Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University; Dr. Victor Cabrera, University of Wisconsin-Madison Gathering over cold drinks at the World Dairy Expo pubcast to discuss recent research on nutritional grouping among dairy farms are Dr. Bill Weiss, Dr. Victor Cabrera and Dr. Pete Morrow.
Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University; Dr. Victor Cabrera, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Gathering over cold drinks at the World Dairy Expo pubcast to discuss recent research on nutritional grouping among dairy farms are Dr. Bill Weiss, Dr. Victor Cabrera and Dr. Pete Morrow.
Dr. Bill Weiss, Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University, began the conservation through the recently published research paper in the Journal of Dairy Science, introducing one of the authors, Dr. Victor Cabrera, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 2:25
Here is a link to the article: https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(21)01082-1/fulltext
What strategies in dairy cow nutritional grouping does the research recommend? Victor added that along with help from a graduate student Jorge Bartos, research shows the opportunity to group animals with similar homogenous nutritional requirements. 3:40
He noted the underlying concepts like production, lactation, pregnancy stages and sometimes herd sizes are also drivers for grouping considerations. 5:70
Dr. Cabrera said he would first separate by lactation or production, but when calculating the density of nutritional requirements for each animal, he said the animal grouping typically happens naturally. 9:30
He also said nutritional requirements play a factor, adding the concept-lead factor of following the diet of the 83rd percentile cow. But how can we improve the nutritional accuracy and formulate the best diet for the group, Dr. Bill Weiss then asked. 12:40
Dr. Cabrera mentioned the research paper showed the overweight concern for animals within the transitional period and said another challenge the research indicated was the lower metabolic energy and body score conditions. He added that diets ultimately improve the health and welfare of the animals in all cases. 19:45
Dr. Pete Morrow, podcast co-host, said that early in his career he had a dairy do grouping according to production on a late lactation cow on a cheap diet. He added the diet was formulated for 10 pounds less of milk and later realized lead factors was instead the key measure. 24:20
There are two points to grouping, Dr. Cabrera said. The journal research was collected from a large farm in Wisconsin, with around 2,400 lactating cows used for the data. Within the grouping for this farm, cows were moved from the 14 different pens each week. Dr. Cabrera mentioned that there are multiple pens for each lactation type, adding the nutrition for the animal's changes based on feed prices and not requirements. 29:31
Dr. Cabrera said he and his team thought the roadblock in nutritional grouping for farmers would be fear that moving them frequently would decrease their productivity and labor management throughout the process. 34:49
From the paper, however, he added the research doesn’t show a decrease in milk production, but instead, the grouping concept yields opportunities for extra milk production, health gain, environmental benefits and more. 36:30
Wrapping up the conversation, Dr. Cabrera emphasized two points, mentioning he believes farmers have a great opportunity to improve nutritional accuracy and believes nutritional grouping offers an effective and efficient system. 41:48
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Scott Sorrell (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podcast we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hello, my name is Scott Sorrell. I'm gonna be one of your co-host here tonight. This is one of my favorite sessions that we usually do, and this is the journal club. These are very similar to the journal clubs that are held at universities around the country and around the world. And we have our professor emeritus from the Ohio State University, Dr. Bill Weiss here. Once again. Bill, thank you for coming and joining us. The one thing I will point out that's kind of different about this one is one, we're in person, and two, we're at the World Dairy Expo, so that's kind of special. I get to see you guys and meet you guys face to face. And so Bill, would you mind introducing the guest that you brought with you tonight, and then the paper that we're gonna be reviewing? Hey,
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:56):
Then, the guest tonight is a Wisconsin, or, which is why we're red. It's Scarlet. That's what I
Scott Sorrell (01:03):
Thought of. My
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:03):
Name's Scarlet person. It's Dr. Vic Vic Carrero. He's an extension, mostly an extension researcher at the University of Wisconsin. I don't know if you're a professor or associate professor at Professor.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (01:15):
Professor.
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:15):
Congratulations.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (01:16):
Thank you.
Dr. Bill Weiss (01:17):
And he's done a lot of work which, which I followed for years on how to group cows both economically and nutritionally. What's the best way to group cows and then formulate diets?
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Dr. Bill Weiss (01:52):
And the paper tonight is, is a little different. It's a review paper, so it's gonna be discussing several years of his research. So we're gonna talk more than just about this paper. And the other thing, this Journal Dairy Science, a few years ago started a program of publishing literature reviews written by graduate students. And these are quite competitive. Not you can submit 'em, but they're, to get picked is, is quite an honor. And this was a graduate student literature review called Considerations for Grouping in Dairy Farms. And I like Vic, if you'd start, we need to give the grad student some credit here. So if you talk just a little bit about who did this, what, what's he doing now and, and so on. So
Dr. Victor Cabrera (02:37):
For sure, I mean, the student's name is Jorge Bartos. He's originally from Costa Rica. I was in touch with him for a long time before he was able to come, and he was always eager to start a career working on dairy farms and nutrition. And so he joined my group in 2017, and he was for his master's, he did an amazing job publishing a couple of papers. One of those is the one that we are looking at today. And today actually, he's a Ph.D., Ph.D. student at Cornell in Kristen Reed's lab and working in nutrition as well as feed composition analysis.
Dr. Bill Weiss (03:19):
Oh, congratulate him on a well-written review with grouping. What I'd like to first go off, but if, what, what should a farmer can, based on your research with they're forming groups, what are some of the criteria ma, the major criteria in forming groups,
Dr. Victor Cabrera (03:36):
I do think farmers have a great opportunity to have animals with homogeneous requirements on their nutrition to be fed more accordingly to those requirements. So the basic idea, and I, and I would like to emphasize this, it's, it's a simple one. It's if we have cows that are more alike, their nutritional requirements in the same group, the diet that we're gonna provide, that that group is gonna be closer to the animals, and therefore the requirements are better met. Then, the whole concept of nutritional grouping is that if we have a large group of animals with a lot of variabilities, the diet that we're gonna provide to that group, it's gonna over-fed a large number of animals and under-fed a large number of animals. If we have smaller groups, and importantly with more homogenous requirements within those groups our chances of having a diet closer to the requirements is much higher.
Dr. Bill Weiss (04:43):
Okay. So you're, you're saying the major criterion would be then production, assuming same breed and all within a herd, but would milk production would be the primary driver for grouping?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (04:57):
Not, not only production. I, I think the underlying concept would be several factors that will determine the nutritional requirements. Production is a very important one, but another would be the stage of lactation as well. So the milk lactation number premium pers likely would be different than multipass animals as well as even the stage of pregnancy will make a difference. And all those things could easily nowadays be computed and better mean a very good number on what's the requirement of the animal, and therefore we can use that density of requirement to group animals alike.
Scott Sorrell (05:48):
And so what role does, does herd size play in being able to come up with a ho homogeneous group that's large enough, to create a group?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (05:58):
Well, that's a very interesting question because I do believe it's not only the size of the whole here is the size of the pens in which we're gonna put those animals, right? So our opportunity, I think, depends, at least in the US in which we manage animals in pans, the pen size is the one that's gonna determine the diet of those animals. Until we can provide precision feeding at the cow level, luckily it will come someday until we don't reach that point I think our best bet is to provide that diet based on the pen level. So that's somehow regardless of the size of the whole current of the farm
Scott Sorrell (06:43):
Bill, I just realized I failed to introduce my co-host this afternoon. So Dr. Pete Morrow, welcome back once again to the Real Science Exchange. Pete's one of our technical surface representatives here at Bache, so welcome. Look forward to your participation there.
Dr. Peter Morrow (06:58):
It's great to be here, Scott, with a couple of distinguished people and going to try to learn a lot today.
Scott Sorrell (07:04):
Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (07:05):
If I get this question, or I used to get this question a lot when I'd go to farms and talk about grouping, they say, Okay, what if I want the biggest bang for the B What would be the first separation you made? In other words, what would be the first, You've got a whole one group tmr. Correct. What would be the first separation you would recommend on a, on, I know it's farm-specific, but just mg
Dr. Victor Cabrera (07:31):
But I think that's a great question and, and a great point of discussion. And, my answer right on top would be premium for multi animals dance . Yeah. So you think the same? Yeah. Yeah, I think that that will make a difference. And luckily there is a growing number, I would say, of farms that are going in that direction.
Dr. Bill Weiss (07:54):
I think, you know, one of the advantages of that is it doesn't necessarily mean you need two different diets. If that's your separation, you might, but you don't necessarily need to if it's just of mature cows and pre-repair. So it's a simple, simple thing to apply, but it's very effective. I
Dr. Victor Cabrera (08:12):
Think. I, I think agree. Yes.
Dr. Bill Weiss (08:14):
So what's the next separation after you've got two year old separated from cows? Now the guy says, I can have one more group. What would be your next group?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (08:24):
What would be the next group? And I mean, if, if it is only that option, I would go with production level, I would go and production would be heavily related to the stage of lactation. Right. So I would have a pick lactation group separate from the rest.
Dr. Bill Weiss (08:42):
Do you think it's more important if he could only, again, because of farm size, so he can have two-year-olds and then two other groups, Would you separate the mature cows into high and low productions or the frame of Paris in the high and low?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (08:58):
I think I would go with the multi, That's a very good question once again, and I think a good point. I would go with the multi-parts first. I think our data, the way I recall it, I think shows more variability within the multiverse, and therefore separating them will give us a better opportunity to provide better diets to them.
Dr. Bill Weiss (09:22):
And then we'll go one step further. Now you can have one more group. What would be,
Dr. Victor Cabrera (09:28):
So if that's the case, for example, we are talking about three groups, right? One would be the first lactation. Yeah, let's leave them alone. Okay. And I think that's great. And then I would go with the multiverse, and I will use not only a stage of lactation or production, but I will use a full, nowadays we can do that very easily, the full calculation of the neutral requirement per animal. And so it will be somewhat somehow agnostic to the stage of lactation or production or size of the animal. However, when we do the calculation of the density of nutritional requirements for each animal, somehow it will group those animals that are in picked in the same group and the late lactation in another, for example. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (10:19):
Bill, can I kind of clarify, is this just lactating cows? Are we talking about dry cows as well? Are they the, in the discussion?
Dr. Bill Weiss (10:25):
I, I should have been clear. I'm always assuming everybody separates dry cows. So this would just be on my, my questions been just for lactate.
Scott Sorrell (10:33):
Yeah. And so they do in us in, in other parts of the world, we do not. And so yeah, maybe, we can dig into that later as well. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (10:42):
To me, that would be the first separation.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (10:45):
Yes. And, and I, I would add actually to the dry, the fresh cows, likely they will require their own in, in one biggest study we did in 2016, which probably was the most sophisticated one including a lu arm on that analysis part of the analysis separate right away the fresh cows as a different group of
Scott Sorrell (11:09):
Animals. And how long do you leave them in there?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (11:11):
Three weeks. 21 days.
Dr. Bill Weiss (11:14):
Yeah. I, I think two, they're fresh cows. The, you know, intake and milk are highly correlated except in the fresh cow. Yeah. And so they need a special diet without, if you can manage that, that's a lot of bank for them.
Scott Sorrell (11:29):
But we're not doing a lot of fresh cow diets in the United States, so, Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (11:33):
And part of, you know, it's a facility that's gonna be a small pen. There's only so much labor, so much pen. So, I can understand some, but I think it has tremendous pain.
Scott Sorrell (11:42):
And would you prioritize that above you know, separating the heifers from the cow? No
Dr. Bill Weiss (11:48):
Heifers first fresh cow, second production third? In my opinion, Vic might have a different
Dr. Victor Cabrera (11:54):
Opinion. I would agree. Yep. Okay.
Dr. Bill Weiss (11:56):
And the other question is, you know, we talk about nutrient requirements, there's a lot of nutrients. Exactly. would you feed all these, you know, in the old, old time, we'd, we'd say, Okay, we're gonna formulate a dye for 10 pounds warm milk than what the group was feeding. That's kind of what we did, which meant protein, energy, everything was fed over at the same amount. Is that the right way to, is your research say all these nutrients should be overfed compared to the average the same?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (12:28):
I mean, what, what they, the background about that the literature says, I mean, there is this old concept about the lead factors, right? So basically you pick the average of the animals and you put one standard deviation where you go with the 83 percentile cow. The closest to that 83 percentile would be the diet for which we formulated the diet, right? It's, it's interesting to me I'm not a nutritionist by training. We just enter into this topic from the standpoint of view, how we can improve the nutritional accuracy in, farms from the standpoint of view of doing grouping or other things. And, then it was very surprising to me that there is not a clear standard for talking with nutritionists and farmers, how should be the right way to formulate a diet for a group of cows. Okay. So even at the point I, I think we are talking to a little different problem. One problem is how we group the cows and we discuss something of that. Now, if we assume we have the right groups, still we have another issue to handle. That is how we formulate the best diet for that group.
Dr. Bill Weiss (13:44):
And so how, how would you, how would you do it then? Let's say we, you've got average milk production. Yes. Let's say the body weights are folks and what,
Dr. Victor Cabrera (13:53):
So, so there are I mean, I, I think, I think a good start is the 83 percentile. I don't think it's the right way either, because that assumes in a certain way that we are talking about a bell-shaped normal distribution of animals. And that's not normally what happens in the groups, depending on how they end up. And so, therefore, I mean, there have been several studies, I think a very good one from you from Ohio University is Norman Pier. I mean, he proposed different lead factors for a different number of groups that I think it's a very interesting way to go. And I think that has been done based on the idea of optimizing the economics of each one of those groups. We did a similar thing, and I think, we did a concept that we call opti group. So we can assume a level of production for each one of the groups and the cost of the diet for each one of those groups.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (14:54):
And nowadays we have very good computer systems and we have very good data flowing to the dairy farm systems. And so it's not that difficult actually to optimize and say, which one level of the diet is gonna provide me the best milk income over the feed course for each one of the groups. And going beyond for all the groups in lactating care. And luckily there are ways to do it. I think we are at the point in which we can promote that more in the industry to adopt that kind of thing.
Dr. Bill Weiss (15:30):
And you know, one thing you need, you, you say the 80th percent is 82, you need AME variance. Yes. And you know, in the past you got bulk tank milk. That's what you knew. I mean, you might have been on this, you might have got a little bit of cal variance, but today we can get, you know, individual daily milk weights. So how would you incorporate that if you, if a farm can get cow milk weights daily, how do you incorporate that into formulation?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (16:01):
Well, I, I, I think that's, that's the, we are a very nice time in which we have all these data flowing with the system including the milk weights, right? In many farms that we can use, how we incorporate the question specifically, it's, it's basically in, in my opinion, is we can calculate for every single cow, every single day, what is the requirement of nutrients for that milk that has been extracted for that animal, right? And if we put on top of that, the weight of the animal that we may not have daily, hopefully, we, do, and hopefully, soon we will have that. But we can have a good estimate of that body weight. In, the worst-case scenario, the animal will be weight at least once in lactation, and we can follow a very typical curve so we can have a good idea what the milk weight of that animal is. Those two are very important points to have a good idea of the nutritional requirement of the animal.
Dr. Bill Weiss (17:10):
But you think, you know, with milk, it's still gonna be 70 or 80% of the requirement for nutrients. So even if you don't have anybody's weights, there are farms where the only body weights they get when they sell caps.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (17:24):
Exactly.
Dr. Bill Weiss (17:25):
So they, the body weight, they might not know that variance, but if they could just measure variance in milk production, that's gonna count for a lot of the,
Dr. Victor Cabrera (17:33):
For most of it, right? I mean, I, I think, yeah, looking at the data and, and putting some numbers, I think 10 mega calories could be attributed to the body weight basically. And, and 30 or four would be the milk part. So that's the kind of difference that the the the relationship between one against the other. I, I do think, yes, I agree. We, we could do that only with milk. But also I would add that even we can estimate a body weight very simple nowadays. So we can have a good, good idea of the body weight of the animal.
Dr. Bill Weiss (18:10):
Oh, has your research come up with like optimal lead factors, I don't like that term, but you know what it means that the degree of overfeeding has your research come up with optimal? Yes. What, kind of numbers do you get?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (18:24):
It was interesting, and in that paper, I mentioned from Kaari in 2016 that, we borrow a full individual animal model in which we can follow every single animal from start to end. We found actually for energy is different than protein. And it's very dependent on the number of groups, obviously. I believe, if I remember well, for the three groups, the energy level would not be much more than 50%. However, the protein will go about 70%, of the 70 percentile.
Dr. Bill Weiss (19:07):
Okay,
Dr. Victor Cabrera (19:08):
So the personality,
Dr. Bill Weiss (19:09):
Yeah, the energy you'd balance for the mean you're saying, And then 20% above, roughly. Yeah.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (19:15):
Okay. So, and, and I think one of the conclusions of that paper is very interesting is because the way we are feeding nowadays with one tmr or, or overfeeding, we are, we are encountering this issue of over-conditioned animals in late lactation, Right.
Dr. Bill Weiss (19:34):
Since we've got a veterinarian , have you considered health in, grouping, and how does, how does health fit cow health would fit into grouping? Or have you looked at that at all yet?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (19:46):
Not directly. That's, I think the next step. But, we can safely and confidently say that diets closer to the requirements will improve the health and welfare of the animals. One point is the one I mentioned before, condition animals, overweight animals, it's a big issue mostly in the transition period in the next lactation that many farms have to ch to handle or they have challenges with them. The other would be the opposite under condition animals. In that simulation study, I mentioned we did it with lower mental, and we balance, the metabolic energy of the animals under different scenarios. And, and I mean we needed actually to control, to not go below two the body conditions score or above 4.5 when we had only one diet, for example. So actually, the point is that it's likely that we can encounter those extreme cases when we have diets that are far away from the requirements of the animals on, on actual dairy farms.
Dr. Peter Morrow (21:05):
So this would allow us to maybe even have tighter regulation around that body condition score. So tighter goals are
Dr. Victor Cabrera (21:11):
Exactly, I would, I would agree with that,
Dr. Peter Morrow (21:14):
Yes. I know recently we just had another podcast we talked about you know, why don't cows stay around longer? And, we know that older cows typically we are, are not maintaining body weight, or body condition. And maybe this is a possibility or an opportunity that we could do to target those older cows, those, you know, third, fourth plus lactation animals to make sure they're achieving, you know higher, higher body condition scores later in lactation.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (21:44):
Yeah. And, and stay longer in the, in the, in the herd. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (21:50):
And you, you've spent a lot of time in your papers on economics.
Dr. Peter Morrow (21:54):
Yes.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (21:55):
That was, that was, that was the underlying goal. Many
Dr. Bill Weiss (21:59):
What've some put some dollars on grouping, What's the, or to start with the return, but then want to go into cost market. What are, what are you
Dr. Victor Cabrera (22:09):
Found? Yes, very good point. Before going to the actual dollar values, I should mention that most of our, dollar value, it's almost exclusively from the savings cost of the diet. And why I mentioned that at the beginning because we do believe in many of the papers, we conclude that the value would be much higher if we would have accounted for the increased productivity. And the reason we didn't account for the increased productivity is that we don't have enough data to confidently put in our models how much we would better production we would expect. So I just wanna put that in front only in saving costs we found, Go ahead. Just
Dr. Bill Weiss (22:58):
So, just to be clear, then, you assume no change in milk production?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (23:02):
Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Yes. So based on that assumption, that is one additional in favor of the grouping, we found between 30 and $40 per cow per year, moving from one group to two groups, and about 45 to $50 moving from two groups too, from one group to three groups, and above three groups, the value will increase a little more. So this is the law of ion return, right? Barely. We will recommend more than three groups unless the hurt is too big and depends on the depends and the conditions and the management of the farm. So the main value we found was between one and two groups, and one and three groups. And that was consistent in several projects and several research undertakings. And actually, that also agrees with other research from other labs like Norman Pier and the previous research from Magi, for example, originally. Yeah.
Dr. Peter Morrow (24:17):
I, I think this is why it's important to talk about those lead factors because, in my early days in practice, we'd have you know, somebody who, you know, just started a, a larger dairy, and they, they'd wanna do grouping according to production. And it was always a self-fulfilling, self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning this late lactation cow, we gotta put her on the cheap diet. And it was formulated for 10 pounds of milk less. And when you put her in there, by golly, you got 10 pounds of milk, less , he was being underfed. And then that took the milk production out of her, and she leveled off, but then she tended to gain a lot of weight because now she wasn't producing as well. So I think these lead factors, so we're, you know, it's a better target than what we were doing before. And that's probably where the success will come from.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (25:00):
Yes. Yes. I, yeah, I, I, I think I, I, I agree with, with, with that point, I, and still, I think we, we have opportunities to both, to better, let, let me try to rephrase again. There are two points. One is grouped the animals and the other is a better diet for those grouped animals. And, as Bill was asking at the beginning, what are, the main criteria to group the animals, right? So, we do have, for example, a decision support tool on my website, which is dairy management in Wisconsin. And, and we show the difference by grouping, only by dec milk, the animals only by production level, only by production corrected energy, milk, and corrected energy milk. And the requirement by body weight, for example, and consistently, all those methods perform less good than the, what we call the cluster, right?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (26:06):
We use two main nutrients like energy and protein, for example, If we could put another nutrient there, it would be even better. And we cluster the animals based on the requirements of those important nutrients. So once we get that, the next point is the lead factor how we group them, and what we decide. And, and I think that's interesting and going to the fact that many of these papers have been done under the the the underlying of the economics was rather than, than looking at the specific factor, let's look at the combination of diets that's gonna produce as the best milk income or feed costs.
Dr. Bill Weiss (26:57):
And, you know, these costs, I'm assuming you kind of use average feed cost. Yes. So in today's environment with very high feed costs, the savings could be more
Dr. Victor Cabrera (27:09):
Exactly.
Dr. Bill Weiss (27:09):
And in fee cheap feed, it may not be worth as much.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (27:12):
So there is an opportunity to also adjust depending on, on the times. Right. just to clarify and, and make sure, we didn't use in our analysis we used the cost of the nutrient itself, regardless of what the source, the source of the fit. Yeah. From which fit the nutrient will come. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (27:36):
But kind of an average nutrient cost over time.
Dr. Peter Morrow (27:39):
I was also impressed with the increase in nitrogen efficiency that was found in the paper, considering that, you know, dairy cows are fairly lowly nitrogen efficient, It was a pretty significant increase in nitrogen efficiency. Can you speak to, you know, some opportunity along with nitrogen
Dr. Victor Cabrera (27:56):
Ex? Excellent point, excellent point. Because one thing we are doing, and I think this is an important point to mention, that what, what we are doing with this concept of the nutritional group, and we are, we are improving feed efficiency without changing the genetics of the A, right? That's another way we can do a lot of inroads on, on feed efficiency. But by using what we have on the farm and the current conditions, we can improve feed efficiency by just grouping the animals. We have a better income or feed cost, and at the same time, we are saving nutrients that would be wasted on the environment. One of those is nitrogen. Another would be phosphorous. And, I can assure you the same will happen with greenhouse gas emissions, for example, right? So in, in the case of nitrogen, I believe this saving will be like 15 grams per cup per day, which is substantial. And, it will, it will improve. I don't, I don't remember exactly the percentage-wise, but it is important as you say because we are having only between 25 and 35% of the efficiency of nitrogen consume to, to convert it to milk, right? So, every percentage point we improve on there will be significant.
Dr. Peter Morrow (29:15):
So what is the optimal frequency, of moving from one group to the next? I know we've talked about weekly, and biweekly.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (29:22):
Yes.
Dr. Peter Morrow (29:23):
What are
Dr. Victor Cabrera (29:24):
Your thoughts, once again? Excellent, excellent point, in my opinion, because that's, a very common question we have commonly. And, I think this gives me the opportunity. I appreciate the question too, to talk a little bit more. The other project that j had, the same one wrote this paper did during his master's. And, and I think it's very interesting because this was actual data from a farm in Wisconsin not far, we are now a large farm, with about 2,400 lactating cows using historical data, and luckily through this dairy bank project we have, we can, we can collect a lot of data and integrate data on the farm. We were able, to follow this for historical data for years and follow, I think this is very interesting as well, following what the farm normally does.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (30:25):
And so the idea was to propose some tweaks in the management to improve the nutritional accuracy, but without changing drastically what they normally are doing on the farm. And on that farm, they're moving cows every week, right? And that doesn't mean that they're reorganizing all the cows every week, but they are flowing cows from different pens every single week. On this farm, there are 14 pens and a large herd of lactating cows. And for example, there are three pens for the ERs pig lactation and another three pens for the multi-pers pig lactation cows. But unfortunately, those three groups of animals and each one of those has about 180 cows receive the same diet. Okay? So we are, we are, we are talking about more than 400 cows in each one of these peaks of lactation ERs and, and multi perus that are separated already in three pens, but they receive the same diet.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (31:39):
Another important point, those diets are predefined. It doesn't depend on which cows end on those spends. They are being done ahead of time because of the prices of the feed in the market, and they will remind those diets for between three and six months. The nutrition will change the diets according to the prices of the feeds, not based on the nutritional requirements of the cows. So those are important points that Jorge works with the data and says, How about if we change those things? You already have to put these cows in these three groups in the pick lactation, right? How about we do a little tweak and you put the top cows in this pen and the low cows in this pen and the rest here? And then we either a top dress or change a little bit the dts on each one of those groups. And that represented a large amount of money being saved only in, in just talking about those big lactation premium person bars. We were talking about more than $200 per cow per year of savings in fields.
Dr. Peter Morrow (32:51):
When you compare that to the net income of some of these dairies, that's a tremendous change in net income
Dr. Victor Cabrera (32:56):
That makes breaks make or breaks the whole year's profitability, of the farm for sure. It, could
Dr. Bill Weiss (33:06):
Know one, one thing. And I was in extension for a long time, and we talked about grouping for a long, long time, farmers tend not to do it. I mean, they, and what are some reasons, One is they don't, they, they're convinced when you move a cow, you're gonna lose substantial amounts of milk. I know you've talked about that in some of these papers. So what are some of the roadblocks and what could we do to convince them that it's, you know, there are costs to grouping? These are not free. You have to move cows, you have labor, you have more ingredients, sellable. So what, what are some things we could do to overcome some of these road logs?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (33:45):
Yeah, ex excellent, excellent point. Because I, I, I wonder the same. I, I think, I think in, in our mind working on this for a few years, it is clear that there is a value here and there is an opportunity here. And, we find it difficult to understand the rationale why there is not a wide adoption or wider adoption of grouping. I do think there has been some movement we are different than 10, or 15 years ago that was very predominant, just one tmr. It has been changing, but I think there is an opportunity to keep more change. We didn't, I think this was in 2015, within this large project of the feed efficiency led by Mike Bandar group, Group. We did a survey in, in Wisconsin and Michigan. I think we sent the survey to about 2000 farmers.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (34:49):
And the main idea was to find out what were the roadblocks for grouping those farmers. And we found interesting things. I mean, one thing we expected was exactly that there is a fear that moving cows more frequently will decrease their productivity. Another thing was just management. We, don't wanna do this extra labor and this management every single week, right? And, so I think those things are yes, important from the standpoint of view of the management of the farm. But I think we can overcome those things. I think we should be able to, to easily manage those things on the farm regarding the loss of, production, of the animals. Actually, in the review paper, there is an interesting paper. There are many actually that demonstrate that if there is a loss, it is short-lived.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (35:50):
And one interesting thing is if, if depends, like nowadays a large enough, there seems to be that the social hierarchy is lost, it's so small that barely noticeable the paper of Randy Shaver and swab. They didn't change dyes. They just move cows and depend on were larger than 60 cows, each one of those pens. And the conclusion was there was no loss of milk. So, I think there are good arguments to say that probably farmers will not suffer from a decrease in milk production regarding the management and the extra labor, Yeah, there would be an extra cost, but I think in the biggest scheme if we compare with the potential savings only the gains are much higher. And if we put on top of that, the extra milk production, the gain in health, and the environmental benefits, I think there is much more to gain with the nutritional grouping.
Dr. Peter Morrow (36:51):
We probably have to break down some barriers along the lines of grouping cows according to being in a breeding pen, pregnancy, and whatnot too, because that's such a, you know, such a big part of the, the dairyman's day that you know, those are the things that, that I think that'll have to be worked through. But the way it sounds in this data seems to share that well worth it financially. Yes.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (37:14):
And, and I think, I mean, going to, to that point nutritional grouping is, is an effective way. I, I think we should try to promote I am looking always for ideas on how we can encourage more farmers and practitioners, and vendors to promote more. But there are, I mean, other things we could also do. And part of the review there is, for example, even within the structure we have of grouping on the farm, doing more frequent diets will help if, if we, if we keep feeding cows as we are doing in groups, there is a trend in Europe. I have been a few years back doing a sabbatical in Spain, and, and there is a lot of movement toward more precision feeding. And even though you will not be able to do a diet for each cow, you could supplement in robotic, and even in, in, in the rotary nowadays, you can, you can add additional nutrients to the animal, right?
Dr. Victor Cabrera (38:22):
One interesting part of that in, Spain, was they were able, they were they adapted a system that is being used in the, in the food human food industry to actually on the fly to balance four different nutrients when the cow was entering, the milk, the parlor, right? So I think it took like 16 seconds. The cow is recognized with the R F I D and they say how much she was producing yesterday, and then they adjusted the protein ingredient, the energy nutrient they put all together and then deliver, the feed to that animal, right?
Dr. Peter Morrow (39:06):
And according to your data, it appears that the, you know, the protein requirement is high said you'd want to achieve about the 70th percentile. Yes, It seems you could, you know, balance for the 50 percentile on, on any L, and then you know, somehow stop drip top dress a protein source, or even a, exactly, even a room and protected protein source, nitrogen source depending upon dietary levels or requirements.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (39:31):
And that system allows you to somehow test the response to changes on the top tracing, right? So actually, that was the next step we were trying to do. Say, Okay, this is what she requires. Let's, let's increase 10%, mark, are we gonna expect more, more milk,
Scott Sorrell (39:55):
Right? Gentlemen, it just flickers to lights. That means it's closing time. So we're gonna get our last drinks herein. And what I'd like to do is ask you guys to kinda wrap up our conversation today and give us, you know, one or two takeaway items from each of you that a nutritionist or dairy farmer can take away from this conversation today.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
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Scott Sorrell (40:41):
Pete, let's start with you.
Dr. Peter Morrow (40:43):
I think for me, it's when you look at this and look at the economic opportunity, there's, there's just a tremendous economic opportunity. And if you can add with that, the ability, you know, to make cows more nitrogen efficient, you know, the huge opportunity for sustainability. And I think this is also something that many, many dairies can do if they have you know, the management ability, which should be there and, and the drive to make these types of changes.
Dr. Bill Weiss (41:11):
Bill, I, I'd like to, one is you don't have to have, a billion groups. You showed, you know, there's a huge advantage to just going from one to two, and so maybe that's the first step. But, you know, the economics I think are clear. Then, this idea that cows lose milk, it's addressed here. They don't, most of the time do not lose milk, So there are not a lot of costs. But there, to me, there are huge benefits from, again, just starting maybe small two groups, but to grouping nutritionally, grouping is economic.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (41:46):
Excellent,
Scott Sorrell (41:47):
Dr. Carrera.
Dr. Victor Cabrera (41:48):
Sure. I mean, I would like to, emphasize two points that I think are important. One, I think farmers have a great opportunity to improve in general nutritional accuracy. I think there are different venues. One of those is a nutritional grouping that I think it's very effective and it's very doable in every system that could be combined with better diet formulation. And I think that can and should be adapted to the practice of the farm in order not to disturb too much, that hopefully will help with the adoption of improving nutritional accuracy in general. And the other thing, I wanna mention is another big opportunity we have nowadays is all the data flowing in the systems on the dairy farms. And I think that's very valuable that gives us additional hints on better nutritional accuracy, of the animals. So, I think we should also foster better use of those data that I think it's very valuable, to improve nutritional accuracy in general.
Dr. Bill Weiss (43:07):
Good.
Scott Sorrell (43:08):
Bill, I wanna congratulate you. This has been a great topic. Good topic, great. Better guest. And so I want to thank you for that. Also thank you, Dr. Cabrera. You've been a great guest. You can come back to the real science exchange anytime. So thank you for coming. Thanks
Dr. Victor Cabrera (43:22):
Very
Scott Sorrell (43:22):
Much. Also, wanna thank our loyal listeners for spending some time with us once again here at Real Science Exchange. I hope you learn something. I hope you had some fun, and I hope to see you next time here at Real Science Exchange, where it's always a happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
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