In this episode, we welcome back the fan-favorite journal club podcast. Dr. Bill Weiss joins Scott and Clay for this episode, discussing a large study from Germany evaluating the time spent in the pre-fresh group and its impacts on health and production.
Guest: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University
In this episode, we welcome back the fan-favorite journal club podcast. Dr. Bill Weiss joins Scott and Clay for this episode, discussing a large study from Germany evaluating the time spent in the pre-fresh group and its impacts on health and production.
Dr. Weiss begins with a description of the study’s overall research question of “How long should a cow stay in the pre-fresh pen?” - and the researchers’ hypothesis that time periods too short or too long would be detrimental to both cow health and production. (3:14)
The study had a wide range of days in the pre-fresh pen, ranging from around seven days to about a month, with a mean of 18 days. This is similar to the general industry recommendation of 21 days. (7:16)
Diets were typical of a U.S. diet, although DCAD concentrations would be considered moderate. (9:42)
The longer heifers were in the pre-fresh pen, the higher their milk production was. A quadratic effect was observed in the multiparous cows, where too short was detrimental to milk production, and too long was detrimental to milk production. (11:56)
If the time spent in the pre-fresh pen was less than seven days, both cows and heifers were at higher risk for retained placenta. (14:30)
On the other hand, more extended periods of time in the pre-fresh pen were related to higher incidences of clinical hypocalcemia. (16:40)
Metritis and ketosis were also higher for cows who spent shorter periods of time in the pre-fresh pen, with three weeks best for these health issues. (19:26)
From these results, Dr. Weiss recommended that if calcium metabolism is an issue on a farm, leaning toward a shorter pre-fresh period of around two weeks may be beneficial. On the other hand, if other issues like mastitis, metritis, and retained placentas are an issue, leaning toward three weeks may be most appropriate. Regardless, don’t put cows in the pre-fresh pen for less than a week or more than 35 days. (20:37)
Dr. Weiss suggested an interesting next-step study would be to feed a DCAD diet for the full dry period to both cows and heifers. (28:32)
Dr. Weiss detailed some of the differences observed between cows and heifers in this study and how more research needs to be done around first-lactation cows because heifers are not just little cows. (35:35)
You can find this episode’s journal club paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030223002230
Authors: P.L. Venjakob, W. Heuwiese, S. Borchardt
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Scott (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome back to The Real Science Exchange, the pubcast we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell. I'll be your host here for the Real Science Exchange, and together we're going to gather for a fan favorite, and that's a journal club with Dr. Bill Weiss. I'd like to also welcome my co-host, Dr. Clay Zimmerman. Welcome back.
Clay (00:32):
Thanks, Scott. Good to be here. I've got a hard cider here and, and my and my cup this evening. Scott, what are you drinking?
Scott (00:41):
Well, we, I need to find out from Bill first.
Bill (00:44):
Okay. I am drinking a Samid Red Ale,
Scott (00:47):
A red ale,
Bill (00:48):
Very multi beer taste. Very good. So,
Scott (00:52):
Alright.
Bill (00:52):
Imported directly from Ireland, so, yeah.
Clay (00:55):
Oh, wow.
Scott (00:56):
I was on vacation last week down in Virginia Beach. I got two sons that are working down there, and I went to the Cavalier Hotel. Now, this hotel was built in 1927. At the time it was really the only hotel there on the beach. And it's really kinda opulent. It's, it's, it's, it's gorgeous and kind of gives you a feel for being back in the 1920s, right. The roaring twenties during prohibition and all that. And as part of their story, they've got a distillery in their basement because of prohibition. And they claim that, you know, there was a lot of illicit drinking going on there during, during those times, but a distillery's called the Tarnished Truth. And so I went on a distillery tour and did some bourbon tasting and some moonshine tasting, which wasn't bad by the way. But I picked up, I picked up something called Discretion, which is one of theirs. It's kind of a high wheat bill bourbon and, and quite nice. And so I'm having that tonight and in honor of my vacation. So with that gentleman, looking forward to this journal Club. Cheers.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
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Scott (02:33):
We'll be doing something a little bit different tonight. It's just gonna be the three of us, and the paper is one that we'll certainly have plenty of conversation around. So let's dive into the research title. The associations Between Days in the Closeup Group and Milk Production Transition, Cow Diseases, Reproductive Performance, Culling in Behavior, and Calving of Holstein Dairy Cows. And that was offered by Jacob Benyall. So, Dr. Weiss, how in the world did you come about selecting this one?
Bill (03:04):
Well, it's actually, there's another paper there that's being in press right now, so it'll be coming out from the same group.
Scott (03:11):
Okay.
Bill (03:12):
And it addresses this, again, a question. When I worked at the university in extension, I got very often, and that is, I have fresh. How long do cows have to stay in, in the Resh group? And this, this study, which is, is quite large, it's a, a field study, but it's quite large attempts to answer that and as to what's the optimal basically it's a range of, of days in, in pre fresh. 'cause You know, it's, it's usually a much more expensive diet than the far offs. You know, you have cow numbers you have to work around and so on. So it is an important practical question. Some farms, because of, again, just calving times they're gonna have to shorten up the period, what's that gonna cost if they go too short, other times they miss a breeding cycle or something. These cows are stuck in there much longer and it is that detrimental. So I think it's a very important practical question that this paper is addressed.
Scott (04:13):
I guess I'm a bit surprised I ever since I've been in the industry, it's been 21 days, and so I'd assumed there's been lots of research to establish that. And so so how, how did they, how was the first 21 days established
Bill (04:28):
If you look there, there's been a little bit, but you know, not to the extent where it's usually was short and long, you know, maybe a week versus three weeks or so. Some of it I think has just to do with management and, and you start looking at pen sizes at all. And then, on a typical farm, you, you know, with 21 days it gave about the right size pens. I think it was, it ended up being pretty close to the right number based on this study. But I think it was kind of an arbitrary, not quite arbitrary, but a little bit arbitrary of a guess.
Scott (05:02):
Ah, interesting.
Bill (05:03):
And I guess too, you know, originally if you look at pre fresh, it wasn't to feed ionic sauce that came later. It was just what we call steam up the cows. Yeah. Adapt the rumen. And a lot of people thought, adapt this rumen three weeks was about the right amount of time. And what we know now is that's actually a very minor benefit of afresh, is to adapt the rumen. It's the, the ionic salts and other additives are, they're the reason to have a pre fresh.
Scott (05:32):
Hmm. Makes sense. So Bill, why don't you, why don't you tell us about the hypothesis for this paper? Okay.
Bill (05:37):
It's actually very straightforward and it's just the hypothesis that if the pref freshs period of cows were in there too short, it was detrimental to health and future productions. And if they were in there too long, it was detrimental to health and production. And they didn't find, define that because that was kind of defined from the data they had. And they went to 18 farms, large farms in Germany. They averaged about 1100 cows. So it's a huge study. 18 farms is a really, really big study. All Holsteins average production was around averaged 305 day production was around 22,000 pounds. So a little bit less than US standards, but still good production. And the only they had to have they, the requirements to be in this study is they had to have afresh. They did not set a time they could have, you know, they didn't say you have to shoot for 21 days or whatever. They just said, you have to have afresh. They wanted to limit it to just farms that had ionic diets. So all the fresh diets had varying degrees of ionic diets, and they had to have certain record keeping systems so that they could get all this data they needed. Had to be on d h I had to do something like dairy cop again, just to get the data.
Scott (06:59):
All right, good. So I wanted to circle back real quick, bill on kind of the protocol. I was curious if they intentionally also looked at getting herds that had different links of fresh groups.
Bill (07:14):
They didn't explicitly say that, but they do have a nice figure in there with a histogram of all the, all the lengths of, of pre-refreshments that were in this study. And it's a wide range. It goes from one day in the, which obviously was a mistake, they missed that cow up to 42 days. And, and they actually, there's day, there's cows that had more than 42 days, but they said that's, that's an extreme. They stopped at 42 days. And they also said anything less than one, or I think it less than two days in there, those cows got thrown out. But it's a huge, most of them would be between seven one week and four weeks. So a very good distribution of data here.
Scott (08:02):
Okay.
Bill (08:03):
And farm, like most farms, cows only moved once a week, so you're always gonna have, they might have shot for 21 days, but just because of once a day, you know, they're gonna be plus or minus three or four days. And the means were again about what for, for cows, and I should mention, I forgot that heifers were included in this. So heifers went through the, the fresh as well, and then they followed those guys. And the mean, mean days in the fresh for cows was 18 days. So very close to the three weeks they were recommended. Heifers were only in there on an average of about two weeks. And they didn't explain why that was. Again, it would be a farmer decision. It wasn't the investigators. And it might be the farmers only wanted heifers in there a shorter period of time.
Bill (08:55):
They, they don't, they, but they don't address that. And, you know, long ago there was a study out of Michigan State, I can't recall the authors but they looked at heifers and with anion softs, and it was detrimental for those guys. It was actually, they increase ketosis and other things. Data since then has, has not been as negative. In other words, heifers don't seem to be as adversely affected by d a as that first study. So it might be these, the, the producers said, you know, heifers don't have hypocalcemia issues. So maybe let's, let's put them in shorter, but it is just shorter for the heifers.
Scott (09:36):
And were these all German dairies?
Bill (09:39):
Yeah. Yes.
Scott (09:40):
Okay.
Bill (09:42):
And you know, if, if you look at the Es, the pre freshs dyes, they look, they don't give a lot of detail, but very, very typical US diet. They had proteins, crude proteins where most of 'em were between about 12 and 14 15%. So pretty typical starches right around 20%. Again, very typical fibers. The low looks like it's about a 33%, the high is 47. So again, and, and a lot of, a lot of range here, which is good for these types of society. But again, on average, very typical to us, us diets dcas. These were not extremely aggressive in d a one was, and these are per kilo one was minus four, the highest was minus 200. But most of 'em, probably of these 18 herds, probably 15 of 'em are less than about 60 MI minus 60. So, you know, mi what we would consider moderate deacon, not extreme deacon, again, they, they looked at production future production after they caved, and then that, which is the bulk of this paper. And then they also looked at health effects. And, you know, with pref freshs, the, and at least in my opinion, the main goal of afresh is to prevent health problems. To prevent health problems, you get the milk. And so it's, it's important. You know, a good thing about these papers is they do spend quite a bit of time on, at least clinical disease. They did not do a lot of subclinical diagnosis.
Scott (11:32):
In what period of time did they look at milk bill? Was that
Scott (11:37):
Full lactation?
Bill (11:38):
No, it would've been, they usually on first what they call first test milk. So let's say first took two to three weeks, something like that. I think they might have done more on some herds, but I think most of it was say, let's say the fresh period first three, four weeks, something like that. Okay. What they found basically in a nutshell is too short as bad, too long as bad. And it's, it was, and, and I should also say it differed between heifers and cows. The effect of duration differed between heifers and cows and heifers. The longer they were in there and the pref freshs, the more milk they got first test. And you, again, you think it's not calcium metabolism. 'cause Heifers don't have that big of a problem with calcium. So they hypothesized maybe, you know, these, the pref freshs diets probably were a little higher in crude protein than far offs.
Bill (12:39):
So maybe that extra nutrients for a longer period of time helped the heifers. They a limitation or a limitation of this paper is they don't show me the far off diets. So I don't, they just said they met Nassim or NRC requirements. So let's say they were 12%, but I don't know. But heifers more than the 14 days was beneficial, special for cows. It was quadratic and there was, with, with heifers, it was linear. The longer they were in there, the better. There was no, with cows it was quadratic, short was bad, long was bad. This could be health related calcium. It could be, again, you wouldn't think so much on nutrient supply, but it could be in the, in the short ones, it could be a nutrient supply. And the long ones, you know, if, if these pre freshs diet had more energy, they might be getting fat. And that's, or increasing body condition and that we know is detrimental. So I, I can't give you the actual mode of action, but again, based on production, less than a week we're bad. More than about four weeks was bad. There is, it is a, a range in there. There is a day that works, but less than a week. And they may have even said less than 10 days. And there was bad more than about four weeks were bad.
Bill (14:19):
Then some other things they found, which some is, I would expect some I was, was a bit of a surprise on health short in both heifers and cows, that they were in there less than a week. It was a risk factor for retained placenta. And that to me makes sense. It's gonna be ma for cows. Seven days probably isn't enough to moderate calcium metabolism. We know hypocalcemia is a risk factor for retained placenta. I assume they don't provide the, the details on this, but you know, generally pre freshs diets are a little stoked up in vitamins and minerals. Selenium, vitamin E especially those reduce retained placenta. So it might be related to immune function. It might be related to calcium. But short, short resh periods, increased RPSs retained placenta. And again, that's cows and heifers. And it was quite substantial given it wasn't just a small effect.
Bill (15:30):
It was basically if they were in there seven days or less, they had an average RP rate of 9% at 14 days. It was, this is for, for heifers. For him, at 14, 21, 28 days, it was about three and a half percent. So, you know, threefold increase for heifers for cows, 15% if they were in their seven days or less. And then it bounced around seven, 8% if they were in there longer. So, you know, this is not, that's not a small amount. Very big. And again, it may be calcium, it may be vitamins and minerals or maybe both. So short they, they identified for cows short was clearly worse than long. So if you gotta make a mistake, leave them in there, move 'em a little bit early rather than waiting, waiting a bit.
Bill (16:34):
And what was a bit surprising to me with, even though what I just said was on clinical hypocalcemia, not subclinical and clinical was defined. They treated cows with calcium and they got better. That's their definition, that that prevalence was lowest at two weeks. In other words, it wasn't, it seven days wasn't the worst, even though that was the worst for retained placenta and metritis as well. But 14 day less than 14, the best, sorry, the least amount of clinical milk fever happened if cows were in there two weeks. Whereas again, you'd think with the other diseases, the worst would be different. And then it increased with my day more days in there, hypo clinical hypocalcemia, the risk increased. Which again, I would've think it would be kind of flat. I can see it not getting better, but I would've thought it would be kind of flat. 'cause It, it, you know, when you look at calcium metabolism, two weeks is probably enough for these cows to physiologically react to deccan.
Bill (17:50):
And so I sit there and when I read these things, and I, when I say, well, this isn't what I expect, and I try to figure out why. And you know, d ad by definition basically puts these cows in negative calcium balance. That's how they work. And so, so maybe if they're in there four or five, five weeks, they're becoming depleted in calcium and that would be an increase. Their chances of a calcium deficiency. That's just supposition. But so again, for milk fever, which is a lot of people put it in long is worse than short for retained placenta, just the opposite. So 14 and 21 days, there wasn't. I'll give you the results here if I can find them on clinic. And again, I keep saying clinical, this is not subclinical At short, short seven days, it was about 3%. Then it decreased to about two and a half percent and then it so there wasn't much difference between seven and 14 days in afresh. But by 35 days it was up to 6%. So it doubled. Yeah, long is bad. 28 days or 21 days, which is kind of, again, the standard. It was higher, but only three and a half percent. So it wasn't going to, so three weeks wasn't terrible, but shorter was better for four hypocalcemia clinical.
Bill (19:26):
If you look at other diseases metritis high with short periods, which again fits the calcium high subclinical calcium, it also could fit vitamin selenium, maybe some other vitamins. 21 days gave you the least amount of metritis ketosis. And this was subclinical ketosis standard, I think it was 1200 higher than 1200. It was the best at three weeks. So again, if this three week thing keeps coming up in most situations and, and milk production, as I mentioned, it was best on for about the, the, the three weeks gave, gave the best milk production cows if on cal effects the maximum, again, maximum production was 21 days. So it's pretty flat between, you know, 15, 16 days and 25 days. So again, if you move once a week, shoot for three weeks, you're gonna, you're, you're doing be fine.
Bill (20:37):
But I, I look at this data and say if, you know, if calcium metabolism is an issue on a farm, you might lean toward shorter, you know, go more toward the two week than than three weeks. 'cause You know, you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss some cows. If these other issues like mastitis, metritis, RPS, then shoot for the three weeks. And, and so that's how I would make that decision as to where to, where to go. Definitely don't be less than a week or try to avoid being less than a week. Try to avoid being more than 35 days. That's, that's when things really, really crashed.
Clay (21:18):
Do you have any idea what the, you know, what the dietary mineral levels were in these diets?
Bill (21:24):
No, they, they don't, they give me the ash, which doesn't tell me much, but no, they give very little other than the protein, fiber and starch and decry very little details on this other than they do say formulated to meet NAUM requirements. But again, I don't know. And, and you know, for DCAS, especially at these pretty modest DCAS calcium, dietary calcium doesn't seem to be a big, big factor in much, but maybe for 35 days or 40 days, it becomes a bigger factor. You know, the studies that are done looking at calcium and dec a is three weeks. That's they, they've put 'em in there for three weeks.
Clay (22:12):
So, so Bill, what are your thoughts, you know, related to the higher somatic cell score and you know, the cows that were in the closeup pen longer. What but what do you think's going on there
Bill (22:24):
That kind of messes up my vitamin selenium theory. First, it wasn't a huge effect. I mean, that was not a huge effect, but, you know, it can be if, if these diets were higher in energy than, than the far offs, they are gaining condition that can suppress immune function. BHB high BHBAs are related to reduced immune cell function. That could be it could be a, a hypocalcemia high subclinical hypocalcemia has been shown to reduce the function of some of these immune cells, neutrophils and so on. So it could be something along those lines, but I really don't know. But it wasn't, it wasn't positive or it was a negative effect, but it was not a huge increase in mastitis or cell score.
Bill (23:23):
I did forget to mention on the decant, I had this wrote down as my, my first thing here was the, the urine PHS were around 6.6. So again, they're acidified, they're not terrible. I think it's a moderate dec A. So if they were stronger in dec a, you know, the effect of time may be worse. That's again my hypothesis. But then on the other hand, the shorter ones might be less negative, have less negative effects if it was a stronger dec, a I don't know. Yeah. So I wanna extrapolate this too, for much, if you're got very, very low urine phs
Clay (24:08):
Yeah, yeah. Some of these were barely negative, right?
Bill (24:13):
Yeah, exactly. And they didn't show a histogram of the urine PHS. It's just the mean. So again, some of these, these a VCA of zero is still gonna depress urine pH it won't get anywhere near, you know, the, the six, but it is gonna depress it. But I don't know how much,
Clay (24:33):
If you look at the starch composition of these diets, there is quite a range in starches here. The
Bill (24:39):
The Low I can see here is about 12%. The high is about 27% something. So huge. Yeah. And I, I'd wonder, you know, the, the old theory of using pre freshs to steam up cows would be the, the 25% starch pre fresh is right. Then all, all the new data says, you know, you actually higher starch is detrimental or most of the data say higher starch. And so some of these might be following that, that approach where starches are in the, the high teens and then the steam up approach, that would be the, the 26th. That's my guess would be it's the opinion of the nutritionist as to which is which is a bigger benefit. And again, the other thing, we don't know the details on the farm, it might be this is what they had, it might add to feed a ton of corn silage, so it's gonna be higher in stars. So you don't know. But it is a huge range. I, I'd be surprised in the US if we went out and surveyed 18 farms, you'd find this big of a range. I'd be surprised, but Right. You might,
Scott (25:51):
Yeah. Bill, I was gonna kind of change directions a little bit. I was intrigued by your comments or the findings that heifers tended to perform better with a little bit longer afresh period. And I'm wondering if those findings were great enough that we ought to consider doing anything different with heifers afresh.
Bill (26:09):
They, they, they were to me enough to, 'cause again, the cost isn't that great. I mean, the pre-fresh diet, because of dec A is gonna cost more than a far off thing, but the heifers don't eat that much. And we're talking probably seven days longer. And I think it'll be worthwhile, or again, what I'm a little bit hedging here because I don't know the far offs, you know, it might be they were just not fed enough in the far offs, but to me, this, this data was compelling enough, at least to say put heifers in for this the same period as a dry, as a cow three weeks rather than what these producers chose to do as again, about a two week period. So I, if in the US and, and or elsewhere, if you, if you move 'em all the same three weeks, I think you're, that, that would be the advice I'd give rather than having short ones for the heifers and three weeks for the cows.
Bill (27:13):
And I say, you know, the, the other thing I used to get questions again is do heifers need pre freshs? Do heifers need ionic salts? The answer is probably not. But on simplicity, again, it's just sometimes you just do things that it's probably not gonna be negative, it's not gonna hurt, and it might just make things easier. It gets these heifers. A lot of farms aren't big enough. They're gonna have to co-mingle heifers and dry cows. They're less aggressive. Usually these pens are not crowded. And it might just be beneficial, you know, for the, and there, there may be some benefits for this. And I, I guess as I just said, that that might be one of the reasons heifers did better if they were in there longer. They just socially adapted, which they made no measurements about that. But it might be nothing to do with nutrition. It might just be, there have been better environments in general for those heifers from where they were coming from.
Clay (28:14):
True. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott (28:18):
You know, Bill, one question you have for a lot of your authors is, you know, what's the next step? And so our authors are not here today, so if you were the researchers, what, what do you think the next steps would be?
Bill (28:32):
Well, I look, again, I think this is the, the time is, it fits the what, what's done and fits the, the management of a lot of herds. So I think that's a good, that the three weeks is a good, good thing. You know, there are are herds in the US and elsewhere that they could do not have facilities where they can have two groups. They just, they don't, so they have a one group dry cow. A lot of these farms still have calcium issues. So could study I'd like, and there's been at least one I'm familiar of. But what about, let's go the whole full Monte here and go a, a full dry period with dec heifers included. And the studies I've seen have been using the cows and they weren't detrimental to cows. But would it just because they can't manage or have the facilities for two groups, can I feed dec ad heifers for the whole 50 days or so that I'd look at?
Bill (29:33):
And I, it intrigues me on mode of action that, that won't help producers much, but it does help science and figure things out is why the, some of this just the, the short period on on RPS again makes sense, but then the mastitis one doesn't make sense. One of those don't mesh. So what's there, is there going on? What's going on there? And then this, I wish I would measure subclinical hypocalcemia, they, they didn't take blood samples, but that would be a, to look at this with, with what we know now about the value of blood, blood samples and how to, how to, the protocols to take the number of days to measure and all this stuff. So look at that. Do these long, long fresh periods increase prevalence of hypo subclinical and you know, the transient, and there's different words for these things, but which are the risk factors for all these other diseases?
Bill (30:36):
So I would add, I'd like to add something like that to this study, but I don't think we need a, a lot of more work on, on the, the, the right amount of days in there. I think this answered it pretty well that we happen to pick the right day, and that's about three weeks. But I guess again, it's a risk. We don't know when cows are gonna calve, even if we have perfect breeding data, we still don't know. And this allows you to pick your, your error, you know, is it, do I wanna be a little short? In other words, maybe move a cow in a week, a week later than I normally would or a little bit early depending on problems you're experiencing on your farm.
Clay (31:22):
So Bill, it, you know, in this, in this study, were the cows, the cows that were either, you know, in there for a short period of time are a longer period of time. Was that done by design or was it all retrospective? No,
Bill (31:36):
It was all retrospective. So you know, the farm they could have missed, the cows can just cab late, you know, gestation lengths or plus or minus. They could have missed a breeding cycle had the wrong breeding date in there. They could have just said, this cow needs condition or something and move it on. But that was not, it was retrospective. The producer made the decision to move cows.
Clay (32:06):
Do you know was it in the dataset? As far as twinning and so forth know, especially for some of these short dates in the closeup pen,
Bill (32:16):
I, I think, and I'm pretty sure they excluded twins. Okay, so cow, cow, I'm almost positive that was in there. And then the excluded ones that were obviously way, way long, that just wasn't what didn't fit right. And again, if they were on the end there a day or two late, those got excluded. And I had something else on mind. I can't forget. Oh, I did the other thing. I, this is a huge study I wanted, I didn't give you the number of cows. There's 13,000 cows in this data set. About a third of those are heifers, so this is not, and, and again, 18 farms. So this is a huge data set. So I think we can take the conclusions pretty, pretty much to heart.
Clay (33:05):
The cows that were in this had gestation length. Yeah, it was between 2 62 and 292 days. And
Bill (33:12):
I forgot to mention they did a lot of fancy statistics if you won't get into, but gestation length was a cova because sometimes if they get a calf if the calving is delayed for whatever reason, you get a big calf and you have increased health problem. So they corrected for that independent of, of days in the resh. So they did try to correct for just the natural for these either premature births or just long, long gestation periods for whatever reason, which I think it helped, helped reach these in conclusions. I think that was an important thing to do.
Scott (33:58):
Alright, as we get close to wrapping this up, any, any other big, big things we need to share?
Bill (34:02):
Health you dores for health? I guess that's still the big, big thing in productional follow. So again, depending on if you have just no specific health problems, this data would say shoot for three weeks plus or minus a little bit, but shoot for three weeks. But again, if you have, if hypocalcemia is an issue, you would wanna move. If you're moving in once a week, you'd probably wanna delay a little bit. So the average time in pen is less if that's the major health issue. So one size doesn't fit all depending on what your, what the herd specific problem is.
Scott (34:45):
Clay, that was a great summary. You have anything to add to that?
Speaker 5 (34:48):
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Clay (35:11):
I wanna congratulate Bill on picking another great paper here. Certainly really great topic. There's a lot of interest around this. Maybe the other thing, you know, just to summarize again, and Bill had hit on this earlier you know, the, these Nala Paris animals that are coming in here, we wanna make sure we don't, we certainly don't wanna short them.
Bill (35:35):
Yeah. And the more we learn about heifers, our first lactation, they're not just little cows. Right. They are different. And, and a lot of the studies in the past, and I did the same thing, we just would block by parody and forget about the effect, remove it statistically and forget about it. But more and more papers have enough first lactation animals and now they can start looking at dietary responses or management responses. And a lot of things are very different between those two types of animals.
Scott (36:08):
Have any other thoughts to share?
Bill (36:10):
They did look at calling early, early lactation calling they said 60 day calling in the first 60 days. Again, these cows that had a short time in the period less than seven days had a greatly increased risk to get called the first two months. So again, that's telling you no pay attention to, to, to breeding dates and try and get these cows in there at least two weeks. And then, and the other thing on they, one other thing on reproduction days in the presh had no effects on stillbirths or they didn't have calf weights, but no, no effect on stillbirths. So in general, most of the effects of the days in fresh were health related and a little, and you don't know if the production responses could have been because of better health, but they did often get better production if they were around that three week fresh period.
Scott (37:13):
So they reported involuntary culling. Did they happen to report death loss?
Bill (37:18):
I did not see that.
Clay (37:19):
So the other thing they were, they reported in the parish cows was the longer they were in the closeup pen, the, the fat to perine ratio in the milk varied. It increased, it increased right? With longer days in the closeup pen. You have any speculation on that bill?
Bill (37:42):
It seems like that means these cows are gaining condition, getting fat, then they calve they don't eat. We know that if generally higher conditions mean lower intakes, mobilization gets dumped into the milk. So that would be my, again, they, they may have had if these diets were too high in energy for a couple weeks, it doesn't matter. But is it longer and longer then condition goes up and then that drop in intake that happens around calving tends to be worse, which again, causes mobilization that increases the fat. It's, it's not, it's coming from mobilized body conditions. Why these, you get these very high fat to protein ratios, which u usually you like, but in fresh cows it usually means there's some, some issues.
Clay (38:34):
Yeah. Maybe especially on the 26% starch, pref fresh
Bill (38:39):
Diet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they, and they did not break these down and look and they probably didn't have enough data, but they didn't try to correlate dietary factors to any of these responses. But that would be a neat, neat thing to do.
Scott (38:54):
Clay, why don't you put a bow on it from your perspective for us?
Clay (38:58):
Well, I think we've had it right all along. Just further confirmation that this, you know, this 21 day closeup period is the optimal here. And we, we, we wanna avoid the extremes here, right? We don't want the really short days. Certainly, certainly seven days or less was detrimental. From a practical standpoint, you know, if we know a cow's carrying twins, we, you know, we need to take that into account when we're be, when we're putting 'em into the closeup pen. And certainly in, in, in the mature cows, we want to avoid really excessively long days in closeup.
Bill (39:46):
Yeah, I should mention also just because of the data the heifers and the heifers may suffer from really long days too, but they just didn't have as many, they didn't go as long as the cows. So, you know, I won't say the data says very long, wasn't bad for heifers, but they didn't have a lot of very long periods in, in the heifer. So that might be bad for them as well. But i, i, again, it fits up. The three week thing fits very, very good for both, both types of animals.
Scott (40:21):
Alright, clay, thank you for joining us here again for another very good journal club. They're always good, but this one is at the top of the list to our loyal listeners. I want to thank you for coming along again, just to spend some time with us here. We hope you learned something, we hope you had fun and we hope to see you next time here at Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
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