Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University; Dr. Chanhee Lee, The Ohio State University; Haley Zynda, The Ohio State University Special Guest: Dr. Maurice Eastridge, The Ohio State University Today’s episode is an installment of the Journal Club and is around an actual table once again! Our guests gathered at the Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference to discuss some of the newest research published in the Journal of Dairy Science surrounding reducing DCAD, nutrient digestibility and ammonia emissions from manure.
Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University; Dr. Chanhee Lee, The Ohio State University; Haley Zynda, The Ohio State University Special Guest: Dr. Maurice Eastridge, The Ohio State University
Today’s episode is an installment of the Journal Club and is around an actual table once again! Our guests gathered at the Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference to discuss some of the newest research published in the Journal of Dairy Science surrounding reducing DCAD, nutrient digestibility and ammonia emissions from manure.
Dr. Lee stated that by reducing DCAD, the urine or lactating cows would have a lower pH, leading to reduced ammonia emission. Traditionally this leads to decreased milk production. (7:48)
Haley Zynda mentioned that there was milk fat depression across all three diets, even the high or average DCAD diets. (16:50)
Dr. Lee said their study saw a 15% decrease in ammonia, which is a significant environmentally beneficial benefit and increases the mineral value. (26:45)
Dr. Lee also mentioned that in this study, they saw a negative production effect, so at this time, it would not be economically viable. But over the next 5-10 years, we can improve upon the strategy and make it practical. (34:47)
Haley Zynda wrapped up by commenting the natural next step in research would be a field trial and trying to grow these crops, especially those using sulfur to decrease the DCAD and soils that are sulfur deficient. (50:09)
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Scott Sorrell (00:07):
Good evening everyone. And welcome to the real science exchange. In the podcast, we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Tonight, we're recording our next edition of the journal club. And with us, we have Dr. Bill Weis, who's our resident professor here at the journal club. And the bill, typically, I'm looking at you through a computer screen, and I gotta tell you, I, I like this a lot better. You're a lot better looking in person
Dr. Bill Weiss (00:34):
Usually, it's the opposite I
Scott Sorrell (00:36):
Hear. So
Dr. Maurice Eastridge (01:05):
Clear
Scott Sorrell (01:08):
Good stuff. Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about the tri-state nutrition conference and then kind of give the audience an idea of why they should come to the 2023 conference.
Dr. Maurice Eastridge (01:19):
Yeah. Great, Scott, thanks very much for having me here and spotlighting to tri-state dairy nutrition conference. This is our 30th conference, so we're very proud of that as Michigan State, Purdue University and Ohio state university worked together for 30 years to host this program in conjunction with our industry support. That's really, what's made this possible. So looking at next year it's April 17th, 18th, and 19th back here in Fort Wayne, all 30 years, we've been in, in Fort Wayne, been a tremendous central location, but we also draw, you know, from Canada and several other countries as well. It's great to be back in person 2019 was our last time here until this year in 2020, we had to cancel. Everybody knows why. And then in 2021, we went virtual. And so it's really good to be back. Everyone seems to be excited. Our exhibitors are, are back up in several like 50. I think we have around 54 exhibitors. Attendance has been good. And so we're excited. Thank
Scott Sorrell (02:24):
You. Yeah. Awesome. Well, we thank you for coming here tonight. We know you've got some other things you gotta do and you won't be sticking around for the whole podcast, but we appreciate you stopping by.
Dr. Maurice Eastridge (02:34):
Well, thank you. And, and thanks for ball Kim and the mini-symposium you did yesterday that went well and sporting the whole conference. Yeah, appreciate
Scott Sorrell (02:41):
It. You're very welcome bill. So what we do here at the journal club is bill picks a, a paper once a month and we get together with the authors and professors with the papers and we review it, I guess these are a little kind of review then maybe some that take place in traditional universities, but why don't you kindly give us a background on the paper that you've selected for today and why you selected it. And then maybe after that introduce the guests that you brought with you today.
Dr. Bill Weiss (03:11):
Okay. Scott, the paper I picked is the abbreviated title reducing DEC on lactate, lactation performance, nutrient digestibility, and ammonia emissions from manure. I picked this for a couple of reasons. One is we all know environmental issues are only gonna become greater and greater and dairy. And this is a new, new way to reduce that that hasn't been investigated to a great extent. And then just the idea of feeding lower Decca D lactating cows, you know, that's adverse to everything we were taught. So it's, I think just, a new approach, something different. Then, the other reason is I am well, well familiar with the main author of this paper. I worked with him for many, many years Dr. Lee. And then this is the master's project of another one where another student or former student we have here with us as well, Haley Haley. So I'll turn it back over to them to kind of introduce themselves.
Scott Sorrell (04:14):
Yeah. I'm glad to have you guys with us, but, you know, bill, I forgot to ask what's in your glass tonight. Okay.
Dr. Bill Weiss (04:19):
I have a spotted cow beer, which I get to drink about once a year when I visit Wisconsin. Yeah. So this is a two times a year time.
Scott Sorrell (04:26):
Yeah. Spotted cow in Indiana. That's awesome. Dr. Lee, what's near glass tonight.
Dr. Bill Weiss (04:32):
I got spot cow as well. Ah, this is the first time that I tried this one. It's pretty good.
Scott Sorrell (04:38):
Super, thank you for joining us tonight. Give us a little bit of background about yourself.
Dr. Bill Weiss (04:43):
My name's Chan hill, Lee. You can call me Chan I'm an associate professor in the department of animal science at Ohio state university. I started my position in 2015. I got my Ph.D. at Penn state university. I had some postdoc experience in Canada for two years and I started my position in 2000 15. And my research area is dairy nutrition and nutrient management. And this work that we are going to talk about is related to dairy nutrition and nutrient management as well,
Scott Sorrell (05:20):
Super and Hailey, welcome to the real science exchange. Glad to have you here. Thanks
Haley Zynda (05:24):
For having me. I'm glad to be here.
Scott Sorrell (05:25):
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and what are you doing with, your great Ohio state education?
Haley Zynda (05:31):
Scott Sorrell (05:54):
Super. And I'd be remiss if I didn't introduce my co-host, Dr. Clay. Zimerman thank you for joining us once again. And what's in your glass tonight.
Dr. Bill Weiss (06:02):
I
Scott Sorrell (06:03):
Have the usual, I have an angry orchard. Yeah, good. See, evening, I'd be disappointed if you didn't clay. Yes. All is very well. And with that bill, turn it over to you, to lead us through the discussions
Dr. Bill Weiss (06:14):
And I don't John and Hailey answer, whoever is appropriate. I'm not gonna put, put out names, but I guess we always wanna start. What's the hypothesis of this experiment. What's the idea behind it and your hypothesis.
Dr. Bill Weiss (06:29):
So maybe I can start. So we came up with the idea for this project because we always have been thinking about how we reduce the environmental impact of dairy production. I think, one of my interests was to reduce the ammonia emission from men's manure because we talked about a lot of gas emissions from cows and manure. And, we recently talked a lot about meth emission, but I think if you look at the dairy contribution to total gas emission in the United States, ammonia is number one from dairy cows' manure. So I have been thinking of how we can reduce Mo emission from manure. Maybe it's possible if we can manipulate diet and we can manipulate manure characteristics, then it's possible to reduce gas emissions from manure. My target was ammonia and that's well, how I came up with this idea.
Dr. Bill Weiss (07:38):
And again, maybe for the audience, the principle behind Decca and reducing ammonia, what's the mode of action.
Dr. Bill Weiss (07:48):
So a Mo the, this is the interesting part. You probably saw quite a bit of paper about DCA for reporting cows or lactating cows for lactating cows preferentially. We tried to increase the DC to improve the production of dairy cows, but this idea that we had is to reduce the Decca for lactating cows, because if you reduce the Decca, then there will be more anions supply. Then that creates the imbalance between ions and lens between an and cat iron and that increases hydrogen ions in the blood. And that should be excluded in urine. That is how urine is urine pH is decreased. If that is true if that is the case, and if we can decrease quite a bit of urine NPH then probably is a good opportunity to reduce ammonia emission. We also expected some negative effects on production because that's what happened to start reducing decaf, and have some negative effects on production, for example, milk, fat the feed digestibility or dry metal intake as well. But we, we, what we wanna do, we wanted to try some diode manipulation to reduce to manipulate manure characteristic and reduce the ammonia emission to show the opportunity. This is the other opportunity that we can try to reduce the gas emission from manure
Dr. Bill Weiss (09:30):
Ali. When you may be, why, why would pH in ammonia be manure ammonia? What's the, what's the connection there?
Haley Zynda (09:37):
Yeah, so that was actually kind of a high point, and I'm glad I was able to bring this research into some of my recent fertilizer sessions with manure being so incredibly important right now. So pH and pneumonia are tightly tied together in the way that by reducing the pH of manure or the manure slurry, we're able to decrease the amount of ammonia volatilization simply by decreasing the number of ammonia ions that can shift back and forth between ammonia and pneumonia. So by dropping that pH further away from nine or, its PKA we're, we're able to decrease the number of ammonia ions in the manure from transferring to ammonia and then further sizing into the ammonia gas, a state that we can smell when we walk into a barn or we're on the manure lagoon,
Dr. Bill Weiss (10:25):
You're trapping. You're not reducing the amount of ammonia produced. You're just
Haley Zynda (10:29):
Trapping, trapping it. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (10:31):
And
Dr. Bill Weiss (10:31):
Like, so another point is if we trap ammonia, we can increase the value of manure as fertilizer. That was another point
Dr. Bill Weiss (10:38):
Mm-Hmm
Haley Zynda (10:41):
Oh, yes.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (10:43):
So you're trapping the ammonia as ammonia
Haley Zynda (10:47):
Correct. Yep. Correct. Yes.
Dr. Bill Weiss (10:50):
And thus there are two projects in this, and I want to emphasize or spend the most time on the Cal project, but you did what I call a proof of concept experiment in Bero. Can you briefly discuss what you did and what you found, again, I want most of the time I want to talk about the cow experiment?
Haley Zynda (11:07):
Sure thing. Did you want me to start on that? Yeah. Nope. So sounds good. So proof of concept we essentially took manure samples from four different cows and composed this manure together, I should say the feces and then the urine separately so that we could create, a sort of homogenous mix of cows all on the same diet. So from that, the urine was a, you know, typical eight and a half pH feces was a little bit less than that in that, you know, seven, seven and a half range. And so from there, we split that composited feces year and out into four different quats. And we had, of course, our control or our base, which was the unaltered manure. And so then we went forth and included sulfuric acid into, or I should say we composed this manure then into a two to one ratio with VCs in urine and then included or added sulfuric acid into this slurry to drop that pH down to seven and a half, six and a half and five and a half.
Haley Zynda (12:14):
And then incubated from there to see, you know, if, if it will work, if, if through adding a strong acid which has been demonstrated over in Europe, that's a pretty typical, typical way of trapping that that nitrogen in the manure. If we could do that and, and show how much ammonia volatilization, you know loss we would have. And so we were able to do that. It was about, a 20% at least decrease in ammonia after we incubated and measured those air samples. So we were able, to demonstrate the fact that by biologically reducing that manure slurry through diet manipulation, we should be able to see some sort of decrease in nitrogen loss.
Dr. Bill Weiss (13:02):
How, how long do you incubate the incubate, these things we
Haley Zynda (13:05):
Incubated those for, I believe, I believe five days. And so through the incubation process, the manure is placed into gallon jars, gallon glass jars, and every 24 hours, the gasbags or the air collection bags are switched out. And the air is sampled for 30 seconds, every 30 minutes for those 24 hours. And so after we switch off the bags we're able to then measure using gas measurement device and get the concentration of, of the part of the gas particles we're seeing. Okay.
Dr. Bill Weiss (13:41):
So one more thing that I want to add is that, in this, in vitro trial, what we wanted to know is how much urine pH should be decreased to sufficiently decrease ammonia emission from the norm,
Dr. Bill Weiss (13:56):
And, and, and that the, for the animal experiment, then you use that data to come up with your treatment. Again, I don't care which of you, but now introduce the animal, the big picture, the treatments, and what you did on the animal experiment.
Dr. Bill Weiss (14:11):
Do you wanna, do you want me to do,
Haley Zynda (14:13):
You can, you can start and I can, I can add, I guess
Dr. Bill Weiss (14:16):
So, based on the result from, in vitro experiment, we conducted the Envivo experiment. We had 27 cows mm-hmm
Dr. Bill Weiss (15:48):
And because this is ammonium chide, and you're measuring ammonia. How did you adjust for that? That's gonna show you.
Dr. Bill Weiss (15:55):
Yeah, that's good. That's good. Point. So if we provide ammonium chide that provides the additional nitrogen compared to other non-ammonia nitrogen to the diet. So we try to include UIA in the treatment to balance out R D P and R concentration in the diet. So I'm not saying there is the same effect between UIA and ammonia, but I think that's the best approach that we can do to balance out the diet.
Dr. Bill Weiss (16:28):
I think it's also important. These were very high corn silage diets, so pretty, I won't say low, but marginal and potassium, which I think had some effects on your results.
Dr. Bill Weiss (16:39):
Right, right. That's true.
Dr. Bill Weiss (16:41):
And then, yeah, if you want to kind of briefly go over the production data first, and then we'll spend a little more time on the ammonia and, and digestibility data.
Haley Zynda (16:50):
Sure. so with the production data, the milk fat was probably the most interesting result that we had. We were expecting some sort of decrease in milk production, especially with that low Decca diet being near-zero or at least, and then also some milk fat depression, probably however we saw milk fat depression across all three diets. Something not expected, especially with that, that high Decca or, you know, typical Decca type diet. There were some numerical decreases in overall milk production. But that also went along with the numerical decrease in the dry matter intake.
Dr. Bill Weiss (17:32):
And this the fats were low, I mean,
Haley Zynda (17:34):
Effectively made skim milk
Dr. Bill Weiss (17:36):
But you know, you look at the diet on paper and it looks just fine. And Andy, right. So, right.
Dr. Bill Weiss (17:41):
So we change it to part of the discussion during the review process, I think like included that description in there. What we found at the time I look at the milk fat content of the heart diet in our research center and they were all low. So I thought that something is wrong. So what we found is the fat supplement that we used, that sub fast supplement should include some renal leg acid. I knew that, but then, the concentration should be pretty low, but when I contact the company, they send me a fairly acid profile of the supplement over the month, the last kind of year, every month on analysis data and that their leg acid concentration in the SEP fat supplement was just, just like fluctuating. And then when we used that supplement, the linear leg acid concentration was shoes. So I think that's part of the reason why we saw the milk fat depression in our heart diet heart in our search center and our experiment. And also another reason is we used a very high diet.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (19:02):
So the high corn cyclist diet, just for those of you that are listening to the or the, excuse me, the high Decca diet, the milk fat percent was 2.5, 2%. So they, they were all quite low.
Haley Zynda (19:18):
Yes.
Dr. Bill Weiss (19:20):
And then again, kind of summarize the, so no effect on milk fat would treat no treatment effect on milk fat. What else did you find?
Dr. Bill Weiss (19:29):
But one more thing that I wanna add in terms of milk fat if we didn't have that problem that caused the milk fat depression for our cows if we had just normal fat and maybe the milk fat the decreased by the low decaf diet might have been larger. So probably all cows had very low milk fat. That's why some of the effects of low decals. So just wanna point it out.
Dr. Bill Weiss (19:59):
Mm-Hmm
Haley Zynda (20:06):
You know, I, in looking at some of the results there's always that that trans 10 shift, so we ha saw that CLA in the milk fat and that I believe tended to increase with the decrease in Decca. Yeah. So essentially as that Decca dropped, there were more to trans 10 shifts mm-hmm
Dr. Bill Weiss (20:30):
And on milk and protein and intake. What did you find on those
Haley Zynda (20:35):
Intake decreased, or I should say dry, or are you talking about fatty acid intake? No. Dry matter, dry matter intake, so dry matter intake wasn't statistically different among the treatments. However, there was a numerical decrease by about a kilogram from that highest Decca down to the lowest. And so that, you know, we can't necessarily attribute it to the low Decca itself. But then that was also paired with a numerical decrease in milk fat production by about a couple of kilograms from that high, low Decca,
Dr. Bill Weiss (21:08):
Don't we kind of with a 200 mill equivalent D change in Decca, is it, is that about the expected drop in EMI or not,
Haley Zynda (21:18):
I would've expected a little bit more you know, typically you read that cows are gonna sort against that salt, a grain mix, and that wasn't the case, even in when we or I should say when I went through the refusals and separated that and, and did a, a particle separation on it that wasn't necessarily the case either. And looking at some of the other references that we used there, there was a numerical difference between a couple of different chloride supplements. And so the chloride supplement we used in this paper had a higher of the, of the numerical dry matter intake. And so we were hoping that it wouldn't drop intake as much as some of the other supplements that could be used
Dr. Bill Weiss (22:05):
And intakes were pretty good, I think, across the board. Mm-Hmm
Haley Zynda (22:14):
Jan? I don't know if you wanna take over on that one
Dr. Bill Weiss (22:16):
A little bit of milk., if I remember correctly milk grid decreased numerically and energy correctly, milk decreased significantly is because of milk fat as I just as we discussed earlier milk oil, again there are several factors the potentials that we can talk about a numerical decrease in milk. I, this is prob it's not statistically different, so maybe it's nothing, but maybe if we use the more cows, it was significant. I don't know, but it's possible based on the analysis published, that there is a clear relationship between detail level and dry metal intake or milk quilt. So and we had the number decrease in milk dry metal intake as well. This is part of the reason why we saw the numerical decrease in milk coil, but probably again we used only nine cows, which is probably the doesn't have, didn't have enough power to look at all the significant differences. So if we used more cows, it would've been significant, but I cannot this is my guess.
Dr. Bill Weiss (23:28):
I think, you know what those was a meta-analysis, you're talking about. If, if your limit is to lactating cows, almost every experiment increases Decca, and you decrease Decca. Do you, do you think that could make it different, then these other experiments?
Dr. Bill Weiss (23:44):
So the reason why we started with this concept is actually, this is a second experiment we conducted on the preliminary experiment with an even less number of cows to see if there is significant, a huge drop in the dry metal intake or milk. By decreasing Decat in a diet we didn't see much difference in dry intake and milk. I, that's why we started another tried experiment. When I look at the analysis or other design experiments in the literature quite a bit of paper didn't see any significant differences in production when they decreased, when they compared to increased Decca or when they decreased the Decat as a negative control. So maybe there is something that we don't know about DCA. So and also, I saw that we saw the opportunity to reduce the ammonia emission from manure, which is a very good benefit if that is possible. So we try to understand really how much D decreasing DCA negatively affects the production and then how much that decreased ammonia emission from Manor. That's what we wanted to figure out.
Dr. Bill Weiss (25:08):
Now, let's get to the meat of this paper, and that's the ammonia. What, what did you find there and
Haley Zynda (25:15):
Cumulatively there, there weren't any significant differences. I believe the, for the animal experiment day one was the only day that had differences among the treatments themselves. But cumulative emissions, there wasn't quite the decrease we were expecting. It was about a 15 per percentage point decrease which was lower than some of the previous experiments. The other ones done in our lab were showing, you know, 30 to 40%. So we were hoping, to get at least a 20 but we didn't quite reach it. And so of course we didn't reach quite with that in vitro work con proof concept trial showed either
Dr. Bill Weiss (25:54):
How much again on the, and this is still a lab-scale on a farm scale. What would 15, if you save 15% of the ammonia, what do you have an idea of what we're talking about here, or,
Haley Zynda (26:06):
Well, I, I would have to do some calculations, of course. But right now, I mean, nitrogen's a dollar a pound. So keeping as much in the manure as we could, would be highly beneficial,
Dr. Bill Weiss (26:18):
But, and again, I don't know if you know the answer or not. I don't over a five or six-day period on a farm under normal conditions, how much ammonia is it, half the ammonia or half the nitrogen, or what loss of nitrogen are we talking about? And
Haley Zynda (26:32):
So if you, if you broadcast apply manure not necessarily in storage, but if you broadcast apply manure on fields, you're losing at least 40% the, of the nitrogen in that slurry.
Dr. Bill Weiss (26:41):
Okay. So 15% could be an of pounds.
Dr. Bill Weiss (26:45):
It's a lot of decreases. We didn't see a significant difference because of a lot of other factors that we discussed in the paper, but a 15% decrease in ammonia emission, is a huge decrease. It's a huge decrease in benefits for the environment. For example, it can decrease the, can, first of all, increase the mineral value. And also that can decrease the, all the farm smells, not all, but a part of the farm smell can be decreased by reducing ammonia emission as well. And then ammonia virtualization also has an impact on the air quality. Those are all local issues and water quality in terms instead of water the problem. So, it is also very important and a 15% decrease in dying manipulation is the impact of an issue as huge impact, but we didn't see a significant difference because there are several factors. But if I have a chance, I talk about it later
Scott Sorrell (27:48):
And I'm curious that, with the in vitro study, is that a viable method of reducing the volatility of nitrogen?
Dr. Bill Weiss (27:58):
I would say it cannot that in vitro cannot be the real situation. It's not rear, this doesn't represent the rear font, but at least we can compare if this strategy can increase or decrease the gas emissions further om north, the quantified ammonia emission probably doesn't match with the ammonia emission from a real farm. But at least for the ranking purpose, we can do that.
Haley Zynda (28:28):
So there, there is a paper that talks about different strategies of nitrogen retention using strong acids and other manure amendments, and sulfuric acid is the one that's most highly rated. I believe it's over in Denmark and, and the Netherlands that they're doing this. And so there are a few different ways that they can effectively add, this amendment. So it can be, you know, at the storage level, or it can even be at field application to try to retain some of that nitrogen.
Scott Sorrell (28:58):
And what would be the advantages of doing it in vivo versus that way?
Haley Zynda (29:02):
Well, storage would be one thing. You don't have to handle those strong acids yourself. But if you were also to, to try to add those amendments to the manure slurry whether in storage or at field application, you're gonna have to have some extra capital lying around too, you know, improve your buildings, improve your manure storage, as well as purchase more equipment.
Scott Sorrell (29:22):
Yeah, good point.
Dr. Bill Weiss (29:24):
Yeah. And the safety of these acids handling these acids is really important. I mean, we handle in the lab and you can't believe what we have to do cause you to spill a drop on you and you're, you're gonna be in trouble. So mm-hmm,
Dr. Bill Weiss (29:39):
Issues. It
Scott Sorrell (29:40):
Makes sense.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (29:43):
So the so even the high Decca diet, there, there, there were no buffers added to any of these diets, correct?
Dr. Bill Weiss (29:51):
No, no. So we didn't include the buffer. I, I know in practice many people include the buffer to increase the Decca of the lactating cow diet. But we didn't include those.
Dr. Bill Weiss (30:08):
So do that brings up a, if you, if, if you do add a buffer, you increase Decca from 200 to two 50 or 300, do you think you that would increase ammonia or you already had a pH where it's not gonna make it worse?
Dr. Bill Weiss (30:23):
Probably it's the, it's pretty much the same that doesn't change the urine pH much. Okay. Increasing decaf from 200 to 300 or 3 5400 doesn't change the urine pH.
Dr. Bill Weiss (30:36):
Where do you think you have to be to get a, a, a, a, a respectable drop in ammonia without doing too much damage to the production of the cow? Where, where do you think is a good number?
Dr. Bill Weiss (30:50):
I don't know. But I think still there is an opportunity with Decca a 100 or 50 or 75. We use the zero almost zero Decca, which decreased the product ably affect the production, but if we can have 50 or 75, if that doesn't affect production much or no production negative effect on production, but it, if we can increase the volume of urine with that, the low pH urine with the low pH, then we have more opportunity to reduce ammonia emission. The thing is ASIS has a pH as well seven, seven, or 7.5, depending on what we feed. It changes slightly because of fee core pH, there is not there is a range that we can reduce the manure pH with urine. So that's quite challenging. So if it can increase the urine volume by decreasing urine pH, there is more opportunity to do that, but we don't want to give a negative effect on production. So that's the first thing within that we want to try something else to reduce minority pH.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (32:10):
So what's the, what's the typical ratio of feces to urine in manure.
Dr. Bill Weiss (32:15):
So when I was a graduate student, I always used, I didn't estimate fecal volume and yield volume to incubate the manure. I did a lot of manure incubation work before. We always assumed that a ratio is 1.7 to one. This is to the urine the, the, as, as-is basis. And I thought that is strong. And then after I did a lot of experiments, that's quite valuable. And then we found that between cows, the ratio is pretty valuable. And what we got was not close to 1.7 to one or even 2.2 to one. So
Dr. Bill Weiss (32:54):
With, you know, with, as cows produced more, they drink a lot more and it has to either go out and milk elsewhere. And that ratio cows are increasing urine production, more than fecal production. That ratio should be widening. And that brings, you know, one, one of the main drivers of urine volume still is a cat on. Mm-Hmm,
Dr. Bill Weiss (33:32):
Yep.
Dr. Bill Weiss (33:32):
And that would've been neutral on Decca, do you think, and it would've increased urine volume, no question. Do you think that would've made it a more positive or did the DEC a having a bigger effect?
Dr. Bill Weiss (33:43):
I don't know if potion chides hurt dry metal intake. I think I saw some papers about the intake problem and portability problems with the potion crawl. Right. I don't know exactly. I, I don't remember exactly, but there was some concern in old PA the, the cross papers, but if that doesn't affect dry matter intake or just, I mean, I'm, I'm talking of just the palatability issue or something else. If that doesn't affect the dry metal intake, then we can include that increased potassium level without changing Decca, by feeding potassium chide, and then decreasing Decca with ammonium chide or something. Like that's some other thing that we can try has the opportunity as well.
Dr. Bill Weiss (34:31):
Salt will do sodium qu do the same thing. Yeah.
Dr. Bill Weiss (34:34):
Right, right.
Dr. Bill Weiss (34:35):
But again, this adds cost all this is adding cost. Yeah. Do you think this is economically viable with additional, you know, right now this is still early research, but do you think this could be
Dr. Bill Weiss (34:47):
Sold? We saw quite a negative production effect with this strategy. So I'm not, I, I, at this point at this moment, I, I say, no this is not particularly affected. We can probably next five or 10 years, we can improve this strategy with a slightly different approach. If that works, maybe it can be practical, but at this moment it's not practical as far as it harmed the production of cause
Dr. Bill Weiss (35:19):
Now I thank you. Eventually. I think we all think this is eventually ammonia emission may be taxed or regulated, or there be an economic cost to getting rid. So would that change the economics then if all of a sudden it costs you money if you lose X amount of ammonia?
Dr. Bill Weiss (35:38):
I think if we can capture point in manure, if we use this manure as fertilizer and that works well for crops then definitely there is a positive aspect for that problem is I don't know if producers can recognize that benefit if they see that and they recognize it. Yes. Probably it's the benefit. Decreasing ammonia is, is, is, is very important. But I don't know how much this concept we're capturing manure with more ammonia changes the crop growth, this is another area that we need to look at.
Dr. Bill Weiss (36:23):
So I've been asking most of the questions. I only got one more you know, you use chide as the Anon. Do you think you'd have got the same thing? Have you used using a sulfate salt, the sulfate Aon, or say again, you know, you use chide to lower Decca. Yep. But do you think you'd have seen about the same thing if you used sulfates?
Dr. Bill Weiss (36:44):
So we can have co we can change the Decca equally by using surfer and chide theoretically, but their digestibility or absorption is different. I believe surfer has less digest observable and I don't know exactly if there is the same effect when they appeared in blood for, to, to increase hydrogen ion and decrease the U I don't know if there is the same effect between sulfur and chide. Because if I just think UR has less digestible, then I think chide is the best way to change urine pH quickly compared to sulfur
Dr. Bill Weiss (37:35):
W would be feeding these high sulfur do there's the mineral antagonist is all that. I don't want to talk about that, but would you know, these cows will excrete a lot more sulfur and manure? Yeah. Mostly fecal. Is that an environmental issue then too?
Dr. Bill Weiss (37:48):
So there are two things if we increase UR SAR for itself is toxic in the room. And that's one thing that we need to probably think about if we want to increase UR content to decrease. Another thing is SAR for concentration in manure. If we increase sulfur concentration, it increases hydrogen Sufi emission. That might be another toxic gas that we can have on the dairy farm. But hydrogen cide emission from manure is pretty small. I don't know if that emission is going to be pretty toxic for workers or cows on the farm. I'm not sure. But it indefinitely increases hydrogen ified emission. Another thing is as a manure value there are studies agronomic studies starting around trying to increase the UR supply when they apply the fertilizer because of a lack of UR concentration in soils, if that UR needs to be needed for crop growth then maybe in terms of manure value having more UR in manure might be beneficial, but I'm not sure mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (39:07):
Dr. Bill Weiss (39:25):
So what I wanna do is drag treatment to manure, to reduce gas emissions. That is the most effective way. Okay. But pro the action or using some enzymes or applying some microorganism, there are many things that we can do to reduce gas emissions from manure problem is I don't think people want to spend money to do them, to do something with Menor mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (40:19):
Dr. Bill Weiss (40:22):
We are doing some the using some distill grains to do something to manipulate the manure characteristic to reduce ammonia. And we try the DCA and I like to try different levels of DCA not very low
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (40:56):
So you mentioned earlier that the line lake acid content of the diets was higher than you expected. Yeah. Where they, the other dietary nutrient levels, did they, did they come out the way you expected, or were any of the others different than you were expecting?
Dr. Bill Weiss (41:14):
I think the crude protein level was slightly different, but it was in the expected range. And other than that, it was pretty close.
Haley Zynda (41:23):
I mean, the lowest Decca we were trying to shoot for that 50 range but ended being
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (41:28):
Lower. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. And I, I
Dr. Bill Weiss (41:31):
Don't know, what you mentioned, but these were 16% protein diets just for the audience.
Dr. Bill Weiss (41:37):
Yep.
Scott Sorrell (41:38):
And where the fatty acids in a room in AER form, or
Dr. Bill Weiss (41:42):
It was a mixture between vegetable or fat and animal fat mm-hmm
Scott Sorrell (41:53):
Okay.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (41:54):
So was, was the corn silage higher in little lake acid content than you were expecting?
Haley Zynda (42:00):
So that's an interesting aspect of it because there is a paper that correlates starch concentration in corn silage, along with a linoleic acid concentration, in the silage. And that's out of I believe it's Penn State. And so essentially with high starch corn silage diets, you're also gonna have an increased concentration of linoleic acid in the diet, or at least in that silage. And so when, when our corn silage is measuring 35, 30 6% starch, we expected quite a bit more linoleic acid. After we had found that paper you know, we expected a higher linoleic acid concentration than we were initially banking on
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (42:47):
Bill. You mentioned sulfur earlier. So where should we be balancing sulfur in our lactam diets
Dr. Bill Weiss (42:55):
0.2
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (43:08):
So, when you added the ammonium chloride to the diets, you reduced U is the, is the rated degradation of urea and ammonium chloride? The same,
Dr. Bill Weiss (43:27):
I believe U hydrolysis to two units of ammonia in the room is very fast. As far as I know but I don't know. I, I didn't I was, there's no way that we, I can watch it, how that is degraded and utilized, but their HSIs should be very fast in the room and by microbes, and we assume it will be pretty similar,
Dr. Bill Weiss (43:57):
You know, you on the, on the high DCA, the one without ammonium Qu you had half a percent urea, which is pretty high. And what amazed me is you had really good milk fats or milk proteins, and terrible milk fats, but for all that urea, those are pretty good milk proteins you had for, for across the board. All treatments. Yep.
Dr. Bill Weiss (44:17):
Yep. Yep.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (44:19):
So you did, you did see milk, protein percent response in the animals. Can, can you describe what you saw there?
Haley Zynda (44:29):
Well, I, I, I guess I'm not remembering the protein results as much as I'm remembering the fats. I believe there was a, was it an increase in protein? Yeah,
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (44:41):
Yeah. Yeah. There was a linear increase in milk, protein percent as you lower Deccan mm-hmm
Dr. Bill Weiss (44:48):
Ill was not significantly different. Right.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (44:53):
Is that right? Yeah, no, no, no effect on protein yield though.
Dr. Bill Weiss (44:56):
So that is pretty much telling us pretty much dilution effect. Probably we have less decreasing ly decreasing milk, and then it has a high concentration of protein. So then this protein synthesis is about the same between the treatment.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (45:17):
So the other part of the paper I found interesting was where you were monitoring the urine pH levels. So you, you looked at 'em throughout the day. So how many times a day were you checking urine PHS? Do you
Haley Zynda (45:30):
Remember? So throughout we were measuring pH once a week until that last week of data collection. And then at that point, we were measuring, I believe every six hours. We were taking a look at urine pH and collecting urine and collecting feces to make that final composite. And, so the measurement of pH at the time of collection was even different from the time of incubation. And so we attributed that to the freeze-thaw process. There are natural buffering effects in the urine pH and interestingly enough, that came from a, a human science paper from, from urine samples in that way essentially that thawing process allowed the urine to essentially buffer itself and increase the pH.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (46:18):
So the Dal variation wasn't that dramatic. But you did see some week-to-week differences, in the low DED diet, correct. Mm-Hmm mm-hmm,
Haley Zynda (46:30):
Dr. Bill Weiss (46:34):
And those, that week three and four popped back up for the low DED mm-hmm
Dr. Bill Weiss (46:47):
So we, I think the problem was the daily order, the grain mix every other week, something like that. And always there is a variation between batches that they make at the feed mill. I think that is a part of the problem. That's why we have an increased huge decrease in urine pH and then stay there and then increased a little bit. And then the decrease back down that's, that's how I think what, what had happened.
Haley Zynda (47:22):
I do remember taking a look at some of those monthly composite samples, and there was one that was a little bit higher than what I was expecting. So that was likely during that weeks three and four
Scott Sorrell (47:31):
It's time for the last call. Cause I am out of a beer
Dr. Bill Weiss (48:04):
Well, like I started environmental issues are only gonna increase in the past, you know, for ammonia, reducing ammonia, the goal, we always just did feed less protein and which is good, but there's some disadvantage of that too. So these ideas of whether they work perfectly or not, again, just give us a bigger toolbox of ways to reduce ammonia. So I think in the future, things like this may become even more important. So,
Dr. Bill Weiss (48:32):
So what, what one thing that I wanna add to the bill point reducing protein level in the dial always work to reduce ammonia emission, but that also decreased the manure value as well. Mm-Hmm
Scott Sorrell (49:44):
Clay.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (49:45):
I think, you know, I think this is important right now, taking, looking at the cost of fertilizer right now, the cost, of nitrogen fertilizer, is extremely high. So if we can retain more of that nitrogen in the field, that's, that's a huge benefit now,
Scott Sorrell (50:06):
Very well. Hailey, going give you the final comments
Haley Zynda (50:09):
Sure thing. So a lot of what I'm thinking has already been said, so I won't necessarily echo it. But I think a natural next step in research would be a, a field trial and trying to grow some of these crops, maybe not necessarily with a chloride supplemented diet, but especially those that are using sulfur too, to decrease that DEC a especially for some of those soils that are sulfur deficient. Now that I'm working in extension, I'm looking a lot at the whole farm model. I'm helping a lot with agronomic areas that I wasn't doing necessarily before. And so just trying to get that whole umbrella approach, to see, you know, how it comes full circle would be important. Mm-Hmm
Scott Sorrell (50:46):
superbill. This is another good one. I want to thank you very much. You did a great job today. I brought a nice paper for us to look at for Dr. Lee, the first time here it's a real science exchange. Look forward to having you back again.
Speaker 8 (51:29):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to anh.martketing@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 bache.com. Che'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 balchem.com/real science to see the latest schedule to register for upcoming webinars.