Guests: Dr. Kevin Harvatine, Penn State University and Dr. Yves Boisclair, Cornell University While maximizing milk production and improving feed efficiency continues to be top of mind, joining together around the pubcast to discuss the various factors are Dr. Kevin Harvatine and Dr. Yves Boisclair.
While maximizing milk production and improving feed efficiency continues to be top of mind, joining together around the pubcast to discuss the various factors are Dr. Kevin Harvatine and Dr. Yves Boisclair.
A leading expert in metabolic and energy nutrition and professor at Penn State University, Dr. Harvatine began the conversation by introducing his guest, Dr. Boisclair. He mentioned the collaboration between the two first began when he was finishing his doctorate degree at Cornell University under Dr. Boisclair. 1:30
Focused initially on regulating hormones, Dr. Boisclair said he quickly acknowledged the importance of shifting his research to better understand molecular mechanisms in dairy cows. 3:11
In a recent Real Science webinar, Dr. Harvatine said nutrition and management are the best practices. While higher production levels result in more milk pounds Scott Sorrell, podcast host and director of global marketing for Balchem, asked about the importance of dairy cow synthesis and pathways. 11:00
Dr. Harvatine said he likes to think of the three assembly lines as lactose, fat and protein. Within milk, he added the assembly lines would be novo synthesized fatty acids and the preformed fatty acids. He then added that in milk fat depression, the minimum a dairy cow can produce is a 50% decrease. 11:25
Based on the basic endocrine regulation, researchers have been able to adjust basic nutritional factors. In fact, Dr. Boisclair mentioned the prolactin cycle is not only essential during the last few weeks in pregnancy but also in lactation performance. 14:50
It’s not just about one enzyme. Metaphorically, the nutritional system works as a factory. When we think about making the assembly line of milk fat, it’s a series of enzymes we have to turn on, and when turned on, they go into molecular biology level. Dr Harvatine went on to mention the importance of understanding the correlation between the different components. 16:61
On the protein side, Dr. Harvatine believes there is a limiting factor causing a minimized response. In fact, when thinking about nutritional factors, he added it’s hard to have a 50-pound cow make as much fat protein as a 100-pound cow. Adding the main factor always isn’t nutrition, oftentimes it’s the lactation stage and endocrinology history. 34:30
What are some key suggestions for nutritionists in terms of increasing milk fat on the dairy, Scott asked? 48:37
Dr. Harvatine suggested nutritionists tailor goals to fit various budgets and individual operations, adding a few scenarios where various fat levels can be accepted. 50:54
Wrapping up the conversation, Dr. Harvatine emphasized the importance of understanding the complete system when it comes to producing more milk fat. He added the physiology component and hormonal responsiveness are just as important as increasing nutrition and feed efficiency. 1:04:01
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:04):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podcast we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorell, one of your hosts here tonight at The Real Sense Exchange. As all dairy producers are looking for ways to be more profitable, maximizing milk component production and improving feed efficiency is top of mind for everyone at the dairy. Back in October, Dr. Kevin Harvatine from Penn State University joined us on the Real Science Lecture Series webinar and shared some of the newest data and recommendations for balancing all the factors impacting milk component production. You can vo view his full webinar at bam.com/real science. So Kevin, welcome back to the Real Science Exchange. This is not your first time here at the pub, Kevin, so I'm gonna assume that you know the drill. So what's in your glass and is there any story behind it?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:01:01):
Yeah, no, so, and my glass today is Angry Orchard, and, I usually keep it in the fridge, but I thought it would be, a great thing to join Clay in having an angry Orchard today.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:12):
Okay. So he did influence you. Okay. Very well. Kevin, I see you brought a guest to the pub tonight with you. Would you mind introducing your guest, please?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:01:22):
Yeah, so my guest is Yves Boisclair, so I had to, twist Eve's arm a little bit, to join us on this. I wanted, to bring him in on this discussion. So background Eve was on my committee in my Ph.D. committee at Cornell University. So it's kind of fun to have them here so that I can ask some questions and get him to do some answering. It's, not just me answering questions like back in the Ph.D. defense. But even I learned my molecular biology techniques and the molecular biology work I did was an Eve's Lab collaborative work between Dale Baumann and Eve. And then Eve was nice enough to let me stick around for almost a year after to do a postdoc. There's a collaboration with him back, back to Dale Baumann also. So the reason I wanted to bring Eve on Eve reads more deeply than any other animal nutritionist that, that I have interacted with and knows the basic literature.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:02:22):
But he also knows the dairy cow, and I'll, I'll let him give his full background, but he, he's worked with cows and understands cow, but then also understand the basic regulation. And what I hope we get to talk about today is, is, you know, as nutritionists, we focus so much on supplying the substrate, the, the building blocks to do things. And that is important, but we, we can't forget that there are all sorts of regulations going on, and, and that's all kind of at play in the background, even if we're not, not thinking about it.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:02:55):
Yeah. Okay. So thank you, Kevin. Very well. That's nice to see you in person. Almost
Scott Sorrell (00:03:02):
Some welcome Eves. Glad to have you here, by the way. No, welcome. Thank you for coming.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:03:08):
Yeah. So in terms of background, I guess I'm, I'm from Quebec, Canada, so born in Quebec raised on a dairy farm went to school at Laal University, did a master's in Guelph, and applied dairy cattle nutrition. And after that, I went to work with Del Bain. And during the eight days of the growth among BST story I did mostly whole animal physiology at that point, and I was looking at the growth model, looking at protein synthesis, and skeletal muscle. And at that point, I, desi decided that there was a lot of future in understanding molecular mechanisms, and there was a lot of interest in trying to understand our growth among actually acting to bring about this old range of action, both at the memory and on the muscle. And there was a growth factor that we call IGF one at the time.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:04:10):
So it is downstream of the growth amount. And the action, the leading groups at that point, there were three or four. And I went to work as opposed to at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC one of the leaders at the time in this field. His name is Matt Recker. So it, you know, this is where I learned the molecule biology, but very much focused also on this idea or this mechanism whereby GRO can bring about all of these actions, both metabolic and also in terms of proliferation of tissues, like the memory. And so after that, I came back to Cornell and our, you know, I'll just finish with that. Our very first, I would say the first five, the first eight to 10 years, very much focused on following up on the growth among I GF story, but using a genetically engineered mouse model, which allows you to probe a causal mechanism in terms of action because you can, not at the time now you can do it and other animals, including large animal, but you could knock out a gene and see what type of consequence happened.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:05:29):
So initially my work here at Cornell was very much focused on that. But I've used cows all along. I've used sheep and now we're focused on other regulatory hormones. So that, that does you pretty much, I guess my story up to this point. Oh,
Scott Sorrell (00:05:46):
Well, thank you for that. Really looking forward to the conversation tonight. I think you'll add a, a very unique element in keeping with our pub theme Do you have a drink tonight? Do ya eve?
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:05:57):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I have a nice pinot. No, since my origin is I can trace my origin to France, although I spend I I've never, I've been there only a couple of times, but yeah, it's a, it's a nice pinot Noah, let's put it this way,
Scott Sorrell (00:06:14):
Very well
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:06:16):
Today, but, well, it's Friday afternoon.
Scott Sorrell (00:06:19):
Well, it's always happy hour. It's a real science exchange.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:06:22):
Scott Sorrell (00:06:29):
Very well
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:06:30):
Scott Sorrell (00:06:31):
All right. Finally, I need to welcome back my co-host for tonight's conversation, Dr. Clay Zimmerman. Clay, it's been a while since we joined each other and shared the microphone. So, you know, it's getting colder outside now. I'm just kind of wondering if you've kind of switched things up. You're still enjoying the Angry Orchard. Have you gone for something maybe a little warmer, like a hot and mulled cider or something? Wow, kind.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:06:57):
So, good question. So I wanna thank Kevin for taking up the angry Orchard mantle today, because
Scott Sorrell (00:07:04):
He might be the first other than you, right?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:07:06):
I know. So I'm, I'm passing on the alcohol right now. I have this lovely wristband I've been wearing for a while. I don't know if you noticed that last week, Kevin, when I saw you. I've been dealing with a detached retina for two months, and I've, I will have surgery next week, so I'm, I'm passing on the alcohol prepping for that. So yeah,
Scott Sorrell (00:07:30):
Great idea. He's also grounded, and not able to fly anywhere for a little while, so
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:07:34):
No flying for
Scott Sorrell (00:07:35):
For a while, kind of missed him in the field. So, yeah.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:07:38):
So Scott, what are you drinking tonight?
Scott Sorrell (00:07:40):
So, in my glass tonight is, is a generous pore of four roses, right? It's been a tough week. So I
Speaker 5 (00:08:43):
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Scott Sorrell (00:09:07):
All right. So Kevin, to get started one of the things that you said during the webinar really kind of struck me and I'd like to kind of have you elaborate on that. You said nutrition and management is the best practice as an experiment in progress. So what exactly did you mean by that?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:09:25):
Yeah, that's, that's a bit of a term picked up from, from Mike Allen. So you know, Mike Mike's a true believer that the cows are never wrong. But, the computer program and unbelievable unbelievably, the nutritionist are sometimes also wrong, right? So, you know, we, I think in, in our research, we can understand what's possible in, in the directions that things can move in. But then when you're out working on the herd we need to kind of try things and, and work out what's the best set of options in that scenario. And part of this comes down to, I think, in nutrition, we have a lot of interactions. So what happens in one scenario might not be the same in the other.
Scott Sorrell (00:10:14):
Okay. You know, during your webinar we talked about the importance of increasing or maximizing milk protein and milk fat, and that seems intuitively obvious, right? That's, that's what we're in the business of selling. So maybe to put it in economic terms, what is a 0.1 unit, of fat or protein? What's that worth to a dairy farmer today?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:10:38):
Yeah, so, so right now milk fat's, what about three 50 a pound? So I, I think it's probably just under 30 cents for, for 10th of a unit, it's gonna depend on how much milk the, the herd's making, right? So obviously a higher producing herd you as you're increasing component percents, you're getting, getting more pounds out of that.
Scott Sorrell (00:11:00):
All right. Very well, you know, one of the things that intrigued me as you were kind of explaining how, how, the synthesis works is that there are three assembly lines or pathways. Would you mind talking to us a little bit about that?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:11:15):
Yeah. And evil has to correct me on this. I, I always heard that from Dale. I, I don't know where that that original analogy comes from, but, but he used to always like to, to, he, he used to always talk about that we can have, think of it as three assembly lines. So we have lactose fat and protein and, really within milk fat, we could separate and say we have an assembly line for our de novo synthesize fatty acids, and then our, our perform fatty acids. And you know, I, I was just working with one of my students this week on, on some analysis, we're doing, and it's interesting in milk fat like with milk fat depression, you can't go below 50% decrease that there's a, there's a floor that a cow never makes less than, you know, two and a half percent milk fat or two somewhere in there, right? We, never see a cow making 0.5% milk fat, in. And what we always to kind of explain that as is that as we turn on those systems, something turns 'em all on, which is probably the basic endocrine regulation. And then we can turn those pathways up or down a little bit based on nutrition or other factors. But, but we're kind of tur we have that shared regulation between 'em.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:12:36):
So Kevin, I, I don't know if you know this or not. My, my graduate research was done with milk fat depression. Yeah. Quite, quite a while ago. This would've been 35 years ago. And we fed extremely low fiber diets to our cows to induce milk fat depression. And it was amazing how, you know, you could really drop the milk fat percentage Yeah. In some cows you know, down into the twos and other cows they would drop, wouldn't drop Harley at all in milk fat tests.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:13:13):
Yeah.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:13:16):
So, and what do you think the reasons are for that?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:13:19):
Yeah, well, so, so on that part of it is, is the ruen side for milk fat depression, that some of those cows, just the way the ruen works, they're able to handle that ac that, that challenge, right? And they're just not producing the trans fatty acids. So that, that's part of it is that dynamic in the room. And and then the other side is, is the metabolic side. So I know we used to joke that c l a was, was great for grad students cuz every cow responded to c l a, right? So we, we never found a cow that didn't respond to C. So I, I think probably more that variation is, is on the side of the ruen than, than on the side of, of metabolism. But just, just kind of to, to back up and on that, that shared regulation to, so E evil have to jump in. He, he teaches lactation also at, at Cornell. So from the endocrine side, we, you know, there's a minimum set of hormones that we can actually stimulate lactation with. And like, for example, prolactin would be, be part of that in as by my understanding of, of Bowman's work with prolactin, I don't know if there's much other work there's done there, but it's basically needed to turn things on, but then it wasn't doing very much on the amount of, of synthesis. Is that?
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:14:50):
Yeah, I mean it's, it's absolutely essential for the, the last phase of, of, of al cell differentiation. I mean, the cell's responsible for milk synthesis. So you need to have prolactin that happens over the last two or three or four weeks of, of pregnancy. But once you have that, you can remove prolactin and you'll maintain you know, the lactation and, you know, the curve will keep increasing because growth amount is the true gal poetic arm in remnants. It's not true in, in rodents, it's not true in humans. But in, in remnants, that's the arm. Yeah, what's, you know, what's and, and the other thing is that in, in the, when Dale was working on growth amount, they actually got also recombinant prolactin at the time the company called Monsanto was really in the business of trying to come up with other simulator milk, protein milk milk kill.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:15:50):
And you know, Karen Plow who was, well, we all know Kevin knows, and I know, but Karen Plow was a peer she actually treated with prolactin both, and I think at 14 days of lactation and around the 60 of lactation she did twice, and she never saw any, any increase. Now prolactin, I think lately for, you know it's been shown to actually if you antagonize, if you use an inhibitor prolactin once lactation is towards the end of lactation, you can actually reduce yield. And there is this thinking, I think that it may, I mean, maybe the role of prolactin during lactation more subtle, but would be to maintain the population. Yeah. So it's not going to give you anything more, but maybe it, it does drop a little bit the rate of involution.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:16:55):
Yeah. So if we go back to our factory analogy bait, basically we, we have to build the factory at the start a lactation, right? Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:18:02):
I mean, it's not only the genes, it's actually the structure. It's so Kevin, I mean, you know, as you know, the, the mil the, I know you've referred to this like the maland is a biosynthetic organ for lipids, but it also you know, a major bioreactor for making proteins and lipes. Yeah. But what you do over this last phase of differentiation is actually create an extensive endo endoplasmic reticulum, which is the, the, the organ, the rough endoplasmic radium, which is, sorry it's, it's a structure within the cell, but this is the organ L where, you know, casing synthesis is going to, to, to happen. I mean, you know, you have to, for the secretion of casing, you, you need to have this structure. So you need to build all of this, these type of organelles. You need the gogi also more extensively for electro synthesis. And so you need to build all of that. And prolactin plays a very critical role in doing that. And then, and actually lipid synthesis is on the smooth, the smooth endoplasmic radium, which are also another, you know, it's, it's the endoplastic radium that's the same structure. So these three things actually depend on this structure for these three different pathways you have to do to add this cellular structure to start with. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to do any of the three. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:19:34):
So it eve it is, is prolactin involved in, in increased memory, you know, cell numbers or is it, or is it more involved in tur, you know, in colos regenesis well
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:19:48):
At all to get in trouble? Yeah,
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:20:30):
Yeah, I, in I, I'll show my, my bias on this, but you know, there, there's a lot of work a while ago that kind of showed some really important hormones like prolactin for differentiation and growth hormone for, for level of milk synthesis. But my, my guess is that there's a bunch of other factors in play that we just haven't characterized.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:20:54):
Yeah.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:20:54):
Very well, cuz I mean, we, we, I think we sort of think that we had, we, we knew the major hormones a long time ago, but we keep kind of discovering Yeah. Important roles for secreted proteins, right?
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:21:07):
I think, I think one, one, you know, one of my goal that I probably will not achieve, you know, but you know, when you study metabolism, and if you look at metabolism over the last 15, 20 years, one thing that come across is that every single tissue in your body is able to secrete signal signaling molecules. They're going to talk to other tissues to do something. Now, you know, memory mil you know, early lactation and, and dairy cow selected for such a high yield very quickly where, you know, the entire metabolism of the animal is taken over by this land. I mean, we have, you know, every single tissue in the body is directed to feed this memory gland. You know, that's really what happens. So bone in other, in other model system, bone you know, liver, edip, post tissue, all these tissues secrete specific set of signals to tell other tissues what to do when they all of a sudden become dominant.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:22:23):
Okay? And if we have the mam lamb, and I'm not aware of any detection or any research that has been able to identify is signal produced by this tissue at the onset, let's say onset of lactation, that would make sense that the maid lens would be able to talk to other tissues to tell the maid lens a to tell the other tissues you got to turn, you know, to change your behavior. And think about me P T H R P might be the only one that has been discussed a bit in the context of calcium, but in the mouse, it seems to be a bit like that in the dairy cow. Doesn't sound to me like it's Yeah. That dominant for calcium metabolism. So anyway,
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:23:17):
I I, I don't wanna take us too, too far off, off course too early in our conversation here, but, but I think the FGF 21 story would be kind of a neat example of that. If, if you'd wanna give the highlights of that story Yeah. Organ crop talk.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:23:33):
Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's something we've been working on now for a while. I mean, it's a, it's a very interesting hormone. Unfortunately, unlike bst, no companies is truly interested well, because it doesn't do something absolutely spectacular in terms of output. So there is no tools really to study recombinant hormone available in, in amounts that you would need. I mean, we're, we've been able to do some work because we were able to get some, but it's, it's a very interesting hormone because it is a signal that regulates insulin sensi sensitivity in the system. Hmm. So, so it's, it, you know, it's, it's, it's a normal that comes from liver and reset the system towards having a more instant responsive system. At least when you give it exogenously. Now, you know, there is, I don't want to get too complicated.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:24:39):
I mean, Kevin is asking probably because he wants to know what we're doing, but I dunno if we're doing, but there is the physiology, Kevin would appreciate that because it also work with knockout mouse. There is what we call the physiology and, and then the pharmacology. So the physiology of the hormone, is it truly to alter insulin sensitivity? Not so sure. The pharmacology says you can do that with that hormone. You can reset completely insulin action in the animal. I mean, you gave it to an obese animal, a obese sheep. We've done sheep work and the insulin just dropped like boom. So you need far less insulin to be able to regulate glucose. So it's a reset completely at the entire system in terms of insulin response. We did try into dairy cow. We had, we, we were interested because the early lactating dairy cows, at least if you listen to a lot of people, it's presumably insulin resistant can debate that one as well.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:25:50):
So we weren't, because it, it's because of, of this so-called insulin resistant. I actually should, it'd be better to talk about a lack of insulin action. That's what it is, because plasma insulin, because of goes down because energy balance is negative and perhaps the tissue also are slightly less responsive to insulin. So, and then you have a massive input of free fatty acids to try to compensate for the negative energy balance. And historically, people have thought that that's a, you know a factor that leads to some diseases. So we thought maybe f GF 21 neural lactation could address that issue, but it, it, it doesn't work in the dairy cow in that manner in early lactation. So that's why I say I told Kevin before, anything I do is not applicable, but, but we'll learn name and first in biology, and I think you never know when it's going to count. Yeah,
Scott Sorrell (00:26:53):
Yeah. Right. We had a question, sorry, clay. I was just gonna say we, we had a question during the webinar related to insulin, which might be helpful. It was come from Saba Anwar, and he was asking a very basic question, how does insulin increase milk protein synthesis in the mammary gland? So maybe that might be a nice place to kind of recenter.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:27:14):
Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll start with that, man, like, you've jump in here. So, so our, our understanding is that mammary gland doesn't have an insulin receptor, so that the, the mammary epithelial cell that's making milk protein actually can't directly respond to that, that insulin. So so that makes us look for basically an indirect mechanism. So what we think is likely happening is insulin is having an effect in the liver, and you're ending up with an increase in IGF one, and then the IGF one s going to the mamert gland, and in telling the mamert gland to, to increase milk protein synthesis. What's kind of interesting to, to bring into that is that the liver then becomes a little bit of the decider, right? That, that you have that intermediate link. And if we go back to the, the story, the mechanism of action of growth hormone that was through IGF one also, right?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:28:16):
So growth hormone, there was stimulating liver two make IGF one, but it only makes IGF one when energy balance and things are, are correct, right? Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:29:19):
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's, I don't want, I mean, when I look at this, I, you know, IGF one does certain things. I don't, I, you know, you say no insulin receptor, I don't know to what extent that is an absolute truth or not. I mean, I think what's true is that somehow in insulin, insulin doesn't regulate, I mean, as you, you know, pe you know, it doesn't, doesn't regulate certainly lipogenesis. Okay? But I mean, you treat with insulin and you have a response in memory protein synthesis. Is it a GF one? Is it the incident? I mean, it gets very complex because like the IGF one receptor, I mean the receptor for IGF one and the incident receptor, they share a lot of, they, they're very pro promiscuous. And one, you know, just to give you an idea, the IGF one receptor is made of two arms, and the insulin receptor is made of two arms.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:30:25):
And sometime the exchange, like you could have one arm that is the IG one receptor and one arm is the insulin receptor. And when you do that, you change the affinity of the rec. I mean, the, the signal that can bind this hybrid receptor actually could be incident. It could be IGF two, it could be IGF one. So, so just to give you an idea, to me, all of these questions are not perhaps as simple and, and, and as you know, it's, it's an neglected area of work. I will see, I mean, memory, protein synthesis, it's truly, I mean, you look at the, all the work that has been done to understand milk fat synthesis. I mean, there's an enormous amount of work over the last 10, 15 years. I mean, Kevin has helped a lot our understanding of of, of how this is regulated Kevin and many of his colleagues now and, and Dale before that. But, you know, if you think about it, memory protein synthesis is far from having received the same level of attention.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:31:38):
I, and I think part of that problem, what, what really helped us on milk fat is we had c and diet induced milk fat depression. So we can get a 50% decrease and we can do it every single time mm-hmm.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:32:30):
So we are able to, to really characterize the biology. I think the limitation on the protein side is that it's a much smaller response and it's more inconsistent probably, cuz we haven't figured out the other interacting factors. So then it's just a lot harder to do the, the, the, the molecular biology and the physiology part. The, the other thing, and it'll be interesting is thought on this. So, so I sometimes I almost think that IGF one's kind of like the room and pH of, of the physiology world. So, so we try to explain everything through room and pH, right? Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:34:02):
I think there's something else Kevin
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:34:25):
Yeah. It, the other thing just to throw out here, so, so you know, I, I often joke cuz we, we think a lot about percents, right? And we think a lot about our, our nutritional factors, having these little small facts by, by often joke that it's hard to have a 50 pound cow make as much fatter protein as a hundred pound cow, right? That that a hundred pound cow is gonna beat the 50 pound cow mm-hmm.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:35:51):
The other, the other, the other thing that, you know, always, I always wonder I asked there a couple of times, you know, when you look at the model that Dale built based on growth among action, yes, IGF one is absolutely central, okay? But if you look at early lactation, you have an animal that is growth among resistant in the liver. IGF one is to the floor, and yet this cow is able to do a lot. The mam land does, I mean, lactation rise, you can even reach a peak of lactation in that phase sometimes. And IGF one is very much depressed. So again, you see what I'm saying, Kevin? I, I'm not, I don't pretend I understand it. Most of us like to explain, you know, when people ask us a question like this, we say, oh yeah, girlfriend only increase I g Y and da da da da da. But I think this is, you know, there's a lot of things that are not understood. I mean, memory and biology, not only protein but in general, I think Kevin will agree with me, unfortunately in the, the animal science departments these days, I mean, there are a number of areas that are absolute absolutely critical to dairy production. And you find these areas to be neglected. I think memory and biology is not, is one I think, I don't know if Kevin agrees with me. Yeah,
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:37:24):
We don't have very much going on,
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:37:26):
But, and I have a question for Kevin. So since I I don't follow this, I had the benefit of I think Kevin right by me for a number of years, so I could ask questions and he would answer right away, but, okay, so first of all, on your work where you give acetate, I mean exogenous acetate, and you can actually increase, you increase the proportion of the, of the the, you know, the C 16 and longer. I mean the, those fat acid dino, who, I mean, and the lone chain, I mean the longer ones, isn't it? Is that what happens?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:38:09):
It's most, most
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:38:11):
The
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:38:11):
Other way, 16 carbon, but we also do decrease both the, the less than 16 and greater than 16.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:38:18):
You increase everything,
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:38:20):
You, you increase everything. But the biggest, the, well most experiments, you increase everything, but least the biggest increase is, is P 16. Oh,
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:38:30):
Yeah. But I thought your, your, your student was talking, is it, is it the Denovo was increased or the completion of the Denovo on C 16? Yeah, it's a rate of completion. So you get all the small, the, the mid chains, but in this case, when you treat with acetate, you end up with more of the fully, you know extended C 16 tic acid. And I, I don't know, I I'm trying to understand what happened there.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:38:58):
Yeah.
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:38:59):
Is it
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:39:06):
Yeah. And, and part of this, so, so if we go, go back to kind of this idea to, to make milk components, we need two parts. I I like to say you, you know, we build stuff, it's like building out Legos, right? You need, you need the Legos to actually put something together. So, so for, for milk protein, that's amino acids for milk fat, most of those Legos are coming from acetate for that de novo synthesis pathway. And, and you're building that basically think of it as, as a two carbon Lego at a time, and you're building that up to 16 carbons. And that's, we get these short chain fatty acids because at some point the fatty acid falls off and then it just can't be elongated. Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:40:12):
So then you go more towards that completion, which is a 16 carbon fatty acid. But the, the other part of that is, you know, I, I don't wanna forget about the regulation side and you know, we've, we've been trying to, to, to go down this road, but we, we have had some challenges in the lab and don't, don't exactly have all the answers yet, but I, I think there's a, a good chance that that p acid is actually changing regulation in the cell and, and that changes things so that we're going more towards, towards that complete synthesis. Yeah, it's hard. I I wish I had a better answer, but, but we, we need more research. Right?
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:40:59):
Okay. I'll ask you a second one,
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:41:28):
Yeah, and you know, I, so recently we've, I've been convinced that we need to be looking at the amino acid side of our diets when we're doing milk, milk fat experiments. So I, I always joke then in academia, we can, we can claim our expertise is one thing, and we're ignoring every, everything else, right? So when, when generally when was doing milk fat experiments, I would make sure that my diet wasn't generally protein deficient. So I, I mean, I'm usually overfeeding dietary protein just to make sure I'm not, not starving the ruen, but I, I hadn't been watching amino acid profiles and we've, we've been trying to do a better job of that and in, in do, do a better job to make sure that we're not, not deficient. Because if you think about you, you know, we, we all learned the amino acid feral and stave analogy that if you have a limiting amino acid, you can't get a response to another amino acid.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:42:32):
Well, it actually goes across nutrients, right? So, so if one of these essentials was limiting you, you could be limiting response to, to just it in, in, in another, another way, right? So we're, we're trying to get better at that, but what's going on there? You know, I I it could be within the mam cland. So you know, there are some links between mTOR and map kinase pathways and S three B P, which is one of our, our favorite factors. It's regulating lip enzymes. Tho those become really complicated pathways, and I, I haven't ever worked in that area, but there's certainly some links, links in the literature. So, so that's a possibility within the mammary gland. I, I wouldn't rule out some of this sort of whole body metabolic effects in, in tissue crosstalk, right? So you know, if that animal is amino acid deficient, it's not just the mam gland that's deficient, it's also the liver, right? It's also other organs that are, are playing key roles, not just in intermediary metabolism, but in, in endocrine roles too, right? So I I, I don't know if that's throwing out enough different options and not, not not planting a flag on any one of 'em, but,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:44:04):
So Kevin, are there specific amino acids that you've been looking at as far as being limiting?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:44:10):
Yeah, so, so not being an expert, we're, we're just trying to follow what, what the experts are doing and just making sure that we have lyce methionine with within, within benchmarks.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:44:23):
Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I know, you know, from a, from a practical application standpoint, you know, oftentimes when we supplement even rumor protected methionine, the analogs, I know you've done a lot of work with analogs, a lot of really good work there, but, but even, you know, even supplementing, you know, a rumor protected DL methionine, we will sometimes see a milk fat response in the herd. Yeah. We've seen it, and we've seen it with lysine too.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:44:52):
We have seen really consistent responses to the analog on a room effect, right? So reducing risk for that alternate room and bio judged nation. We did do one experiment where we had bypass methionine as as treatments, and we did see some beneficial effects there in maintaining milk fat. We, we didn't quite have the perfect setup because believe it or not, sometimes when we wanna get milk fat depression, we can't get milk fat depression, right?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:45:25):
Dr. Yves Boisclair (00:46:56):
Yeah, I mean, I think the old work is essentially measuring activities. So what they would do is, I mean, this is, this is before, before the time when they could measure expression, they would extract, prepare, you know, extracts and I see for activity. And I think I mean the liver fatty acid center activity is compared to, let's say adipose tissue. Yeah. Or if you compare a ruminant to let's say a mouse or a rat liver, it's, it's virtually nothing. Once, once they're, you know, past the winning, you know I mean, so I, I, I don't know. I mean, as you know, Kevin with Q P C R, you can measure expression of about everything anywhere, but not quite. But, but indeed can be misleading. I guess that's, you know, I, I still, I still lean on the side that there is not very much going on in labor in terms of, of Denovo iis. Not saying there is none, but
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:48:08):
Yeah, no, I, I, I would agree. I I don't think it's a significant contributor. I, I do start wondering how much repackaging mm-hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:48:37):
Guys, if you don't mind, might want to, you know, this has been fascinating, most of it over my head, so I'm gonna bring it back to maybe something a little more practical. So what are some of the key things that you could share with nutritionist in terms of what can they do, what, what kinda interventions can they do to increase milk fat on the dairy?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:48:58):
Yeah, I, I like kind of thinking this as the, the short term versus long-term view, right? And, and I guess one thing we, we haven't talked about on the long-term side is, is genetics in, and we've, we've done some characterization recently just trying to get a feel for how, how different herds are. And, and from the databases we can see from D R M S, there's hardly any variation in average milk fat potential between herds, right? There's bigger variation between, between cows so that that's information we can use today. But, but long term our selection indexes are doing this for us, right? That they're applying pressure to, to increase milk, milk, fat percent. So that would be one thing is making sure that, that you're keeping up with that and making good decisions so that, that your herd potential is where you want it to be down the road.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:49:57):
And, and I know, especially when we go through, through different economic times, it can be easy to think, well, I'm not, not gonna worry about that cuz it's not change changing my cashflow today. But, but long term it could really, really be a problem. For, for the short term things, you know, I, I always talk about we, we need to minimize milk fat depression. And what I, what I've been kind of trying to challenge people on recently is that, you know, when we average a three seven milk fat, if a herd was at a three four, everybody was really upset and this needed to be fixed now, right? The genetic potential in, in the average of our, our cows is increasing. So right now, our 12 month running average is probably 4.05, heading towards a 4.1% for Holsteins. So, so if we're at a three seven, that should be like when we used to be at a three four, right?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:50:54):
So I, I really challenge people to make sure they're changing their, their goal. So I think there's times where we have decreased milk fat because we have some milk fat depression going on and we, we need to, to, to fix that. And then on, on the side of increasing milk fat dietary fat in general has an effect. You know, p acid has the biggest impact there, but we're, if when you look through experiments, especially if you're on a low fat diet, and fat is expensive right now, I think we're gonna be seeing a lot more diets that are really low in fat. So then just adding any fat can give a little bit of a boost. Certainly when you go above moderate fat levels, pulmonic acid gives more, more. And then e even brought up on acetate, that's been really con it in our basic work. Tate's been really consistent to increase milk fat. It's not, not feasible to buy acetate to feed, but it comes down to fiber digestibility and room and room and function, which I know are really hard things. And kind of the holy grail of, of dairy nutrition is, is great fiber digestibility and great room and function, but that, that's important there.
Scott Sorrell (00:52:15):
Yeah. You mentioned that genetics, our, our, our cattle has improved significantly in in recent years. How, what kind of a grade would you give us as a nutrition community and being able to keep up with their needs?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:52:29):
You, well, you know, I, so I actually just had an, an email I was responding to earlier today about this. And, and somebody was wondering like, we've, we've increased average milk fat so much, and why is that? Well, you look at the genetic data in, in a considerable part of its genetics, right? That that can be defined in their data, it's harder for us to say what part of its nutrition. And, and I actually joked with the person I said it, it maybe we should give the most credit to economics because people are being paid for like that and, and now all of a sudden they, the, the, they're, they are thinking it's important and they're not shooting themselves in the foot. You know, they're, they're doing the things they should have been doing to, to begin with. So I, we, we probably don't wanna overlook the motivation factor in this, but certainly nutrition is, I think we're improving.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:53:28):
We've reduced a lot of risk factors part of that through our knowledge, part of it just in our feed ingredients. So as oil became more valuable, they start stealing it from our distiller grains, right? So we have lower fat distiller grains than we used to have. I, I think we're doing a lot better job on the nutrition side. So I, you know, I, this probably part of, part of the influence from, from Dale, but it's, it's hard to push production, right? We, but we, we need to keep up to that genetic potential. We can decrease by making mistakes. So I, I, I kind of have a hard time saying that as nutritionist, we've pushed milk fat but I think we're doing a lot better job of, of inhibiting milk fat.
Scott Sorrell (00:54:19):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:54:32):
Yeah, so I, I there, I always claim I'm not a, not a protein person, right? But what I always say, the number one goal in should be maximizing microbial protein production, right? And you know, if you think about the weight, the way our research goes we, we, we tend to do research with new tools and, and new technology out there. So a lot of our protein work's been focused on amino acid supplementation. It's a lot harder to do experiments on microbial protein yield. I mean, you need to do it can cows, you're doing o masal sampling. And the techniques are, are messy, right? So we don't have a lot of data there, but our number one goal always needs to be to maximize microbial protein production. You know, that that's the big benefit of the room and it's great amino acid quality. So, so that would be number one. And then as far as amino acid balancing and guidelines, I, I point them towards the experts in, in the modeling in, in that field to get, to get their targets. But remember that that balancing is all dependent on that microbial protein pro prediction which, which is tough, tough one to have a good number on.
Scott Sorrell (00:56:00):
Yeah. So given this, the caveat that you're not an amino acid expert, but I have a question. It's amino acid, so maybe I'd offer this up to clay as well, but you know, oftentimes when, you know producers nutritionists are, are using or prescribing amino acids in their diets, and yet when we see milk protein prices decline, you know, around that $2 mark, we see people start to pull that out. So how do you feel about that generally? What, and, and it makes sense maybe from a protein perspective, but what else are we giving up when we, when we pull those amino acids out?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:56:38):
Well, I, I'll let Clay answer that part, but the one, the one thing I always wanna point out on this, cuz this, this gets a little bit frustrating to me, that so, so as milk, soon as milk protein becomes one penny per pound higher than milk fat, everybody tells me, I don't care about milk fat, milk protein's more valuable. And, and I always like to point out that we, we can have both, right? And if you think, if you calculate out the economics of it, if you, if you say milk fat is valuable right now, I'm gonna produce milk fat, you have to put the fixed cost to that cow. You have to pay first, right? So, so if you put that in and calculate your profitability for the fat, now you already have that cow with, and you've already paid our fixed cost, right? So now to make that milk protein, you just need to cover your variable costs for the protein. And, and I, I never wanna do the, the calculations myself, but, but that, that should be pretty easy to make a profit when you've already covered your, your fixed cost. Right?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (00:57:51):
Well, I'll, I'll let Clay answer the
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:57:52):
Rest. Yeah, well, no, that's a, that's a good point. And I, I think what people sometimes forget about is if you're, if you're in a multiple component pricing system, which, you know, in the US I think, you know, somewhere between 70 and 75% of the dairies are, you know, they're paid, they're paid for both pounds of milk fat and milk protein, and they're always these swings between the two. But it'll, but that pendulum swings somewhere. You know, it, the, it swings somewhere between 30 and 70% of the milk check is on the low side rate, some either milk fat or milk protein will make up at least 30% of the milk check. And on the high side, one of those will make up 70%, but you're paid for both. So I, I think we lose sight of that sometimes. And, and you talked about this some, you know, during, during the real science lecture, short term versus long term, it rarely pays to give up on either one of those because, you know, ultimately the dairies being paid for pounds of, of fat and protein.
Scott Sorrell (00:59:09):
Gentlemen, this has been fun, but they just flicker delight, which means that is last call. So what I'd like to do is ask each of you, and we're gonna start with Clay, kind of give us two or three takeaways from this afternoon's conversation.
Speaker 5 (00:59:22):
Our last call question is sponsored by Amino Sure. XM Precision Release methionine, the next generation in amino acid balancing with amino Sure xm. You can save up to 5 cents per cow per day on your methionine investment. Try it today and receive an additional 2.50 cents per cal per day savings with Bache m's. Limited time rebate offer, contact your Alchem representative to learn more.
Scott Sorrell (00:59:46):
Clay, would you mind starting us off?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:59:50):
Yeah, so no, I, I, I, I really, really enjoyed the the, the conversation this evening. So, you know, my takeaways are certainly that, you know, there's a lot, a lot of complexity to the biology of, of producing milk components and a lot we still don't know. But you know, I I think we, we grow some points home, home, you know, in the end about, you know, ways you can be, can feed for both milk fat and, and milk protein, you know, from a, from a practical basis. And and Kevin, I liked your point. You know, certainly from a protein perspective of focusing on microbial protein, it's a, it's a very high quality amino acid source. And, and, and that's where everything starts, certainly from a milk protein perspective. So, Kevin, I want to thank you. I, I sat in one of your talks last week and you taught me a new word, parsim. Yeah, I love that word. I, I actually had never used that term before, but you wanna explain what pars of ODI is?
Scott Sorrell (01:01:07):
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (01:01:10):
Scott Sorrell (01:01:59):
Eva, want to thank you for joining us today. My pleasure. Enjoyed, enjoyed the conversation and so thank you for joining us. Do you have a few comments you'd like to share with, with the audience in summary? Well
Dr. Yves Boisclair (01:02:10):
From my perspective, it's, it's, it's being exposed to the practical things, which I cannot not to pay too much attention to. So looking watching the, you know, the presentation that Kevin prepared as a preview to this podcast I guess I'm amazed and talking to Mike Emberg, one of my colleague, which lately about how much fat is cows are making on this optimized crude protein diet. So guests never realized, I mean, I used to be a dairyman, essentially. I was for many, many years ago before I went back to school. And, and we, we had the cow that was at 3.9% fat. We were super excited. All things and 3.5 or more the average. And now we're talking what, 4.1 to 4.7. I mean, it's, it's plain amazing. So yeah, there is genetics obviously, but I think a lot of good nutritional inputs is going into the industry now. It's amazing. Yeah. So again, it's, for me, it's, it's the, the practical side that I like to listen to. It put me back in the real world in my corner office. I don't think about these things too much. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (01:03:35):
It takes both the basic science and then the practical aspect of it. And Kevin, with that, why don't you, why don't you close this out, sir?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (01:03:42):
Yeah. So, so I, I still gonna bring back to you know, with this idea that we need to think about that underlying regulation. And I think on the applied side, we, we actually are trying to, to optimize this. We just don't quite put the hormones or the physiology to it, right? So if we think about genetics and we're, we're breeding this cow to make more milk and to make more milk fat, well, what are we doing? We're breeding for herd, have different hormonal secretion, different hormonal responsiveness, right? We talk about transition, cows transition period being so important in healthy cows. Well, what, what are we doing there? By, by having that healthy cow coming through she, she is in a physi physiological spot where she can tell the mammo gland to make more milk, right? There's, there's no substitute for, for that. Cuz if she's a 50 pound cow versus a hundred-pound cow, we, we don't have a nutritional lay to make, make up for that, right?
Dr. Kevin Harvatine (01:04:51):
So then, you know, I, I'm, I am a nutritionist and that, that's where my heart is to, to balance that diet, right? And try to get those things right. But I think we have to appreciate that all these other parts are setting up that cow that we're then feeding. It's really important to, to keep that in mind. And, and just that other idea that we, we, we have, we, we have to give the substrate, but then we also need to make sure that, that we're not getting the wave to physiology and kind of optimizing the physiology that I like to use my, my bodybuilder example that, that if you, if you wanna become a bodybuilder, you just can't eat whey protein, right? You have to go to the gym, lift weights, and that tells your muscles to grow. So we, we need to always keep that in mind as nutritionists, yes, we're, we're providing the substrate, but we also need to be making sure we have, have the regulation in place.
Scott Sorrell (01:05:46):
All right. Very well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining us tonight for this enlightening conversation. I certainly enjoyed it and I hope you did as well. To our loyal listeners thanks once again for joining us here at the pub. For a deeper dive into the topic of feeding cows for maximum milk components, please reach out to us at anh.marketing@balchem.com with any ideas for future discussions, and we'll do our very best to bring those players together and make that happen. So from all of us here we hope you learned something. We hope you had some fun, and we hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always a happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (01:06:23):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to anh.marketing@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 a and h.marketing at alchem.com. Balchem’s 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 alchem.com/real science to see the latest schedule and to register for upcoming webinars.