In this journal club episode, Dr. Alex Bach with the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies joins Dr. Bill Weiss from the Ohio State University.
Guests: Dr. Alex Bach, ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies), and Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University
In this journal club episode, Dr. Alex Bach with the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies joins Dr. Bill Weiss from the Ohio State University.
Dr. Weiss introduces the paper as one that's immediately applicable to the industry and answers a question he received a lot during his Extension career: What's the cost of moving cows? This research gives us some real data to help producers on cow management. (3:49)
Dr. Bach states that grouping cows is necessary, and the goal is to feed cows as close to their requirements as possible. But in a practical world, that can be difficult, and producers may resist moving cows due to the increased work and perceived drop in milk production. Dr. Bach gathered data from the field to see if that's the case or not by evaluating three farms with different diets and evaluating income over feed cost. (4:33)
Dr. Bach goes on to describe the farms and the methods his team used for estimating individual cow intakes in a group pen setting. Cow pen/group changes coincided with a diet change. Individual farms made their own ration decisions and pen movement decisions. (8:17)
In general, cows moved from a high to a medium to a low diet over the course of lactation. Primiparous cows moved from the fresh pen to the medium diet. If diet differences were adequate between groups, the loss in milk was compensated by the lower cost ration, and producers made an additional 20-30 cents per cow per day in income over feed costs. However, if the diets were more similar, lower feed costs did not compensate for the loss in milk production. (15:30)
Dr. Weiss asks Dr. Bach if he could only build two rations, a high and a low, how would he do that? Dr. Bach’s approach is to look at a histogram of milk production in the pen and split that into quantiles. His goal is to make a ration that satisfies at least 70% of the animals in the pen for the high diet and around 60% of the animals in the pen for the low diet. (24:36)
Dr. Bach also ran a sensitivity analysis evaluating how results would change if milk prices or feed costs (or both) went up or down. He found that the higher the milk price, the more resilient a farm will be to a single diet and that feed cost is the opposite. The most interesting scenario is high feed costs and low milk prices - that's where it's almost mandatory to make groups, if you want to survive on a dairy. (27:23)
Dr. Bach evaluated the change in nutrient intake for the diet switch and projected the milk production change from that nutrient change compared to how the cows actually performed. The cows always lost less milk production than predicted. Dr. Bach thinks the main reason is that the cows were overfed before moving. (37:46)
Dr. Bach invites the audience to experiment a little bit with grouping cows. Don't be afraid of losing milk, and look beyond milk. Put in place mechanisms on the farm that allow you to measure income over feed costs as the ultimate goal. Cows are flexible, so don't be afraid of making a mistake. If something goes wrong, it will go wrong for a short period of time. You can correct it. You can change the diet right away, and the cows will recover. (46:14)
You can find this episode’s journal club paper here: https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2022-22875
Author: Dr. Alex Bach
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Scott (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pubcast we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I am Scott Sorrell. I'll be one of your hosts here tonight at the Real Science Exchange. And we're here tonight celebrating the latest research on one of my favorite sessions, and that is the Journal Club. First, let me introduce our resident journal club professor Dr. Bill Weiss. Bill, thank you for joining us again here at the Real Science Exchange. What's in your glass tonight?
Bill (00:38):
Well, I've got a glass of Sids Red Ale from Irish. It's an Irish
Scott (00:42):
Ale. That sounds good. Bill. Would you mind introducing the author of the paper you decided to review tonight? Papers
Bill (00:48):
Changes in milk production and estimated income over feed cost of group housed dairy cows when moved between pens. The author is Dr. Alex Bach, and he's, I notice he's, his location has changed, so I'm not, he now is at the Catalent Institute for Research and Advanced Studies. That's different from the last time we talked in person. Yep. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to tell me what that is and what your new title is now.
Alex (01:16):
Well, it's, it's complicated because it's, it's been always the same institution, but that institution is just supporting researchers to go to wherever they want. So through Irea, I was in a research institute, then I left that institute. I still am in a Korea, and then I'm gonna transfer to another university next year. So it's,
Bill (01:38):
This is more complicated than, or it's, than Ohio State. So yeah. I should mention you're in, I don't know if you're in bar still in Barcelona. A writer.
Alex (01:47):
That's right, that's right. I'm still in Barcelona.
Bill (01:49):
We met many, many years ago in person and then, then in contact with each other. A lot. I should also mention he is an editor. I think you're still editor
Alex (01:59):
Still surviving that. Yeah. Still surviving that. Yep. Yep.
Bill (02:02):
So he has a big influence on the, the nutrition papers in journal and Dairy Science, so,
Scott (02:07):
Oh, excellent. Well, welcome Dr. Bach. as customary, I think we explained before, this is a virtual pub with real drinks. And so do you have anything in your glass tonight?
Alex (02:18):
I have tea. Tea with milk.
Scott (02:21):
Oh, tea with milk. Well, there you go. Very well. Terrific. Before we dive in, I can't can't proceed without welcoming my friend and co-host Dr. Clay Zimmerman. Welcome. Clay, you have anything in your glass tonight?
Clay (02:36):
Well, I have something in my cup. I, yeah, I do have some hard cider here in my cup this evening.
Scott (02:43):
Alright. I'd be disappointed if you didn't, clay. So,
Clay (02:45):
Scott, what's, what's in your glass tonight?
Scott (02:48):
So, I'm not stepping out too far on the limb, clay. I've got something called Rare Breed. It's from Wild Turkey. It's pretty good, actually. Usually if I'm drinking wild Turkey, I'll get the 101. I find that to be pretty good, a pretty good value, but I'm kind of liking this. So with that, cheers, everybody here's to a great podcast. Thanks for joining us.
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Scott (03:34):
The paper tonight is titled Changes in Milk Production and Estimated Income Over Feed Cost of Group Housed Dairy Cows When Moved Between pens. Bill, why'd you settle on this paper tonight for the journal Club?
Bill (03:49):
Well, you know, I'm a nutritionist and there's a lot of good, just basic nutrition paper, but I also like papers that are, you know, directly almost immediately applicable to the industry. And this is one such paper, and this is also when I, when I worked and was an extension, I got asked this question a lot. What's the cost of moving cows? And as you, as we discussed this, there's not been a lot of research 'cause it's really hard to do. And so you never kind of knew you could kind of guess it an inch. But now we have some, some real data to, to help producers on, on cow management.
Scott (04:27):
Very well. Dr. Bach, would you kinda like to give us an overview of what the paper entailed?
Alex (04:33):
Yeah. Basically the idea of the paper was exactly what Bill is saying, right? You got this question from producers you know, from the basics of nutrition that you have to make groups cows are different. They have different level of productions. So what you wanna do is fit them as close to the requirements as possible. But in a practical world it's difficult and there are always excuses. The farm is not designed to do that. It's more work. My cow will drop milk. And the idea was, okay, let's evaluate this. Let's get data from the field and see if that's the case or not. So we had data from three farms. We look at three different scenarios with different diets, and we actually look at what the consequences are not only on meal production, but on the most important aspect, which is income of feed cost. So the idea was just putting black and white, or what happens when you group cows and we just focus on income of feed cost. There will be other topics that will be covered and it will be really interesting to study, like environmental impact of making groups or health aspects on these cows, or reproduction, reproduction, performance of these animals. And we didn't cover that because we cannot cover everything. Right. But I think it's, it's an area of very interesting research and, and, and great development.
Bill (05:48):
I guess one, one, reading the introduction though, one of the statistics you give that came from a survey said something like 60, 65% of, of the big farms do not group by, you know, basically anything related to income over feed cost. And what surprised me. I knew it wasn't a lot, but I thought it'd be know 50, 60% did it. What, what do you think are some hindrances for producers not doing this?
Alex (06:19):
I think what you read in the literature is excused on van design and complication. I think that the most frequent answer that I get is afraid. They're afraid of losing milk and milk is easier to quantify than income or feed cost. We don't really know what income or fit cost in a farm is. So if they only look at milk in the tank, they get afraid of it, you know, that's one thing. And the other is simplicity. They have labor problems and they are afraid that if they make two rations, people will make more mistakes. So they think that, hey, just one Russian is simpler, less room for mistakes. These are the two main deterrents that I see in the field for applying this.
Bill (07:02):
And this research directly addresses the, what I agree with you is, the biggest thing is when you move cows, they're gonna crash and burn and you're gonna lose all this stuff, or that's what they say. And they said, this paper is one of the first that's attempted to address that again, the cow cost of moving.
Alex (07:20):
Right? And, and the beauty of it is that, yes, sometimes cows do drop too much in milk and that causes a loss in, in, in income over the feed cost and, and profit, but sometimes not. So it’s a bit of an art. You really have to make the rations right and move the animal at the right time. So it's not as easy as it thinks. In theory you should be working very nicely, but you can mess it up and you can just make the wrong decision by grouping your cows. So that's a, that's what I found also interesting in this paper that I said not everything is, is always good, right. Yeah.
Bill (07:56):
And I think, you know, the fact you use three farms, that obviously makes it a more broader interpretation. It's not just one farm. 'cause You know, a lot of things affect cow movement and pens and everything else. So that's strength, definitely a strength of his papers. The fact it is over three, three different farms, if they were all in Spain, correct? I can't remember the details.
Alex (08:17):
There were, no there were some in I don't, let's see, there's, I think there's one in Italy, two in Spain. Okay.
Scott (08:25):
And what sizes were they?
Alex (08:28):
They were mid-sized farms. The smallest one was 300 cows, and the biggest one was close to 1000. So it's, it's a variety of farms. Yeah.
Clay (08:37):
So the, so the other part of this that I'd like, and you know, the second question here is, you know, even, even in dairies where they have a lot of groups, the number of different rations that are on the farm, right? So, these were pen moves and diet changes.
Alex (08:56):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's something that really strikes me. I mean, you, you, you walk for a farm and we have a very good example. I mean, there are many farms in Europe like that. They are milking a thousand cows or 800 cows. They have different groups. They have even a few group cows and a MultiPro and a fresh and blah, blah. And they're all feeding the same diet. Guys, you have to make a different TMR because you cannot fit everything in the same t m R for all the cows. You might as well, you know, mix a different proportion of ingredients when you go to that pen or those pens. They don't do that. And that really strikes me
Bill (09:29):
To me, you know, there are costs to moving labor management, et cetera. So if you're gonna move cows, make it worthwhile and absolutely have different clients that are appropriate for the group. So,
Alex (09:40):
Yeah. And what this paper shows is that there is a lot to gain, actually, right? Just in, in terms of income of feed cost. If you do it right you can make 20, 30 cents per cow and day extra. And that's a lot of money at the end of the month and at the end of the year. Setting aside what I said before on environmental impact and reproduction and maintaining the body condition of the animals and all that,
Bill (10:02):
I think, like I said, this is hard research. 'cause You know, you're, you got pens, so you don't, it's hard to follow an animal. And I thought the way you approach this was very good. So would you give a, you're not in minute detail, but how you actually calculated the change in income over feed cost when you have, when you're only measuring, for example, feed intake for a group of cows, you don't know what the cow did. So you go into that a little bit, please.
Alex (10:28):
Yeah, that was actually the trickiest part of the paper. For us it was very easy to predict. So what we did is we were tracing the cows over time. So we have daily milk weights, so it's very easy to predict. If you give me data on the last month of milk production, on a daily basis of a cow, I can very much predict how much milk she's gonna produce in the next 10 days or next 21 days. We know the milk curve shape, and we can do that for every cow. So that was the easy part. The most difficult part was, okay, how much are they eating, right? So we know how much they eating in the group, but what is the intake for every cow? So what we did is we used the nasem equations and the new equations from the NRC 2001.
Alex (11:10):
Now it's NASEM 2021, and it's two sets of equations. So one uses animal data and the other one uses Russian data. So we actually use the two equations to forecast intake. And then we took the average of these two equations and assigned it to every animal. And of course then if you take the average of all the animals in a pen, it should coincide with the actual intake of the pen. And if that wasn't the case, then the deviation, it was like 2%, 3%, whatever it was, we assign that percent deviation to every cow. So then when we recalculate the average of every cow, then it's actually the same as the average of the pen. Okay. Once we know the intake of every animal, then we can calculate our income or it costs relatively easy.
Bill (11:58):
Yeah, I said that that's like I said, I don't would've thought of doing that. And I thought that was a great part of this paper. Really, really thought that was a good idea how you did that.
Clay (12:09):
And, and you did, you, you ignored the moves from the fresh pen, right. Because the predictions are too messy and Right. And really early lactation,
Alex (12:19):
Right? I mean, early lactation cows are just driven by genetics mainly. So that will have a big impact on, on how much they perform and, and, and everything. So, and of course, because we also need data to forecast future mill production, we need some time before we do the pan, right? So, and the fresh pan, some cows were there only for 21 days. In some farms they were there for 30 days, and some of them were for 40. So it was, it was messy. So we could not use that, that data to do that.
Bill (12:48):
Then did you, on the, on the diets, these were farmers, they, it was their diets. You didn't work with saying, let's change the diet to this, but this is what they were feeding Correct.
Alex (12:59):
This, this is what they were feeding. We didn't do any intervention. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Bill (13:03):
So, some of the changes are pretty small, you know? Yes and, but that's was their choice, not yours, so,
Alex (13:11):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And what is nice to see is that sometimes this, the, the changes are too small and that does not compensate the laws in meal production. And, therefore it didn't work. So it was not good. That's one thing that because people are so afraid of losing milk, when they go from a high diet to a low diet, they tend to put in a little bit more protein, a little bit more energy, just in case. Then my cows don't lose a lot of milk, and they end up not making it work.
Clay (13:41):
So I Alex, I'm, I'm curious, when, when they were, when these pen moves were made, do you know them, do you know any details about were they moving multiple cows at a time? You know, do you know any of those details? Sure, sure.
Alex (13:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Pen movements typically, and, and that was the case in this study, they take place once a week because that's when the cows are dry, typically. So on a Tuesday or on a Thursday, typically. So they were moving animals, all the cows that need to be dried, I don't know, 20 animals. So now I have 20 spots to move cows. So then I moved my high cows to medium cows, my medium cows to low cows. So they were always moved in groups of five and more animals. Yeah.
Clay (14:25):
Okay. Thanks.
Bill (14:26):
And was the producer that made the decisions as to what cows moved or did, did you provide insight or how, how was that chosen?
Alex (14:35):
No, that was the tricky part as well, because this producer are using a software that's called Auto Milk, that we developed that software provides assistance to the producers using artificial intelligence on when to move the cows and what to fit to the cows. So I had to talk to these guys and say, Hey, don't pay attention to alga milk. Just move the cows whenever you feel the need to move them. So that was a decision made by, made by the producers.
Bill (15:01):
Okay. And then if, if you could then kind of, and, and I, there's three farms again, and they, they didn't all do the same. I mean, the results were different. So if you'd kind of just walk through the, the big picture results from, from, you have, I just labeled 'em, farm A, B, and C, but can kind of on the big, big picture results and what you found in, in changing milk change in intake, and then ultimately change in I O F C there?
Alex (15:30):
Well, it was, so in, in far may, we basically had a few different types of groups. We have animals that were on a high diet, and they were moved into a medium production diet. And then we have a group of pablo cows that they will move to a medium production diet as well. And then we have the tail ends, right? So the medium cows, the medium production animals were moved to a low production animals. And in that farm everything worked very nicely in terms of income and feed cost, except for when the cows were moved from the medium to the low. And the reason of of that failure was that what I said before, the differences in nutrients between the ration for medium pollution animals and low producing animals were very small, and the price difference was not big enough either.
Alex (16:24):
So these guys, when they moved from medium to low, they lost about two kilos of milk. And the savings in diet did not compensate for that loss in the other scenarios, they always worked. And, they made about 20 cents more per cow one day. And, and, and, and it worked very nicely. One interesting thing in this farm, and we also saw that in another farm, and we also found that in the literature we were moving in the ERs groups, right? So we have towers of ERs, animals groups. They move from this group to a medium production group that has a mixture of animals. So it has animals. They are medium pro pro producers. So they are about 35 liters or so. But of course, there are multier cows there. So we were expecting, well, maybe these prepro cows, when they go into the multiparous cows group they're gonna stumble because they're gonna be afraid of the more adult animals.
Alex (17:20):
And when we did the maths, we were expecting a bigger drop of milk that we actually observed. And if you look in the, there seems to be a repeatable scenario that when cows are moved into MultiPro, they are resilient. They don't drop as much milk as one would expect. That was a bit of a surprise. But that's what we found. And we found that in P farm A and it also cured in P farm B and also in farm C. So it was repeatable in the three farms.
Clay (17:50):
So, Alex, I am curious so the changes from the, you know, the Perus groups to the other, you know, to, to the other diet, they were a little later, you know, further along into lactation, right? I think they averaged what, maybe 190 to over 200 days in milk when those pen changes were made. Could you speculate? Do you think you'd see the same thing if it was happening earlier in lactation?
Alex (18:26):
Yeah, probably not. Absolutely. Yeah, I in, in fact, we have that discussion in the paper where we, one of the reasons why we think these cows didn't lose as much milk as we thought, and that's something that people don't realize, is that, okay, we're moving the preap cows from one pen to the other, and that would apply to all the cows, eh these cows that we are moving are very advanced in lactation, so they produce less milk, and they're probably over fed, so they're getting more, more nutrients at what they need, and they're not producing more milk, because genetically they cannot do that. And they're just building body fat and attrition. So when you move them, they might actually be intimidated by the MultiPro cows, and, and their intake might be a little bit lower, but still they're able to get all the nutrients they need, because before they were over fat. So had we moved these cows before early living, lactation, I don't know because meal production is still pretty flat in this pineal cow. So it's not a matter of meal production, but it's a matter of growth. These guys are growing from day one after Calvin, right? There's, they're still developing. So if we give them more time to grow 200 more days by the time of movement, they probably have a lower nutrient requirement, and that allows them to, to cope better with the change.
Bill (19:50):
Do, do you remember, and I, I looked, I couldn't see this on crowdedness and these pens, like both stall, feeding bunk space per head and, and stalls, were they crowded or
Alex (20:03):
Right? No, this and that's quite common in Spain and in Italy where this took place. The software that we use is called alga milk. Again it, it keeps track of stocking density, and the average of stocking density in these three hertz is around 98%. Okay. So they actually have more space available for the cows than they're not crowded at all. No.
Bill (20:30):
Do you think, you know, in the US that's would be, it would be more common to have over overstocking, hopefully not by too much, but do you think these results would be if you were at 10, 10% or 20% over? Or do you think they'd be a little more dramatic of a loss?
Alex (20:50):
It's, it's difficult to answer depending on how you calculate the stocking density and, and how you look at, at your animal numbers, right? It's if what's restricting or, or it's the limiting factor is foodbank access. I wouldn't be that worried. If the limiting factor is the pan, the cubicles or lying space, then I would be more worried. The reason why I say that, or I think that is because cows only spend eating for maximum five hours a day. So even if there is a little feedback space, they can take turns and they will take turns. Cows are no conflict animals, so they will learn very rapidly who's the boss and who's not, and they will patiently wait. So if we have overcrowding in terms of feedback space, but we make sure that there is always feed available and it's fresh feed in the feed bank I think it will be okay. Now, if there is a limitation of bedding or, or cubicles, that's a different thing because the cows, they do need to lay down a good 11, 12 hours a day. And if it's overcrowded, that's not gonna happen.
Bill (22:00):
Then I'm looking at this table here that's on the changes and nutrients before and after the changes, and, you know, protein drops, it varies a bit on the herds, but usually it's less than one crude protein, less than 1% unit, usually NLS, you know, couple percent drop. What, what do you, is, is, again, these are pretty subtle and, and pretty small. What, and I know that you, you can't answer it from the data, so I'm asking you to extrapolate a bit here, but do you think, you know, would, if you were making these changes, maintain protein, drop energy, drop 'em both based on, you know, production, expected production, how would you do the nutrients? And if you could, let's limit it to just two pens. You can only have two diets, a high and a low group or something like that.
Alex (22:52):
Yeah, that's a very difficult question. And it's, it's a question that we nutritionists tend not to make yourself. And, and, and every time I do some teaching and, and, and also talk to nutritionists, the single most important question that we should ask when we do a ration is at what level of production are we gonna read the ration for that pen? And when you ask that question, there is no answer. It's, well, I look at the average and, you know, because I'm afraid of losing milk, I just put two more liters of milk. Yeah. And why two liters and not four or one or minus one? And that makes a big difference because a ration for 80 pounds costs much less than a ration for a hundred pounds. Yeah. And if only 10% of the cows are able to use those extra nutrients, you're gonna lose money. So overfeeding, it's, it's, it's very complicated. So back to your question when I do Russians for groups, I make Russians that are much more different than this. So I usually go for one and a half, two points in percentage in protein. And energy-wise, it's also point two or so. So it's much, much bigger changes than this. But again, these were changes made by nutritionists, and they're always afraid of, of looking at, at milk, meat glasses.
Bill (24:14):
Yes. And the other, you know, there's only so many spaces, so you gotta keep the pens full. So there is, sometimes you can't move the cows, you wanna move. But would you, if again, let's just say you can only have two diets, so would you have maybe one pen balance for the, the top third production and the, so again, I know you have to pick a milk yield. How would you, you do that
Alex (24:36):
Yeah. What I do when I try to select to make, so if I have a group of cows, I need, okay, at what level of production am I gonna feed these animals? My first approach is I look at histogram and I do the percentage. So I look at the one tile, and I want to make a ration that satisfies at least 70% of the animals in my pen. 30% of those above a little I don't know, 40 or 30 liters, so sorry, 80 or 90 pounds. They will not be satisfied by the diet. So that's okay. They will lose a little bit of condition. Hopefully they will put it back later on. So I would do that. So I will look at my high pen, and I would make a ration for these guys to cover the 70% of their needs. No, not 70% of their needs, 70% of the animals in that panel. And then I would do another ration for the lobe. And there I would probably go a little bit lower, even so I would go for 60, but it depends on the genetics of the herd or the body condition. So it's, it's a little bit of an art. That's the tricky thing, right? We don't have a method to decide at what level of production we want to fit this group.
Clay (25:44):
So on the, so, so, so in the higher group, you're basically going a standard deviation above the mean,
Alex (25:51):
Pretty much. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. 1.6. Yeah.
Clay (25:55):
Yeah.
Alex (25:56):
Okay. I, and in the lower group, I will go to 60% or so.
Bill (26:00):
Now, would you I know we're getting off track here from the actual paper, but we'll get back to that in just a minute. But would you, on this when you're, you know, you set up the group and you would basically do protein and energy the same, not say, I'm gonna make sure there's a little, and maybe balance to two standard deviations for protein, one standard deviation for energy for the means, or would you do both essentially the same? Same over?
Alex (26:30):
No, no, I, I'm more, I do a bigger difference in protein than in energy.
Bill (26:38):
Okay. Okay. Well, you're, you're right, because that's
Alex (26:44):
Exactly, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what I do.
Bill (26:47):
Okay. Another thing you did, which I think is really important when you do this kind of stuff is you looked at sensitivity. In other words, you know, you, you have to, in a lot of your calculations, you set a milk price, you set a feed price, and that's what we have to do. But then you also said, what happens when milk goes up, up or down, 10% fee goes up and up or down 10% would, would you discuss what you found on, on as those two things? And they can change independently. One, you know, one can go up and one can go down, but Right. What, what did you find on that?
Alex (27:23):
Yeah. Well, we found that it's, if meal prices go up, then making groups is a little bit less interesting. So the higher the meal price, the more resilient your farm will be to a single diet in the fit cost is opposite. So the lower the fit costs, the more interesting the less interesting it is to have groups. And of course, the, the, the most interesting scenario is when you have high-fi cost and low meal prices, that's where it's almost mandatory to make groups if you want to survive in a dairy business.
Clay (27:57):
Well, we, we had that latter scenario of the US for sure, right
Alex (28:01):
Now. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It, it's, it's not an uncommon scenario in the US and every Yeah. And everywhere else.
Clay (28:07):
Yes.
Alex (28:09):
But, so Yeah, go
Clay (28:11):
Ahead. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
Alex (28:12):
But the trend was the same, eh? So the farms that when they move one cow from the one pen to the other have a positive outcome. They still had a positive outcome, but as meal prices went up, that positive outcome was a bit lower. So it was a straight line. It's not the, it changes direction. It's just the same, but the outcome is a bit smaller.
Clay (28:36):
So I, I'm, I'm fascinated by all of the I, I really like how you, you put a graph in here for each farm and each, each
Alex (28:46):
Package and movement. Yeah.
Clay (28:48):
Yes. I thought that was pretty fascinating looking at these. And so, so you were, you were comparing 21 days before the move to 21 days after, and, and, and you've got a prediction in there both for milk and income over feed costs. And looking at most of these graphs, it looks like it, look, it looks like in general the milk yield is lower than predicted for about 10 days post pen move. Yeah. Is that, has that been seen before, or I'm curious your comments about that.
Alex (29:30):
Yeah, there are some studies, old studies from the seventies and even the sixties where they were looking at this and, and what you see in the literature is that they have decreases of 4%, 6% new production, very transient the first day, maybe the first week, no more than that. So it really coincides with what's in the literature.
Bill (29:55):
Then, then I guess getting back to this sensitivity thing, which I wanna stick with what we were on. You know, you give them these graphs, like Fay was talking really good. It means you moved, you know, 10, 10 cows in a, in a move. Did you look at, say in a, when a single move, when they moved 10, how much did cow to cow variance? Did you look at that? Were they all dropped two, three kilos or did some not do anything and some just crashed?
Alex (30:27):
I did not look at that, and I don't remember that from the top of my head. My guess is that there will be some variation but I don't remember how much it was. Okay. But that for sure, there is variation. Yeah.
Bill (30:42):
Could that just be, you know, is it, if you could, if there was, you might be able to tease out, you know, what, what cows are more susceptible to a pen mood and which ones can handle it. So For sure,
Alex (30:52):
For sure. Yeah. And that's actually what our mill does. It looks at the expected production, the drop that you expect when you move one cow from one pen to the other. And then it will determine the exact moment of moving. Man.
Bill (31:08):
I did have one, one more question on sensitivity. We have graphs here where, you know, change in feed price change in milk price. The effects on of, of changing feed feed prices were pretty consistent across the three farms, but the change in milk price two of the farms did about the same thing that that cost, the income over feed cost changed about the same as feed, as milk price went up, but one or down one of them changed a lot. Farm, I don't know which farm that
Alex (31:44):
Is. Farm C, farm C I think it was farm C.
Bill (31:46):
Really, that the slope of that line is probably twice what the other ones are. Do you, do you ever know why that farm was so sensitive to milk prices?
Alex (31:58):
Well, that farm, it, it's, it's peculiar because they, they have a, a pen movement that it's, at some point I debated whether to put it or not in the paper, I said, Hey, this is reality because people do, these guys had a previous, a group of premi cows that were moved to a high yielding cows. So it's, it's a very strange and unnatural movement know if you wish. So, and of course they lose a lot of money, these pre cows, when they go to a high diet, they just stumble and, and they have two kilos less of milk, and they lose about 50 cents per day.
Clay (32:36):
And, and there was very, and there was very little difference in feed price per ton. Right? Absolutely. There's a very small feed cost difference.
Alex (32:46):
Yeah. Which is the other caveat, when you do grouping, people just look at nutrients and sometimes because of feed prices when you try to reduce energy and protein, somehow the diet doesn't decrease as much in price. So you actually have to look at, okay, how much does it cost me a mega cal of energy? How much does it cost me a pound of protein? And, then use that. Because if your pound, if the cost per pound of protein or the cost per mega cal of energy is higher or equal in the receiving diet, you are gonna lose money even if that diet is a bit cheaper in price. Okay. So, and that's what happened here. So I think that's why Bill is so sensitive to meal prices on this farm because it's a very open movement.
Bill (33:30):
And eco economics and dollars in euro euros are a little hard to, you know, we can't be too, too conclusive on this, but do you have suggestions on how much the price per kilo or price per pound of feed should, should differ? And if you could do it in percentage rather than euros or dollars?
Alex (33:49):
Right? Yeah. Percentage would be let's see. I always try to have a difference at least of 20 euros between the original diet and, and, and, and the following one or the receiving one, and typically fit cost in Europe are, we're talking about two hundred eighty, two hundred and fifty. So we're talking about a percentage wise. 12%, 13%. Okay.
Bill (34:14):
Okay. So fair, a fair amount to make it worthwhile.
Alex (34:17):
It has to be drastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because that's what we need to understand. The the outcome is not more milk production is more income of feed, cost more.
Bill (34:26):
Exactly. Exactly.
Alex (34:27):
And, and yes, we will lose milk for a few days, but it's only a few days. Then the cows are on, on their spot, they're on their requirements, they're really efficient. We always tend to look at the cows as being very efficient at early lactation. And we think that these are the cows that make money on a farm, and that's totally true. But then we have the 10, the tailers, and those are the ones that eat away all the benefits from the high producing animals. So every small improvement in efficiency of these low producing animals is a huge opportunity for producers to make more money.
Clay (35:01):
So, so the feed cost you were mentioning, is that that's, is that euros per ton?
Alex (35:07):
Yes.
Clay (35:08):
Okay. And then the base milk price that you were using to do the original calculations, I think it was 32, it was 32 euros per liter? That's
Alex (35:22):
Correct.
Clay (35:23):
And I think, I think right now I was doing the math on that. I think that's about $16 per hundredweight in the us. But I love the sensitivity analysis. That's really good.
Alex (35:36):
Yeah. Nowadays, here in Europe, the meal price has gone up. So instead of being 32, it's 50. Okay. So it's 50 cents. Ah, yeah. So sending
Bill (35:46):
Our milk over there or so that's right.
Alex (35:49):
But, fit costs are very, very high as well. So when you look at income, the costs is still in the order of 10 euros per cow per day. So it's not that they're making more money, they're just able to pay for the feed, which before they were not.
Bill (36:04):
Did you, and again, it may have been in there and I missed it, but did you do anything on either body condition or body weight? 'cause You know, no, they made lost milk, but, or they might have come back at milk, but they're still losing a condition, or
Alex (36:18):
We don't have data on body condition. We do have data on, on body weight in one farm. Because it was only one farm, I did not include it in the paper. Okay. there were small changes in body weights actually. Okay. So we, we actually were seeing that these ple cows were like that. And then when they removed they stopped putting weight. So we did see some changes in body weight. Absolutely.
Clay (36:43):
So, but
Alex (36:44):
Only in farm a if I, if I'm not mistaken.
Clay (36:46):
So along those lines, were you able to monitor milk components?
Alex (36:53):
Yeah, milk components. Was there milk components on a monthly basis. Right. Okay. So, and this was a change that took place once a week. So we had data from maybe 30 days before, maybe 10 days later. So it was difficult to use that data, so we decided to stay away from it. Yeah. But yeah, that would be, that's a very important question. And that's some research that needs to be done. It's not only milk, it's also the components of that milk that dictates the price and the income of food cost.
Bill (37:24):
Another calculation you made was you looked at change in nutrient intake and projected milk change from, from just the nutrients, and then you compared that to what they actually did.
Alex (37:36):
Yes.
Bill (37:37):
Could you go into the results of that a little? Because they were those diff a little bit different farm to farm, but they were, to me, pretty consistent on what you found.
Alex (37:46):
Yeah. They were very consistent and they were surprised. I mean, in general, they were surprising because they always lost less milk than predicted. Okay. We were predicting, I don't know that the cows would lose two kilos of milk, but they only lost half a kilo. So, and that could be too, too many reasons, eh, but I think the main reason is that the cows were over fed before we moved them. So that's why they don't lose as much. And, and, and we assume that they were eating that much, but they're, they're over fed. So when they go to a diet that provides less nutrients, because before they had super nutrients, now they lose a little bit less milk. Okay. But they were very consistent. Yeah. Especially in prepro cows.
Bill (38:34):
Yeah. You know, I would've guessed if, you know, because of the change, it would've upset the room and a little bit and all, they would've been a little less efficient, at least for a short term. And they'd actually be, be, you'd find the opposite of what you found. So,
Alex (38:48):
Absolutely. And, and that's what we were expecting. And we were expecting, okay, the animal will be upset because she lost her friends, and now she's a new pen with intimidating cows. She needs to adapt to the social hierarchy. Now she's getting a different diet, a little bit more fiber perhaps. So the woman is gonna be a little bit clunky, but hey, they continue to produce milk. They lost some milk, but not as much as we predicted. Yeah, sure. So it was surprising. But
Bill (39:14):
Do, do, do you know of anybody done things like you got all these chewing monitors and rumination monitors and so on. Do you know of anybody's done studies with those looking at when you move a cow or cows?
Alex (39:29):
I'm not aware of that. I'm not aware.
Bill (39:31):
I'm not either. But yeah, that with the technology we have now, those types of things would be, I think, very interesting to see.
Alex (39:38):
It would be very interesting. One concern I have with the rumination devices is that you always need a measure of intake because the cows that ruminate the most are typically the ones that are in acidosis or are the ones that are actually eating more. That's why they ruminate more. So, and people think, oh, my rumination is going down, so I have a ruminant problem. And it's really an intake problem. So it's, it's, it's difficult data to interpret without having the actual run intake. Yeah.
Bill (40:14):
I'm thinking if they did something like you where they follow it pre and post and do some predictions on what it should have been, if, if nothing changes, and then look at the deviation from the expected, something like that. But
Alex (40:27):
That would be a really cool study bill. Yeah.
Bill (40:30):
There is a drop, transient drop in milk. Do you have any suggestions on how to, what producers might do to, you're not gonna eliminate it. I don't think that's possible, but any suggestions on ways to reduce the negative even though it's transient, the negative effect of mood?
Alex (40:47):
I don't think we can avoid that. I think it's because we, we, we're changing the animal from one social instructor to the other. And, and it's very good literature saying that, that, that that's gonna have a toll. And the other is that we're giving them less nutrients, so we cannot expect the same outcome with flash nutrients. But for sure when you do pen movements one thing that I would make sure I do is they have enough space and they're receiving pens, and that the cows are moved in groups meaning five or more.
Bill (41:20):
And so if, if there's not a lot you can do to stop the change, the transient drop in milk, and you, again, you just have to make the change worthwhile. You have to exactly change the feed cost enough. You live with, live with the lost belt, but you just have to make it worthwhile.
Alex (41:37):
Right.
Alex (41:39):
And I have a producer in, in, in, in Italy and in, in the Piedmont area that he was surprised because he actually started looking at these groups and, and making groups and changing all the diets and, and all that. He had one single, he moved from one single diet to group feeding, and he went from one single diet to three diets. And the guy is very, very good. He's an average production of 41 liters per day. And he was surprised because overall milk production from the herd did not decrease. So he could not understand why having some cows that were losing milk when they were moved, where did that milk go? Right. So it's, it's, you don't lose it. It's just a transient loss, but you actually compensate later on with these cows being better and being more efficient and, and all that. So it's the total milk production of a herd when you make groups, it's actually not lower than when you don't.
Clay (42:31):
I was curious, does it make any, does it make any difference, you know, when you're actually making these moves relative to, you know, either feeding time or feed availability?
Alex (42:42):
Yeah, feed availability is crucial. Yeah. This, this thing will crash. If cows don't have feet in front, then the feet is not fresh. That, that's for sure. Yeah. That's, that's important.
Bill (42:56):
Yeah. So I ask this question to every, every author, what, what's, what's next if, are you gonna keep this line of research going? Or what, what other projects are you working on along those lines? Yeah.
Alex (43:10):
What this project has brought to my attention is do we really need a al Cows group? So if you go to a farm, even if they have a single diet or they have no groups, very likely they will have a al cows group. Is that really necessary? That's the question I'm trying to answer now. So I, I'm looking at what happens when you actually mix peanut cows with MultiPro cows? Are you using milk? Are you using reproduction? So that's, that's what I'm working on now.
Bill (43:38):
That's a good question. 'cause For years I've all, that's my standard recommendation. If you, if you got first right, it makes sense. First grouping is heifers or first lactation and everything else,
Alex (43:50):
It makes sense, but there is no data to support it. So, and it just makes sense. And, and, and, and it's okay. Yeah. But then when you look at things as it happens in this study where, hey, when these guys are mixed with multis, they seem to be okay. They do actually very well. So do we really need that? Can we use that pen that is uniquely devoted to various cows to some other cows, or can we do something with it? So that's what I'm trying to answer now. That
Bill (44:16):
Would be a good question and answer. So I'm glad you're doing that.
Scott (44:19):
All right. Very well, bill. You always do a great job with these, right? But I think tonight you really outdid yourself. This has been a very interesting paper, very interesting conversation. And the guest was top notch as well. Dr. Bach, you did a great job. In fact, clay, I think we need to invite him to give a lecture on our real science lecture series. Yes, yes. Maybe. We'll, we'll, we'll be in touch Dr. Bach to see if we can arrange for that. You know, I'm, it's been a great conversation. I'd like to leave the audience with just one thought, if you guys had one key takeaway for the audience, what would that be? And, Clay, would you mind starting us off?
Clay (44:59):
Yeah, my, I mean, my key takeaway is from the ti sensitivity analysis, right? And as we said, as you were saying at the beginning, in times of lower milk prices and high feed costs, having, having, having different diets available and making the, the and different different groups available, it's really huge economically. I think we get lazy at times. You know, we get lazy when we have these really high price milk high priced milk periods with lower feed costs and, and, you know, only having one lactating diet. But it's, it's, it's really huge economically when times get tougher.
Scott (45:50):
Yeah. Thanks, clay. Dr. Bach, what kind of final comments do you have?
Speaker 6 (45:57):
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Alex (46:20):
I think I would like to invite the audience to experiment a little bit with it. So don't be afraid of losing milk, and look beyond milk. Put in place mechanisms in the farm that allows you to measure IOFC. That's the ultimate goal. And also just blame this. And, and being in different farms, doing different things, I've been surprised how flexible cows are. So don't be afraid of making a mistake. You got, if something goes wrong, it will go wrong for a short period of time. You can correct it. You can change the diet right away, and the cows will, they're plastic, they will recover. So it's not that you're losing all the milk and you made a mistake and you're doomed. So just experiment with it, and play with it.
Scott (46:58):
Very good. And Dr. Weiss, any final words of wisdom for us?
Bill (47:03):
Just, I'm gonna repeat what Alex said pretty much, and that is, you know, milk change in milk is only half the equation, and it's, it is income over feed cost that, that matters. And if you're, I think we just accept you're gonna lose some milk. So make the diet change enough to pay for what we know is gonna happen, and don't ignore the milk loss, but remember, the ultimate goal is to maximize income over feed cost.
Scott (47:31):
Yep. Well said. Bill. Gentlemen, this has been a good one. Appreciate you sharing your research, your time, and your passion. I'm sure the audience is enjoying it. And speaking of the audience, we want to thank our little listeners for coming along once again to join us here at the pub. I hope you learned something. We hope you had some fun, and we hope to see you next time here. It's a real science exchange where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 6 (47:55):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to 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. Balchems real science lecture series of webinars continues with ruminant focused topics on the first Tuesday of every month. Monogastric focused topics on the second Tuesday of each month, and quarterly topics for the companion animal segment. Visit balchem.com/realscience to see the latest schedule and to register for upcoming webinars.