emphasizing that media and consumers are focused on methane intensity and the carbon footprint, which ultimately is an extension of digestive system studies. 26:51
Dr. Jeff Elliott, podcast co-host and technical services representative for Balchem, asked how much the industry has improved feed production management in the last 10 years. 28:23
Dr. Wattiaux said when talking about production intensity, yield or even greenhouse gas emission there was a high level of variation. Adding when making an impact on reducing emissions, manure and crop management is just as important as the cow or environmental effects. 32:05
Wrapping up the conversation, Dr. Wattiaux mentioned despite the research showing differences between the jersey and holstein breeds; it emphasized the importance of a forage diet variability and nutritional options for all breeds and their environmental factors.t 42:14
Read the articles here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32389470/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34955248/
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Scott Sorrell (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pub. We're leading scientists and industry professionals who meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Tonight's one of my favorite subjects. It's the journal club once again here with Dr. Bill Weiss from the Ohio State University. And with me, as my co-host is Dr. Jeff Elliot. He's a tech service manager for Bache Corporation. And our featured guest tonight is Dr. Michelle t from Wisconsin, gonna be talking about enteric emissions and, and how to control those by breed impact, the forages, concentrates, those kinds of things. Correct. All right, awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
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Scott Sorrell (01:13):
Bill, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you come about selecting this paper?
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:19):
Well, thanks, Scott, it's good to be back. A couple of things. One, I'm a nutritionist, so I always want nutrition papers. This has a breed treatment in it, and I get questions a lot about jerseys and, this addresses some of those. So it's a comparison of breeds of Jersey and Holstein. And then methane is a, is a hot topic now, and it's not just environmental. Methane has a lot of energy, so you're losing energy to the cow. So I think it's both a, a current topic, but again, this breed effect is what got my attention. And there's, we're gonna concentrate on one paper, but there's a series, so there'll be some other papers posted. We're gonna concentrate on the one entitled, I'm gonna shorten the title a little bit, but it's on Arteric methane lactation digestibility, metabolism of nitrogen and energy from Holsteins in Jerseys Fed Two levels of Forage NDF with from alfalfa or corn silage. And Michelle, if you want to just first kind of introduce the other authors on this, a little bit of their background, then we'll get into the paper,
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (02:28):
So. Sure. So the first author is Ilias in. He was a graduate student in my lab a few years back, and he's now actually a faculty at South Dakota State University. And he is tremendous work. This is why we have this whole series of papers, because he's very, very sharp and did an excellent, hardworking and, very bright Omar Santa is the second author. He is a scientist at Infa in Mexico, and he just happened to be in the labs when the experiment was taking place. And he also conducted some measurements on those animals while we were conducting that experiment that is being processed now and hopefully will be submitted soon. And he looked at the defeating behavior of the hod and the jerseys. Ken Weigel was the, is were a departmental chair, and he was involved in the project in part because of the jersey and the Hochstein with the breed effect. He is a geneticist, and so he has an interest in breed differences. And as a professor in the department I'm the one who tried to, you know, put, the project together and write the grants to get the fund to support everyone to do the work. Okay.
Dr. Bill Weiss (03:39):
So we'll just start here with kind of what, why, why you picked the treatments you did, why you decide to study forge source and forge fiber concentration, and what was your initial hypothesis. Yes.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (03:55):
So, well, again, we looked at three different main factors here, the breed, the forage level, and the forage source. So the interest for the breed was really because they were, or earlier papers suggesting that maybe the jersey animal, the jersey cow might have been more environmentally friendly when you look at their environmental impact per unit of cheese yield. And so that was one of our major motivations, say, okay, let's, let's look at you know, the jerseys versus the stein in term of some of the environmental performance. And we know methane is one of the major contributor to carbon footprint. So that was, you know, step number one, measure and compare meth emission from those two breeds. So that was a motivation for, for Hoshin versus Jersey, the level of forage it's actually in the experiment was not just the level of forage. It, it was a substitution for the forage in df in the diets.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (04:55):
So in other words, we wanted to replace this equal amount of NDF from off of ail versus NDF from alpha of a silage. Why did we want to do that? Well, again, because, you know, we have a big trend in, in many part of the United States and Wisconsin is, is not an exception where you see producers, you know incrementing the acreage of corn, often time at the expense of the alfalfa. So what are the consequences from a nutritional perspective? But also we wanted to put that into a more environmental context perspective as well, because, you know, Alfa is perin, so it stays there in the ground for a few years covers the ground less so erosion, you know, possibly carbon sequestration, whereas corn typically is a row crop. It may be associated with actual loss of co2, you know, from the soil rather than capture the co2.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (05:46):
So the end of the day we wanted to look at, at that. And then, you know, again, there was the legume versus grass aspect, you know, of, of our legume corn grass. And we know, know that they kind of behave differently in the room and in the, the lower track. So we wanted to take a fresh look at that. And then and then the, the, the level of forage was really tied back to some of the earlier work that we did where we actually, you know, found that, you know, more forage in the diet, more in the, in the day yielded, you know, more methane. And so again, part of the logic here was to look at whether there was some sort of interaction between the type of fiber, the level of the fiber on the methane emission, and obviously the cow performance and the digestibility and all those different parameters. Okay.
Dr. Bill Weiss (06:33):
And again, not, not redde real detailed, but mm-hmm.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (06:43):
Chose? Yes. So we had rationed that were formulated for either 19 or 24% of forage ndf, you know, and so, and then the alfalfa silage corn silage NDF ratio was a 30 70, right? So 30 70 in 19 or 30, 70 in 24. And and so that amounted to, to, to make it, to simplify things, if you will, to either feeding either a 55% forage diet or a 68% forage diet. Now remember, one of the little details that is important to remember in looking at this paper is that those animals were perper cows, all of them. And so we were not dealing with, you know, mature cows. We were dealing with first lactation cows. Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Jeff Elliott (07:30):
And, and maybe before we get into, dive into the details a little more, can you explain how the enteric methane was measured? Sure. The green feed system,
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (07:40):
Yes. So the green feed system is probably the most common ways these days to measure methane because of the flexibility of the technique. But the basic a protocol is to have the animal and policing her head into a relatively close space. And we do that by giving her a little incentive to do that, you know, a little concentrate falling in front of her nose. And so she's gonna get in there and if she stay there long enough, we can measure the air flow coming in, you know, around the nose of the cow. And then, and and then there is a detector for the amount, the concentration of methane in that air. And so, so we can basically measure air flow in time, concentration of methane, and then look at airflow out and concentration of methane. And based on that, you can then figure out how much methane was emitted from between point A and point B with point A being, you know, outside of the unit point A being, you know, the cows in the unit. Okay. Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Bill Weiss (08:56):
Now, how long would a measurement period the methanes last?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (09:01):
So that's a good question because still, you know, last week there's so much misconception out there. I had people just thinking that cow actually far in right
Scott Sorrell (09:11):
That's what the media tells us, though.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (09:13):
Yes, they irritate or they be for two, that's okay, but they don't, I mean, they do far, and actually this is one of the limitations of the green feed, is just it measure the methane from the Roman and eic, but it doesn't measure the methane from the lower intestinal tract. So then there is some methane produced in the colon and intestine, the large intestine. And you know, I mean, earlier research indicated, you know, five to 10% of the total methane of the animal comes out the backhand. But, so it means 90, 95% come at the front end of the animal. Right? so yeah, that, that's was I'm sorry, I kind of, let's strike the, the original question. I never
Dr. Bill Weiss (09:51):
How long Yes, on average are they actually in the box
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (09:54):
And your measurements? So for one single measurement, they need to stay only a few, a few you know, five to six seconds. So very short, short amount of time. However, because of the fact that irritation is something that comes and goes, you know, the burping blah, and then nothing happened, just breathing and there is some methane in the breath, but then there is another burb, you know, a few minutes later and you cannot predict when those comes out. So there is a lot of variation in the rate at which the methane comes out of the animal. So this is why you need to go back and do measurements at least 10, 12 times over the 24 hour clock in order to capture, you know, any cyclic, you know methane each,
Dr. Bill Weiss (10:35):
So each
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (10:36):
Cal, oh yes, that's, yes. Imagine that for, for the 24 animals that we had there you know, we did methane measurements every three hours over a three day period in order to cover the 24 hour clock at least once. Okay. Yeah. So that's why you need to have good working, hardworking graduate students and a whole team of people doing that
Scott Sorrell (10:56):
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (11:11):
Well, there must be variation. Yeah. And some work has been done in earlier days of using that, you know, green feed units, you know, when people were testing it. And so, and, and there was, you know, measurement done for every, every two hours or every three hours or every four hours. And the way that the scientists have figured out, you know, the best protocol to address that question, you know, what could happen in between is that they basically look at very complete data sets, okay. And look at, okay, let's calculate the average emission of those dead animal when you've done like 24 measurements. Right? Got it. And then they say, let's take, you know, two measurement out and redo the calculation and see, you know, if the average has changed. Right. And so by pairing it down like that, they kind of figure out that a minimum of eight measurement per day give you a representative estimates of the total met emission of the animal in one day. Thank
Dr. Bill Weiss (12:06):
You. Does, does meth, did you ever measure this over time? Like two days on treatment and then you measure it two weeks later? Does it stay pretty constant day to day?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (12:17):
That, that's a good question. So in it 80, this is some of the recommendation from the manufacturer is to try to balance the, the measurement within a day with the measurement across days. I don't know of any experiment that actually went back and did it two weeks later on the same treatment because you know how we were an experiment, right? But, but it seems pretty, pretty, you know, we should be pretty confident to say that those measurements are quite reliable actually. Yes. But again, you need to combination of within days and across day measurement over three, four day period to make sure that you, you get good numbers. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it, so, and again, what the way that the green feed really works is that so the comp the company, all your data is processed by the, the C log South Dakota University not university, South Dakota Company. And so they process the data for you. And so they really have the expertise, you know, to, to kind of look at outliers, anything that went wrong with the units, because all this, all this goes through the internet so there's some sort of quality control to the unit right there that, you know, give you, you know confidence that the numbers are reliable. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (13:32):
And I just had one more question on the diet, and I always ask this forage NDF level changed. Yes. Which means something else has to change too. That's right. That's right. So what, what else changed?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (13:43):
So, yeah, I did have to refresh my memory this morning going back this paper. So there were two ways we tried to keep the starch relatively constant across all the diet, 23%, more or less. And we also try to keep the total NDF constant across the diet to keep the total NDF constant across the diet. We played with soils. Okay. A non forage fiber. Right. Okay. And actually this is very good, bill, that you're asking the question, because often time we interpret our result and report them as the effect of what we wanted to change. It's always a substitution. Exactly. You know, you can also interpret your, your result as, you know, the things that have changed, you know, as you formula the diet. So, so so, so the, the low forage diet had a lot of so health to bring it to the level of the high total forged diet. And the other feeding region that we played with was the corn grain. Right. Because if we had
Dr. Bill Weiss (14:44):
To keep the starch
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (14:45):
To keep the starch constant, yes. Yeah. So when we had the alpha silage based diet, obviously we, we had a lot more corn grain in there compared to the corn diet corn Salish diet.
Dr. Bill Weiss (14:56):
I think that's using soy halls to do this, I thinks the best. It's Oh, is a compromise. But I think that's the best starch can affect fiber digestion. So you took that variable. Well, yeah, you balance for starch. So I think the diets actually were a good choice, so
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (15:11):
Thanks mm-hmm.
Dr. Bill Weiss (15:12):
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (15:33):
But, so, you know, I mean, we didn't revolutionize science.
Dr. Bill Weiss (16:18):
And then on treatments, what kind of summarize the production responses to the diet treatments
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (16:24):
There, there was not much of a difference either in terms of performance.
Dr. Bill Weiss (16:28):
Their intake changed to be, as you'd expect with the higher forged diet, the eight a little less. Yes. but that was about it. It, but
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (16:36):
That, that was about it. That's right. Yes. Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Bill Weiss (16:39):
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (16:55):
Matter. Doesn't really matter. You know some of you may remember my the name of my mentor Larry Satter and Larry Satter did some work, you know, quite a number of years ago. And I remember Larry's basic practical recommendation is, you know, at least one third of either corn silage or off of a silage. And, you know, the rest can be the other, the other forage, and you'll be fine. Some of the earlier work seems to indicate that cows have real good ways to adapt to a wide range of, you know, mixture of corn silage off of a silage. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (17:32):
And, you know, these cows would be produced. I remember reading those papers from Larry mm-hmm.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (17:46):
That's right. That's right. Yes. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Bill Weiss (17:48):
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (18:00):
Okay, so in term of the breed, again if you're not familiar, you know, the methane that the cow produced per day is pretty much directly related to how much feature consumed, and it makes sense, right? The more the cow eat, the more fermentation there is in the room, the more methane you're gonna produce. So amount of feed consume is factor number one. Then, obviously as nutrition is, we are really interested in looking at diet composition and how it may affect met emission. But, so in term of the breed differences, the fact that the jerseys were eating less than the hochstein, when you look at the methane per day, I do remember those numbers. You know, there was like 380 grams in the jerseys, but 450 grams in the hochstein, and it was a significant difference. Yeah. So, so grams per day of methane, you know, per animal.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (18:51):
The jersey not surprisingly, was producing less methane than the, the hush teams. But, you know, those of us working a lot with methane emission we talk about methane production, which is what I just talk about. The day denominator is the day, right? Methane is the narrator, but we also look at what we call the methane yield, which is the amount of methane divided by the dry matter intake. Okay. And there was no difference there. So, which would suggest that, you know, the microbiome, the type of microbes that lives in the ru of a Holstein or jersey, doesn't make a difference in terms of methane emission. Right. And then what a lot of a big part of the industry is really interested in is the methane per unit of milk produced by the cow, and that's what we call methane intensity. And again, there was no difference in that measure between the Holsteins and the jersey. So, so in a way you can say that well, I dunno what you can say, except again, if, if, if you get bigger animals, you're gonna get more methane, but those bigger animals tend to produce more milk. And when you look at the methane per unit of milk, the breed doesn't make a difference.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
So how'd you standardize that? So you're comparing apples to apples, right? So within the Jersey population, you've got very high producing, very efficient animals, producing. And then, so when you say there's no difference between jerseys and Holsteins, how do you know you were comparing something that's more apples to apples other than just the, the breeds?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (20:27):
Well, that, that's a good, that's a good question. And I don't know if I have a straight answer for you, except that, you know, you need to design experiment like this one, right? Where you randomly pick animals from, you know, from one breed. And I'm sure, so we, we had 12 jerseys and 12 Holsteins, you know, we just hope that on average, those 12 animals from each breed represented the breed as a whole. Right? That's all we
Dr. Bill Weiss (20:49):
Can do in this day. What was the average milk for the, for the two breeds? Just the ballpark average milky
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (20:55):
For the, so that was you know, 20, let me see, look at it here. So the whole scene premier per cows, right? 33 kilos, and the jersey was 21 kilos of mill per day.
Dr. Bill Weiss (21:08):
Yeah. 50 and 70 pounds. Rightly so. Pretty,
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (21:11):
Pretty average. Yeah. Yeah. But, but in term of going a little deeper in your question about the, so the methane emission is only one of the factors you know, that affect the overall carbon footprint, right? We know that methane is the single most important contributor to the milk carbon footprint, but there are many other factors as well, right? So the efficiency of the animal is not related only to how much methane the animal produced per day, as Bill said, right? Methane is an energy law. It contain energy. So as the cow breathe out that methane, she's breathing out energy. While, you know, as a nutritionist, we would like her to use that energy to make milk, right? Because that's what we, we are all about in nutrition. But, you know, there are many other factors next to, you know, the, the type of microbes that produce the methane that can influence the efficiency of the cow, right? Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Bill Weiss (22:06):
So, on, on this methane thing, and this experiment, because the results were similar, it, it doesn't matter that very much, but how should we express methane per unit of milk component per unit of dry matter intake, or per cow per day? What's the
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (22:23):
So you, you're hitting
Dr. Bill Weiss (22:24):
That's the right way.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (22:25):
You're hitting on something here, bill. And I, I'll tell you, as a good, as a good university professor, I'll an academician, you know, what's the right answer?
Dr. Bill Weiss (22:37):
It depends.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (22:38):
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (23:35):
And I think we need to have more discussion as an industry, whether, you know, we should be trying to minimize maybe the methane per cow per day versus the methane per milk. And we actually are working right now on a manuscript where with the data in part of this data set the, the, the relationship, the, the degree to which those three measurement meth, you know, so having day in the day denominator, having milk in the denominator, or having dry matter intake in the day denominator, how closely are they related? There are some correlation between those, right? As you would expect. But it's not straightforward either. So, so I think what it means is that, you know, again, for geneticists, you know, that could make a big difference, right? Whether the goal is to decrease the methane per cow or decrease the methane per kilos of milk,
Dr. Bill Weiss (24:24):
You know, on the, on the per cow thing, you know, just hurt or dry and you'll reduce methane production.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (24:29):
Well, that's another thing I think that we found in, in the, when we tried to integrate all this data into a typical herd we, we found that you know, the reproduction rate of the herd, and so your proportion of dry cow and heifers that, you know, produce methane, but no milk can have a big effect also on your overall covered footprint of the milk coming out of your farm, right?
Dr. Bill Weiss (24:56):
Yeah. And you know, like you said, they eat more, they almost always produce more methane, but if they eat more or eat more digested fiber yes. They also usually produce more methane. Yes. And you didn't find that here,
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (25:08):
I guess That's right. That's right. What
Dr. Bill Weiss (25:10):
You thinks going on.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (25:11):
Well, I, you know, it's, it's very hard to do those experiments where you really look at the effect of the digestibility of that fiber, right? In this experiment, we just look at the type of fiber from, of a or from corn silage, and then the amount of fiber, right? But we were not able to look directly at the effect of the digestability of that fiber. But we, we tried and we, it, as I said, it's very difficult to, to really do an experiment that doesn't have too many confounding factors right. To do that. But, but the logic would tell us, as you say that if you have a more digestible fiber, you would get more energy to the animal. That means, you know, the animal can produce more milk, but you would also have more, more methane. But with the overall hypothe, when you look at the trends that the benefits would outweigh the, the negative. So you would have more, more milk than you would have more methane. Yeah. And therefore you would make the cow more efficient that way. That was kind of the hypotheses
Dr. Jeff Elliott (26:13):
We had. Yeah. But that gets back to how do we measure it? Are we looking at yield? Are we looking at that intensity? Yes. Yes. And, and what do we need to do so, right? Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (26:20):
Dr. Bill Weiss (26:22):
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (26:46):
So as I recall, again, there was very little difference in the composition of the manure due to breed, but there was a difference in the coms of the manure due to the level of fiber in the diets. Not the source, but the level of fiber, which, which kind of makes sense again as a nutritionist, right? Yeah. So more fiber, you know, in probably means more fiber out. And so then you got a manure that has a different composition. And if, you know, you think about what's going on in your manure pit being an extension of what's going on in the digestive system of the cow, if you have more of residual digestible fiber in there, you're gonna produce more methane out, you know, out of the manure kits.
Dr. Bill Weiss (27:30):
So that, that's kind of what I mean, if we feed more, more digestible fiber the cow, so she produces more methane, but then if we don't, is it just, do we just transfer the methane from the cow to the manure?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (27:43):
To a certain degree, I think we do to a certain degree, yeah. So if we do, and that's one of the difference again, between the high producing animal and the low producing animal, right? We have a loss of digestibility in high producing animal due to high rate of passage. So their manure is more fable mm-hmm.
Dr. Bill Weiss (28:12):
The track. So I think that's you know, we look at as nutrit as we concentrate on the cow and one of your papers you're starting to concentrate on the farm and that that is the next step, but
Dr. Jeff Elliott (28:23):
Yeah. Yep, yep. So if we can back up just a little bit mm-hmm.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (29:07):
Good, good question. I, and, and I don't think I have a very straight answer to you, but, but here's how we will answer that question. I I don't think the numbers have changed that much when you look at the big picture,
Dr. Jeff Elliott (29:16):
Right? Yeah, yeah. It still may be 70% because of Yes. Even though it's gotten, even though it's improved, right?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (29:23):
Right.
Dr. Jeff Elliott (29:23):
Yes. Assume
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (29:25):
Improved. And the way I would say this is that when people started to say, okay, we need to reduce methane emission, and I use the word emission here, and I don't like it, but that's what, because it's vague. What do you mean? Right? Because based on the conversation we had here, for me, emission doesn't mean anything I need, need to know. If you're talking about production intensity or, or yield, right? Yes. So what's no day denominator going back to that? Yeah. And, and I think so those three numbers, so, so in, in term of trying to reduce, let's talk about the intensity, right? So the methane per CHS of milk, we have more than, you know, 160 years of land grant research, you know, very focused nutrition and biochemistry and all this that help us make cow producing a lot of milk. We just started in the last 20, 30 years to really pay attention to methane.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (30:17):
We know much better how to increase the denominator, increase meal production, then we know how to reduce the nu narrator, the methane that comes out of the cow. So when, so what's the fastest way to increase, right? The ratio it's been make cow produce more milk. And so from that perspective, you know, the benefits that we've had in the last 10 years or so I think have been associated with producers feeding their cows better, maintaining health, you know, and all this kind of things that, you know, maximize the, the genetic potential of the animal. And that's to everyone's benefits. There's no question about that in, in my mind. Yeah. Now, focusing for a moment on the, they nominat on the numerator 10, 15 years ago, when people ask me, so what can we do to reduce the methane from the cow? I said, yeah, I have one solution for you. Kill the cow
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (31:11):
You know, that was it. 50 million years of evolution to make the cow, the cow and, you know, use fiber, it comes at a little cost, right? Yeah. The methane, you know what I mean? Right. And so, but now, you know, thanks to science and research and discoveries, they are now more and more on the market, on coming on the market feed additive, you know? That can make a big difference in term of how much methane comes out of the cow. So, so we've made a lot of progress, but I don't think those ratios have changed. Fundamentally, the, the methane emission from the cow herself is still the single most important contributor to the overall carbon footprint. But I think we need to pay attention to the manure, and we need to pay attention to the feed production. And I think rereading some of the paper this morning to, you know, get myself, you know, gear up to share all those thought with you guys here.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (32:05):
It seems like some of the data that we collected seems to indicate that, you know, again, feed aside, when you look at just met emission from the cow and the variation that you could expect around the mean value, right? And then you look at the, met the greenhouse gas emission coming out of the manure storage and processing, which is methane, but also nitro oxide. There's a lot of variation there, much wider variation. And then you look at the variation in emission in greenhouse gas from the field where the feeds are being produced, where you grow your corn alfa. And it's another magnitude of variation there. So when you, you know, as a producer, I think if you really want to, to make an, you know, a true impact on reducing the emission from your farm, the cow is important, but you need to also focus on the management of that manure and the management of your crops. The big picture thing here, right? Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Bill Weiss (33:04):
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (33:40):
Loss. A small loss. I agree. I think, you know, it could be the case, but only in the situation where you have such high producing animal that every calories count mm-hmm.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (34:46):
Yeah. I think, and, and have that, you know, make the animal produ, you know, use those nutrients towards milk. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (34:52):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (35:02):
But we know we are going in the right direction.
Dr. Bill Weiss (35:04):
The first law of thermodynamics says we've saved energy. So you also did another paper, and again, just briefly on this one, where you looked at RDP level Yes. And methane. Yes. And you briefly, again, just kind of summarize what you found. Did RDP have a, a big effect on methane production?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (35:23):
Yes. So this was a few years back and, and we had an interest at that stage. So, so the idea, right, was that the, the bugs, if I can use that name that produce methane, I was caught myself to call them bacteria. They're not bacteria, right? But thanks to the microbiologists who just keep revising their, you know, taxonomy of, you know, what is microbes? They're called akea, right? So remember that akea is what produced methane and, and but we know that those are some of the most primitive right? Microorganism in the Roman. And so, and those most primitive microorganism are using some of the simpler chemical component ammonia, right? As a nitrogen source. And then, you know, the, the, the very simple carbohydrate energy sources. So it was logical to us to say, well, can we formulate diets where we gonna really try to alter the source of those very readily available, you know, carbohydrates and the rdp, so the source of nitrogen available to this primitive form of bacteria to see if we can, you know, kind of knock them off and, and reduce met emission. But again, it, it was, I think the overall result was that RDP didn't impact whatsoever the methane emission. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Bill Weiss (37:03):
Yeah. I had one question I forgot to answer ask here on the previous paper. Yeah. And this is on digestibility. You measure digestibility in that paper in vivo, not in vitro. Yep. And it was higher for corn silage mm-hmm.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (37:24):
Yes. What,
Dr. Bill Weiss (37:25):
What,
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (37:25):
That was a good puzzling, you know, when the student came and showed me the data puzzling to me, David, he almost cried. You know, this, we got it all wrong,
Dr. Bill Weiss (37:44):
So if, if you would've done, a lot of people would've take out starch or put right change. So what do you think if you, if you would've done that? I, I think what you did is the way I would've formulated diets uhhuh. But if you would've replaced forage fiber with starch, do you think you would've found what's more or less expected?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (38:02):
Yes, exactly. That's what I think we would've seen. Yeah. Yeah. So again, you know, starch is, you know, the, the such, you know, goodies for those microbes. And so you gain on the energy side and you gain on the protein side because you got all our you know, microbial protein production with starch that I don't think you have with the dextrose. And so
Dr. Bill Weiss (38:24):
That's why I think these titles ought start using the word substitution.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (38:28):
I know you rather
Dr. Bill Weiss (38:29):
Than the effect of
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (38:30):
This. I am 100% with you there, definitely.
Dr. Bill Weiss (38:34):
Because again, forget, you might think this is what you're changing, but you're always change something else too.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (38:40):
So Yes, yes, yes. But that gives you food for thoughts, right? For the
Dr. Bill Weiss (38:43):
Mix work. Exactly. Exactly. It's an important decision when you're changing something, what you change is it's a very important decision.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (38:49):
Yeah. And we were intrigued because when we looked back to this first study just, you know, play with the data, try to understand what's going on, we actually found a high core, you know, linear relationship between the level of soil in the diet and the level of methane emission. And we say, wow, could, could the soil be part of the, you know, what we are seeing here? Yeah. And again, I don't have the straight answer to that. Yeah. But you know, it's, it's, you know,
Dr. Bill Weiss (39:16):
If it's, you know, highly digestible, it should produce method, should
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (39:19):
Produce nothing.
Dr. Bill Weiss (39:20):
Exactly. And it's also essentially all celluloses. Yes. Yes. So maybe celluloses, he celluloses has some effect.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (39:27):
Yep.
Scott Sorrell (39:27):
Well, let's call, last call then. And with that, what I'd like you guys to do is give us one or two key takeaways from the conversation today that consulting nutritionist, feed company nutritionist can take back to the dairy. And bill, why don't we start with you?
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Tonight's last call question is brought to you by nutrition Precision Release. Nitrogen nutrition delivers a complete TMR for the room and microbiome helping you feed the microbes that feed your cows. To learn more about maximizing microbial protein output while reducing your carbon footprint, visit balcom.com/niture.
Scott Sorrell (40:04):
Bill, why don't we start with you?
Dr. Bill Weiss (40:06):
Well, to me, the biggest thing here, I know this was about methane, but the thing I found most intriguing was the almost total lack of diet by breed interactions, which means we have a ton of data on Holsteins, which means maybe a lot of that is directly applicable to Jersey. So that's, to me, was a major finding. Mm-Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (40:30):
Okay. Yep. And then why don't you add to your answer a little bit about what's the next step in your research?
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (40:39):
To me, the next step in the research is to try to develop the tools because, you know, you asked a question about TOMA 2013, where are we today? You know, TOMA in 2013, for example, did not look at bio digestion and how that can contribute to reducing the environmental impact of a dairy farm. You know, and some work that has been done here at UW Madison by our engineer colleagues, seems to indicated that bio digestion can go a long way to offset your methane emission of your cow carbon sequestration in the soil. You know, depending on how you manage your, your, your cropping systems can also have a big impact. And I'm sure it's no secret to everyone, right? That agronomists have a heyday these days because, you know, everyone's a money in them to go and do carbon sequestration in the soil. To me, I think we need to, to, to place, you know, our work on the cow in the context of Right. The, the overall impact on the farm and, and not just the, the negative, but also the positive of, you know, what dairy farming is doing for the farmer, for the consumer, for the, for the local economy and this kind of stuff. Yeah. I think this is, you know, we need to be rooted in, in understanding how dairy contribute to society more than just milk. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (42:09):
And then a, a couple key takeaways then for nutritionist out there.
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (42:14):
Well, I agree with Bill. I think, you know there was a lot of work to find, come up with not a lot of differences, but that's sometimes that's what science is about. Right? and so I'm fully in agreement with Bill that at the end of the day, and we have some other data coming along here, looking at feeding behavior, and they, we didn't see much of a difference between the jerseys and the, the Hoch team. So, one main takeaway, the the other thing that I would challenge to people to, to think about in terms of the takeaway is again, in the big, big, big picture, one of the reason that we did the, the low and high forage diet, with the assumption that high forage diet would be diet that you formulated, if you can be more self-sufficient on your farm, rely less on purchase feed, which has its own issues, right? And so again, placing the nutrition in the context of the management of the entire farm, rather than putting the nutrition always just in the context of making the cup produceable milk, I think to me, is kind of the way of the future.
Dr. Jeff Elliott (43:17):
And I think that goes back to really where we started. talking about haage or alfalfa or corn. So Exactly. It really wasn't a big difference, but it's a lot of things going into that decision. That's right. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (43:31):
Yeah. Great input, gentlemen. You know, I failed to mention during the introduction that we are recording here at the World Dairy Expo. So if you hear some extraneous noises in the background, that's, we're here in the booth at the ba booth at the World Dairy Expo Bill. You know, great job today. You did a good job. You got a great guest, a great paper review. I think people are gonna enjoy this one. Thank you, Michelle. Great job. You're a great guest. I appreciate the time that you've spent with us today, and you're, you're welcome to come back anytime here to the Real Science Exchange. Yeah, we're always open, and always having a good time. So, well,
Dr. Michel Wattiaux (44:04):
Thank you for the invitation. I really enjoyed the conversation and it's very stimulating to, you know, discuss those papers in a very open and practical way.
Scott Sorrell (44:12):
Yeah. Very well, thanks. And always, we appreciate, our loyal audience. We thank you. Thank you for coming to spend some time with us here. Once again, we hope you learned something, hope you had a little bit of fun. And I hope to see you next time here at Real Science Exchange, where it's always a happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to anh.marketing@balchem.com with any suggestions, and we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five-star rating on your way out. You can request your Real Science Exchange t-shirt in just a few easy steps, just like or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange. And send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Balchem’s real science lecture series of webinars continues with ruminant-focused topics on the first Tuesday of every month, monogastric-focused topics on the second Tuesday of each month, and quarterly topics for the companion animal segment. Visit bache.com/real science to see the latest schedule and to register for upcoming webinars.