A Journal Club podcast is a staff and fan favorite, and joining us for today’s Journal Club is Dr. Gonzalo Ferreira from Virginia Tech and Dr. Bill Weiss from The Ohio State University. Dr. Ferreira will be discussing his paper about including alfalfa in multigravida Holsteins.
Guests: Dr. Gonzalo Ferreira from Virginia Tech and Dr. Bill Weiss from The Ohio State University
A Journal Club podcast is a staff and fan favorite, and joining us for today’s Journal Club is Dr. Gonzalo Ferreira from Virginia Tech and Dr. Bill Weiss from The Ohio State University. Dr. Ferreira will be discussing his paper about including alfalfa in multigravida Holsteins.
Dr. Ferreira starts with an overview of his research and said that he did a preliminary trial in Virginia Tech and saw that the urine pH was being decreased by using a product called polyhalite. (5:36)
Dr. Weiss pointed out that the study had a fair number of clinical hypocalcemia, about 10-15%, which is high. (27:39)
Dr. Ferreira said that in testing the polyhalite, he included between 400-500 grams per cup per day. And everything was going well in the case of Calcium Chloride; it is stronger, so you can add less and have the same acidification process. (37:03)
Dr. Ferreira wrapped up by encouraging people doing research not to get stuck in a theory. Sometimes you need to get out of the box and try different things. (48:45)
You can find Dr. Ferreira’s paper here: https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(23)00170-4/fulltext
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Scott (00:09):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podecatst 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 one of your hosts here tonight at the Real Science Exchange, and we're here tonight with one of my favorite segments in the podecatst series, and that's the journal club. But first, let me introduce our general club resident professor, Dr. Bill Weiss. Bill, thank you for joining us today.
Bill (00:37):
It's good to be back, Scott, especially, it's a lot more relaxed than the last time I saw you, so,
Scott (00:42):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Do you have anything special in your glass tonight, Bill?
Bill (00:47):
I've got a glass of Rhinelander IPA, so a local beer here, so
Scott (00:52):
Very well. Yeah. You like those local beers, don't you?
Bill (00:55):
Yes. There's plenty of 'em here too, so, yeah.
Scott (00:58):
So Bill, I understand, you know, you know our guest quite well, that's Dr. Ferrera. Would you please tell us a little bit about him and how you guys perhaps met?
Bill (01:08):
Well, tonight's guest is a professor at Virginia Tech, Gonzalo Ferreira. I met him back, I can't even remember how long ago we met at a meeting, and he talked about going to a PhD, getting a PhD with me. And a couple years later he contacted me again and I said, yeah, let's, let's do this. I think it was in the early two thousands. I think he graduated around 2006. So came to Ohio State in the early two thousands, got his PhD from me then went on and was hired by Virginia Tech. There was a gap in there. I know. I came back to Virginia Tech is mainly an extension appointment, I think, and you can correct me on that, but it's good to see you again. Good to see you,
Scott (01:49):
Bill. Yeah. And so welcome Dr. Or Dr. Ferrera. Pleased to, pleased to have you on the Exchange tonight. Also, I don't wanna forget my co-host. We're pleased to welcome back Dr. Glenn Ains. Glenn, as always, it's a pleasure to have you back on the podecatst. Have anything in special in your glass tonight?
Glenn (02:07):
Well, I think you'd appreciate this one, Scott. This is a little concoction that I made up. It's basically diet Sprite some diet mango cranberry juice and vodka to flavor .
Scott (02:22):
So vodka
Glenn (02:23):
It's one of my favorites to sit around the pool with.
Scott (02:26):
Ah, are you, you, you next to a pool today?
Glenn (02:29):
No, unfortunately I am not. But when I get back to Florida, I spend a lot of time around my pool, so
Scott (02:36):
Okay. And
Glenn (02:37):
Just for a point of note Gonzales, it's I'm a hokey as well. But all right. I think there's a big gap between when you were there and when I was there. So back in the mid to late seventies rather. So, yeah, all.
Scott (02:58):
So, Glenn, I'm having tonight, I'm actually having wine and cheese, and so I was about to
Gonzalo (03:04):
Ask where'd
Scott (03:05):
You get the cheese? So, yeah, this is a seven year old vintage cheddar compliments of Dr. Bill Weiss. And so I figured if I'm gonna have cheese, I better have some wine with it. And this is our renegade red. I don't think it's quite as old as my cheese, but it's very tasty. So, Bill, thank you for this. Alright. Cheers. Cheers everyone. Thank
Speaker 5 (03:30):
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Scott (03:52):
Yeah. As we dive into the paper tonight. Bill, why don't you tell us how you selected this paper for the discussion?
Bill (03:59):
Well, the shortened title of the paper is basically evaluation of inclusion of alfalfa hay and pre fresh diets. I, you know, there's a lot of research on d a and free fresh diets, but not a lot on interactions of diet and dec a So this, this paper is looking how forg source affects response to DEC a and that's, that's why I picked it
Scott (04:24):
Very well. So kind of maybe we just go to Gonzalo, maybe kind of give us an overview of the paper how it came about and the hypothesis that you used as you got into it.
Gonzalo (04:37):
Absolutely. It's kind of a long story, but a very interesting story. A few years ago, I think it was at the end of 2016, a company mining company from England contacted me to say, okay, we want to try this product as an animal product. What would you do with it? And this product is called Poly Highlight. Okay. And poly highlight is a natural mineral. It the composition is a sulfate with calcium, magnesium, and potassium in the molecule. So at the beginning, I didn't know exactly what to do. So what I did is I looked to the empirical formula, and I did, I estimated what we call the decat which is not that dietary cation and ion difference. But anyhow, I said, okay, this seems to be like what, what we call an ion salt.
Gonzalo (05:36):
So we did a very preliminary trial, we put it at Virginia Tech in the diets of the closeup group. And we, we didn't fit individually, and we saw that the urine pH was being decreased by using this product. So that was kind of the starting point, kind of based on the chemistry. I was not that wrong about the use of it. As I told you what, it was fascinating about this product. It has potassium, and usually when we, we, we see a feeding ingredient that has a, a potassium we try to avoid it for prepartum diet. So that was kind of a contradiction. Then we did a follow up study, which we did measure dry intake also using the polyhide. And we saw that the urine pH was, was going down again, eh, it was confirmed. And based on that, eh, we were feeding a lot of this poly, we were increasing like 400 grams per cap per day.
Gonzalo (06:39):
And we were obtaining the, that acidification that we were looking for. And that kind of was, was motivating. Like, okay, I'm feeding a product that has potassium to prepartum cows, and, and that is kind of goes against the books if you want. And then we crossed the roads with a grant from the National Alfalfa and Forage Alliance, which by the way, they, they funded this project that we are discussing today. And I said, okay, I have an opportunity here to do some work with alfalfa. And typically we nutritionists, we avoid including alfalfa in prepartum diets because of that high potassium concentration. The problem with having a high potassium concentration is that maybe reaching that negative ticket that we want to accomplish is a little more challenging. But because in the previous study putting a lot of ionic product, cytogenetic product, we, we didn't have any issues.
Gonzalo (07:45):
We said, okay, let's give it a try. Here at Virginia Tech, eh, we typically feed the closeup group with calcium chloride, eh, as the ASIC product. And typically we use grass hay. We are here in Virginia, we are in the rescue land, right? So most of the, of the hay that we use is SCU hay. So that was kind of, that is kind of our, our typical closeup dry diet, at least here at Virginia Tech. So we use that as a control if you want. And then we brought alfalfa from, from the Great Plains, and, and we, we, we, we prepared this study, eh, trying alfalfa including alfalfa in, in these closeup diets. What was the hypothesis? The hypothesis, the working hypothesis is that, eh, I I've been in the industry in, in the field for quite a lot, eh, and I learned a lot that by experience that many times we have to feed what we can and not what we want, right? So many times we are challenged to maybe include alfalfa in, in these diets. If we would go to the west coast, very likely there is going to be a a lot of alfalfa inclusion in closeup diets. So yes, that was kind of the working on hypothesis was to test that we can feed alfalfa even with high isogenic products. We tried, we tested two products and that the dry material intake and the pH would be similar to that controlled diet that we fit typically here in the closeup f
Glenn (09:31):
So I, I actually have to confess, I had to look at the poly hay lights to even understand what it was you were working with. Can you go into that a little bit more deeply from the standpoint of the chemical makeup? Because it's got a fairly high sulfur level as I recall as well, right?
Gonzalo (09:50):
It does, it does. That's a very good observation. Yeah. So if you see the molecule, I don't remember exactly the formula. But, but you have four equivalents of sulfate. You have two equivalents of potassium, and that is, that difference makes a ketogenic, okay? From the dec perspective, and I don't remember how many you have. I think it's one on one on the, on the magnesium and the calcium. So you have three macrominerals, calcium, magnesium, and potassium. And then you have the, the, the sulfur as an anion.
Bill (10:26):
And just for the audience there's about a million decat equations out there, just which, which decat equation did you use? 'cause That is important in what you did
Gonzalo (10:37):
That is very important. Yes, bill and we use the, the, I think it is the most used. Okay. So we did the sodium and potassium minus the sum of the chloride and sulfate without the 0.6 correction on the case of the sulfate. Yes. Okay.
Bill (10:55):
Because like I said, you're, you're, you acidified one, one is basically a chloride, acidification, the other one's both chloride and sulfate. And you know, the theory is sulfate isn't as acidifying on a milli equivalent basis. And yes, whether it is or not, it's a little question on your data says it's, it's fine. So just as well, so
Gonzalo (11:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously there is data from, from the just evolves group that we sulfate that the acidification is not as strong. And, and we can see that in this paper in one of the diets. Yeah.
Bill (11:27):
And I guess one thing you brought up, and that's this idea that alfalfa is so bad in decat and you know, you, your grass hay and your alfalfa had the same decat essentially the same dec a even though there was I think one, almost 1% more K in the diet, or more than a half, a percent more K in the, in the alfalfa, not in the diet. So I guess, is that a surprise that the decat is about the same even Okay. Is high.
Gonzalo (11:55):
It was a surprise to us. Okay. We were expecting to have a much greater, let, let me do and this is for the conversation. Okay. I don't like the idea of, of speaking of decat for the forage, because the forage is a component of the diet.
Bill (12:12):
It still has a decat, it still has a dec a
Gonzalo (12:15):
Yes, but it's not, it's forage cation ion difference. It's not dietary. I mean, but anyhow, we, we, we can go there, . We were expecting a much greater decat for the alfalfa and a much lower d for the grass hay in this case, looking to the typical values from nasm, we, we, we did use that database. The alfalfa was on the low side on the D and the grass hay was on the high side of the dard. And by, totally by chance, they ended up having the same dard, which was from an experimental perspective, that limited our, our, the possibility of, of performing our main objective, right? We were challenging with your pulpa.
Bill (13:08):
So I think one thing, people, you know, we get carried away on K 'cause that's the most variable, but, you know, plants are electrically neutral. You don't get a shock when you touch a plant, which means if there's a lot of cat ons there, there's also be a lot of anon in it. It has to be neutral. And a lot of those anon are organic acids. But, but I mean, the chloride in these ports are higher than people think that most of the chloride data is very, very old, and we don't have as much of it. So it's usually, it's still gonna be very positive, but it's not as bad as think we think because the chlorides are higher than we think. And sulfur also are going up substantially in some of these forages. If you give us brief now, we don't want a lot of detail, but briefly on the diets so people have an idea of what, what you were feeding. And again, just the main ingredient, ingredient compositions,
Gonzalo (13:59):
First of all, this was a designing, which we were testing two factors. One factor was the type of hay we use mainly mixed grass hay, which here in Virginia is scu hay. And then we use alfalfa hay. We imported that from, typically the manager of the dairy brings that from cancer. That is on one side. And then the other factor was the source of the acid genic product. And that acid genic product was either calcium chloride or the poly highlight that I told you. That is on, on the main things. The, the diet was, we formulated diet to have at least 60% of forage. So the, like, every, eh, dry cow is a high forage diet, and we wanted to have at least 20% of that forage to be, eh, either the alfalfa or the, or the grass hay. And then we formulate, when we formulate the diet, the decat, we aim it to eh minus 160 eh milli equivalents per kilogram of dry matter.
Gonzalo (15:11):
We ended up having a, a little stronger negative ticket. And then what else? One thing that we didn't honestly, we didn't pay much attention at the time of Russian formulation, was on the sulfur side. By adding this poly highlight, the concentration of sulfur ended up being greater than what we usually would do than the typical recommendations. That is something that Dr. Goff we were discussing about that once in a while. And now what else can I tell you about the diet, the diets there, bill? And then, yeah, we, we tried to cover the, all the, the requirements on the energy side, not to have a high energy diet, of course.
Glenn (16:02):
I assume that the dec ad was similar in the rations before you added the acidifier,
Gonzalo (16:10):
But yes, we tried to do the diets as, as as similar as possible
Glenn (16:18):
In terms of the dec ad, the negative. Yeah, yeah,
Gonzalo (16:20):
Yeah, yeah,
Glenn (16:20):
Yeah, yeah. I was just curious if the diet before you added the, the dec ad, did you have to, was was one of the diets anymore? I I assume they were very similar because the four,
Gonzalo (16:31):
They were very similar. Yes, they were very similar, because as, as Bill was saying, by, by, by chance, eh, the, the grass hay and the alfalfa, they ended up having pretty much exactly the same decat. So therefore, the, the, if you think about it, the, the, the base, the, the fundamental of the diet, all the ingredients other than the genic product, eh, they were very similar. So
Bill (17:01):
I might just mention, or I can just mention, you know, the, the calcium of these diets range from about 8.85% up to about 1.4. The alfalfa diets obviously were higher in calcium than the grass ones.
Gonzalo (17:15):
That, that that is correct. That is another very good observation Bill. Yes, there was a lot of variation there. And we commented that in, in, in one of the papers in one of the comments in the paper that yes this was not controlled for the calcium concentration. Maybe we should have improved that. Yes.
Bill (17:34):
To me, I don't think that's an issue. I mean, as long as you've got a plan in there, I don't think it's an issue. 'cause You, if with alfalfa diets, you expect higher calcium diets that goes with the treatment, so
Gonzalo (17:45):
Yeah. Yeah. But also I think in the calcium chloride, maybe you are putting a little ex extra calcium than, than than the polyol
Bill (17:56):
Do you, you what's not in here and it's become an interest of mine is phosphorus, especially with respect to hypocalcemia. Do you, do you recall what that what were, what they were? If you don't, we'll move on.
Gonzalo (18:08):
I, I, I do not. I do not. And typically, I, I, I stuck more to that idea of, you know not supplementing phosphorus, but, but that, that is another thing that we should start considering.
Bill (18:20):
You do have a fair number of byproducts in this, so it, it's, it's probably plenty. I'm just wondering if it's, it was too high, basically, but we'll, we'll move on. Yes, we'll just get to the results. Well, first of all, again, it's important on how many cows and what were, what were the cows, basically. You discussed those briefly
Gonzalo (18:40):
And right
Bill (18:41):
Duration of feeding.
Gonzalo (18:43):
Yes, yes. So lemme talk about a little about how we selected the cows. Obviously we did this in, in ous cows, so all the cows were on, on their second or more calvings. Why did we do that? Because typically, eh, multiple cows are more susceptible to hypocalcemia suscept. So we did not have any spring heifers here. In a previous study that I mentioned already, we saw that those cows that they had symptoms of clinical hypocalcemia typically were the oldest cows. So we tried to put as many old cows as we could in the herd. So we used 80 cows. Our herd is not huge, so it was kind of, eh, hard to find the enough number of cows and, eh, what else can I tell you there? Most of them, I would say that half and half, half of them were on the second party entering the second lactation, and the rest would be third or more. And what was the other thing, bill, you mentioned when,
Bill (19:56):
When did they start on trial?
Gonzalo (19:57):
Oh, yeah, yes. Yeah. Very good. So we, we selected the, here we have Callen gates, and we have in, in in one pen we can have eight cows at a time. So we had different cohorts of cows of eight. The idea was to block them and what we did in one cohort, we chose them to start at least 35 days before the expected Calvin Day. Of those 35 days, we used 14 days to feed a far off diet and train the cows to the
Glenn (21:17):
So in your, in your prepartum sampling, did you sample 'em based off of the, so you moved the cows into the pen when the first cow got within 21 days of her calving date, right?
Gonzalo (21:35):
Yes. That, let me clarify just in case. Yeah, yeah,
Glenn (21:38):
That's
Gonzalo (21:38):
Was a little, yeah. So the cows are in the far off group. Correct. We selected a cohort from there, eight cow, when the first cow was close to 35 days from the expected Calvin date. So the next Calvin, the first Calvin would be within the next 35 days, we moved them from the pasture into the barn, and we kept feeding that far off diet. Okay. That for two weeks. And we collected that baseline urine sample Okay. With the far off diet. Then after we got that urine sample, we changed the diet 21 days from the first expected Calvin date. Mm-Hmm.
Glenn (22:39):
How, how far? Maybe 21 to 28 days, something along those lines In a cohort?
Gonzalo (22:45):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Before, like I think some of them actually were maybe 15 days. Okay. Because they kept before the expected coming day, and then some others were 32 days. I think it was the largest.
Glenn (23:00):
Okay.
Bill (23:02):
I think we'll go ahead and get into the results. And I guess the, one of the first things that caught me is that the cows fed grass, hay ate more than the cows fed alfalfa, which is almost a hundred percent opposite of what we'd see with lactate cows. You know, they almost always eat more legume. So what, what do you think, and you had much more significantly higher forage n d f in that diet. What do you think's going on there?
Gonzalo (23:28):
First of all, eh, I don't know exactly why you say bill. That grass. Hay and they ate more because if you see the figure of dry intake, pretty much, first of all, there was a tendency only for alfalfa should be lower intake, and only in one, in one diet. The diet was alfalfa and chloride. So
Gonzalo (23:58):
I see, I see what you're saying. That typically with alfalfa, when you would expect more, I'm not sure whether here is alfalfa plus the chloride, that tendency to eat less, eh, on, on that particular diet. Calcium chloride, I think it's being used. I never used it for that purpose, but eh, could be used for restricting dairy intake in, in beef cattle. So I, I, I don't know if that is more like a, a bad side on, on the chloride on, on that treatment than that the grass was a greater dairy intake.
Bill (24:38):
I mean, you, you say there's no interaction here on intake between d a and Forge, and you say Forge had a tendency 0.09. I just, it was a whole kilo, almost a kilo difference. That's a fair amount. I said it's just very unusual to me to get grass deep cow eat more grass than alfalfa. That just,
Gonzalo (24:59):
But, but again, that I I, I totally agree, bill, but, but it's not that grass was higher. It, it is that one treatment on the alfalfa was lower.
Bill (25:08):
Yeah. So who knows. And the intakes were, you know, where they, we'd expect from 10, 11 kilos. But I guess the other thing, you know, a lot of equations are based on forage N D F, and this would for that treatment, it wouldn't, it wouldn't fit the equations, let's just say that. So,
Gonzalo (25:27):
Yeah. Yeah.
Bill (25:30):
End of the d a stuff, which is to be the, first of all, there was no interaction basically between forage and d a with respect to calcium metabolism or very few mi minor interactions.
Gonzalo (25:42):
Okay.
Bill (25:45):
That's just, I mean, stating the factor, and first of all, you did, you got these urine phs quite low, so they, they, they're question, they're fully acidified. Is that what your, what your goal was to be fully acidified or there's this modern acidification,
Gonzalo (26:01):
You know, you're, you're right. The phs are very low and here , I, I, I, when I was working in the field, I did a lot of urine, urine phs and all that. So presently here at Virginia Tech, they're always extremely low. So, so yes, that is something that, eh, that we need to learn on you more. I don't know if the water could be a component here, but consistently is very easy here to get a very good acidification. But they, I agree. They're on the low, on, on the very low side.
Bill (26:40):
And then just for the audience, they're about five and a half for most of the treatments, which, you know, I used say very low, they're low. It's just, I call 'em fully acidified, there's no question. Fully
Gonzalo (26:50):
Acidified. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Gonzalo (26:53):
And hopefully there is very clear before the audience they are listening. So we had a pH on the, on on starting on the baseline with the far off diet around eight. And then when we started feeding all the diets, the pH was fully acidified the urine was fully acidified. So yeah, it was successful. The let's say, and going back to the hypothesis, we again, even though the dec of the alfalfa was not as high as we would like to, eh, we could bring down the pH of the urine, feeding both alfalfa diets,
Bill (27:28):
And as expected, when pH goes down, calcium excretion went up. So it, did it fit, fit what's supposed to happen?
Gonzalo (27:36):
That is correct, yes.
Bill (27:39):
But one thing that surprised me is you had a fair number of what you call clinical hypocalcemia. I mean, for d a lot of times won't necessarily reduce sub clinicals that much, but it almost always eliminates clinicals. First of all, kind of define what, how you define clinicals, and then may, I'd like to discuss that because you had 10, 15% clinicals, and that's very high for decat diets.
Gonzalo (28:07):
Yeah. Well, I, I, after this paper actually, bill, I also have some conflict on terminology. Okay. So typically we say clinical hypocalcemia or perrine parais or milk fever, and we talk about those three as the same. Correct. Now what is the definition of clinical hypocalcemia look into the concentration of calcium? In, in, in, in, in blood, typically we say that the clinical hypocalcemia, depending on the source, you said less than five or 5.5 milligrams of calcium per the literary, if I remember correctly, the unit what I'm saying here is that based on that definition, that threshold of 5.5, we did have a lot of clinically hypocalcemic cows, but the thing is that we didn't have those many cows with milk fever or persis. So I, I don't know if you see where I'm going here, but I have some conflict with the, with, with the three definitions of clinical hypocalcemia. We did have a lot of cows with low concentration of calcium, low enough to fit under the definition of clinical hypo. And apparently there are a few papers around that they have observed that as well.
Bill (29:39):
Well, I mean, to me, if it's clinical, it means you have to be able to see it observe clinical signs. So I, that to me is, should not be based on blood levels at all. It should be the appearance of clinical signs. And you, you've stayed in here, I can't find it right now, but you had a fair number that showed clinical sign, cold ears, shaky, that kind of stuff.
Gonzalo (29:59):
Correct.
Bill (30:00):
And so that's to me, I define clinical is they have to show, show something and then some clinical is less than eight or whatever.
Gonzalo (30:08):
Yes. And in the same way as as we said, based on the concentration of calcium, we said that because I, I i, if, if we read the definition of a subclinical hypocalcemia, there are some papers that said the only way of finding those, those subclinical cases you have to measure the, the concentration of calcium in the blood. Well, based on that definition, we did have some cows that they had subclinical hypoglycemia speaking of calcium, but they did have the signs, for example, the cold ears or some, you know, obligate or something like that.
Bill (30:51):
Yeah. Again, when I, when I talked this stuff, as you know, I said clinical, you have to see a subclinical, you have to measure something. And so you define subclinical based on calcium, but you define clinical based on clinical signs verified by a low calcium then.
Gonzalo (31:08):
Okay.
Bill (31:09):
So I said you still, I can't find it right now in the paper, but you said something like there's seven or eight cows that showed clinical signs,
Gonzalo (31:18):
Correct?
Bill (31:19):
Yes. And that's still higher than what I would expect from a deccan situation. Mm-Hmm.
Gonzalo (31:28):
True, true. And again, based all those signs, as I told you, mainly are based on, on cold ears. Yeah. Okay. now the question is I, I'm not trying to be defensive here, but do we always track ears? Do we have a, a, a good metric, a good threshold? What would be expected? I'm not sure we have it, do we?
Bill (31:55):
No, I don't know. I said it's just if you read a lot of the dec a papers on how they define clinical, and that's, like I said, is, is a variable definition. It's rare with decat when they have decat, not decat, it's very rare clinical. subclinical is not eliminated. And I said, so I'm, I'd just think, you know, high phosphorus can be contributing perhaps marginal magnesium. So some other things might be going on here as well. It's just something to kind of think about a little bit.
Gonzalo (32:24):
Okay. In the case of the magnesium, one thing I didn't discuss in the paper for sure, but poly halide has a good inclusion of magnesium. So
Glenn (32:37):
Did you balance the diets then for Meg?
Gonzalo (32:41):
No, we did not.
Bill (32:42):
Guess another thing with, with Jess McCarts work out at Cornell, who's done a lot and I think has really started changing the way we think of hypocalcemia, it used to be if blood blood levels were low after having, they were hypocalcemic, but now she's come up with a concept, I'm probably not gonna get her terminology right, but if it's low the first day after and rebounds right away, she says that's perfectly normal mm-hmm.
Gonzalo (33:22):
I agree.
Bill (33:23):
Did you happen to look at the, her papers are pretty recent, but did you look at, which I think she called transient and prolonged or something. Did you look at that at all? Yeah
Gonzalo (33:36):
We did look at that and, and, and again, when I say like, like you were referring bill that eight or nine cases that they, they showed levels of again, blood concentrations below the 5.5, that means in our case that at least in, in, in one of the four measurements, the blood concentration was lower than the threshold. Okay. So that doesn't mean that they were hypocalcemic speaking on blood calcium concentrations, eh, throughout the four days. Only one, at least one day happen, and it happened at different days. Eh, I am, I'm aware of the paper McCart, I don't remember exactly the definition. I think what is persistent, transient and delayed. I think it's the three things, eh, but we did look at it, we didn't, I don't, I don't think we had enough cases to do eh, statistics on that, to be honest.
Bill (34:41):
I know since she came out with that stuff, it's really changed the way I look at blood calcium data. Yeah,
Gonzalo (34:46):
Yeah. Yeah. And agree. And in, in our previous study, actually, we did a measurement at calving date and at seven days post calving. And actually, I don't know if, if Dr. Mccart was to review or not, but the suggestion was to, okay, you should, you should, in the future, you should try to measure several times up to calving. And, and that is how we ended up doing it in this case, because we're missing a lot of information of doing at calving and seven days after.
Bill (35:18):
So I kind of asked my standard question, I asked this at you a lot when you were my student, what would you do differently? You ever know, experiment is ever perfect. So what, what would you do different?
Gonzalo (35:30):
What would I do different? I guess I think the diet's a little more like, like Glen Glen said with magnesium, eh, making a little, the, the diet's a little more, eh, similar if you want. That would be one thing. Obviously if I have, I mean, I would not repeat exactly the same study, but eh, ensuring that I get the alfalfa that I was looking for, eh, and checking on the, on the, on the catal and iron difference of the alfalfa before receiving it. That, that, that was a big flaw in this study. I assume that alfalfa is alfalfa, bring it, bring it, and, and you know that, that was a huge oversight in this paper.
Glenn (36:27):
Yeah. Just always remember the stuff that's closest to the barn gets the most potassium,
Gonzalo (36:32):
.
Glenn (36:33):
But on that, on that point, you, you fed, I don't know how, it's part of my question earlier was, was, you know, how much of the hay lights did you have to add, you know, and you said about 400 grams. If your difference had been bigger in your forages on your dec a would you have had to be, what, six, maybe 700 grams of material now? And that's all mineral. Right?
Gonzalo (37:03):
I appreciate that comment because yes, that was key, key on, on the, on the thinking. When, when we were designing the experiment you know, we always say that pan ionic salts they depress dry intake. Now when I was testing the poly highlight, we included between 400 and 500 grams per cup per day. Okay. And still everything was, was, was going well in the case of chloride calcium chloride, it's a little more is the, it is stronger. So you can, you can add less and, and have kind of the same acid acidification process. The initial hypothesis of it, because cows were performing well in previous studies, we said, okay, let's go for more osteogenic product. Maybe we can counterbalance the potassium of the alfalfa with more acid genic product. And nowadays, by the way, we, we feed cows nowadays, maybe we are not going to have such a drastic depression on rheumatoid intake. Also, if we see in the old papers about the use of as osteogenic products one of the biggest one, eh, is from Dr. in the past, and they were feeding the Osteogenic product, eh, with the concentrate separated from the fort. Eh, and, and typically we don't do that anymore. So even though the depressing effect of the atherogenic product on Dietary intake can still be there, eh, maybe we can, we can, we can go for more, eh, eh, atherogenic product.
Glenn (38:47):
'Cause It, it didn't, it didn't look that it caused an intake issue which is
Gonzalo (38:52):
No, well,
Glenn (38:53):
High positive for it
Gonzalo (38:55):
On the chloride. There is, as I told you, there was a tendency to decrease the drama intake chlor. Yeah. On the chloride, I don't know. I if you go to a chloride, first of all, in this, in this case, all the, all the as osteogenic product where in a ped concentrate, but typically the pellets that they have, the chloride, and even though this was chloride, dehydrated sorry, de yeah, dehydrate is very hydroscopic. And also if you, if you grab some of it, you start to feel some heat, you know, from, from it. So I don't know if the palatability is related to that or, or or something like
Glenn (39:38):
That. I was gonna say, I was just surprised that the poly, apparently it must not have, it must be have a different palatability. It seemed like it didn't have any negative effects on dry matter intake, and I just wondered six or seven or 800 grams, would it make a difference? Either
Gonzalo (39:57):
We, we, we fed in the very initial one that it was not a, a control study, it was just a pen feeding dry the animals and feeding the animals and measuring urine pH there we fed half a kilogram even in, in both, well, in that group they were either hosting and jerseys and, and yes, it seems to be a good product. I, I don't know. To me, it's very interesting. I'm, I'm biased now because I started from scratch and suddenly it worked, you know, so Yeah, it is a neat, neat story.
Bill (40:32):
I just would wanna, again, for the audience remind, we're talking about intake depression or not depression. There is no nondead control in this. So you're comparing chlorides to, to the hali. They both made a depressed intake. We just, they have pre behave similarly is what you, it's that one was not worse than the other.
Glenn (40:51):
That's,
Gonzalo (40:51):
That's, that is correct.
Glenn (40:53):
Okay. But the intakes were for dry cal disease now.
Bill (40:56):
Yeah, they were right where they should be, I think. Yep. Do you think on the forage types here, and if, let's say there's, and I don't want to use any brand names, but there are commercial D ad products out there. Do you think you'd have seen the same non-interaction between forage sources and other decats?
Gonzalo (41:17):
So if I understand the question correctly, bill, I'm, I'm, I'm phrasing just in case you are saying if I would have used a commercial salt, a osteogenic product, would I have seen an interaction with the forage? Yeah. You didn't,
Bill (41:34):
This, this paper, there was no interaction, which makes it nice. Do you think if you use different, different anion sources, it would still stay that way? Both forages would behave similarly?
Gonzalo (41:45):
I guess it would depend on the composition of the, of the, of the product first. That's a good question, bill. I, I don't know how to answer that one. To be honest, maybe not. Maybe not. If you can balance, I mean, if you think on the certification, only if you are reaching the same D cut, eh, you shouldn't see an interaction other than thinking on the, on the, on the typical nutritional composition like N D F concentration, forage and all that. Maybe not.
Bill (42:23):
I, I agree. 'cause Again, you had a chloride based acidification and a sulfate based acidification. The commercial products are same basics. So I think this is, it can be extrapolated, you know, we never know. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't hesitate to extrapolate the lack of interaction to other sources.
Gonzalo (42:41):
Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Glenn (42:44):
I was just curious a little bit about the sulfur issue. How high did you get? I have to go back and look.
Gonzalo (42:55):
Yeah, that's a good question. A few, actually, maybe it was more than one year ago. I had Jesse go visiting here, Virginia Tech and we discussed this and he, he, he raised the question of, oh, you're, you're feeding a lot of sulfur here. The values are 0.3, point almost 1% in one of the diets 0.2 and 0.6. And I think, Bill, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Nam now says the maximum adequate intake would be 0.4, if I'm not wrong. Yes,
Bill (43:30):
There is an interaction between higher grain diets. It would be 0.4 higher forage diets. Point six would be about it.
Gonzalo (43:37):
I was going to say that there is a comment on the nam saying that when you have a high forest diet, you can be a little more permissive on the concentration of, of sulfur, because I think there is a, a a mechanism about the, the room pH and the release of the dissociation. Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Bill (44:00):
It would that the 0.6 doesn't worry me for the short term, but almost 1% sulfur. That's would be a concern to me on, on both to direct toxicity and clearly you're, you're messing up trace minerals, but that's a, a short term thing, but
Gonzalo (44:17):
Right. Percent
Bill (44:18):
Sulfur a lot .
Gonzalo (44:20):
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah. So
Glenn (44:23):
Chelated copper,
Bill (44:25):
So def definitely in selenium yeast,
Glenn (44:28):
Definitely need to look at some chelated products in those kind of situations.
Bill (44:33):
To wrap up with my last question for you, and it's what, what would be the next, next experiment in this area for you if you'd continue in this area?
Gonzalo (44:43):
Yeah, yeah. I do want to continue in this, and actually I put a follow up grant. But they didn't, they decided not to fund it. Eh, you know me bill, you know that I am a my undergrad degree is more on the agronomy side, eh, so on forages is, is is my, my, my passion, eh, I would like to get a little more data on, you know, the, the effect of fertilizers and fertilizer doses on how we can manipulate, if we can, the, the catal and ion difference in the, in the alfalfa hay. That would be something interesting. And then obviously you have an agronomy component on that research, but then follow it up with with the cow study.
Scott (45:29):
So, you know, I want to thank Bill for, you know, the fine cheese. It's really much appreciated, but I should probably explain the backstory for this kind gift. So Bill was being honored at this past A D S A with a Bill Weiss symposia, right? It's kinda like the lifetime achievement award. And unfortunately, bill had been detained in Newark, New Jersey since Sunday. It got to be Tuesday afternoon and still no, bill Weiss, he was still stuck in Newark. And his symposium was the following day, Wednesday at, at two o'clock. So we decided to kind of make a smoking the bandit style, midnight run to pick up some cargo, and in this case, the cargo was, was Dr. Weiss. So we drove all the way to, from Ottawa to Newark and back, and we got Bill. Oh wow. Got Bill to the symposium on time. So anyway bill, congratulations on, on the Bill Weiss symposium and, and thank you again for the cheese.
Bill (46:27):
Thank you. And you, you went well beyond the call of duty for, for picking the up.
Glenn (46:32):
Scott says, when Scott says we, it's he
Bill (46:35):
. Yeah, exactly.
Gonzalo (46:38):
I take the opportunity. Sorry, bill, I couldn't be there. I didn't go to a D S A this year, so congratulations on the symposium. Thank
Bill (46:45):
You. Absolutely. Very nice. Well
Glenn (46:47):
Deserved
Scott (46:48):
. So we will go ahead and call, last call. And with that what I'd like to do is kind of get a you know, just one key point, one takeaway that you'd leave the audience with from the conversation today. And Glenn, I'm gonna start with you.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
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Glenn (47:29):
Well, I, you know, what I took away from it is the, you know, we've, we've got a lot of producers out there that are trying to, you know, either find or grow, you know, haze and alfalfas that are, you know, low in potassium so that they can, you know, manage their, their decat issues and you know, hats off if we, you know, can show them that in fact, you can manage it without having to, to do that specialization. There's some advantages, obviously to the dairies. Of course, there's always the question of, of cost, right? Obviously if you have, if you can, you know, basically acidify a diet, but the amount of acidifier you use has to get to be a pretty high level, then that's a cost to the dairy as well. So, but it's an interesting concept and, and now I know about polyhide, so learn something every time.
Scott (48:26):
Yeah. Gonzalo one thing, I don't, I don't think we mentioned it, but you spent several years as a consulting nutritionist, so very applied. And so I'm just gonna ask you to maybe what kind of applied advice could you give consulting nutritionist out there basis this research?
Gonzalo (48:45):
I love that you asked for it because it's exactly what I was going to say. One thing that I learned a lot being in the field is to not get stuck in the theory sometimes on the, on the, on the biological principles. And sometimes you need to be flexible and, and, and get out of the box and, and, and try different things. That is kind of my, my, my key message. Don't, don't get stuck to, oh, do not fit this ingredient to this cow. You can still learn and do it by, by relying on the theory, but, but being a little more flexible, which is in line with what Glen just said, I think.
Scott (49:31):
Alright. Very well. And Bill is the resident expert here. Any, any thoughts you leave for the students or for for the audience?
Bill (49:41):
Two, two things. One is rule one and nutrition. There's, there's, there's not bad ingredients. There's only bad diets.
Glenn (49:48):
Absolutely. So you,
Bill (49:49):
You can make things work and but of specific of this paper, I think the big thing is the lack of an interaction between diet, basal diet and dec A because that means, again, if, if diet affects the response to dec A, then you have to start, things get much more complicated. But if basal diet pretty much is independent of dec a, that, that makes life a lot simpler.
Scott (50:12):
Yeah. Very well agree. Alright, Gonzalo, Bill, Glen, thank you for sharing your knowledge tonight. Your time and the conversation's been quite compelling, so I really appreciate that. To our loyal listeners thank you for coming along once again to this episode and sticking around with us as we explore more topics. We hope you learned something, we hope you had some fun and we hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (50:40):
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