Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University, and Dr. Matt Akins, University of Wisconsin Today’s podcast is the latest installment of the Journal Club where we take a closer look at some of the newest research published around the world. Today we are focused on research centered around dietary energy and genomic residual feed intake in bred heifers.
Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University; Dr. Matt Akins, University of Wisconsin
Co-host: Dr. Clay Zimmerman, Balchem
Air date – April 26, 2022
2203-045
Today’s podcast is the latest installment of the Journal Club where we take a closer look at some of the newest research published around the world. Today we are focused on research centered around dietary energy and genomic residual feed intake in bred heifers.
Dr. Akins explained RFI is residual feed intake, and is the difference between the actual energy intake and the expected intake based on equations. If it’s negative, the animal ate less than predicted and a positive RFI means they ate more and were less efficient. (7:38)
Dr. Akins also said that diet, high versus low energy, had about a 9-10% reduction in intake, which is about two to two and a half pounds, which was right where predictions were. (19:00)
Dr. Akins compared strategies for bred heifers to limit feedings and said both are good options. Limit feeding takes a lot to manage dry matter, animal intakes and body measurements as underfeeding or overfeeding can have major effects and is less forgiving than a high fiber forage system. (32:15)
Dr. Akins mentioned a big take-home for producers from this study would be that diet energy and fiber can be useful to control body weight. Use NDF and the diet as a control measure for dry matter intake and make sure you’re balancing the energy content to meet the needs of the heifer. (57:29)
To read the article referenced in this podcast click here: https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(21)01092-4/fulltext
You can contact Dr. Akins for more information or questions at msakins@wisc.edu.
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This podcast is sponsored by Balchem Animal Nutrition and Health. This podcast is sponsored by Balchem. All views expressed by the guests are the opinions of those individuals and are not the views of the Balchem, its affiliates or employees.
Scott Sorrell (00:00:06):
Good evening everyone. And welcome to the real science exchange, the podcast, 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 Sorell, one of your hosts here at the real science exchange tonight. We're back for the next installment of the journal club styled after the traditional journal clubs convened around the globe and where we take a closer look at some of the newest research published in the world's leading dairy science journals. We welcome back Dr. Bill Weiss, America's professor from the Ohio state university to the pub table. Once again, bill selected a paper for tonight's discussion, focusing on dietary energy and genomic residual feed intake in Brad heifers to gain additional insight and to liven up the discussion. We've also invited one of the authors to join our bill. Welcome back to the real sense exchange and thank you for taking on this role as our journal club advisor.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:01:00):
Uh, thank, thank you. It's good to be back.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:02):
Yeah, it's good to have you back. Uh, before we dive into the paper, uh, what's your glass tonight, the bill for the conversation? Well,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:01:08):
I've got a bottle of moose head lager, so
Scott Sorrell (00:01:11):
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:01:15):
That was what was in the fridge, but, uh, this is from graduate school, Norman St. PI and I always drank moose head and south celebration of his Canadian roots. So
Scott Sorrell (00:01:24):
Yeah. Good. Well, I was gonna have a beer tonight, but, uh, my son was home for spring break, uh, last week and there's no beer left in the fridge. So we're going back to the bourbon. Um, also joining us tonight, uh, at the table is Dr. Matt Akins from the University of Wisconsin. Welcome to the exchange Dr. At and, uh, anticipating spring. What do you, do you have anything cool or tasting your glass also joining us tonight is Dr. Matt Atkins from the University of Wisconsin. Uh, welcome to exchange Dr. Atkins and, uh, in anticipation of spring, do have everything cool and taste your glass.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:02:00):
Uh, thanks for the, uh, invitation sky. Appreciate it. Good to be here this afternoon. So yeah, I got the coffee here, so
Scott Sorrell (00:02:08):
Nice. Nice, cool coffee. Good. Yeah, very well. Great. We also have Dr. Clay Zimmerman back with us. Once again, tonight, uh, clay, anything interesting in your glass?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:02:20):
I don't know how interesting it is, but, I do have my favorite diet beverage
Scott Sorrell (00:02:30):
All right. Good stuff. All right. Um, clay, the title of the paper that we're discussing tonight is the effect of diet energy level and genomic residual feed intake on bread, Holstein, dairy Heer growth, and feed efficiency. The length of that paper will be in our show notes for our listeners. Um, clay, can you give us, uh, an overview of the paper we're discussing tonight?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:02:52):
Yeah, so it's, you know, it's a really interesting study looking at, you know, several different factors related, uh, related to, to heifer rearing, uh, economics and, and efficiency. So, the study was set up to, to look at, uh, to look specifically at Brad dairy heifers and, uh, uh, the impacts on growth, uh, um, dry matter intake and feed efficiency, um, related to genomic residual feed intake, and also looking at two different dietary energy levels, a high energy diet versus a lower energy diet. So, uh, pretty interesting paper, you know, looking at all these and in Brad heifers.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:42):
Interesting. I look forward to the conversation bill, how did you come to select this paper that we'll be reviewing tonight?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:03:48):
Well, one it's on heifers and we haven't done anything on heifers. Uh, two, uh, it's a lot of energetics and that's one of my major interests. So that's the two reasons mainly is something new and, and there is a lot on energy and I also think it's useful to producers or could be useful to producers.
Scott Sorrell (00:04:06):
Mm-hmm
Dr. Matt Akins (00:04:19):
Yeah, so this study, um, was conducted at the Marshfield agriculture research station. Um, it's an excellent facility. This study with the Brad heifers was conducted in, uh, it was in a free-stall barn, um, with 16 identical pens. So we had, uh, H pen had, uh, eight heifers in that and eight stalls, uh, really well, well designed, uh, facility, very comfortable stalls, um, all the headlock system, as far as feeding, uh, drive through TMR system where they can, um, very pre-access. There's very little stress in this facility. Um, so it's an excellent, um, facility as far as comfort, um, very little stress on these heifers. So, uh, typically we see very good gains of heifers in this facility, just because the, just the stalls very comfortable. Uh, they don't have a lot between the bunk and the free stalls. It's a 10, 15-foot walk.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:05:35):
So the amount of activity that they generally see in these facilities is, uh, a bit less than you might see in a typical stall or even a, a bedded pack facility just to the size of the pens are quite a bit smaller than you might have in a commercial facility, which is pretty interesting to see, but excellent facility. Um, yeah, so the study was conducted in actually 2015, uh, kind of brainstormed ideas, uh, between Kent Weigel and another co-author on the paper and pat Hoff and Wayne Copeland, uh, kind of bouncing around ideas on, Hey, we got a lot of this genomic digital feed intake data that we can access or predict on, on, uh, pretty much all of our animals are all genomic tested in the Aw Madison area herd, so we can get this information fairly easily.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:06:32):
So, and then we wanted to look at so we can get this information, but we wanted to put a dietary kind of a factor in this. Um, and one thing that we've been looking at fairly closely is the especially energetics and energy intake on dairy HES, and really what we're trying to do with a lot of our studies is just trying to control it. Um, oftentimes pregnant heifers can become over-conditioned fairly quickly. They, uh, the gain can get a bit outta control, actually, uh, higher corn outage diets. So a lot of times we try to dilute the energy, uh, using some kind of lower energy forage, whether it's straw or corn stove or, or other low energy, uh, lower-quality hay, uh, lots of different options. So we wanted to look at kind of how those two factors interacted with genomic RFI and then the, uh, energy content of the diet. So that's kind of what, our thought process was.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:07:30):
So, Matt, maybe, for the benefit of our listeners, could you briefly explain what RFI is?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:07:38):
So RFI stands for residual feed intake, and I'm not an expert, to be honest, I'm not, I don't, I haven't done RFI calculations. Um, but then, the premise is it's the difference between the actual, uh, energy intake and the expected, what you would predict based on equations. Um, so if it's a negative RFI, that means the animal ate less than predicted if it's, a positive RFI, that means they ate more. So that means they were less efficient. So ideally we would see animals with a negative RFI, uh, prediction.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:08:20):
So is that, so is that during lactation where that gets measured or can you measure it in these growing heifers as well?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:08:29):
So from our data, it was in, it was from lactating cow data collect over to over several years of data. Um, so you can, it's, it's fairly difficult in lactating cows, cause it's a lot of, of data you gotta collect, right? It's, uh, intake, body, body, weight, and condition score, uh, all the milk yields, uh, milk components. So there are a lot of input factors to be able to calculate energy intake and output, uh, heifers. It's pretty easy. Uh, it's just intake, uh, and growth. And then by the condition score to try to define the different components of gains. Um, well, in this study, it was, it was all based on predictions from lactating cow data. So, these RFI calculations are of a, uh, predicted as a lactating cow. So we wanted to see if we, so if we start breeding for cows that have a, a more efficient or negative RFI, what, what is that gonna do? Uh, as far as when they're half for, is that gonna also improve efficiency?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:09:42):
I got, uh, on the, on the diets, well, one, I, you know, this was a factorial and whenever I review papers with factorials, I always ask, you know you hypothesized an interaction or there's no reason to a factorial. What was your hypothesis concerning the, well, first, I guess for the audience, give a little background on the diets and then on the why you expected interaction between, you know, low and high efficiency and low and high energy diets.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:10:13):
Yeah. So yeah. Good question bill. So then, yeah, the diets. So the, a high energy diet, so it is like a, almost a 50, 50 corn silage, alfalfa, silage diet, fairly higher energy. I think the TDN was around 62 or 63% TBN
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:10:30):
63. Yep.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:10:30):
So it's a bit higher than what we balanced for. Um, and then the fiber levels were a bit lower than what we would typically balance for, for pregnant hemorrhage was like 45%. Um, and then we had the lower energy of diet, which is more of our optimal gain diet. That was, uh, I think what's 58, 50 9%,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:10:54):
50 57.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:10:55):
And then the PDF was very on 50% PDF. Um, and that diet, I think was about 25% corn silage, 50, so percent alfalfa silage. And then I think about 25% wheat straw chopped straw,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:11:15):
About 15 on straw was 15.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:11:17):
Yeah. So yeah, that, that low-energy diet would be just away. And we do this pretty often in our experimental diets just trying to use that straw as a way to increase fiber, but also lower energy content to try to optimize, the intakes where they should be, and also to try to control energy intake. So it's kind of twofold with that lower energy diet as controlling intake and also, uh, lowering the energy intake as well.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:11:46):
So the, um, the diets, the diets were only supplemented beyond forage is just with mineral in this case.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:11:55):
Correct. Exactly. I think, do we have Ure in that you often add Ure to these diets?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:12:00):
They were I androgynous, but I, I, I, I think you,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:12:04):
Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't see, uh, Ure and the diet. I think the protein came from the alfalfa mostly.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:12:11):
Yeah. So, yeah, and that, and that study the protein in the alfalfa must have been high enough to supplement. Those are pretty low proteins. We're running about 12% protein, which is for, for dairy heifers, pregnant dairy heifers it's we found that to be pretty adequate. So that high energy diet was was excessive, uh, would cause excess gains cuz the lower PDF will offer higher, uh, intakes and also the energy content's higher. So it's gonna both factors contribute to excess energy intake as far as the interaction between the diet and RFI level. Um, yeah, we weren't too sure what we'd expect. I guess I guess the hypothesis was we would see some sort of, especially with the efficiency, we would see some sort of interaction. Uh, we wouldn't expect it as far as the, if you look at RFI, it, you might not. It's a, it's a bit complicated how it's calculated. So we weren't expecting much of a difference in intakes, uh, between those as far as that effect. Um, but we knew we would see something with the diets just based on our knowledge that higher PDF diets are gonna cause a, um, reduction in intake. What we didn't expect was the result of, of the, uh, efficiencies and the gains was pretty interesting. I don't know if we wanna get into the results yet or not, but that's, uh, that was pretty interesting.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:13:52):
So, so Matt, how, how long were the heifers actually on these treatment diets?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:13:58):
So they were four months. So it's a pretty long period, 120 days. So plenty of time to get really good growth data. Kind of the minimum that we do growth data is at least two months about 60 days is I pretty much the kind of minimum that we like to go eight weeks.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:14:15):
Um,
Dr. Matt Akins (00:14:17):
120 days is a good chunk of time, to get growth data.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:14:22):
Um, as, as someone who doesn't do a lot of half diets, um, you, you formulated these diets for 0.8 and 1.1 kilograms again, how, how do you you do that? I mean, I can balance dairy diets in my sleep, but I don't know how you pick, I know you pick the treatments or the GA desired gains, but then how do you formulate a diet, to meet those desired gains?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:14:50):
Uh, yeah. It's so in, in this case, we used PDF as a way to predict intake. That's probably the hardest thing to do with heifer diets. And that's the one thing we did notice with the NRC model is that it didn't do a great job of predicting intakes for heifers. So what we did, in this case, is we used PDF. So, we assume that he's gonna eat about 1% of their body weight in PDF per day. Okay. Which is, if you look at some of the data from Hoffman and, and Colin, that sits pretty nicely, right. About 1% of body weight and that carries true for anything above about 40% PDF diets, you get below 40% we've seen, uh, it, doesn't always actually probably restricted more by energy intake than, than by, uh, PDF the factor. That's what we did first was just to predict, uh, intakes based on the PDF content of the diet. And then, uh, we inputted the, uh, body weight and I gain it to the model. Then we balance the diets based on that. So,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:15:56):
And just using the estimated either TDN or N EEG from, um, the old NRC
Dr. Matt Akins (00:16:03):
Yeah. From NRC two, one, it worked fairly well, especially for, we had a pretty good discussion about that in the, um, it may, it, it did miss on a little bit, I think for the higher energy diets.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:16:24):
So Matt, I, you know, I'm curious the, so balancing for NDFs, but pretty interesting, you know, when you look at the results, how would, do, does, uh, PDF digestability what, what role would that play in these he
Dr. Matt Akins (00:16:41):
Diets? Yeah, that's a good question. Uh, we have not looked at that. I've wanted to do that where you take two corn silages that have identical, uh, identical composition as far as energy or start fiber, but the N ditis stability is, is maybe higher using a VMR type porn. We haven't, we haven't done that yet. That's something that would be interesting is we haven't looked at like their direct impact of PDF stability, uh, on that cause it's kind of when you use these lower energy, high fiber forward is usually they're pretty low energy N DFJ stability. So you're kind of, you're, that's one other factor that's where you get the lower, lower energy content too. So yeah. That's interesting. You, what you probably expect is that similar to lactating, Cal you probably see increased intakes. Um, that's what you likely expect. Just a faster, digestability faster in the room and it's gonna probably allow, uh, faster, uh, ruin the flow. So that's just without any data. That's what I, I would figure would happen. That's a good question. I've thought about that several times. So
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:17:56):
Just, uh, put a plugin for the new NRC. It does have PDF in the ER, intake equation now,
Dr. Matt Akins (00:18:02):
So oh, does it right. So hopefully
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:18:03):
It will do better than the last we knew that was a problem, but we didn't have the data, so
Dr. Matt Akins (00:18:08):
Then, everyone does do it. So I'm glad to hear that bill. I just got the book today, so
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:18:18):
If, if you wanna, again, on the big picture here, not on all the detail, but the major measurements, would you kind of just go over on starting with some of the production measurements and then I'd like to talk about digestibility a little bit later, but
Dr. Matt Akins (00:18:32):
Yeah, so we could start with the intakes, I guess first. So what we noticed was for at least dry matter intake, really the very little effect of the RFI. So between the high and low RFI, really no effect on intake or, uh, there's no interaction with that.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:18:55):
So, Matt, you, you were feeding for, a small amount of feed refusal, correct?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:19:00):
Yeah. And that's what we typically do. Um, we're talking two, 3% of the dry offered and that's, and that's what I suggest to producers. You don't, if, when you're feeding these lower energy diets with any kind of roughage in it, if you feed excessive amounts, it's gonna cause them to sort, they're gonna sort against that, that, uh, that lower energy feedstuff. And we've seen that before in some of these, in some of these char, especially if you get chop sizes too long, uh, even feeding for two or 3% refusals, they're still gonna sort it out, but by feeding for lower refusals, you're kind of forcing the animals too, to eat that material. So, but yeah, yeah, that's, that's typically how we manage that, those diets and it's pretty reasonable. What we do is just score the bunks every day before we feed we're looking for just scattered particles through the bunk.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:19:59):
We don't wanna see any piles sort of like a bunk scoring system for beef cattle. Yeah. But when we look at the intakes, the diet had a pretty major effect, um, far as the difference between the high and low energy diets about a, a kilo difference. Um, so about nine, 10% reduction in intake. Um, so about two, two, and a half pounds of intake reduction. So, which is what we expect, um, as far as the PDF intake, that's where, that's where kind of, uh, if you look at that, that's the real proof right there. It's right around 0.9, five to 1% of, uh, of body weight intake per day. So right on with, what our predictions were.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:20:48):
Yeah. It's AMA it's, it's amazing. You know, if you look at the kilos of PDF, PDF intake, they all ate right. At five kilos of PDF. Yeah.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:20:58):
Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Isn't it? Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:21:06):
Know, especially, you know, it considering the digestibility of the PDF and those two diets are quite different and, you know, that was a lactating cow. We would not expect that we'd expect these straw cows to eat less PDF. And so that to me was quite surprising.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:21:23):
Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's really interesting with heifers there. That's what makes that they're not too hard to feed they're, they're fairly straightforward compared to a lactating, how to be honest. Um, so using MDF as an intake modifier is especially useful, especially for pregnant HES. That's where it, um, is useful for, pre-prereading animals that probably may not have as much application. Um, so cuz you really, they don't have as, or gonna be their fill effects are gonna be greater. So you're gonna probably, this is probably more of a, uh, situation that you use for, for post-reading you're pregnant Heer so
Dr. Matt Akins (00:22:10):
Going start with looking at energy intakes, like you'd expect, uh, about a kilo difference in intake, that's gonna result in energy can energy intakes it quite a bit higher about one and a half, uh, kilos of, uh, of TDN intake graders. And that kind of translates directly into what you'd expect for the growth of these animals, but across all those, any of those intake measurements, uh, dry matter or nutrients, we didn't see any, any, uh, interaction there at all, very consistent, really no effect of RFI, but definitely a major effect of the diet energy level and the, especially the diet PDF level. So, then if we start looking at performance, so as the growth and that's what our in HES, that's what we mainly look at its growth and also condition, probably the two major factors, um, that we, uh, look at. If we look at the daily gains, uh, across the 120-day study, we're talking about one point we're at about 1.2 kilos of growth for these, the high-energy animals.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:23:19):
Um, and those were not different between the high and low or, uh, RFI animals on the high energy diet, right around one point at 1.15 to 1.2. So what is that about 2.4 cows per day? Uh, it's higher than what we would want them to be
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:24:01):
Yeah, they were, they were, they act yeah. On, the high-end energy diet says average almost 2.6 pounds a day, average daily.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:24:09):
Yeah. So we're talking about a half-pound more than what we would be targeting usually for these larger Holsteins we're shooting for about two, two pounds per day is what we're, uh, to keep up with third growth targets. So
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:24:24):
What, what I kinda change in body conditions desirable say over this was 120 days over three, three or four months, what kind of body condition score is a desirable change in the change in body condition score.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:24:39):
We don't wanna see a lot of change in condition. We don't wanna see a great amount of gain in condition. Okay. I do with peppers, we wanna see three, or five at calving. So,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:24:50):
So, and this, this half a unit gain you got is, is undesirable in those
Dr. Matt Akins (00:24:59):
Undesirables. They were covered. It started for like a 3, 3, 3, 3, 4 at the start. So those are about between what? 14 to 16 months when they started. Yep. So we don't wanna see a great increase if they're already at a three, three, we don't wanna see 'em increased by a half-point. So cause that's likely gonna
Scott Sorrell (00:25:43):
Did you see any differences in the brain score mat?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:25:47):
Yeah. So as far as the Heights. Uh, we didn't see much of a difference in gain of, of Heights, um, cross any of the treatments, any of the hip height growth, really, really no difference there, uh, which is what we mainly used at our, as our frame score. So really no difference in the frame of the animal, just basically the extra gain was going towards fast fat gain.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:26:12):
Do these, uh, do these heifers end up down in the Arlington heard at the University of Wisconsin?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:26:19):
Uh, it depends on it. That's a really interesting question, cuz it depends on whether they're confirmed pregnant with a bull or a heifer calf. So if they're a bull Cal, they, they are, they're kept at the Marshfield station usually. Um,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:26:35):
Okay.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:26:36):
That's just to keep enough lactating cows in our facility and then there, there, all the animals that are confirmed with a, uh, heifer calf are shipped down to the, uh, Arlington re-research facility cuz that's where we have all our Heer raising facilities, um, at, so all the heifer calf raising facilities. Okay.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:26:57):
Okay.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:26:58):
So that's why they, there's kind of a difference in where they're raised or they're they calved out. Okay. So very rare. Will they calve out a bull carrying Heer down at Arlington just cause we can selectively keep 'em where they're needed? So
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:27:14):
I've seen the cows at Arlington. I can attest they large frame cows
Dr. Matt Akins (00:27:19):
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:28:30):
Unlike the, on this daily gain. What baffled me was the low energy diet on the high efficient animals, high R the low RFI, high, efficient animals they gained, you know, substantially than what you predicted. Um, and why, why do you, uh, everybody else did read the book, but that group in
Dr. Matt Akins (00:28:56):
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:28:57):
Dunno. What do you think is the biology behind that? I don't know. I
Dr. Matt Akins (00:29:02):
Dunno, honestly, I don't know either. Um, there's not a lot of literature on it little, uh, there's some good data from Australia looking at this where they separated like the top and bottom 10%. And they saw a fairly similar result about a 10th of a pound 10th of a kilo, uh, difference. Um, and also a reduction in the more efficient animals had lower intakes as well. So I all their data fairly closely except for the intake part of it. Um, yeah. Point nine, four kilos for the, for the high-efficiency animals compared to 0.8, five. So what a temp of a kilo, but so it's about a 0.2 pounds difference. So more gain for the high efficient animals on that low-energy diet.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:29:50):
So, so, so Matt, on the, on the high RFI animals, the ones that would be less efficient on the low energy diet, would you have expected them to eat more than the count than the heifers on the, uh, on the low R RFI, um, treatment then?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:30:13):
Not necessarily. Um,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:30:15):
Okay.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:30:16):
Not necessarily. What we saw is they ate the same amount, but they gain more so that they were in, in theory, they're still more efficient. It's just they're a little as far as how they responded, the genomics responded a little bit different than what we might, might expect. The RFI is categorized theoretically it's the same production, but lower intakes. That's assuming the same, the same body weight, same production, everything, but just slightly lower intakes. But in this case, we had the same intakes, but a bit higher growth, higher performance are those heifers. So it's either something metabolically, um, makes them more efficient. We don't know, to be honest, we didn't take, we didn't take blood samples, liver samples. We didn't know what was going on inside the animal.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:31:12):
Yeah. And you know, I, I, I find it interesting again that they, they all, no, no matter which treatment they were on, they all ate the same kilos of N
Dr. Matt Akins (00:31:25):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, that's it worked pretty well, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Makes it easy. Makes it easy to predict what they're gonna eat.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:32:05):
So Matt, how would you compare this, this, uh, strategy for Brad heifers compared to limit feeding?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:32:15):
Yeah. There, they're both good options, right? Um, they both have, uh, good qualities to them. So limit feeding. Uh it's it does take a lot of management, right? So you gotta, your do your diets have to balance very well. And you have to be on top of your management as far as the dry matter of your feeds and also monitoring the intakes of those animals and doing body measurements weighing your animals on a routine basis every few months. So you can track that, um, is important. Cause if you're off on that, that limit feeding program that can have major effects, whether if you're underfeeding or overfeeding. So it's important to manage that, uh, cuz it's a little less forgiving than with the using a high fiber forge system.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:33:12):
So what, so when you're, when, when you are limited feeding, how often do you need to make those adjustments and the amount of feed offered?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:33:24):
So that's a good, good question. So we usually do that, I think at the farm, they, the Marshfield ARS, they limit feed up there cause they that's one of the locations that's they've been doing it for almost 20 years now with pat Hoffman when he, when he's, uh, was doing his, uh, work up there. Um, so yeah, they, they typically are gonna adjust 'em every couple months, every month or so they're gonna adjust those intakes. Um, so yeah, but it's hard cuz you gotta think like you gotta be figuring out like what is this animal gonna eat? Um, and kind of the, what they do the Marshfield station, that's kind of, it works well. And pat showed us, is that what you should be feeding for is enough feed for them to have enough until so if we feed at 8:00 AM, there should be out of feed by five or 6:00 PM.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:34:18):
So about 10 hours, eight, 10 hours of feed available. If you have, if you have feet left the previous the next day, that's you need to ratchet it back. If they're out too early, that kind of you're, you're underfeeding 'em so kind of almost an art to it, but uh, the patent state's got a nice formulating system on limit feeding. They got a whole system that, that gem, uh, the developed pretty nice formulator, uh, based on all their, their data. And I know Wayne Cobin used that in one of his feeding studies and that worked well for him. He was pretty impressed. He would do the, he would adjust his would be I think every two, every one or two weeks when they were on the study and he would adjust them, uh, based on the predicted body weight gains.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:35:12):
And he said it worked pretty well. So, but it is, it's a, it is fair management, intense, intense system. Cause you gotta watch your intakes. Uh, and also you gotta manage the feed bump closely. Yeah. You gotta be in there pushing feed up within an hour or after you feed, otherwise, they're gonna push those feet away, and then they're gonna be stretching for it. And then they're gonna have lead to, uh, shoulder sores and uh, front feet issues when they're pushing forward, it causes them to wear on the inner claw of their, their feet. And that's gonna, that's something you gotta, you gotta manage. So you can manage that by pushing up more frequently. So every, every hour for the first three or four hours until they get full, and then they'll come back, uh, kind of feed more sporadically, but especially the first few hours you need to push up more frequently.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:36:03):
So I'm assuming on that limit feeding, you gotta have plenty of bunk space too, or
Dr. Matt Akins (00:36:09):
Yep. Yep. That's critical. You need to have a spot at the bunk for every single animal, which in some facilities is you could imagine that's probably not the case, especially with heifers. Some of 'em get pretty overcrowded. So in those situations limited feeding probably is, not a great strategy, to go with. Um, so that's kind of where we come up with this. Uh, we've been working on this kind of, um, IFI for a system using ad an Adlib and into you can feed as much as they can eat in the day. It's, uh, it's fairly simple to manage just really gotta watch PDF get a good analysis of the, of the feed. So especially PDF protein, uh, but as far as managing the diets are pretty simple.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:37:21):
When you form relate these diets to, I'm gonna say you're just limiting energy, but letting them Adlib dry matter intake, but limiting energy, which I think's the right way to do all this stuff. But you know, you expected to eat less feed and, but you had pro like say crude protein percent was the same. So would you be enough for research purposes? I know there's reason to do things, but if you expect this diet to reduce intake, would you recommend, you know, a higher concentration of crude protein? So that intake of protein was, was the same rather than concentration.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:37:59):
Yeah, it's probably a good point bill. It probably would have a little bit a touch higher protein level in that. So you have a similar it's,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:38:08):
You had enough protein cuz they gained just what you expected. So you weren't limited on protein, but,
Dr. Matt Akins (00:38:14):
But yeah, you can have a little bit of a, uh, safety factor there. Yeah. 11 and a half 12. Percentage's kind of on the low end. So maybe you can bump it up to 12 and a half 13%, but yeah, based on the data, they, we didn't see any difference in growth. Um, we didn't adversely affect that. The lower protein intakes. If you look at the energy or the protein requirements in NRC, it's right about nine and a half, 10% of the diet protein, for heifers. So we can probably 11 and a half, 12% for these animals probably adequate. I
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:38:57):
Don't think so. Matt was the results, in feed efficiency in your study? Were they, were they what you were expecting to see?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:39:09):
Uh, yeah, so we, yeah, similar to the body weight gain, uh, we saw an interaction with these two with the, uh, the feed efficiency. Um, so yeah, that was, that was interesting. So really no effect of RFI when they were fed the high energy diet. And I don't know what that's caused by, why do we see it, an effect of that, of the RFI on fit, a higher efficiency diet or high energy diet. Um, but when we fed the lower energy diet, we saw that you had that higher gain on the high-efficiency animals. Yeah. That held that pulled through and caused. They were, they were more efficient compared to the lower, uh, efficient animals. So pretty, pretty interesting. So really no effect of R wasn't an effective RFI on the high-energy diet. But we did see an improvement in feed deficiency when fed the, uh, the lower energy diet. And I don't know what I, I dunno if it's because they were fed for the optimal gain, that's possibly one, one reason, or if on whether they're on the high energy diet that they just were so efficient, uh, gaining so quick, really there's no effect there wasn't room for an effect to be more efficient. So I don't, yeah. It's a kind of a unique thing that we saw with this. So we don't have all the answers to that. So quite understand why we saw that,
Scott Sorrell (00:40:34):
Man. I'm curious if you, uh, looked at economics, um, on the various treatments and if so, what were your conclusions?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:40:42):
Yeah, we haven't done the economic calculations, but you would expect that the, yeah, the animals that were fed the lower energy diets, um, would be more ideal for at least optimal gain those animals on the higher energy diets would be gain more. So they're like, but these aren't feedlot animals, you're not beef cattle. So we don't want them to get you that much.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:41:04):
Dr. Matt Akins (00:41:09):
Yeah. If we were in a feedlot, situ we'd be like, oh man, this is great. But I'm like, uh, yeah, not, not so good. So, but as far as with the lower energy diets that, um, they're probably more cost-effective than if you were to, uh, as far as, uh, cuz those lower energy feeds and normal circumstances would be a bit lower cost. Now we straw that's that can get costly. Right. We're talking
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:41:53):
Matt, do you, do you ever use corn over in these, he, in these spread Heer diets to dilute the energy?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:42:02):
Yeah, we have, yeah, we have, um, Wayne, Kobos a nice study. He looked at, uh, straw corn over and Gama grass, Gama grass is perennial. Um, yeah. Corn is overworked well. Um, the one issue we saw with that is it, it, it does get them sorted out pretty quickly. Yeah. Um, so you gotta probably grind that to a fairly small particle size, but it can, I think it can work. It worked at the DIDs job. It, it reduced, uh, energy intake or, uh, dry meter intake and energy intake. And the body weight gains were almost optimal around, uh, 0.9 kilos or around two pounds per day. So compared to an ADLI bed diet with a high, a higher energy Adlib diet. So yeah, it was, it can work and most years it's pretty low cost depending on the demand. Um, but there are other good forages out there too.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:43:04):
Some sorghums work pretty well with this sorghum SU Dan grass can work well if it, especially if it's not a BMR type, uh, probably wouldn't use a BMR type with this kind of system, but a mature Sorg sedan grass can work excellent with this. Uh, and then most warm-season proven can work. Excellent too. So switch grass probably work pretty well. Uh, Gama grass works excellent. Cuz it's all leaf material. So there's the very little refusal of that. So it works well, but yeah, there are lots of options. Really. It just comes down to the cost of those and which one kind best fits the management style, for the farm operation.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:43:48):
Matt, if you, if you looked at the nutrient digestibility of the diet were, um, what, what did you see there, and were you surprised by any of the findings
Dr. Matt Akins (00:43:58):
You yeah, really, no difference in RFI as we expect. I don't think we'd
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:44:40):
I, Mike, on, on beef cattle, but RFI, you know, started with growing animals and we, we kind of, you ERT it for dairy, but there's and studies, they try to partition the improvements in efficiency and digestibility is usually credited with a portion of the high, oh, get it mixed up high fishing animals, lower, low RFI tends to digest better, but they also tend to produce less heat and lots of, lots of things just add a cup. So the lack of a difference here and there, we're not talking big numbers, so it may have been not enough, not enough sensitivity and those are typically fed on diets too. So that might be it. But
Dr. Matt Akins (00:45:24):
Yeah, that's, that's a good point. I don't,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:45:27):
I do a lot of, well for my, my career I've I think I about 150 tons of manure in digestion trials. I figured that up one day
Dr. Matt Akins (00:45:37):
That's a lot,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:45:38):
It's a lot of manure will be applied.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:45:42):
That individual cows are that individual
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:45:44):
Cows.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:45:44):
That's a lot of cows.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:45:46):
And, and so I look at digestion data a lot and you know, these look very raised, I might add, but uh, um, you know, approximately O organic matter digestibility, if you don't have a lot of fat is approximately equal to TDN, it's, it's very close and these TDN are the, your O MDs, which I'm gonna just say is approximately TDMs are a lot lower than your estimated TDMs, which doesn't surprise me, but it would also mean that these cows are getting less energy from the diet than you predicted using NRC. Do you, do you think that's, you know, if you would've put in measured energy values, they would've done worse than what you're, what NRC would've predicted.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:46:30):
You're saying if you would've jumped in that they just bill data to re
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:46:35):
Yeah. If you, if you wouldn't, you know, again, approximately use OMD as TDN and calculate energy intakes from that, it'd be a lot less than, your energy intakes with the estimated TDMs, which means these cows are doing better energetically than the model predicts the old model, the new model's a little bit different, but is it, do you think that's that where these cows are better than we, the, the heifers, sorry, the heifers are better than we think they are on energy.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:47:06):
Yeah. Very likely. Yeah. You, you see with cows, right. Those genetics have a big role, so wouldn't expect any different with heifers. So, but yeah, I think, yeah, with the new NRC, I, I, I'm looking forward to trying to look and see how that compares to some of our data. So
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:47:23):
Yeah. I'd like, you can't do that cause we, we didn't have a lot of Heer data, so that'll help too. And just see if there are some deficiencies in the new model and
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:47:32):
Yeah, bill, bill, I was curious if has this, do you know, has this PA has the data from this paper been run through the new nation?
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:47:41):
I, I have not done it. I doubt it has because of the timing on coming up. I very much doubt unless somebody's done it since it came out, it would not have been used in the evaluation if the timing wasn't right.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:47:54):
Yeah. Matt, I was, uh, intrigued by how you date your manure collections
Dr. Matt Akins (00:48:08):
Uh, a lot of hand IMing, I'll just explore that
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:49:22):
Dr. Matt Akins (00:49:23):
Uh, that gets about 75% of it probably than the rest we gotta hand shovel into the skid loader. So yeah, it's, uh,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:50:01):
Dr. Matt Akins (00:50:06):
So it's a lot easier usually it's not as liquid as a count either.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:50:10):
Yeah, that's true.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:50:12):
So it's usually really, especially on the low energy diet, it's pretty firm on that high energy diet, uh, a little bit looser than, uh, of feces. So, but yeah, so then we just measure it, we take the, uh, collect the manure, um, sample it and then take it back to the lab, analyze it for, for dry matter Ash NDF protein and estimate the full, uh, excreta of the, of those nutrients. So we got the weight of the manure and the percentage of each nutrient. So it's pretty unique, kind of, not many other people do that with whole pen collections. So
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:50:54):
Like I said, the numbers, the nitrogen with urine, you gotta be able careful for what the other numbers look very reasonable. I mean very, very
Dr. Matt Akins (00:51:01):
Reasonable. Yeah. The nitrogen number you think about, you probably get some contamination, from the urine. So, and technically that would be the nitrogen, the urine was already digested. So, um, so that's a good point bill.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:51:15):
Well, I said the dry matter and NDF all those looks, uh, very good. Very, no, I don't have any problems with those at all.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:51:23):
Yeah. Yeah. It's right around 58%. I digest dry me stability for the high energy ones and about 50, 51% for the lower energy. So about seven percentage units difference. So yeah, much lower than our TDN calculate. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:51:40):
It's, it's, it'd be interesting to plug this through and again, just assume, well the new model doesn't use TDN so you're gonna have to do a little bit of
Dr. Matt Akins (00:51:48):
Calculation,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:51:49):
But you can get, you can get a number
Dr. Matt Akins (00:51:50):
I have to calculate MES. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:51:53):
But again, this, you have almost a 10, 10 unit difference in fiber to NVivo fiber digestion and they ate the same NDF. I just find that very intriguing. Very intriguing.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:52:04):
Yeah. That's very interesting. So
Scott Sorrell (00:52:09):
Now kind of based on your findings here, Matt, I'm just curious if you've got any follow-up studies, um, planned to kind of fill in some of the blanks.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:52:18):
Yeah. So this was conducted in 2015, so it's a bit of a dated study it's we bought, got it published about four or five years after we got all the data completed after the grad student
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:53:19):
Dr. Matt Akins (00:53:20):
Especially an extension appointment, you get kind of pulled in lots of different directions, so I'm sure bill can attest to that. So,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:53:28):
So, Matt, you, you monitored these heifers for 150 days into lactation once they caved any, were there any findings, uh, there?
Dr. Matt Akins (00:53:40):
Yeah, really. We didn't see any differences in lactation for performance across any of the treatments, milk production, the same, um, really no effect there, no difference in fat or protein, uh, percentages across the treatment. So obviously those animals that were fed for higher games, we didn't see much of an effect of a negative effect on LACT and performance. So which you would've thought maybe some effect. I think the thing to take away from this is that if you were to keep feeding these animals like that up to calving, we probably would've run into some problems, but these animals, we typically dry them off at especially heifers or dried off days before Calvin. And they're put onto, a, lower energy, dry cow diet. Um, so similar to what we would feed the rest of the cows. Um, so that probably helped control gains for those last 60 days. Um, and some of those animals had in other four or five months before Calvin. So they probably, there was some effect that might have been diminished between the end of the study and then the, when the Cal, so where that's something they considered too. So
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:55:01):
Were there any differences? I'm not sure it was in the paper, maybe it was. Were there any differences in body weight? I, of these, of the, of these animals at caving or, or body condition score.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:55:17):
So I have to look at it, I don't think I have that data. Um, cause we are at the Marshfield location, we didn't start taking body weights at caving until this year.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:55:26):
Okay.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:55:27):
So I don't have that data. We do at, at, at the Arlington facility, they take body weights within one week after Calvin, but we don't have that data for Marshfield. So that's why we didn't include it.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:55:37):
Okay.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:55:40):
But the calf body weight was pretty interesting. Um, the ones at the Arlington facility, I think we're generally smaller calf body weights, obviously because there are heifers, all the ones that were a cat, all the cabs were born, Arlington was smaller cause they're heifers
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:56:01):
Four and a half kilos.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:56:03):
Yeah. And then all the ones, the cabs born in Marshfield were larger. They were both cabs. So that's something think is interesting. It doesn't follow the treatments, but it's some interesting observation that we had and we had to include location in the model, um, to try to remove some of that variation due just due to the location. But yeah, it's interesting that we didn't see a, a, a massive, like a, a negative response due to that high gains. But again, I think if we had to feed that diet up to closer to Calvin, that we probably would've, we might have seen a more negative effect. So Really no effect on DYS Scotia or, uh, any of the lactation performance data
Scott Sorrell (00:56:57):
Bill, we've missed any big, uh, topics you'd like to cover in, in the, uh, podcast today.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:57:02):
No, I just like Matt to kind of give a, a big picture, take home on if I was a producer, what, what would I do here with using, you know, we realize that's only one experiment, but what, what can they take home or for nutrition professor or, or a, a producer, what can he take home and apply this to his farm? Cause I think there's stuff that's directly applicable today on what, what you found.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:57:29):
Yeah. So as far as the takeaways from the study, I think the big thing is that diet energy and fiber really can be useful to, control body weight, and grow tougher. So using NDF and the diet to use that as a control measure for, for dry matter intake and then making sure you're balancing properly for the energy content of the diet to meet the, uh, needs of the, of he. So, if you know, the NDF content of the diet and the body weight of the animals, you can fairly easily predict what the animal's gonna do. So that's kind of the main takeaway from this. Um, we didn't see, a major effect of the RFI. It, it looks like it's not gonna hurt the animals as far as having a, a, a, a negative RFI, but you might see some response of, of being more efficient animals, but, um, I think we'll have to get more data on that to confirm the results. So, but yeah, definitely use of NDF and can be especially useful for, uh, feeding, dairy, HES, especially pregnant dairy HES.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:58:37):
Yeah, no, to me, uh, it's limit feeding is, is it works, but there's some, you know, social issues, some animal welfare concerns. And so it's limiting letting the Heer self-limit by feeding high fiber diet, I think is a, a very, a better approach. I, I realize they're both essentially the same, you're limiting energy intake, but I think this is a, a, an easier to apply the approach.
Dr. Matt Akins (00:59:07):
Yeah, we completely agree. And probably if you look at the byproduct markets and protein markets, that's pretty, yeah. Ugly. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:59:37):
And then, you know, with our, I'm sure I don't genetics, but I'm sure more and more people are gonna be selecting for RFI on, on cows. And at, at the least, as you said, it, it's not gonna affect your decisions on heifer growing. Um, the low energy diet still works just fine on, on high, high, or low, low RFI, high, efficient animals, which you assume are gonna the ones that most people are selecting for.
Dr. Matt Akins (01:00:04):
Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, it's not gonna have a major effect on nega. It won't have any implications on the side, if, if any, it'll have a positive. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:00:15):
They may be able to even limit a, a little, little more, they're a little more fiber in that cuz to get them, because they still grew more than you expected and
Dr. Matt Akins (01:00:24):
Yeah. Touch more. Yeah. Touch more. Yeah. But not, not anything outside of where we would-be target.
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:00:30):
Yeah. Not, not, not an issue thing, but you might be able to even shave it back, kick a little more fiber in and shave intake back just a little bit more.
Dr. Matt Akins (01:00:38):
Yeah. If we could hone in on the groups, as far as the genetics of the groups, that's a bit of a challenge on most farms as far as trying to figure out, the genetics and the individual groups. That's, that'd be a challenge, I think, on most production farms. So, but across all the, with both groups, it performed well, I think. Yep.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:01:02):
So, the one thing I'm, I'm interested in have, have you, uh, so I live in Maryland in the Mid-Atlantic and we, we plant a lot of small grains for cover crops
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:01:14):
Here.
Dr. Matt Akins (01:01:15):
Yeah. Yep.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:01:16):
Have you all done any research with small grain silages because, you know, you can adjust your time and, you know, too, to get, too, to get a certain NDF level that may maybe work, may work better in these half diets?
Dr. Matt Akins (01:01:34):
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. Um, yeah, if you start looking at probably that, uh, heading to, to boot stage, heading to, to dose stage at PRP almost I ideal forage for inclusion of these, these, he diets, the one thing to consider, and you mentioned it earlier is the NDF data stability,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:01:52):
Right.
Dr. Matt Akins (01:01:53):
Can be pretty high in that cereal, green forages. Um, mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (01:02:51):
So, gentlemen, uh, I dunno if you notice, but the lights just flickered that's, uh, that means it's the last call and I'm outta Woodfords
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:03:16):
Well, again, I'm, I'm not half for excerpt by any stretch, but if, if this is and from what, what Matt was saying, I think it is, but, you know, if, if this would work with forages other than straw because it costs, but you know, we have mature grass hay up the Wazu here, and if that would work, it's, you know, get good growth rates, the proper growth rates, doesn't take a lot of management and managing feed bumps and all that when you restrict feed. Uh, and, and it's it, it, it works fine. So I, I think that's the big thing is just use what we know on energy intake, fiber intake to, to get the desired gains rather than artificially restricting feed. But that's my personal opinion. So,
Scott Sorrell (01:04:04):
Yeah. Clay, anything to add any key takeaways for you?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:04:08):
I, I think they did it, I think both bill and, and Matt did a great job summarizing here. I prefer this approach of limiting, uh, the energy density
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:04:36):
Thanks.
Scott Sorrell (01:04:37):
Mm-hmm
Dr. Matt Akins (01:04:39):
Glad it could be useful. So
Scott Sorrell (01:04:40):
Yeah. Any final words, Matt, you like to share with the audience?
Dr. Matt Akins (01:04:45):
Yeah, just, uh, I don't have any words, I guess, so if you have questions, you can contact me, um, the UW, but yeah, I think, uh, bill and clay summarized it well, so I don't have much to add, I guess.
Scott Sorrell (01:05:02):
All right. Very well. Well, we'll put your contact information in the show notes, if that's right. Yeah. And that way people can get ahold of you. Perfect with that. We're gonna call it to a close gentleman. So I want to thank, uh, bill Matt and clay for sharing this research and for being part of this year's, uh, journal club, uh, we know that professors and students are using these segments as part of their curriculums. So we appreciate all the hard work that, that, that folks put into these overviews. As always, I also want to thank our loyal audience for joining us here today. Once again, around the, uh, real science exchange table, hope you had fun, hope you learned something. And I hope to see a next time here, a real science exchange, where it's always happy hour, and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (01:05:41):
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