Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University, and Dr. Alexander Hristov, Pennsylvania State University Dr. Hristov started working with canola meal after he commissioned a review paper comparing canola and soybean meal when he was editor of the Canadian Journal of Animal Science. In that review, most of the studies used solvent-extracted soybean meal. Because canola has a higher oil content, it is always mechanically extruded to remove oil before solvent extraction. This paper is a more fair comparison because both meals were extruded and thus exposed to heat. (7:02)
Dr. Hristov started working with canola meal after he commissioned a review paper comparing canola and soybean meal when he was editor of the Canadian Journal of Animal Science. In that review, most of the studies used solvent-extracted soybean meal. Because canola has a higher oil content, it is always mechanically extruded to remove oil before solvent extraction. This paper is a more fair comparison because both meals were extruded and thus exposed to heat. (7:02)
There were 24 cows per treatment, and it was a continuous study rather than a Latin Square design. No differences were observed in dry matter intake, even though many studies in the literature have shown a higher DMI for canola meal-containing diets. Both diets had similar milk production and feed efficiency. Cows on the soybean meal diet had higher milk fat than canola meal-fed cows. (15:09)
Soybean meal-fed cows had higher total VFA production. Dr. Hristov attributes this to the additional free oil that was added to the canola meal diet having a slightly depressing effect on fermentation. The canola meal-fed cows had a higher proportion of propionate and a lower proportion of acetate than the soybean meal-fed cows. Serum amino acid concentrations were mostly similar with a few differences in individual essential amino acids. (21:40)
Serum glucose concentrations were higher for canola meal-fed cows. Dr. Hristov believes this was probably a result of the increased ruminal propionate since it is a primary precursor for glucose production. He goes on to describe the digestibility results. (28:30)
Bill and Alex discuss the nitrogen excretion data and how low in protein one could go before impacting milk production in an effort to reduce nitrogen excretion to the environment. (37:06)
Dr. Hristov’s take home message is when you are comparing these two feed ingredients in similar diets, if feed intake is not affected you'll have a similar response between extruded soybean meal and canola meal. Comparing solvent-extracted soybean meal with canola meal is not a fair comparison. (51:05)
The paper can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030223004101
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Scott (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the pubcast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell. I'm gonna be one of your hosts here tonight at Real Science Exchange, and tonight we're discussing a great paper during one of my favorite segments. I always say it, bill. My favorite segment is the journal club. I'm not sure if that's because you're my favorite professor, or I just like the journal club. Maybe a little bit of both. Before we dive in, Bill, would you mind introducing the guests that you brought with you tonight?
Bill (00:42):
Sure, Scott. Good to, good to be back. The guest tonight is Dr. Alex Hristov from the Pennsylvania State University. We are, they're the, they're the other thee. Welcome Alex
Alex (00:55):
Thank you.
Scott (00:59):
Yeah. So, yeah, bill. Bill and I are both Ohio Staters, but I've paid far more tuition to Penn State University than I have Ohio State, and I've got two sons Oh, good. To Ohio State. Thank you. Yeah. One graduates in two weeks a semester early, by the way. Good. So, yeah, he's, yeah. Good kid. Bill, I forgot to ask, we are in the pub, your favorite place. What, what's in your glass tonight?
Bill (01:24):
I've got a glass of Ra Ganzi lager from Connecticut or Rhode Island. I'm not sure. Very tasty.
Scott (01:33):
All right. Do you ever have anything other than beer? I'm not sure you've had anything different than a beer before here.
Bill (01:38):
Not beer showing once in a while, a bourbon, but
Scott (01:42):
Dr. Hristov. Well, welcome. It's great to have you here. I've heard your name many, many times in the past, usually associated with your work on histidine, and so very interested in that and, and, and may have to have you come onto our webinar to talk about some of your work with histamine at, at some point. It's very good work. Before we get started are you drinking anything special tonight?
Alex (02:07):
Well, I am drinking a 15-year-old single malts. As I said, it's a little early for me, but I have to follow your format,
Scott (02:20):
Exactly. Well, thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad you did. You're, you're drinking something far better than what I have tonight. But before I get into that, I'm gonna introduce my co-host. This is the first time I've had Dr. Marcos Zenobi. Marcos, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you here.
Marcos (02:37):
Thank you so much, Scott. It's a pleasure.
Scott (02:38):
So, those of you that may have followed some of the choline research that we've done may recognize the name Marcos did a lot of the research with, with reassure down at the University of Florida. So we, we certainly welcome you tonight. Marcos, he's in Argentina. And what, what's in your glass tonight? Marcos.
Marcos (03:02):
I'm having a Malbec red wine from Mendoza close to the Andes, so it's my favorite.
Scott (03:11):
Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. And tonight I'm having what we call a Russell's Reserve Kentucky RAI Bourbon. Not, not quite as good as what Dr. Hristov is having, but it's, it's gonna have to do for today, gentlemen. I look forward to the conversation this evening. Cheers.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Cheers.
Speaker 6 (03:39):
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Scott (04:42):
So, Bill, as we get started tell us a little bit about the paper that you selected and, and why you selected it.
Bill (04:49):
Well, the papers from Journal Dairy Science, like most of them, was published earlier. I don't have the month, but in 2023, I think around June and as titled, production Effects have Extruded Soybean Meal replacing Canola Meal and Diets for lactating cows. I picked this for a couple reasons. One is Canola's becoming a fairly common ingredient in the US and there's been a fair amount of data not just the US showing, comparing canola to soybean soybean meal. And in general, there's a few flaws with a lot of these comparisons. And I think this paper does a better job of giving a fairer comparison of two ingredients or diets based on two different ingredients. The author of the paper is a graduate student, and Alex can go into him his pedigree a little bit, but it's by Sergio Quavo. And Alex, could you just give us a brief history of him and, and what he's doing now or in the future?
Alex (05:53):
Yeah, sure. I think his last name is pronounced Eva. Sergio came first as an intern. Za Murano is the university down in Honduras. He's from Honduras. Spent a couple of months here at Penn State and then joined us as a master's student. This converted into a PhD degree, and now he's scheduled to finish in spring next year. And interviewing for jobs. I think he's mostly interested in industry jobs. So I don't think he will have any problems finding one. He comes from a coffee farm. His family has a coffee farm in Honduras, and he brought me coffee over the years, and it's great coffee.
Bill (06:50):
Alex, what I usually start with is, the hypothesis and objectives of the research. Could you go into that briefly on this project?
Alex (07:02):
Sure. I may give you a little background too. I started working into canola versus Soybean Neo based on a paper that I, in fact, commissioned. I was an editor in the Canadian Journal of Animal Science, and I asked my buddy PE a Huan to do a review of canola versus soybean meal. And that review came out as very favorable to canola. And that's, that's how this whole story started. We have done quite a few studies since then comparing soybean meal and different versions, extruded solvent and canola meal. And the hypothesis in this particular paper was following a crossover study where we had a shorter periods and experimental periods with a continuous design study which is this particular paper comparing can mill versus extruded soybean meal. The hypothesis in fact, was that there'll be no difference between in production effects. There'll be no difference in the production and milk composition between canola meal and extruded soybean meal when they're fed on equal crude protein basis in the diet.
Bill (08:30):
And I think, you know, in the, in that meta-analysis, most of the comparisons were with solvent soy. Yeah. And so that's one, one big difference here is this, is this product is more similar to, 'cause the canola is almost always extruded or expelled, however you wanna say that.
Alex (08:45):
Exactly. That's what is missing in a lot of the work that was done with Canoa meal. They compare it's compared to solve and extract soybean meal which doesn't under doesn't undergo heat treatment. Canoa has too much fat and cannot be so extracted. It has to be physically some of the oil has to be removed to extrusion and then so extracted. And during that extrusion there is heat generated. And that increases ROP as we know. And it's really not, not fair. If you want to compare Cano a meal, which is already extruded meal to solve an extracted soybean meal.
Bill (09:35):
And, and you spent your, your diet, well, if you briefly go over the two diets you used, and I do wanna talk a bit more about those, but just big picture differences between the two diets.
Alex (09:47):
Yeah, I have to go back to the paper. Basically we had between 13-15% inclusion rate with canola meal and extruded soybean meal. And we did this on a cr, we replaced them on a CR protein basis. So there was a similar amount of cooked protein coming from both meals. We did something else which didn't make a lot of difference in the diets. Everything else was the same. All other feeds were the same. But we did include some oil, canola oil in the canola diet, canola meal diet to equal diet or extract. And we also included some urea to go with the protein, good protein between the diets, otherwise everything else is exactly the same. And
Bill (10:43):
You did add, because of, of the lower inclusion rate of bean meal, you added a little bit of soy holes to keep the, so starch is equal. The NDF is a little bit different just because it has to be,
Alex (10:55):
Oh sorry. We added soy holes too, to equal NDF. Of course the soybean meal has higher protein content. The extruded soybean meal has lower of protein than so extracted because there is eight to 10% oil left. But still there is a difference with can milk.
Bill (11:18):
And I think another important thing you did was you provided, are you rp, amino acids, metin, methionine, and lysine, so that you kind of remove that as a variable? So it's a, I think it's a more fair compare. You're comparing diets that are pretty equal, basically nutritionally equal,
Alex (11:36):
Nutritionally equal canola meal certainly has more matan in than soybean meal of any kind. Now if you walk through the literature, you'll see matan in Canoa mill all over the place. If you look at the Canadian analysis, they're always higher than our analysis for, I don't know what reason but it does have high Italian content. So we wanted to eliminate this as much as possible. And we added licensing and room protected lysine and Ruben protected metaline to equal the two diets. Okay.
Bill (12:17):
And then also another positive of this study is instead of using book values for the protein fractions, you actually measured them. So you're, you're really testing the product, not the accuracy of the book values.
Alex (12:33):
Yeah. Bill, that's a long story, and I don't know if we wanna go into that one. I have my concerns with Nasim. If you go to the, yeah, let's, let's not go, let's not go that way.
Bill (12:49):
It's from the literature number, but I think it's not right, the right constant for canola is, I think, much too high.
Alex (12:57):
Yeah. exactly. Exactly. And NRC was wrong. NRC was wrong. Now nation, I don't think it's much better. Yeah. But certainly because of that, again, extrusion Cano Mill typically has low RDP and higher RUP than what the book values are. Okay.
Bill (13:19):
One, one thing that's always, like I said, I think the right constant in Nasim is, is to way too fast. But the thing you found, and also in Nassim, and also in NRC, is that the RUP digestibility is substantially lower for canola, and everybody gets about 80% the value of sowing. What, why do you, why do you, so I think that's real. What, why do you, this is real,
Alex (13:43):
You think it's,
Bill (13:44):
Why do you think it's less digestible than soy protein?
Alex (13:49):
Yes. definitely. This is one thing that I don't think there is disagreement out there. Even Naso and NRC has similar values there. The reason BI think is the higher a DF bound crude protein and n df bound crude protein, if you look at actually this paper, we did analyze both, and they're considerably higher. Let me go quickly to this. They're considerably high in canola meal, done in extruded soybean meal. So for a DFI CR protein, we have 2.4% for canola meal versus 0.4 per percent for the soybean meal. And NDF bound CR protein is 6.3 versus 0.7. So I think that that's the reason, the main reason for this difference.
Bill (14:46):
Do you think that's a factor of processing?
Alex (14:52):
No, I don't think it's factor a factor of processing. It's actually related to the plant, to the plant protein, because if you look, we haven't analyzed it ourselves, but if you look at the seeds that are in the databases you'll see that difference still being there.
Bill (15:09):
Okay. Well, and then the last thing just for the audience, this was a big study. You had 24 cows per treatment, and like you said, this was not a Latin square. It was, I think eight weeks or six weeks, I can't remember, but a continuous study, which is clearly That's right. Better for, for protein studies. That's clearly superior. Well, I'd like to, we'll go ahead and move into the results. So I always like to start with the main thing, and that's production. You could just kind of review what you found on,
Alex (15:41):
On production. Yes. So one thing with the Cano MU method analysis or studies have been the higher drama intake. I don't know how you or your audience is familiar with this, but seems like consistently when we compare the two meals, cows tend to eat more of the can meal diets that have can meal. There is something there that we still haven't figured out, though. Is it a palatability problem? Is it some other kind of regulation? In this particular case again, as you said, with 24 cows per treatment long-term study, we did not see a statistical difference in dry meat intake. 26 versus 26.2 versus 25.9. So very small numerical difference, but no statistical difference in dry meat intake. No difference in milk yield. Feed efficiency was not difference. These cows were milking about 40 Ks which, what is that?
Alex (16:52):
80, 88, 88 pounds. Yeah. One thing that we see here was increased milk fat percent, the canola milk cows get the 3.5 extruded soybean meal diet was 3.95. This is something that we don't see consistently in our studies, but we have seen this with other soybean related products or different soybean trials that we have seen where soybean oils tends to increase milk fat, so that's not too surprising here. And EO of milk fat also increased what else we have. And energy corrected milk, though wa was not different and feed efficiency on energy corrected milk basis was also not different.
Scott (17:54):
Alex, just real quick,
Alex (17:55):
If I on the protein side,
Scott (17:56):
If I can circle back, go ahead. On that fat increase, is there a difference in the fatty acid profile of the two different beans?
Alex (18:06):
Yeah. So there is more oleic acid in the canola mill. I mean, this is one reason canoe oil is considered more healthy if you want. But there is more linoleic acid in soybean oil. And we have to go back to these studies that we have done with different fats. But I think this is one of the reason that we've seen increase in milk fats.
Scott (18:33):
Okay.
Alex (18:33):
The other thing in this particular study is that we added the canola oil to the diet where the oil in the, in the extruded meal was incorporated in the, in the mill, although it was, you know, broken seeds ground and, and all that. But anyway, I think this is the reason why we have seen that there may be some inhibition of fermentation, changing of the pathways of the bio hydrogenation with the canoe oil versus the soybean oil because of the different form of the oil in the diet.
Bill (19:11):
So, it could be that the canola diet is depressing fat rather than the soy is increased. 'cause To me, when I look at the numbers, it looks more like a mod, very modest depression and fat rate.
Alex (19:24):
Very modest. Exactly. And that's probably the reason because of the free oil that was added to the diet in this case.
Bill (19:33):
And one, one thing I forgot to mention earlier is that you also, you had a lot of first lactation cows in this study, so you could, you had enough power to look at parody effects, which they all did what we expected, but you had enough power to look at interactions, and I just wanna say, you basically found none. So these results are applicable to both first lactation and older cows, which a lot of studies are under power to look at parody interactions. So I just wanted to mention that
Alex (20:01):
Exactly. For some things, we did find interactions there in the tables. Milk protein yield, for example, was affected differently in primi. Paris was smoothie. Paris M-U-N-M-U-N I should have mentioned that was also tended to be higher for the soybean diet versus the canon meal. And that's again, typically what we'll see with when we compare canon meal versus soybean meal. But yeah, you are right. There was no other differences. Bill here in body condition score, we monitor body weight, which is one thing we emphasize with this continuous trials when we look at exactly am mean acids particularly, or protein. And there was no difference there as far as I can tell here. Yeah.
Bill (20:55):
Yeah. And when I, I did some calculations on total energy use using Nasim equations and the, the soy diet, if you, based on milk maintenance and body weight change had about one, one mega cow more energy, but with all the estimates, you know, that's, there's no difference at all. Those are well within the errors of estimation. Yeah. These diets were probably pretty, pretty equal in, in any l or me both.
Alex (21:23):
Yeah. Yep.
Bill (21:25):
You, you measured some, we'll go briefly into this, but you, you did do, you had cannulated cows, some cannulated cows, so you did measure some room and fermentation measures. Can you kind of go over the important findings on that?
Alex (21:40):
Yeah, let me take a look at that table. So we did see an increase in total VFA concentration, no difference in pH. That probably goes back to the fat, to the oil that was added free oil with the canola diet versus the extruded soybean diet, because that's a, that's a quite a significant difference here in the total VFA. So there may have been some inhibition of the free oil versus the extruded soybean near where the oil was basically enclosed into the seed material. In terms of different fatty acids there was actually more proportionally more propionate with the canola versus the soybean diet and less acetate. So there was a little shift there in those two major fatty acids. Vale rate was also higher in the canola diet. Let's see, what else here? Protozoa seems like protozoan numbers were increased. And that's probably again related to the oil. Now the shift in the propanoate is something interesting propionate acetate ratio. And I tend to think it's, again, probably because of the oil and the type of oil we added to the diets.
Bill (23:22):
It, it kind of goes in line with the lower milk fat as well, is the Exactly. A shift in. Yeah. And then I'm gonna go to table six, which is amino acids. And this is something I always have trouble interpreting as plasma amino acids. How, how do, I guess, just as a general question, how, how do you interpret plasma concentrations of plasma amino acids?
Alex (23:49):
So, I mean, I think there is some relation there. Bill, with amino acid deficiency, if you want. In fact, his since histamine was mentioned, our histamine work started by working at plasma amino acid concentrations. And we have consistently seen in our wall protein diet trials decreased plasma histidine. So that's how the histo work started at Penn State. So we tend to, when we do protein diets, if we have enough funding, because those analyses are not cheap, right? How we tend to analyze plasma amino acid. What we have seen here, particularly, we were looking at these three amino acids, although two were supplemented, but we were interested to see whether there was some effect on histamine. I should have mentioned, bill, our intention was to feed slightly below the MP requirements of the cows.
Alex (24:57):
This was done during the NRC time. And we were booking at NRC, not nas, but again, that's another entirely different topic. And we were targeting, I think 5% deficiency in mp, but we didn't get there with one of the diets, I think with the extruded soybean meal diet. So our intention was to look at histamine particularly at a 5% deficiency in MP that did not work. Well, and as you can see in that table here, there was no difference in histamine hiin. There was some difference in some of the other essential amino acids. For example, isoleucine was higher with soybean meal leucine was also higher. So there was some total essential amino acids were not different, but some individual essential amino acids were higher with the extruded soybean meal. That,
Bill (26:01):
So, so do you interpret this as amino acid supply was similar or, you know, 'cause if, if one goes up, is it because something is limiting, say milk protein production, so there's an excess of it, or, I said I just have a lot of trouble with
Alex (26:23):
I bill you know, I don't wanna put too much emphasis on this, but if I, if I see a strong decrease in one essential amino acid, that would probably indicate a deficiency. Okay. No, I'm not talking about increase decreases. So in this case here, I mean, obviously ROP digestibility is considerably higher in the extruded soybean meal versus the canon meal. So I think the differences, although total differences are not there, there are some individual amino acids that are higher in the soybean meal, and that's probably because of the higher digestibility of IOP intestinal digestibility.
Marcos (27:10):
So we were thought that thought that lysine is one of the amino acids that suffer heat right. In, in this products. And it seems that is not happening right. In street soybean mill, at least in the, the product that you use based on this table, right?
Alex (27:26):
Yeah, no, you are right. So this mill, if I remember the numbers correctly, was about 170 degrees Celsius, which comes to 340, I think Fahrenheit. We did a study quite a few years ago, probably 10 years ago, where we increased temperatures up to 200 degrees and then work at lyin. And only when you exceed, I think when you exceed 180 and get to the 200 degrees heat, then lies starts disappearing and digestibility decreases at the typical extrusion temperature. And, and you have to understand, this is not a temperature that is strictly regulated. It's simply friction that creates temperature. There is no heat input. But that's a typical extrusion temperature about 320 Fahrenheit. I don't think there is much effect on rising
Bill (28:30):
You took some blood values and I'll ba or ketones BHBA, no difference fatty acids, no big difference. Urea, no big difference. But you did find higher plasma plasma glucose in the canola diet. Yes. First, yeah. Is there, what, what's the, what's the reason? What, what reason are you thinking? Is there a significance to that? A biologic? Significance to that?
Alex (28:56):
Well, quite a big difference here. And you know, of course we look at our data and we screened the data quite, quite rigorously and that, that difference was there. The only explanation, Bill, we had, I think was the propionate increased proponent and prop as, as we all know, propionate is the main gluconeogenic amino acid volatile fatty acid. So I think that's where the difference is coming from.
Bill (29:30):
Do you think there, what's, what's the result, biological result of that higher glucose, if, if any, do you think it, because then it didn't relate to more lactose production?
Alex (29:41):
Yeah. we, we obviously didn't see that here. I don't think there was any biological effect with these diets in terms of production or milk composition.
Bill (29:53):
So just, just just another energy source, then just
Alex (29:56):
Another energy, increased energy source of glucose.
Bill (30:01):
Okay. Then, you know, this was a pretty extensive study. You also measured digestibility.
Alex (30:08):
Yeah.
Bill (30:09):
Which, you know, one of, I spent 30 years measuring digestibility, so I always liked digestibility data. You found no, no difference, basically no difference in, in dry matter, digestible organic matter, which again, suggests essentially equal energy values in these diets. You also didn't find a difference in nitrogen or crude protein digestibility, even though canola is a significant substantially lower RUP digestibility. What, what do you think is going on there?
Alex (30:43):
Yeah, so don't forget that we did add urea to the diet. So it's not just we, we try to equal you know, the protein by adding urea. So maybe that interfered with the nitrogen data in terms of digestibility. We did see one difference here that's in the table increased a DF digestibility with extruded soybean that so that's a hard, hard to interpret. Again, we added, we added soy house to this diet to, to equal NDF. And then maybe there was some difference there with the a DF, the type of a DF and that cause digestibility. We also have to keep in mind these are marker studies, including the urine data. There is, there is always some variability because of the markers, but yeah, we didn't see any nitrogen balance data except few that I don't think are of any significance. There was some interactions here between for, with parity, but I don't, I don't think these are important differences to, to discuss
Bill (32:08):
On, on the, you, you found a better a DF digestibility with soy diet, which to me, you know, the, the, the fiber in canola meal isn't very digestible. Yeah. Whereas the, the fiber in soy holes is quite digestible. So I think that explains it. But you also, you didn't find a difference in NDF digestibility, and usually those are pretty highly correlated.
Alex (32:33):
Yes.
Bill (32:34):
What do you think's going on there?
Alex (32:38):
I can't, I can't tell you why we didn't see that difference here. In fact, there seems to be almost numerical, numerically higher NDF digestibility with the canon meal versus extruded soybean meal. Again, those are complete diets. The influence of canoe and soybean meal in these diets at 13, 15% inclusion and very low NDF in both feeds will be small. So there is a lot of variability here, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't put too much emphasis on, on these differences.
Bill (33:17):
Did, did, did you, and I, I, it may be in the paper and I may have missed it. Did you look at nitrogen free NDF digestibility, or would this be just NDF digestibility?
Alex (33:29):
No, we did not. That's a good point. This is just NDF total NDF digestibility. That's a good point. Bill. we may have to go back and look at this data.
Bill (33:39):
The diets are, like you pointed out earlier, are quite different in NDIN or N-D-I-C-P and might explain. That's right. That's
Alex (33:46):
Right. The two feeds are different. The diets Yeah. May not be that different.
Bill (33:51):
Exactly. Exactly. And then in, in your nitrogen digestibility data, again, they're both very good and you know, it's marker data, but they look very reasonable. It isn't like you've got some, some goofy numbers here. They do, yeah. Is, you know, the, when I did the calculations on using your room and digestibility data, your RUP digestibility data, you know, when you, you figure out the total nitrogen in the diet, the difference, it really is pretty small and it's likely you're, you're, you won't measure it with total crude protein digestibility, just, it's just too small. Yeah. Feed nitrogen is not the major source of fecal nitrogen. It's in nitrogen. That's
Alex (34:34):
Right. That's right. Yeah. The numbers look reasonable to me, too. They
Bill (34:40):
It Looks very reasonable. I think they all look quite reasonable.
Marcos (34:46):
So I have a question related with the diet probably, and maybe it's a little bit out of the topic, but in my words, sometimes we tend to use corn as the only source of forage. Do you think that changing from canola meal, toru, the soybean meal, will d have different result in that kind of diet? 100% corn silage forage, and in this diet you have 15% or 14% alfalfa silage. Ehh, sorry. It's do you think that the forage source will change the response?
Alex (35:23):
Okay. Well if I understood your question, it's not a hundred percent corn silage diet. We have alpha for haage, we had a little bit of straw as well. Here. You are asking if, if the diet was completely corn silage forage. Is that what you're asking? Okay. Yeah. You know, I don't think the response will be different. I don't think the response will be different. We, again, haage contributes to the nitrogen input here, but the both diets were equal on alpha alpha haage. So I don't think that's a factor here.
Bill (36:13):
It would, you know, with these corn silage, it includes the, in increases the inclusion rate of these protein supplements a lot, which you get rid of alfalfa. So I don't know if it is, if it shows up or if it's more or less likely to have an effect, but that's another experiment, I guess. So
Alex (36:32):
We, you know, we try to make it as practical and as you know, appealing to industry as possible. This study was funded, you know, by industry here. So we didn't want to make diets that are not realistic. And I don't, I don't think anybody will feed more than 15% of these meals in a diet, typical diet.
Bill (36:59):
And like I always told my students, you can't answer every question with one experiment.
Alex (37:03):
So, no.
Bill (37:06):
Let's, let's go into, you know, nitrogen excretion is, is a big deal now and you, you, you've got a lot on the, the, the nitrogen excretion data on your urine end excretion was statistically the same, but you got more urine, statistically more urine urea, nitrogen excretion with the lemme see. I had with the, with the sewing, it was 20 grams more, but the total nitrogen was not, it was 10 grams more. It wasn't statistical. What again, i, I used to see high correlations between urea, urine, urea, nitrogen excretion in total urine, and this seems to be a little bit outta whack. Do you have an explanation for that, or is this not, not uncommon? It may not be as common as I think,
Alex (38:01):
So they both will go in the same direction. You are probably talking about different sizes here in the effect there is about 10 grams versus 20 grams in urinary urea and urinary total nitrogen. That's probably what you mean. Yeah. let me see here. I mean, we have about 60% urinary ure of the total nitrogen, which, which I think is perfectly within the range that we typically see. We all know in terms of environment, urine nitrogen is what is the important one, not fecal nitrogen. If we did measure fecal ammonia emissions, for example, we may have seen some higher ammonia emissions with the soy diet versus the canola milk because of this higher numerically, not statistically, but still higher urinary nitrogen. So if that's your point, I think if, if we have done this work, there may have been some high ammonia emissions from that manure.
Bill (39:20):
I’d be, it'd be pretty, the difference would be pretty small though. I mean, it,
Alex (39:24):
Pretty small differences. Yeah.
Bill (39:26):
So I, I'd say in general, the environmental impact to the nitrogen basis would be essentially equal. I don't think it's a big deal.
Bill (39:36):
Right. That's right. Nitrogen efficiency you know, milk in versus diet in these were about if I remember it averages that there's a little difference between parodies, but it's gonna be about 26, 20 7%. Is that good or bad, or you've done a lot of this stuff is okay? Yeah,
Alex (39:59):
Well, when we have done this, you know, meta-analysis and so on, we came up with about 25, 20 5% nitrogen efficiency for that was about maybe 10, 15 years ago, though. I think there is a trend to feed less nitrogen nowadays, and that will increase in addition to increased milk production and milk protein yield. I think that will increase milk nitrogen efficiency. So if somebody has done an updated meta-analysis, maybe this will come to about 27%. Now for the US data, because European data were at the time slightly higher because they do feed whole protein diets there, I think the average was about 27% versus 25% in North American diets. So I think this 20, you know, 27, 20 8% is about right. What, what you'll see in, in the modern diets and dairy cows in the us
Bill (41:14):
This, I'm gonna ask your opinion now, but how low in protein these were 16.5% crude proteins. Yeah. How low do you think you could have gone without, you know, we don't wanna hurt production that's not economically or environmentally friendly, but how, how, how low do you think you could've gone in this
Alex (41:35):
Bill? We have done a lot of work with this low protein diets and we have gone down to 14%, again, with cows that produce about 80, 90 pounds of milk, and then we see a decrease in milk production. So I would say if we had to guess here 16%, certainly we wouldn't see an effect on production if we have gone down below 16%. That, that would depend again, if, if you do, I mean, that's the thing. If you do a crossover trial, you are not probably gonna see differences even at 15 point a half percent. But if you do a continuous design trial where you give the cows enough time to respond to this war protein diets my guess would be that that 16 at 15 point a half percent, you'll see some loss of production even, even probably some body weight loss. Because we have seen that in cases where we don't see a milk effect pro milk production effect, we actually see body weight effect in, in this long term continuous design studies.
Bill (42:51):
Got a good point. You gotta measure all responses. You don't, don't lead to conclusion.
Alex (42:56):
You do, and you can't do it in a crossover crossover trial.
Bill (43:01):
Agree 100%. My, my last question, so
Marcos (43:07):
I have a quick question. So at the beginning you said that you plan for 95% MP in the diet, but you couldn't accomplish that. If you were able to do it again and accomplish the 95% mp, there is any result here that could change the protein metabolism, but in terms of production? Yeah.
Alex (43:29):
You think that's the efficiency, certainly the nitrogen efficiency would, would improve and nitrogen losses would increase. I don't think we have, we would have seen changes in in, in the milk, in the production, milk production responses for the milk milk protein effects because again, that, again, I don't wanna go too deep into this, but at 5% in our data, five to 7% MP deficiency, but this is NRC bill we did not, we ha we have not seen a decrease in milk production or milk milk protein effects. When we go below five 7% deficiency, then we see a decrease in production.
Marcos (44:25):
That that's because NRC were overestimating mp,
Alex (44:30):
Yes. NRC was overestimated, no question about this. We have done, we have, we have looked at the nass but again, we don't wanna go there. We have an abstract that is coming next year in based on our, you know, continuous design trials.
Bill (44:54):
Yeah. I think the other thing people need to remember is all these protein numbers, no matter what model, they're all estimated,
Alex (45:02):
They're all calculations, all, they all have error.
Bill (45:04):
They all have error.
Alex (45:06):
Absolutely.
Bill (45:06):
Even if, even if it predicts the average perfectly, there's still error. And Yeah. So a 5% difference to me is probably just within the, the error of prediction of all
Alex (45:17):
These things. It's all calculations. It's all calculations. But the cows don't like bill, the cows don't like,
Bill (45:22):
That's exactly right. So,
Scott (45:25):
Yeah. You know, and their nutrition, we feed the two things, right. We feed the rumen, we feed the cow. And, I just found myself wondering as we were talking through some of this would it, would it be important to measure maybe what's going on with microbial populations and species within the rumen? And would that be important to know that.
Bill (45:46):
Alex measured some things that are, are, are bigger picture of room fermentation measures, right? I'm not a microbiologist, but I think he, some of the differences in the fatty at VFAs. He found he has to be microbial. So someone could delve into that, find reasons, and that might be, have, have other significance. So, but it is, what you said is correct. We gotta look at both rumen and we want a very efficient rumen, but we also need a very efficient cow. So you have to feed both, correct? Yeah,
Scott (46:17):
Yeah,
Alex (46:17):
Yeah. You know, you have to decide how far you go with this analysis. Yeah. In most cases, fermentation is enough for me. If I want to follow on the fermentation and see what is causing that effects, then I'll do a microbial analysis which is more expensive. You can't go the other way around. You can't look at the microbial effects and try to deduct other effects from there because that's not gonna make any sense. This is only a tool, and if you, if you use properly, you know, it will give you some additional information. People tend to make too much outta it, I think, nowadays.
Scott (47:05):
Yeah, makes sense. Marcos, anything else? I know this is your first time to the real science exchange. I forgot to tell you, your primary job is to at least come up with one question to stump Bill. I'm not sure we've done that yet today.
Marcos (47:23):
Okay. Now maybe it's a general and practical question for both of our cases, but in the real world, how nutritionists manage the change in price of this commodity, commodity canola meal and ARU soybean meal, how they, of course, they will not add oil, right? So when they need to switch from one source of protein to another, basically they need to reform
Bill (47:53):
I'll answer first and let Alex have the final word. You know, if you look at the meta-analysis very often it's you replace it on a crude protein basis, and then you fill it in with maybe start your byproduct fiber. And, you know, we don't balance diets for crude protein anymore. And so I think one of the strengths of this study is they looked at a ton of amino acid supply, MP supply, RDP, all this stuff, and tried to make these diets truly equal nutritionally, not just equal and crude protein. And I think that's why in this study, they were equal because the diets were equal. In a lot of these other studies, the diets are not equal, they're not the same diets.
Alex (48:43):
Again, I'll just reiterate what Bill said at the beginning. Again, you cannot compare solvent extracted soybean meal with canola meal and say this is better than that one. It's comparing as, as you say, apples and oranges. You know, apple fair comparison is with something that has gone the, the heat treatment that can all mill is undergoing when, when it's processed. And, in that case, there will be no difference in our data show that if you do this, there'll be no difference in production responses.
Scott (49:20):
Gentlemen, what I'd like to do as, as we wrap up here, is give each of you an opportunity just to kind of kind of give your final thoughts and, and Marcos, I'm gonna start with you. What's some things that you might've learned today that has applications for, for the producers and customers that you call on?
Speaker 6 (49:38):
Tonight's last call question is brought to you by NitroShure Precision Release Nitrogen. NitroShure delivers a complete TMR for the room microbiome helping you feed the microbes that feed your cows. To learn more about maximizing microbial protein output while reducing your carbon footprint, visit balchem.com/nitroshure.
Marcos (50:02):
Well, the application and something that I will use in the future is that when we switch from one and change, basically have the same diet basically as spill. And, and Alexander says, right, two, don't change production or, or components in the, in the milk. Right. Something that's, I see those mistake quite often. Okay, even with soybean meal versus a two soybean meal, which are different protein sources, similar, but different. So something, a mistake that I saw quite often here in LA time. So that's my take home message.
Scott (50:40):
Thank you for that, Marco, Alex what's, what's a, a, a few things that you think you learned from the study that you'd like to share with the audience tonight? And, our audience typically is consulting nutritionists, feed company, nutritionists. We've got a lot of academia out there, students. So what kind of things would you like to impart to them?
Alex (51:05):
I mean, again I will just repeat what I already said. If feed intake, when you are comparing these two meals, if feed intake is not affected you'll have similar response between extruded soybean meal, extruded soybean meal, not so, and extracted soybean meal and canola meal. Now, most of the data out there are comparing so and extracted soybean meal with canola meal, and that's not a fair comparison.
Scott (51:40):
Fair enough. Bill, any final words? You wanna put a bow on this for us?
Bill (51:46):
Well, I just want to emphasize, you know, when there's a lot of papers out there comparing ingredients, that's not an uncommon thing. And readers need to look at the diets, not just make sure you see if, you know, if a diet is deficient in RDP because of an ingredient substitution, does that make the ingredient bad or does it make the diet bad? So really delve into the details when people are comparing two different feed supplements to, to say, are the diets really equal? And are you comparing the ingredients or are you comparing difference in diets?
Scott (52:24):
Yeah. Nice summary Bill. Gentlemen, this has been a lot of fun. I learned a lot. It's been very engaging. I want to thank you for joining us here tonight at The Real Science Exchange to our loyal listeners. Thank you once again for coming along with us on this, this episode of the Journal Club. We hope you learned something. We hope you had some fun, and we hope to see you next time here at Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 6 (52:48):
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