This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. Dr. DeVries gives an overview of his presentation on the economics of feeding more than one ration to lactating cows, with special consideration for additional costs (beyond increased feed costs) such as delivering additional loads of TMR, labor cost and mixing errors. He notes that producer surveys indicate that simplicity and not making mistakes are reasons given for not feeding an increased number of different rations. The surveys suggest there is some real money to be made if appropriate rations are used. Diminishing marginal returns should also be considered: going from one ration to two will yield the largest gain in income over feed costs, with each additional ration yielding smaller gains. (1:52)
This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada.
Dr. DeVries gives an overview of his presentation on the economics of feeding more than one ration to lactating cows, with special consideration for additional costs (beyond increased feed costs) such as delivering additional loads of TMR, labor cost and mixing errors. He notes that producer surveys indicate that simplicity and not making mistakes are reasons given for not feeding an increased number of different rations. The surveys suggest there is some real money to be made if appropriate rations are used. Diminishing marginal returns should also be considered: going from one ration to two will yield the largest gain in income over feed costs, with each additional ration yielding smaller gains. (1:52)
Dr. Burhans and Dr. Overton discuss some considerations for feeding multiple rations, including environmental impacts, herd size, pen availability, feed costs and milk production impacts. Dr. DeVries emphasizes the costs of feed delivery are a big part of this as well. (9:20)
The panel discusses a spreadsheet that Dr. DeVries presented during his presentation to calculate delivery costs. Dr. Burhans mentions some of the on-farm software gives an assessment of how close the actual ration was to the formulated ration, allowing for adjustments if needed. (16:28)
The panel considers the importance of body condition scores and recording actual data during nutritionist walk-throughs of dairy herds. They also delve into feeding frequency and optimal feed refusals levels. (27:45)
Panelists share their take-home thoughts. (43:08)
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Scott Sorrell (00:10):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pubcast where leading industry professionals and nutritionists. Meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. We've got a good one here for you today. But first I'd like to introduce my co-host, Dr. Clay Zimmerman. Also got two color commentaries with me welcoming back Tom Overton from Cornell University. Tom, welcome back. Yes. So it's good to see you. Yeah, Scott. Great.
Dr. Buzz Burhans (00:35):
Glad to be here again. Thank you
Scott Sorrell (00:36):
So much. Yep. And we've got Dr. Buzz Burhan he's a consulting nutritionist and also got some ties to Cornell University. So, buzz, you've not been on here bef well, you've been on here once, but it's been a while ago. Why don't you just kind of introduce yourself so that the audience out there knows who we're talking to?
Dr. Buzz Burhans (00:54):
Well, I appreciate the opportunity to come and spend some time with you. I've been feeding cows for close to 40 years. And one of the things that is a little unique to me is I've fed them in a lot of different locations in western us in the northeast, and I had some great opportunities to go to unfortunately two of the war zones to Ukraine and dairies there to Israel and to a fair number of places in Europe.
Scott Sorrell (01:28):
Well, good look forward to the conversation tonight. And our feature guest is Dr. Albert Dre from the University of Florida. And his topic here at the Western Dairy Management Conference was group feeding economics, milking the feed margin. So interesting topic, Albert, can you just give us an overview some of the key points you made during your presentation?
Dr. Albert DeVries (01:52):
Yeah, thanks, Scott. It's my pleasure to be on the podcast and happy to talk a little bit about what I presented on, on this topic here. So my, I got invited to talk about group feeding economics with the idea of remind us perhaps, or show us again, or what is the latest on feeding more than one ration to lactating cows here. And so I went through the literature mostly, mostly what other people have done. And that's, that's one aspect of maybe making increasing income of feed costs. But there's another aspect that they asked me to address, and it is, well, what about some additional costs that have not been included in some of these previous studies? For example loading you know filling up more loads of, of TMR. So more delivery time, more labor costs and then also errors, you know, if you feed more loads, if you did more rations does it increase errors? And what's the cost of those? So I, in my talk, I try to look at some, some cost of delivering multiple rations as well. And at the end, I try to look at the positives and the negatives. And like an econ a really co would say would you feed multiple rations? And the answer is, it depends. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (03:12):
Yeah. So just kinda clarify, you, you are an economist, right? And not a nutritionist? Is that how you describe yourself?
Dr. Albert DeVries (03:19):
I'm definitely not a nutritionist. Yeah. a real economist would say, I'm not an economist either. But yeah. So I have animal science degrees with, I've done a lot of heck econ and operations research. So I really enjoy putting dollars and cents and, and decision making around their dairy farming and their decision making.
Scott Sorrell (03:39):
Yeah. Good, good. Clay, you went to the presentation today. What were some of your, your takeaways and questions?
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Dr. Clay Zimmerman (04:57):
I have a lot of questions. I submitted a lot, but hey, they're saved for the podcast, so this is great. So you did a very nice job setting everything up and in the background and so forth, and you ended, you ended his presentation with a spreadsheet that he developed and showing some examples from that. So we'll dig into the spreadsheet a little bit later. I think he talked about the principles of grouping cows nutritionally the potential economic benefits of grouping cows nutritionally, and showed a lot of examples of that from some studies that were done. But most of those were simulations, correct, Albert? Yeah,
Dr. Albert DeVries (05:40):
There were, correct. There doesn't seem to be many recent field studies. At least that's not what I could see. And most of the latest work, even that's 10 years old, at least what I know was, was simulation work. Now these folks had, you know, very respected nutritionists on them, but granted it's not the same as as field studies, field studies that I've seen in literature from were from the seventies and so eighties. So I'd be curious to hear if everybody knows of, of, of newer better data. I also would venture that that the grouping question, there's so many aspects of it, but even in a field study, you can only change so many things. You cannot change 50 things. Right, right. And get answers. So in that regard, I think once we, once we have, I think we understand how cows respond to nutrients quite well, I think simulation is a, is a valid one approach to get to some of these hard questions.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (06:36):
So, and, and then you went into a little bit of survey data that was done a few years ago, and that was in Michigan and Wisconsin,
Dr. Albert DeVries (06:45):
Right? Yeah, Michigan, Wisconsin. Right. They asked these producers if not if, but what are some, some benefits and some constraints to feeding more than a ration on on their farms. And you know, what, what struck me is many of them wanted to keep it simple and therefore not feed maybe more than one, maybe two rations. So simplicity and not making mistakes is high on these producers list. And at the same time, then if you look at some of these studies, say, you know, there's some real money to be made. And in fact, I think I can share that. When I walked at my presentation, some producer came to me and said, we're feeding 10 rations and we're making a heck of a lot of money. So I said, oh, you must be doing something right there. He said, yeah, people really ought to look at this, you know, to, to really group cows and then balance rations for that specific group of cows. And I think he looked at milk production, he looked at body condition score, looked at a variety of things. He had his own way of grouping cows, but, and
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (07:44):
How large of a herd was that? I would imagine pretty large. Yeah.
Dr. Albert DeVries (07:48):
I mean, I can't remember. 2000 cows or so. Okay.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (07:52):
Yeah. So there was, there was, so there was a question in the questioning queue in the room, and I'm sure it was from this producer because it was, what are your thoughts on feeding 10 different rations? Yeah,
Dr. Albert DeVries (08:03):
Yeah. And I sort of boxed that. I said, well, and all the delivery and this and that, but and, and also, I mean, there's some diminishing marginal returns, right? That if you go from one to two groups, there's, there's, there's a higher gain in income of feed costs. And when you go from two to three becomes smaller, three to four becomes smaller, four, five becomes smaller. So our thinking from nine to 10, I mean, I wonder how much more you make, but no, I don't know why he stopped at 10, whether it was physical constraints or Yeah. Whatever the reason. Right. But no, they really believed in it, and it did not really affect, he said, yeah, we're moving cows between pens you know, feeding different rations to these different pens. And he said it doesn't really affect the cows much when you move them. Yeah. And he looked at the labor costs and he said per hour, I'm not, not saying who it was, he said, per hour of people moving cows we're making about $1,400. Yeah. So you could pay somebody $400 for an hour. Yeah. To, to negotiate, to negate, right. The benefits of multiple.
Scott Sorrell (09:08):
Yeah. Maybe we should throw that that question over to our nutritionists over here. Now, maybe it's not 10, but in your opinions, what do you typically think are optimal?
Dr. Buzz Burhans (09:20):
It, it's hard to answer because you have to know how many cows okay. Are there, I do think in many cases there could be more rations fed, not just more groups, but more, but if you have more rations, you gotta have more groups. Right. And that will have an impact both on the production possibility, but also has one things that I've become interested in is trying to get the rations to be as conservative as possible in terms of some of the environmental issues, particularly the protein issue. So the nitrogen, if you get that nitrogen down, and I am often below a level that most of us would be comfortable with that can make a, a difference as well. I think that the, the big thing is the willingness to have multiple pens. You have to be big enough, have multiple pens, and then be willing to formulate that.
Dr. Buzz Burhans (10:26):
There's a, there's another piece that concerns me about that, and that's how much when I'm doing that. So I have multiple rations. I don't wanna make a complete mix every time I have to feed the next pen. So can I put together a premix, which is predominantly what's in that, but then customize things. What I do is customize if I've got soybean meal or cornmeal, or I've got some specific, that I can then float the amounts of these other ingredients to match what I've got most, in most cases. In the east anyway, the, the the minerals and stuff are all in that in the west, that, that premix of minerals is easier to have as a separate ingredient to put in. Yeah. Got it.
Dr. Tom Overton (11:22):
Yeah. So I mean, this is a, it's a fascinating topic. And actually 10, 10 different diets for lact, that might be a record. I don't know. I can't think of any dairy that does that, so that's fascinating to me. But I mean, this whole issue of, you know, to group nutritionally or not to group nutritionally is like the age old question, right? And I remember the days of, you know, BST where we had more persistency, and that then led people to argue very much toward one group tmr, right? And then, you know, now, and then, you know, I still hear echoing in my head people saying, well, you know, if you can move a cow to a different diet that's less expensive, that, and you don't lose any milk or milk components than you should have moved her yesterday or the day before. So I think we're, people are smiling because we all know people that have, you know, purported that.
Dr. Tom Overton (12:05):
You know, I think one thing I, I really liked Albert Albert that you did was you know, you pulled in some data, you know, it was adjacent from prod in our group, you know, they put together a long time ago now, but in terms of actually the hard data on what it costs to make a load of feed and things like that, and I think that's often ignored in all this discussion. I really like the way you, you, you did that. And so really interesting. And I know Clay, there's more things in the spreadsheet that I think you want to get to as well.
Dr. Albert DeVries (12:32):
So, yeah. But, but the cost of delivering a load of feet is a big, big part of that, right? Yeah, definitely. Yep. And sort of, I don't know if it opened my eyes, I didn't really know, but, so I think I used at the end an an hour, like a hundred dollars or so. Mm-Hmm
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (12:58):
What, what is the elements of that a hundred dollars typically?
Dr. Albert DeVries (13:03):
I mean it's labor. It's labor, it's depreciation on the tractor, the loader. Got it. To make sure it's maintenance. Got it. It's some fuel. Yeah.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (13:12):
So, Albert, one, one thing that, and you made a point of this in the presentation, the, these, the simulations, and I think even the, you know, the actual on farm trials that were done, it ignored the fresh cows, right?
Dr. Albert DeVries (13:29):
Yeah. That's a, that's a good question. And so some of them ignored the fresh cows and some did not, I think.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (13:35):
Okay. And
Dr. Albert DeVries (13:37):
Correct. And so the presentation didn't come out very clearly because some of these studies weren't very clearly about that. So the Wisconsin data that LA last showed last said, every they had, they fed fresh cows up to 21 3 weeks, a separate ration. And then they were wondering how about how many rations after fresh 21 days and later, and others might not have separated out the fresh cows first. So it was a little bit of a mixture, and I would have to almost go back to the literature, see what they really did. But I guess that's the question, right? I mean, that's probably the first group you would separate out, right? Am I correct there?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (14:18):
I think so, and to tab Buzz's point earlier, especially, you know, when you're trying to think about some of the environmental needs, right? There are real opportunities with fresh cows to feed them differently and set your peaks, set your peak milk, and then ratchet things back. And I think there could be some huge cost savings there from a feed standpoint.
Dr. Buzz Burhans (14:40):
I agree. Agree. I agree. The, the challenge is to know how to formulate some of, so if I had 5,000 cows, so I've, I've fed dairies up to 15, a little over 15,000, you can have multiple pens that are basically the same population, similar population. So I don't need different mixes, but it would make sense as they get further into lactation, whether it's from the start or as it progresses, I should be able to tighten that up a little bit. And the question would be, how, what's the best way to do that?
Dr. Albert DeVries (15:20):
So, can I ask, is it, it's feeding the fresh cows separately from the other lactating cows. How common is that? Or not common?
Dr. Tom Overton (15:28):
So, fresh cow diets have been around forever, right? And there's lots of herds that'll transition cows either onto a fresh cow diet which often is the high cow diet with a few kind of tweaks to it or onto the high cow type diet. And I think, you know, these last few years, we think about, you know, some of the work that Trent Westoff and, and Sabina Mann's group has done with protein feeding, specifically in that group. You think about amino acids, you think about transition specific nutrients like choline, other things like that. I, I think that fresh diet is gonna become more of its own unique diet versus just an adaptation. And I think that this discussion pro be given what fraction, the fresh cow group, whether it's a 14 day fresh group, a 21 day fresh group, what have you you know, is really such a small proportion of the cow, is that the question that you're driving at really is what do you do with the cows for the remainder of lactation? And I think that's really the, the key part to drill on here, because I think the, I think I agree with the notion of kind of setting that fresh group kind of apart, you know, and, and, and maybe thinking about it as its own deal.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (16:28):
Yeah. So the spreadsheet that you built, what, what, what are the inputs into that? I have a lot of questions about the feed costs and so forth. I've gotta repeat a question. I asked to the room earlier, a little bit later, but I'm curious, what, what are the inputs into the spreadsheet? Yeah,
Dr. Albert DeVries (16:51):
So let me, so what I tried to do in the spreadsheet, right? I started from scratch, I didn't have anything, and I said, how can I get to some way of calculating that I have feeding multiple groups you know, when does it take an extra load or not? And so I think I had to first figure out, I mean, herd size and then how often. And so then from that I determined to par size, I determined pen number, so I'm milking two X for three x. I said, my cows need to be away no more an hour away. And so then I had a pen size, and then I had a, I had a a loader size and I knew how much feed went to one pen. And then you know, if I did multiple one ration, then I need X number of loads.
Dr. Albert DeVries (17:41):
It'd all be the same. That's basically my cheapest way of doing it. But if I have multiple rations, therefore multiple pens of feet, then occasionally I may need an extra loader or two to deliver that second, third, or fourth ration out there. So yeah, so I had to calculate when does it take an extra load or not. And then also how much, how do much do we fill up these, these loaders? Which, okay, I just estimated that based, because of course I knew how many cows I was feeding. And I had a load size. And so sometimes I was 90% full. And sometimes if I had, you know, multiple rations, my loader was 50% full. I don't know how realistic that is, but I then I said, well, if I have my loader not as full, I make more mixing errors.
Dr. Albert DeVries (18:31):
And I seen that our own dairy, you know, you're trying to dump in you know, ingredients. And I think you probably do, and I, this is a question for the rest of the panel too. Can, are we making fewer mixing errors when we feeding big loads then small loads, for example. So I had, that was in my spreadsheet as well. And then I played with, okay, I'm feeding one ration, two ration, three ration, four rations. How many extra loads do I need? And what is then, which then had to cost a hundred dollars per hour, right? And then also, how full are my loaders? If they're smaller, I said, well, then you make relatively more mixing errors. And therefore there's some cost because cows could get fed the wrong ration, produce a little less milk. That's basically the what was in that spreadsheet there.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (19:22):
So, so were you assuming if more rations were fed that there would be a production benefit to that?
Dr. Albert DeVries (19:27):
So the spreadsheet did not have anything on the production benefits that was separate that I did from the studies that I reviewed. I could have done that at the bottom, I could have said, okay, you know, I feed one ration, three or four, say three over one. That is, I dunno, $50 per cow per year more. And then I could have taken the difference right from, from the extra cost that I calculated with my spreadsheet, but I left that up to the audience. My spreadsheet only did only calculated what is basically the cost of delivering TMR depending on farm, you know, farm size, pen size, how many loads I deliver.
Dr. Buzz Burhans (20:04):
So instead of the spreadsheet, some of the, the software will give you the percentage variation that you just made when you printed that in some of the dairies I worked with more the ones in the west had software that I could review that and say, Hey dude you gotta get this a little bit tighter. 'cause There's a, there's a cost thing going on here. The other thing about using a single diet that concerns me is we tend to have a lot of emphasis on the front end of the, of the lactation, less emphasis on the tail end of the lactation. So one of the potential impacts of that is we get fatter cows when they dry off. And that has implications for not only the cost of the diet, but the potential for reproductive performance and takeoff at the beginning of the next lactation. So I would be e especially on the larger herdz, I would be reluctant to say, okay, let's all do just one diet, which I remember back in the days of the introduction of, of BST made more sense at that time. I'm not sure that it makes that much sense now where there's a lot less BST being used.
Dr. Albert DeVries (21:42):
Yeah. Now we're getting back to how do the cows benefit from multiple rations? Right? Right. And I think many of the studies were sort of weak on that aspect that you're addressing there. Like, what do you do when, when you have more fat cows and what are the, when they become fresh mm-hmm
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (22:15):
What, what were the feed cost assumptions that you used in your, in your spreadsheet?
Dr. Albert DeVries (22:22):
Yeah, so when, again, in my spreadsheet, I didn't assume any feed costs, right? The spreadsheet was purely delivering TMR. Okay. And then, okay. And then I did have, if you have feeding a smaller load because I have this one graphs and where it says, you know, when there's more variation, mixing errors, there's a little less milk per cow. And I've used that deliberately. So I did penalize, I basically put in a penalty. I said, there's some extra cost, but cows make less milk and I must Yeah. Have clearly I did there's some feed cost in that calculation because I calculated an income of feed cost, but that was minor, that was not, the spreadsheet, again, does not address by itself the multiple rations that were, that could be delivered because I took that from the scientific literature.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (23:14):
So, so now I'm gonna re-ask the question I asked in the room earlier. Okay. And you said we'll discuss it offline later. Yeah. But we're
Dr. Albert DeVries (23:22):
Online
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (23:23):
Now,
Dr. Albert DeVries (23:26):
For, for a bigger audience, I think too. So,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (23:29):
So how, so the financial benefit of feeding multiple lactating rations beyond the fresh group, is it more is there more benefit financially if feed costs are higher rather than lower? Or by the same token, if milk prices are higher rather than lower, right? Because your income over feed cost will vary.
Dr. Albert DeVries (23:56):
Yeah. So greatly, I think there's more benefit when naturally let's naturally meaning high milk price and lower feed cost is the case. Yeah. I think if you had high feed cost, low milk price, then the multiple group being I think lakes perhaps a little less sense. And I think I've seen it in some of these studies too, that I reviewed. Yes.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (24:20):
As Tom, you have any thought thoughts
Dr. Albert DeVries (24:21):
On that? I think so. Any thoughts? Yeah,
Dr. Tom Overton (24:23):
Yeah. No, I think that's fair. I guess I, you know, I, I've got a couple questions for buzz here, right? And, and one would be, you know, in your experience this, this notion that you know, if you have more loads, you make more errors, there's more error associated with it. I'm curious, my, my sense is probably very heard and and feed or specific relative to those issues, as you say, you know, reviewing things with herds. I mean, what do you, what do you see out there in herds that you've worked with over, over time?
Dr. Buzz Burhans (24:50):
There is a lot of variation in the, the people who are mixing the load. But I mentioned that some of the software that is used can identify how far off you were. And I think that that can, if, if the dairyman works with his feeder, I think that can be tightened up significantly to do that. So I, I think it, it's legitimate to, to go for that, especially because of the potential for other you know, do you want the same amount of protein, the same amount of amino acids at peak milk as you do at 200 days? I'm not sure. I think there's some other opportunities there. I haven't done the studies to prove that it makes a difference, but I'm pretty comfortable with getting pretty good performance and trying to tighten some of these things down. Now there's some people that they're not interested in that, right? And we're just gonna ram a jam and, and go, but that's not how I, I really feel about how we I should be doing it anyway.
Dr. Albert DeVries (26:07):
Yeah. You, you bring up the software and I, I'm not, I mean, I'm a little familiar with the software, but not too much. But I could imagine that some of the software develops into, you know, what if you had fed two or three rations instead of this one ration, here is an estimate of the gains you might have made. Mm-Hmm
Dr. Tom Overton (26:49):
So the other question I had for bud, sorry, go ahead bud. If you're gonna go No,
Dr. Buzz Burhans (26:52):
Go ahead. I, I was just gonna say the other thing, if you were gonna hire a company to make, to update their software, I would be also be interested in looking at something like the milky area nitrogen. 'cause That stuff can be automatically downloaded. And I would want to see that I, I look at it manually. I have to just sign onto somebody's processor and, and look at that. But I think that's something that could be added to this that would allow you to tighten. I don't want a lot of excess mus, it's just a waste of, of money and it's, it's an environmental issue as well. So if we could put that into what you just described. Yeah, that would be really cool. These guys could, you know, get to some of these software people and say, you know, how can we really make this thing fly? Yeah. Sorry, I didn't
Dr. Tom Overton (27:45):
Mean to No, you're okay. I wanted to actually ask you a nutrition question right back to this notion of body condition management buzz and things like that. And I know, you know, certainly at times there's been discussion of feeding a little more starch and early lactation, right? And then switching that to more digestible fiber and later lactation trying to maintain output of milk, milk components, especially milk fat, right? Given the value of it mm-hmm
Dr. Buzz Burhans (28:22):
I two things come to mind and I, and they're not answers for your question one is that I do tech support for a nutritionist who had a very large dairy that had repro issues and their their cows were just too fat. So that has an implication for, if you look in the repro literature, there's significant support for keeping them leaner and not having them overeat in the closeup period because that's going to potentially minimize their intakes post calving as well. So that was an interesting thing for me, you know, that my wife Chris is a veterinarian and we put that together and went through that just recently because this was a big dairy and they had significant issues that so we were looking for what can we do about the repro here? And that's what came up. The other thing about this is just me, the other thing that bothers me is the nutritionist out there.
Dr. Buzz Burhans (29:33):
Everybody walks cows, including my favorite nutritionist who is a, the, the friend that had this issue, but mostly nobody quantifies that. So I have a, a little sheet strategy that I use and I wanna know what, how many cows that as I'm walking through are, are body condition score three and a half or four or two and a half or two. And that to me, I've walked with a lot of people and it really bugs me that people just walk through and take an impression. And I think that that makes a difference. You can't just do all this with some numbers, not have any feedback on the numbers that you were interested in, but also not have any, any quantification of what's going on with the cows. How many lamb cows are out there? Should I have that much starch in there now at this point?
Dr. Buzz Burhans (30:32):
Or how many fat cows do I have here? Or how many cows do I have there are leaner than I want 'em to be? And why are they that lean? So that quantification of body condition, although we're talking about mixing and feeding, but how we mix and feed should have input from those quantifications. And I, I honestly believe, not that I'm the greatest one ever when I need help this guy you gotta go to, right? But, but there are, I do or have done quite a bit of support for other nutritionists and that those two things are big things to me that you have to pay attention to this. And if you've got the software, you should be looking at what the percentage of variation is in terms of your mixes. It's there, you can get it. So it's a, it's an important thing to me. If I was gonna run, you know, these big dairies, we're talking big dollars, right? For what the investments are. There's no reason that shouldn't be part of what they do on a big dairy. But there it's way too often people just go by their impressions, right? What's your impression?
Dr. Albert DeVries (31:45):
Can, can I ask follow up on the body condition of late lactation cows? What is, what is ideal here? And can you illustrate what fat cows cost too? Like, like when would you intervene? I'm,
Dr. Albert DeVries (31:58):
I'm asking you to say more about what barbecue score you're aiming for. Negatives of two fat or too lean.
Dr. Buzz Burhans (32:05):
So right or wrong we used to have a lot of fatter cows when they went dry and then they're still fat when they calve in. And we have issues there. I target a body condition when she calves in of about three plus or minus a quarter of a condition score. I am somewhat considering that the optimal body condition there might be between 2, 7, 5, and three and not even three and a quarter. 'cause That three and a quarter is contributing to that excess fat that's gonna get mobilized. But I have, and some of that came out of this issue that where this dairy had the repro problems. And, and Chris and I spent a lot of time looking at what was the origin of those. And it, and, and there's a lot of data in the repro world that the body condition is a big factor and their intakes not just the body condition, but their intakes. So that's what I've done is I go for three and they're all, it's, it's like having 10 kids, right? They're all a little different. So they're not all gonna be right on three. And that's why I have historically gone for three plus or minus a quarter score. I'm considering that I might prefer to be 2, 8 5 plus or minus a 10th of or, or 0.2 condition scores.
Dr. Tom Overton (33:46):
So buzz, I'm gonna circle back with you 'cause I, I think that's a great point. And I mean, the best nutritions I know are very systematic about how they actually quantify various parameters on the dairy, whether it's BCS by group or at calving or what they're seeing, you know, over time mm-hmm
Dr. Buzz Burhans (34:28):
The the other thing for us who are nutritionists is it's, it's like, why do I bother to sign on to the processor and find out what the MUN is? The same thing is true. Why would I leave with just an impression when I reformulate the diets, right, the forage change or something and I gotta redo the diet. I might as well know whether I've got 'em right where I want 'em or they're a little bit too much or, or too little. It's like the Goldilocks story little too, the porridge is too hot in some places and and cold in others. And some of it's just right. I haven't got it just right yet though.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (35:14):
So there was a question asked in the room about times fed per day. Are there benefits to feeding more than once per day and pushups and so forth? So curious the opinions on that around the table here as far as number of times that these cows would be fed per day and and are there benefits to that?
Dr. Albert DeVries (35:43):
I I can start with saying what we're doing at, at Florida. Yep. And then it'll let you continue here. So I think we feed most of the herd twice a day. Now is that because we live in a heart and humid climate and we feed fresh feed, I think we feed about 6:00 AM and then maybe 2:00 PM and the 2:00 PM feed has to last until the morning. And then we have two low producing groups and we feed them once a day. I think that's perhaps fairly typical in the southeast we're doing it this way. But I, I do know too that there is this conversation about once versus twice and yes, push up every two hours. That doesn't always happen, but I know that's what we should be doing.
Dr. Buzz Burhans (36:26):
I, I think you make good sense. I want to sort of conserve the costs. So I tell 'em only feed 'em once a month, but
Dr. Buzz Burhans (36:38):
No, but seriously there's some variation in the facilities and the number of animals there. I think so in a, in a a a barn situation as opposed to a dry lot, dry lot situation, you have two very different situation. And the guy that's got 5,000 cows is probably not running a pusher, right? Automatically. Some of 'em may be, but I haven't seen one. So in the barns where you can run that pusher, then you may be able to get away with feeding less often and let the pusher do the work. 'cause The cows will hear it and, and they'll come up to it. But if I have a half mile long feed alley in a big dairy, then the pushers are, they're not feasible in the feed alley anymore. And I think that the other issue that you, you mentioned Albert is, is a big one, and that's the heat. If you're in a, in a hot environment or if I'm on one of the big dairies, and these are outdoor dairies, there's a, a drive for they, they, they, they dump it outside. Most of them don't have feed bunks, they just drive them and then they do get pushed up sometimes with a, a, a blade. But I think that that heat thing is important.
Dr. Tom Overton (38:12):
Yeah, no argument on the heat side, right? I mean, again, hot environment, right? That all makes sense. I think the one thing that I think about is, and you know, certainly we have plenty of dairies in my cooler part of the world most of the time anyway, that are kind of once a day feeding type type dairies. But you know, I think some of this gets into how we might think about some of this technology that we're now we're seeing emerging on farms with computer vision feed bunk monitoring, right? So monitoring feed availability 24 7 versus well, we have enough feed at five o'clock in the afternoon, what's happening at three o'clock in the morning? And, you know, whether there's an opportunity for, and I'm just just kind of throwing this out here, right? But I mean, whether there's opportunities for farms to look at which groups they might top off, right? So maybe, maybe a second. Feeding is not for everybody, but maybe there's groups that get topped off some more than others later in the day to make sure that they've got feed available through that whole cycle and not running out of feed at, you know, two o'clock in the morning or whatever. I
Dr. Buzz Burhans (39:08):
Think you're spot on. That's critical, especially that nighttime when nobody knows what's really going on. That makes a huge difference. I remember reading an article in feed stuffs probably 25, 30 years ago about feeding beef and the optimum was if those bunks were empty a half an hour a day and that if they were empty six hours, that was a problem. But if they were never empty, that was also, they didn't get as high dry matter intake out of those gals. So what, what you mentioned I think is critical that being able to know, and you can do that now. You can know what's, what's going on in the middle of the night when you're not there.
Dr. Albert DeVries (39:59):
Can, can I follow up a nutrition question as far as amount of way back? What is your goal here? You don't want to be empty, but you don't want to have a lot of extra either. So
Dr. Buzz Burhans (40:10):
If if, if I was the perfect manager and feeder, I would want that bunk to be empty for that half hour day. It's almost never that, you know, it, it's either empty a lot more or it's not empty and there's a lot a way back. I don't have a a perfect answer for that. I think in many cases if we get, we take 5% or 3% out at the end of the day and then refeed that somewhere else, maybe to a heifer pen or something. But I don't have a, a hard and fast rule for that other than in a perfect world, I would like to see that half hour empty and not, other than that,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (40:58):
The, the fresh pen would be an exception, right? You want some refuse one of the fresh pen, right? Your, the, their cows coming in all the time, they're ramping up on intake. It's very difficult to predict. Difficult to predict.
Dr. Tom Overton (41:11):
Yeah. And I would Fresh pen. Yeah, fresh pen clay, I mean, I'd, I'd advocate for three, four, 5% there. No more than that. I think. And, and again, this concept buzz is that about refeeding somewhere else, but refe as an ingredient, right? So you're kind of accounting for that, you know, energy and protein density and things like that and some of those other groups. I think I, I continue to think that these, you know, farms in general, at least that I see in my world that, hey, it sounds, sounds cool to say I'm gonna feed to a slick bunk. You know, I'm not sure they do it well enough most of the time. And you know, especially we've got herds where, and I've run into the scenario right? Where feed versus for slick bunk you know, what's that train cow to do behaviorally when that feed truck or feed mixer rolls through, probably cause 'em to hit the feed mug harder.
Dr. Tom Overton (41:54):
These herds are overcrowded potentially, I dunno about, maybe Florida herds are overcrowded but I'm teasing, right? But you know but you know, herds are also overcrowded and so that causes change of feeding behavior and you know, what does that do to components, right? And so that's probably where it's gonna show up. And so I, again, I think a little bit of refusal is probably better as long as you get a plan for it. 'cause I, most farmers I know aren't gonna throw it out, right? So unless it's really bad, but it have to be really bad, they're gonna feed it somewhere.
Scott Sorrell (42:23):
Well listen then what I'd like to do guys, is you know,
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Dr. Clay Zimmerman (43:08):
Yeah, so I mean, I really love this topic. It's near and dear to me. It has been can been, thank tell. And I think, so I actually think a little bit of the opposite. I think when, when margins are tight on the dairy, that's when we need to be examining this more and looking at, at more rations, right? When, when the, when the dairy margin's tight, there's money to be made here. I think we get a little lazy at times with, with the, the one, the one diet thinking at times when profitability's really good. There are definitely some opportunities here that we, that we've talked about today.
Dr. Albert DeVries (43:50):
Yeah, and for me too, I mean, going through this exercise, I, I think if you have not thought about feeding more than one ration for a while, I think it deserves another look and another discussion with your nutritionist. You know we, we mentioned many, quite a few reasons why this may be reasonable. It's not necessarily extra TMR delivery cost. And we talked about body condition, for example. You know, some good reasons I think. And then we talked about t of feed costs to really rethink, I think, of, you know, feeling maybe more than one ration.
Dr. Tom Overton (44:25):
Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (44:26):
Interesting Tom.
Dr. Tom Overton (44:28):
Yeah. So again, this is a fascinating topic and one that's gotten age old debates, right? Things like that. And again, Albert, I really appreciate how you brought in the, the notion that it really does cost us something to feed more loads, right? And, and, and that should be factored into as well as anything that we might think about with the cows. And so, you know, I just really appreciate the, the discussion. This was fun today and I appreciate the opportunity.
Scott Sorrell (44:50):
Yeah, for sure. Buzz final words,
Dr. Buzz Burhans (44:54):
I, I think what was most stimulating today was your talk, Albert. It made us all pay attention to the economics of some of the details of what we do when we were feeding cows. And I think if, if we had to sit here and none of us had heard your talk we would've had a probably a very different discussion today. But I think it was really important to raise the issues that you raised in terms of the, the economics.
Scott Sorrell (45:23):
Yeah. Well gentlemen, this has been very enlightening. I've enjoyed it as I just sat back and listened to the conversation. It's good. Tom, great job as always, buzz. I really enjoyed your, your, your practical perspective and so yeah, you've been a great guest, Albert. The thing I really liked about what you did for state was kind of the questions you had for the, the panel as well. And so it's kind of a really kind of cool interaction and, and, and, and learning process here. So I, I really appreciated that. And so this was a, a, a, a great podcast. Listen, I, I, I appreciate your time today. It's been great. And to our audience out there, listen, as always, appreciate you coming along for another episode. I hope you learned something. I hope you had some fun. I hope to see you next time here at Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Balchem (46:08):
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