Dr. Hansen’s lab conducted several in vitro experiments where choline chloride was supplemented to beef embryo culture media for the first seven days of embryonic development. Calves resulting from the choline-supplemented embryos were consistently 17-20 kilograms heavier at weaning. In the feeding experiment presented at the Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium, Dr. Sagheer fed rumen-protected choline to beef cows one day before AI through seven days post-AI, spanning ovulation, fertilization, and the first seven days of embryo development. In contrast to the in vitro studies, calves born to cows supplemented with choline during the peri-conception period were lighter at weaning than control calves. The panel discusses potential mechanisms of action for these results, including choline’s role as a methyl donor potentially impacting the epigenetic programming of the embryo.
Scott Sorrell (00:10):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podcast 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, gonna be your host here tonight. I'm with my co-host, which is Marco Sagheer. Welcome Dr. Sagheer Appreciate having you here. Thank you. Our color commentator today is going to be Dr. Pete Hansen from the University of Florida, and our special guest is going to be Dr. Masroor Ger. We're gonna be discussing a presentation Masroor that you're gonna be giving here at the Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposia. And I guess that'll be tomorrow or, yeah,
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (00:51):
This evening.
Scott Sorrell (00:51):
This evening. 5:00 PM Yeah. And that's gonna be titled feeding Rumen Protected Choline During the Peri Conceptual Period Programs, pre Postnatal Phenotype of Calves. What I'd like you to do is let's do a couple things. First, just tell us a little bit about yourself, and then what I'd like you to do is kind of give us just kind of an overview of what your presentation's gonna be like tonight.
Balchem (01:22):
New research is changing everything we thought we knew about Choline's impact on the cow and her calf and top scientists have a lot to say about it. They're presenting new research that supports choline as a required nutrient to optimize milk production choline as a required nutrient to support a healthy transition choline as a required nutrient to improve calf health and growth and choline as a required nutrient to increase colostrum quantity. This new research is solidifying Choline's role as a required nutrient for essentially every cow, regardless of health status, milk production level, or body condition score. Learn more about the science that is changing the game and the choline source that is making it happen. ReaShure Precision Release Choline from Balchem visit balchem.com/scientistssay to learn more.
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (02:25):
So I originally came from Pakistan where I did my bachelor's in veterinary medicine, and I did my master's in animal reproduction where I studied IVF in our native buffalos. And I moved to US in August, 2021 when I started my PhD with Dr. Hanson for my PhD. We are working to see how can maternal derived molecules, essentially nutrients can affect the embryonic development. And when you transfer those embryos, if, if, or how they can affect the postnatal phenotype of the calfs. And for this experiment that I'm presenting today at the conference or symposia, we have fed protected choline during the preconception period to beef cows. And we have looked at the phenotype of the calves if that feeding can have an impact nine months later at the caps.
Scott Sorrell (03:19):
Okay. Very interesting. So what exactly, how long are you feeding it?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (03:25):
So we have some in vitro data where we supplement colon chloride in the ambry culture medium only for the first seven days of embryonic development. Got it. Which is when the embryo is a one cell zygote to the BL stage of development. Okay. There is only seven days in the culture dish, and we see that when we supplement choline during those seven days of development and we transfer those embryos to the cows, we see that the calves, they are heavier at birth and at weaning. Okay. So we repeated that experiment three times now, and we have seen the effects on the weaning weight consistently. So the idea for these experiments stems for the, for those from those in vitro studies where supplementing choline have positive impact on the calves. So for the feeding study, we are trying to repeat the same in vitro experiment where we are feeding protected choline one day before artificial insemination until seven days after ai. Okay. So, which covers the time period of abolition, fertilization and first seven days of embryonic development. Okay.
Scott Sorrell (04:28):
Now, before we start talking about some of the results that you've seen, let's, let's kind of go back to the, the, the in vitro stuff. So you were measuring, measuring weaning weight. How much larger were those calves?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (04:40):
So for our first experiment we saw about 19, i, if I'm not wrong, about 17 to 19 kilograms increase in the weaning weights from the choline supplemented embryos that became calves.
Scott Sorrell (04:54):
Okay. Yeah. And then did you follow those?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (04:57):
Yes. For, for our very recent study, one of my colleagues Dr. Laney Hayman, she took those calves to slaughter and she looked at the carcass weight and effects were even seen on the carcass weight and the meat was even better Okay. For those animals. So,
Scott Sorrell (05:13):
Okay. And have you done this on lactating animals or dairy animals?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (05:18):
So this was all beef cows. All beef animals where we had cytes coming from Brahman animals and braus animals. And those were transferred into mixed breed of cows. Okay. Beef, all beef so
Scott Sorrell (05:28):
Far. Right. Interesting. Dr. Hanson.
Dr. Pete Hansen (05:31):
Yeah, no, I, monster did a fantastic job. Yeah. We've done three experiments where we transferred embryos treated with choline or without choline. And the first experiment we did, we saw heavier birth weights. And actually gestation length was a little bit longer in the calves dry from choline treated embryos
Scott Sorrell (05:54):
That cause any issues with the heavier calves.
Dr. Pete Hansen (05:55):
Well, you know, it's, yeah. The cattlemen were not very happy Yeah. When they saw they were not that much larger. Got it. But, you know, they're looking for smaller calves. And the other two experiments that we did, there was no effect on birth weight, no effect on gestation length. But we still saw this, like maer said, about a 17 to 20 kilogram increase in weaning weight. Yeah. Not statistically significant, but the effects are usually greater in the, the male calves than the female calves. And that's a characteristic of fetal programming is that there's sex effects that the effects of maternal environment on the male embryo are often different than on the female embryo. And we're not seeing a significant effect of sex on the response to choline, but it's kind of consistent in our, in makes in our studies.
Scott Sorrell (06:52):
Can you talk a little bit about mode of action of, of how this is happening?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (06:57):
So there are so many things that can happen when you talk about early embryonic development, right. Those zygotes or those gat male and female, they meet together, they form a zygote and they have to start a new genome. We call that embryonic genome activation. So the new genes are being activated for during those process processes. One of the important thing that is happening is the epigenetic modifications. Yeah. And there are three types of epigenetic modifications, mainly. One of them is DNA methylation. Second one is HISONE modifications, and the third one is regulation by non-coding RNAs. So what we think, or at least we hypothesize, is that because choline is a methyl donor, it could potentially be affecting the DNA methylation of the embryos. So DNA methylation, it just essentially reference to the addition of meth groups to a DNA molecule. And when DNA is either hyper or hypermethylated, it can change the function of the DNA, but it does not change the structure of the DNA. So because as I said, in the first seven days of embryonic development, there is dynamic changes happening in the epigenetic program of the embryo. So it is plausible to think that if you change the availability of methyl donors during that period of development, it could, it could probably alter the epigenetic program of the embryo. And that might have, you know, both positive or negative consequences for the calves.
Scott Sorrell (08:29):
That's what I was gonna ask. Yeah. And have you seen negative
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (08:33):
For our feeding study, we are seeing that the calves that were derived from the dams, which were fed choline, they were lighter, they were not the same as, you know, in vitro study, but they were lighter in weight at weaning as compared to the control calves. So, you know, who knows what's happening in there. We have not done any mechanistic studies so far. Yeah. But we have some, you know, hypothesis that what could be going on.
Scott Sorrell (08:57):
Yeah. And, and Marcus, so I was gonna just gonna say that's kind of the opposite of what you saw in in your studies, right, exactly. Yeah. Yes.
Marcos Zenobi (09:05):
But different also opposite to what they saw in vitro. Right? Yes. So really hard to,
Dr. Pete Hansen (09:11):
But your studies are cool in Chester tissue. Yeah.
Marcos Zenobi (09:15):
Prepartum so close up per
Scott Sorrell (09:16):
So. Yeah.
Marcos Zenobi (09:17):
But
Dr. Pete Hansen (09:18):
Anyway, which is a much different kind of organism.
Marcos Zenobi (09:21):
Oh yeah, exactly. It's amazing how you can modify an embryo, right. With different compounds. Mm-Hmm
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (09:35):
Yes, we are, you
Marcos Zenobi (09:36):
Expect to have the same effects.
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (09:38):
I mean, theoretically you should see the same effects, but you know, these molecules, they don't just affect the DNA methylation. They could be doing so many things. As I said, there are evidences that, for example, just choline can affect different cell signaling mechanisms. For example, mTOR A MPK signaling, it can also affect the lipid metabolism. So there are several things that can happen in the embryo and which can have consequences for the calves after embryo transfer. And for the second question that you asked, we are currently working with methionine, which is another methyl donor. And we are producing embryos which are grown in different concentrations of methionine. We are looking at the effect of the concentration of methionine on the in vitro development, where we look at if it affects the percent of embryos that become blast assist or if it affects any of the other characteristics of the embryo, for example, if it is gonna affect the lipid, if it is gonna affect the impact, the apoptosis, for example. And then we are also transferring those embryos to the cows to see if it has any impact on the calves. So those two experiments are ongoing.
Dr. Pete Hansen (10:43):
Yeah. The calves are born. Right. So we're just waiting for them to, to grow and get weaned. I do wanna say it's kind of fun having Marcos here because he was actually the inspiration for all this
Scott Sorrell (10:57):
Research. Oh, is that right?
Dr. Pete Hansen (10:58):
Yeah. I never really had any interest in nutrients and their effects on the embryo. But I had a new grad student, Paula, who was Marcos's wife, and he was a grad student studying choline, and we were studying early embryonic development, and the whole department was just choline, choline, choline. And Paula, because of Marcos, was choline, choline, choline. So I had a new grad student come, Elia Estrada, and I said, well, just for the hell of it, let's add choline to culture, medium of embryos, and see what happens. And I always thought that, you know, we would get away from the go back to what we were usually doing, but you know, it's probably been, I don't know how many years now.
Marcos Zenobi (11:48):
Six,
Dr. Pete Hansen (11:49):
Six years. Seven. Yeah. So we've, we've really gotten into choline in a big way. Yeah. That we never, but you're really kind of the inspiration Marcos, so
Scott Sorrell (11:57):
Yeah. Nice. So, so I got so many questions. So I'm, I, you know, are there degrees of methylation and, and, and how can you control that or can you control that? And what do you know at this point in time about these degrees of methylation, positive or negative?
Dr. Pete Hansen (12:18):
Yeah, we're doing an experiment now. Like this whole idea of fetal programming, developmental programming dome is nobody has a very good understanding for how that can happen. Yeah. So the, the big explanation is at some point during embryonic development or fetal development, some key regions of the DNA get methylated or get ONM methylated, and that gets inherited by the animal when it's a postnatal animal. I don't think anybody's proven that that's the mechanism. So we've looked at DNA methylation in the calves derived from choline treated embryos. And there are changes in DNA methylation, but not just hypermethylation like you would expect if choline is a methyl donor. We actually see just as much hypomethylation. So it's not clear whether those changes in DNA methylation are the cause of the phenotype or a result of the phenotype. You know, maybe 'cause animal's growing more, some genes get methylated or unmethylated. So what we're doing now, or what we're trying to do now, we cultured some embryos with choline or without choline. We're gonna measure DNA methylation in the embryo, and then we have another group of embryos from the same matings, and we're gonna produce calves from those. And we'll look at DNA methylation in the calves and we'll see how many DNA methylation sites got changed in the embryo that are still changed in the calf. You know, see whether those are conserved or not.
Scott Sorrell (14:14):
Yeah.
Dr. Pete Hansen (14:15):
But it could be, like Maser said, some of these other biochemical pathways that choline is regulating, like lipid metabolism could also be involved. So yeah, it's a big, you know, black box mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (14:46):
Yeah. Yeah. And how much bigger would you say
Dr. Pete Hansen (14:49):
I, you know, I knew you were gonna answer me that
Dr. Pete Hansen (14:52):
When You asked Foster how much, and I, I don't remember
Scott Sorrell (14:56):
Yeah. Are you seeing enough positive results from this? I think you know enough. Do you see that there is a commercial implications for this down the road?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (15:07):
Yeah, I think so. For sure. At least for the, for the beef study that we have done, I mean, we, we have seen that there is negative, negative effects. But in the br culture medium, we have now consistently seen positive effects. And which makes a lot of sense because in the uterus of the cows, there is a lot of choline, you know, before as of today, there is no published data as much as to how much choline, but there are experiments where they show relative amount of choline. So they have shown that there is a lot of choline. But we have produced recently some data where we have collected undiluted uterine fluid samples, and we have looked at the exact concentrations of different metabolites in the uterus. And you know, there is a lot of choline in the uterus, so that makes sense.
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (15:55):
Right? Yeah. 'cause In the br culture medium, there is no choline mm-hmm
Dr. Pete Hansen (16:25):
So how much choline is there in the,
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (16:27):
It's 1.8 millimolar, which is exactly what we calculated based on Marcos and you know, his work and all that.
Scott Sorrell (16:34):
Wow,
Dr. Pete Hansen (16:35):
Interesting. So in the blood, what it's four micromolar? Seven micromolar. Yeah. So you're talking thousand fold higher. Now that's in lactating cows fed protect methionine, but yeah, even in beef cows it's hundreds of micromolar. So the mild sage of Cornell developed this device to sample uterine fluid and Mazda improved it. And so yeah, we have data on many, many different metabolites in the uterus. They're all higher than in the blood. Mm-Hmm
Marcos Zenobi (17:45):
And that choline that is in the uterus is just choline or
Dr. Pete Hansen (17:52):
Choline chloride. Yeah.
Marcos Zenobi (17:52):
Yes. This
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (17:53):
Is free choline. Nice.
Dr. Pete Hansen (17:55):
Yeah. It's ama, I mean, Paula
Marcos Zenobi (17:56):
Yeah, Paula also showed wife. Yes. I remember col was just,
Dr. Pete Hansen (18:01):
Was one of the metabolites that was the highest.
Marcos Zenobi (18:04):
Yes, I remember that.
Scott Sorrell (18:07):
Some kind of curious then I mean, do we know enough today that people should maybe start putting choline in their, their I guess the medium? Is that what you call it? For, for embryos?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (18:21):
I mean, I would say yes, because you know, if you see an experiment effect just one time you would be like I don't know if it's real or not. Yeah. But then you repeat it again and again with two different beef breeds of donors, you know, that that means it is real. I mean, I would not, I would definitely, if I do ABR transfers, I make IVF company, definitely I'm putting colon in there. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (18:43):
Yeah. Do they know about your research yet?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (18:46):
I think people know, yeah, for sure.
Scott Sorrell (18:48):
Okay. All
Dr. Pete Hansen (18:48):
Right. You know, commercially people don't say what's what culture they
Scott Sorrell (18:54):
Use.
Dr. Pete Hansen (18:54):
Yeah. But many people put a little bit of serum in the culture medium probably because of the growth factors that are in serum. Yeah. So they are adding a little bit of choline.
Scott Sorrell (19:07):
Yeah.
Dr. Pete Hansen (19:08):
Whereas when all the experiments we do, we're using culture media without serum. So we, we know exactly what's in there.
Marcos Zenobi (19:19):
Yeah. I remember it when ELAP showed the first results. It was kind of nice, but the first time. Right. But after five years, two tries, three more tries and the same results. I think that there is something there Yeah. With calling. So we
Dr. Pete Hansen (19:36):
Do need to do it in dairy. Right. Yeah. For two reasons. I think if you could get heavier calves, that would probably have a beneficial effect on the ability of those calves to make it into the milking herd. And maybe, I mean, if you look at some of the calf data, calves that grow better early in life probably produce more milk when they're cows. So that's, you know, the practical aspect of it I think is very important. But there's also this question that we've never been able to answer. I don't know that this happens. Maybe the choline treated embryo has a better placenta. The placenta produces more placental lactogen, the cow produces more milk and that's why the calf grows more after, after birth. I don't know that that's true, but if it is, you wouldn't see it in a dairy animal because calf would be weed birth. So we've measured placental function indirectly by looking at secretion of one protein produced by the placenta. That doesn't change with choline, but I think it's still an open question. Are we programming the calf because we're programming the mammary gland? Which of course would be cool also from a dairy perspective.
Scott Sorrell (21:03):
It really would. Yeah. So is that kind of, maybe I was gonna ask, you know, what does future research look like? And you've talked a little bit about methionine now you talked about dairy. Would that be the major thrust going forward?
Dr. Pete Hansen (21:15):
We tried to do a dairy study mm-hmm
Marcos Zenobi (21:45):
Well,
Scott Sorrell (21:47):
You working on that, that we just pop in
Dr. Pete Hansen (21:51):
Would you agree with that Miles?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (21:53):
Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of results that you see from nutritional studies where people feed choline, they come from the system where they have Callen gates where they individually feed the cows. And to be able to do the trial, you have to first train the cows, right? Yeah. And you could do that. You could afford to do that because you're working with transition cows. They are dry cows. You could just give them 5, 6, 7 days, 10 days to get acclimatized to the system and then you start feeding choline. But since we are just focusing the period of embryonic development the first seven days around the time of ai, we cannot, you know Yeah. Give them 5, 6, 7 days. We have to feed them and they have to eat it right away. Yeah. So that is challenging for us. Yeah,
Dr. Pete Hansen (22:36):
Yeah. Yeah. We did try, I mean, yeah, ma went down to a dairy in south Florida on top dress that didn't work too well then he was bolusing choline orally. Yeah. But you know, that was a little stressful on the cows.
Marcos Zenobi (22:51):
Yeah. For cow. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (22:52):
Could you do it in a robotic feeder? I'm sure that would be an option. Yeah.
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (22:56):
Yeah. If we could find that dairy where even where if people supplement some of the concentrate when the cows are milking, you know, because you don't need to feed a lot of colon, it's only 60 grams of colon, which is like maybe this much, right? Yeah. So you could make a pallet or something and you could, you could feed them that way. But we need to find a dairy like that and who would like to work with us.
Marcos Zenobi (23:17):
Yeah. And would you expect to see the same results, better results?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (23:24):
You
Marcos Zenobi (23:24):
Know, I think that the demand of calling on that cow probably is higher. I don't know. Based on meat production, other things, but who knows, right? Yeah.
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (23:35):
I don't know. I mean, we have to do the experiment to answer the question because as Dr. Hanson mentioned, it is also a different physiology because of the mom or the cow not feeding the calf. So that might change the results. I mean, we don't know. So we have to do the study. Yeah.
Dr. Pete Hansen (23:52):
What about your sheep results?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (23:53):
Yeah, yeah. I mean we have recently conducted an experiment with sheep. We got very much interested in sheep because it has just five months of gestational length and if you want to study effects of anything on fetal programming, you could get the calves or the lambs within five months mm-hmm
Dr. Pete Hansen (25:19):
I said, that's not real monster, come on.
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (25:22):
He did not trust me. So I told him the lambs are there and they have everything still there on them. You know, you could see they're males or females. I didn't change anything. So
Dr. Pete Hansen (25:32):
It's just chance.
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (25:33):
Yeah. So we did the experiment again you know, with more number of sheep because the first time we had about 53 sheep. The second time we had about 60, 70 more sheep. So now we have a good n and we saw exactly the same effects.
Scott Sorrell (25:47):
What is Horatio?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (25:49):
We get 60% females, about 40% males in choline and in the controls it's about 55. 45. So
Scott Sorrell (25:56):
Yeah. And so what's the hypothesis behind that?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (26:00):
You answered that.
Dr. Pete Hansen (26:01):
It's a tough one. Well, it's interesting. I mean, unlike the cow, they have more than one lamb. Yeah. I forget what the average litter size was like 1.7, 1.8. Right. So, but there was no effect on fertility. The fertility was the same, the litter size was the same. So it's not like choline is killing off the male fetuses. Yeah. So the only explanation I can think of, which I'm still struggling with, you know, how could you get more females if you're not killing off the males? You're either preferentially increasing survival of the exhorted sperm, which seems kind of odd. Or maybe you're affecting ovulation time. You know, there's not very good evidence. But some evidence that if at least in cattle, if insemination occurs right at the time of ovulation, you get more males. 'cause The y sperm is a little smaller. It goes up the reproductive tract quicker.
Dr. Pete Hansen (27:11):
So you're more likely to get a male, but then those sperm die. And so if ovulation is delayed, it's the X sperm that, that are still alive. Not, I mean, it's only a small shift, so maybe that's true. Right. Maybe the choline is affecting ovulation time relative to estro. And and so how many living sperm versus sperm are there at the time the OSA comes down the uc? Maybe that's responsible, but of course, unlike the cow studies that ram is mating the female. Yeah. Probably, possibly multiple times. We, we synchronized the sheep. So he had a lot of used to to mate. Yeah. But my guess is he read a lot of them more than once. Mm-Hmm. Right. But it is very
Marcos Zenobi (28:04):
And do you have any blood metabolites from that ship study? Yes. Anything that changed?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (28:10):
I did a preliminary experiment where we fed them same polys of choline, and we collected blood sample before boardus feeding. And then after every two hours until 10 hours, we didn't see any plasma choline going up. But TMO, you know, it went like boom, it was like f four folds at least high in choline. So, you know, I dunno if that is affecting the sex ratio or the embryos or the semen. I cannot tell. 'cause There is no data on that.
Dr. Pete Hansen (28:40):
And we saw no effect on the birth weight or we weight.
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (28:43):
Yeah. No effect on birth weights. We weights. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (28:45):
Okay. Did you look at the carcasses? Any, any differences there?
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (28:49):
Yes. We, I mean, not the carcass. We did, we did slaughter of them, but we looked at the carcass ultrasound. Right? Yeah. We did ultrasound to look at the rib eye and the intramuscular fat only the longus doci muscles area was higher in the colon supplemented lambs and the lambs produced from colon supplemented dams. Hmm. So that was Yes. Higher.
Scott Sorrell (29:14):
Interesting. Any other, any other species you're gonna look at? I mean, I'm wondering about mono gastrics right? And what implications that may or may not have.
Dr. Pete Hansen (29:24):
Yeah. You know, your question, is it commercially relevant to be doing these kind of things? I think so. You know, we've never, like I'm always saying if you look at the improvements in animal production in the 20th century and into today, it's because of genetics. But it's also because we've gotten so good at optimizing the environment of the animal, but it's always after it's born
Scott Sorrell (29:54):
Yeah.
Dr. Pete Hansen (29:55):
So now I think we can start to think like marcos's data as well in late gestation. How can we modify the environment of the animal before it's born? What's tricky? It's a pure guess, right? There, there's no, it, it's hard to predict, oh, I think this molecule will have a positive effect if it's added at this time. Yeah. It, it pretty much
Marcos Zenobi (30:22):
Trial
Dr. Pete Hansen (30:22):
And error. Trial and error. But I think when we find molecules that do have beneficial effects that that'll have a lot of relevance to, to the producer.
Scott Sorrell (30:34):
Yeah. Marcos, we've referenced your research a couple times. Can you give us just kind of a real high level overview of, of what did you do and and what were some of the, the results that you, you, you found?
Marcos Zenobi (30:47):
Well, we start, the main goal of our tribe was always to feed, groom, rotate corn through the transition. Yeah. And look at the performance of the day, the, the cows, right, right. In production components, et cetera. But because we are working with transition cows, we start focusing on the heifers. Basically the, the calf that were born from ma supplementing with Colin. And it's just why we start looking at that, because during my PhD of Pablo, my wife PhD, we have the second baby here. And so we start looking at what minerals or Vietnamese mom should start taking. And Colin was just there, right? So she,
Scott Sorrell (31:27):
She was taking colon. Oh yes.
Dr. Pete Hansen (31:30):
I take colon.
Marcos Zenobi (31:33):
So everything started there. I'm so
Dr. Pete Hansen (31:35):
Handsome.
Marcos Zenobi (31:37):
And there was so many data showing good result of feeding according to pregnant mom. Yeah. To the, to the babies that we decided to start looking at the, the hay for the, the, the calf. Right. basically with what we saw in two tribe that we did better growth rate through the winning period. Even after that better corum from the moms we tried to just isolate the effect of colostrum. And again, we saw the effect of the calf on growth rates in the first 60 days. Less diarrhea better immune system, if we can say that. Right? Mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (32:36):
Doubt. So I'm sure that the, the, the data that you were referencing before on humans and the impact on children was the Cornell data. And in, and then in that study, mothers that consumed choline had children that were smarter, right? Yeah. For the most part. And those, those children are now 14 years old and they're, they're still following up with those children right now. And, and that data's gonna be published, but, but I, I believe that that result continues on. And so my question to you is, I'm sure your children are brilliant. Is that, is that true? Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Pete Hansen (33:12):
See, I think my mother had cigarettes and alcohol.
Scott Sorrell (33:14):
That's my line. I always say my mother didn't take home
Dr. Pete Hansen (33:20):
Well, but they didn't know, I mean,
Scott Sorrell (33:21):
Right. They didn't, didn't know. People
Marcos Zenobi (33:23):
Didn't know. But talking about cigarette alcohol, there are plenty data that colon can reverse the
Scott Sorrell (33:28):
Effects. I I know. I saw. It's amazing.
Marcos Zenobi (33:29):
It's amazing the molecule of colon. I mean, it's, when you start reading, it's amazing. Yeah.
Dr. Pete Hansen (33:34):
Well, I mean, there's a effects on brain health. I mean, that's why I take cho
Scott Sorrell (33:37):
Well, that, yes. So do I because it, I have an aging brain and there there's some
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (33:51):
I think one thing that hopefully we will follow up on is if you feed choline to the cows, how does that affect the uterine microenvironment? You know, that is a really good question that needs to be answered. Because if there are effects on the embryos, for example, specifically, how are those effects being being, being conducted, let's say for example, is choline feeding changing the concentration of metabolites of the choline in the uterus as well? You know, we don't know because usually you just feed choline or whatever nutrient, you just take a blood sample and you say, oh, it went up. So we assume that it also went up in the uterus. But from our data that we have just collected on the uterine fluid, even if you see a normal concentration of a metabolite in the blood, it's already so high in the uterus. So how would feeding something change that concentration of that metabolite in the uterus? You know, that is great question. An important question that we need to answer.
Scott Sorrell (34:54):
Yeah. Yeah. And do you have plans to answer that? Or
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (34:58):
If we get funds Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (34:59):
If we get funds, yeah. There, there's source of, and
Marcos Zenobi (35:01):
Now, right, right.
Marcos Zenobi (35:03):
What are our ships? Are you planning to do something with transition ship? I mean,
Dr. Pete Hansen (35:11):
Yeah, I would say we haven't talked about that. Okay. But you know, the one thing when we were waiting to have this podcast, I was just looking at the brochure of all of balchem’s room protected products, and you know, I just thought, man, we should test each one of these molecule for, I mean, minerals. Nobody knows what
Scott Sorrell (35:35):
Yeah,
Dr. Pete Hansen (35:36):
Exactly. Minerals, what role minerals play in the early embryo even just for fertility. And you know, that would be fascinating to look at. And then like Nia and, you know, again, plays a big role in metabolism. So I think there's lots of opportunity out there, hopefully for us. Yeah. But for other people interested in improving livestock performance to either improve, use these molecules to improve fertility, affect fetal growth and, and affect postnatal function. So it is, the whole rum and protection story is kind of transformed nutrition of, of ruminants. So pretty exciting.
Scott Sorrell (36:23):
Yeah. Yeah. Great comments. Yeah. this has been very fascinating. I I, I've enjoyed this. I really have. I, what I'd like to do is we get ready to close out here. I'd like to you guys to just kind of give a couple thoughts that you'd like to impart to the audience. A couple key takeaways that you think they oughta think about as, as we close out here. And Marcos, I, I'm gonna start with you if you don't mind.
Balchem (36:47):
Tonight's last call question is brought to you by Nysu Precision Release. Niacin. Niacin is a proven vasodilator for heat stress reduction and a powerful anti lipolytic agent for lowering high blood nefa in transition cows protected with Balchem’s, proprietary encapsulation technology. You can be sure it is being delivered where and when your cows need it. Learn more at balchem.com/niashure
Scott Sorrell (37:13):
Well,
Marcos Zenobi (37:15):
For me it's gonna be easy. Something
Dr. Pete Hansen (37:16):
Profound, please,
Marcos Zenobi (37:17):
No, it's, I mean, I, I have been reading about calling, I have some experience with calling and I, I don't have doubt that calling is required. I mean, I, I, I could encourage people to try and use calling in the transition, even try after maybe some result from the field can feed our experience. So always we learn from them. So try and use, I remember that the calling through the transition. I think that is a good choice. Alright. No
Scott Sorrell (37:44):
Doubt. Yeah. Good. Thank you Marco. Dr. Hanson?
Dr. Pete Hansen (37:49):
Yeah, I am trying to think of something profound.
Dr. Pete Hansen (37:53):
You know, I just, you know, federal research dollars are being threatened right now, which I think is a shame. And companies like Ball Cam have done such a good job promoting basic research. I mean, you, some of the things we're doing don't necessarily immediately relate to solving a producer problem immediately. But I think will in the long run, and, you know, I think humans are pretty ingenious and are constantly thinking of new ideas that maybe weren't obvious to people before. So I, I think this room and protection story is one of those. So I think we're gonna continue to see some big advancements that maybe nobody was predicting five or 10 years ago. So it's exciting to be involved with that.
Scott Sorrell (38:51):
Yeah, great, great comments. Mass ru. Yeah,
Dr. Masroor Sagheer (38:54):
I think because I work in the area of fetal programming or developmental programming, I think a lot of things, not just choline or most of the nutrients that we feed people, just look at the immediate effect of that. Let's say if somebody is feeding choline in transition period, you want to look at the effects on health disorders retained placenta, for example, displaced eism milk production and all those things. But now, I guess with more and more growing evidence, we should look at the long-term effects of feeding those nutrients on the calves that are born from those moms. And even, you know, trans-generational effects. Because evidence coming from mice, it says that there are transgenerational effects that you see by, you know, fading different molecules or even like, for example, different stress markers. Mm-Hmm
Scott Sorrell (39:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Great, great, great comments, gentlemen, this has been fun. I appreciate joining us to our audience out there. It's always great having you here. I hope you learned something. I hope you had some fun, and we hope to see you next time here. It's real science exchange where it's always happy hour and you're always my friends.
Balchem (40:01):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email@anh.marketing at balchem.com with any suggestions, and we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five star rating on your way out. You can request your Real Science Exchange t-shirt in just a few easy steps, just like or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange. And send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to anh.marketing at balchem.com. Balchem's real science lecture series of webinars takes place on the first Tuesday of every month with the top research and nutrition topics that will impact your business. We also include small ruminant, monogastric, and companion animal focused topics throughout the year. Visit balchem.com/realscience to see the upcoming topics and to register for future webinars. You can also access past webinars and search for the topics most important to you.