Joining together for the final episode of the New Revelations in Transition Cow Nutrition mini series from the 2022 Cornell Nutrition Conference to discuss animal nutrition requirements are remarks from Dr. Heather White of the University of Wisconsin and topical insights from Dr. Clay Zimmerman of Balchem.
Guests: Dr. Heather White, University of Wisconsin
Joining together for the final episode of the New Revelations in Transition Cow Nutrition mini series from the 2022 Cornell Nutrition Conference to discuss animal nutrition requirements are remarks from Dr. Heather White of the University of Wisconsin and topical insights from Dr. Clay Zimmerman of Balchem.
Discussing the challenges a cow faces during transition to lactation, Dr. White briefly began the series highlighting the impact both negative energy and nutrient balance has during each period. 3:58
When a cow enters different cycles such as pre-partum, her energy requirements vary and balance among glucose, negative amino acids and macro and micronutrients becomes critical factors.
So how can nutritionists maximize adaptive mechanisms to shift precursors or ingredients to maximize lactation efficiency?
Beginning with key lactation performance supplements, Dr. White mentioned choline is a nutrient with the ability to impact milk yield and improve energy production. In fact, a 21-day choline study from the University of Wisconsin indicated a 4.6 pound per day increase and substantially greater carryover ratios. 15:28
Not only has research shown the immediate production benefits of choline, but also the positive impact the nutritional supplement has had on liver lipids during calving.
Dr. White added that with three available methyl groups, choline also plays a valuable role in methyl donating which has long lasting effects on liver metabolism and overall nutrition. 20:21
In addition, research shows that supplementing cows with rumen protected choline (RPC) ultimately improves calf growth, immune functions and metabolic health as well.
However, when discussing health and clinical improvements in a prepartum cow, Dr. White mentioned the key is to understand the next generation is developing in utero. She then shifted the conversation, echoing the importance of choline supplementation in multiple generations as body score conditions fluctuate. 35:53
Wrapping up the conversation, Dr. Zimmerman summarized key points that Dr. White shared and highlighted the impressive milk yield results from the University of Wisconsin study. 45:32
If you would like to review Dr. White’s webinar from the 2022 Cornell Mini Symposium, you can view all four webinar series at balchem.com/realscience.
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Scott Sorrell (00:08):
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 Science Exchange. Tonight we're completing a series of podcasts with presentations from the Transition Cow mini symposia presented prior to the 2022 Cornell Nutrition Conference. Before we dig in, I'd like to welcome my co-host, Dr. Clay Zimmerman. Clay thanks for joining us here once again. And do you have any interesting in your glass tonight?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:46):
I, I do. I'm back, back to my old standard here. Yeah, I've got some hard cider tonight.
Scott Sorrell (00:53):
That's a big glass of cider though. I'm glad to see that
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:55):
That is what's in your glass tonight, Scott?
Scott Sorrell (00:59):
So, tonight in honor of Dr. White, I'm having a whiskey old-fashioned. Now, I will apologize, Heather. There's no cherry in the glass. I know that yours usually do, but I just didn't have one. Ms. Mary didn't have one in the cupboard, so we're gonna go without, but we do have the whiskey Old fashioned. So clay and conclusion of this great series of podcasts cheers.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:23):
Cheers.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
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Scott Sorrell (01:48):
In this podcast, we get to hear Dr. Heather White as she shares the newest transition cow research completed at the University of Wisconsin. Clay, what should the audience be looking for as they listen to the presentation?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (02:00):
Yeah, a few different things here. So you know, first of all, the production level, these cows, these were really high producing cows in this study. So we really had a couple of unique things when we designed this experiment with Dr. White, that was one piece we were looking at, you know, will we see the same response to when we protected choline in, in high, in these really high producing cows? The other unique, aspect to it was we were looking at the at, potential benefits in the calves born to these cows. First of all, Holstein heifer calves, but there also were, were beef on dairy calves in this experiment as well. We'd never, that had never been looked at before. So that, that was a, that was a second unique aspect to, to this particular study that we, that we did with Heather.
Scott Sorrell (03:06):
Excellent, excellent lead in. So let's get right down to it. Let's hear what Dr. White has to say.
Dr. Heather White (03:11):
What I was asked to talk about were some new insights from what we've been working on at University of Wisconsin and transition cal research, which I have apli and kind of comically renamed a k a, what we did during Covid I'll get to that in just a few minutes, but you'll see that we did the largest study we've ever done under the context in pretense of what it took to do research during covid. You all know what it was like to be out in the field, and so we'll share some of the things that we worked on. But before I jump right into that, I certainly don't have to tell you that the transition to lactation periods a period of great challenge, but also a period of great opportunity, right? This is where what we do with nutrition and management can have some of the biggest impacts.
Dr. Heather White (03:58):
Now, the driver on that potential for impact is largely due to negative energy balance and negative nutrient balance. So when the cow is pre partum, she's a dry cow, she's an easy keeper, right? Sometimes a little too easy, that's a different issue, but for the most part, she can consume here in yellow more than what's required the blue line. And so she's in positive energy balance, but as she enters partition, as she approaches the time of calving, her energy requirement drastically increases and it exceeds what she can consume. Then she goes into negative energy balance, and we always talk about this being negative energy balance, but it's not just energy, right? It's negative glucose balance, it's negative amino acid balance. It's me negative macro and micro micronutrient balance. And so we've gotta work harder to make every bite she's consuming count. Now, what we focus on in my lab is how can we take this period of negative nutrient balance and better help the cow meet her needs.
Dr. Heather White (05:06):
So she has adaptive mechanisms that allow her to shift what precursors or what feed ingredients, what room and products she'll use to meet the needs of lactation, and how do we take advantage of that? Or how do we help work with her so that she can do that more efficiently. So if we think about the context of the liver, when we change what the precursors that she's predominantly using are, there's a shift in how those nutrients are partitioned, and there's a shift in those pathways. So at a 30,000 foot view, if we have the liver, and we've heard some of this today, so I'm just gonna highlight here, we know we need glucose production, and that's typically from propagate lactate, some amino acids. Not all can be used for glucose production, but as feed intake is decreased, we lose some of those contributions, and we have contributions from other sources like glycerol from mobilized adipose tissue.
Dr. Heather White (06:09):
Now, that's still a fairly small contribution to glucose, and we know the biggest contribution of fat mobilization as she's milking off her back, as we say, is the energy that's coming from non fatty acids, okay? Those fatty acids go to the liver, and in an ideal world, are completely oxidized through the TCA cycle for energy. But there is a capacity to this. There's a limit, right? We could think of it as a carousel. So how many people have taken kids or grandkids to ride a carousel? And what determines how long you wait in line? Or how many kids get to ride the carousel? How many animals are on the carousel, right? So what happens when you're the next in line and all the horses are full, depends on when the last time you fed the kid is and how tired they are, right? There has to be some alternative fates.
Dr. Heather White (06:59):
So either you can wait for a few turns of the carousel or you can go find something else to do or dig a snack out of a magic bag, right? So the liver has the same capacity to pivot. These building blocks of fatty acids can be used in oxidized for energy, but they can also have alternative fades, and this balance is key. So two of those alternative fades is they can be in completely oxidized through ketogenesis. We don't harness as much energy through this pathway, but ke bodies and other ke bodies are another form of energy that can be exported from the liver. And I'll, I'll come back to that in just a second. They can also be reed as triglycerides, and we heard josay talk about stored liver lipids. And so these three have a balance within them. Now, historically, we've thought about keto bodies or ketogenesis and triglyceride storage as being all negative, but we're learning it's not purely a bad thing.
Dr. Heather White (08:03):
So we heard Mike talk a lot about the energy demands and the energy requirements of the liver of producing protein in any of those tissues, right? TCA cycle is what's producing the energy for most of that. But the liver cannot export energy at TP or energy equivalent in nads from the liver for use by other tissues. In contrast, ke tone bodies can be exported, so those can be shipped to other tissues like the mammary gland, the central nervous system, and can be used for energy. We're also learning through some work I won't share today, but some basic mechanistic work we've been doing along with others across species that the triglycerides may be transiently stored. So we may be able to help re harness those later when the liver has more capacity. Okay? So my point from this is that all three have a role, and this is a part of an adapted response to transition to lactation or to negative energy balance.
Dr. Heather White (09:00):
Now that means our job is to find the nutrients that can help modulate these pathways to find the ways that we can shift the balance or the flux between the three and the other pathways going on in the liver so that we can help the cow be efficient and productive along with remaining healthy. All right, so that brings me to what I'm gonna talk about today. One of those nutrients that can modulate several of these pathways is choline. And I'll share the impact of room and protected choline supplementation on lactation performance, a little bit high level of where we think the mechanism of that is coming from, and then also looking at the calves or the offspring that were exposed to the choline in utero.
Dr. Heather White (09:46):
So several people have highlighted this meta-analysis, so it saves me some time leaving more time to share the good data. But basically a meta-analysis of choline studies had demonstrated that there is a consistent positive impact on milk yield and energy corrected milk, which is great to know that across the literature, the patterns the same. But what we were looking at when we focused on this is there are very few, in fact, only one study that feeds this higher level of choline. And so we wanted to do a study where we teased out if a higher dose of choline, pre partum would result in a difference in response to just the standard dose fed pre and postpartum. And that's when we started this study. So we were planning this study early 2019, maybe the end of 18. And so when everything in the world is hunky dory, you don't hesitate to plan the biggest study you've ever done with, oh, say a hundred plus calves and their calves and multiple diets.
Dr. Heather White (10:49):
At some point on farm, we were feeding eight different diets when we had cows that were pre partum and postpartum not to mention the taking care of the calves. And so this was a really fun study to do for a lot of reasons. It was also a challenging study for some others. But we ended up enrolling 116 multi Paris animals. We fed them from 21 days before anticipated calving. And there's a few interesting things I wanna point out. The first one is that across the studies in the literature, most of the time when we feed something like choline or methionine or anything else that's a transition supplement, we tend to top dress it. You hear the studies that are we top dress the choline? We put it on, maybe we mixed it in a little, and we know that that response is different than if we truly mix it in on farm. How many of you have top dressed something on a farm you're actually working with?
Dr. Heather White (11:47):
Once in a great while, we get the opportunity where we can do that, right? How many of you would prefer to mix it into A T M R? All right, so we wanted to mimic that aspect because we don't have a lot of research that has actually mixed it into the T M R. Now, what's that mean? That means that the cows ate the amount of CHO that is associated with how much feed they ate, right? So that introduces a little bit of variance in a research world, but that variance actually mimics what's happening in the real world. So if a cow ate more or less than we had formulated for more or less than the average, then she may have consumed more or less choline than the average. So we actually have a whole nother set of linear analyses that I won't dig into today because the response is the same regardless of how we analyze it.
Dr. Heather White (12:36):
So what we did was we broke pre partum treatments into four groups, control, no, R P c R P C one regular dose. So this is the recommended dose of the reassured product. And then you heard a little bit about this product from Berry. This RPC two I call it, which is a higher concentrate product space, is valuable in the ration. You all know that, right? So if we have a higher concentrate product, then I can feed more of it without changing every other aspect of the diet. So that's how we use this to our advantage here. So we have the recommended dose of RPC two, we also have a high dose. These were the pre partum doses and pre partum we have individual calcine intake. And then we increased that pre partum RPC postpartum. They went to the default, if you will.
Dr. Heather White (13:28):
Okay? So control, stayed control, no rpc. If they were RPC one pre partum, they had RPC two rpc, one postpartum. And regardless of which dose they got of RPC two pre partum, they got the recommended dose postpartum. So our goal was only to investigate the change of the pre partum dose, okay? Postpartum. They were also housed in groups of eight and fed for 21 days. After the 21 day period, we moved them into groups of 16. We mixed them up, we fed them the herd diet with no room protected choline. So just our regular herd ration. All right, so this is the energy corrected milk from that study. I'll take a second to orient you because all of these figures will be in the same order, and all of the cow data will have the same colors. So control is red, and then R rpc one regular dose rrp C two regular dose, and then RPC two high dose in that order, yellow, green, and blue.
Dr. Heather White (14:31):
So what we observed was during the 21 days, we were feeding the colon cows increased milk as expected. We called this the supplementation period, but there was no significant difference of treatment, okay? Now, what we did observe was a significant effect during what I call the carryover effect, although I'm really fond of Barry's hangover effect. I kinda like that. I might steal that berry. But this hangover effect, we saw a significant increase in energy corrected milk 4.6 pounds a day advantage. It was about two kilos. So very consistent with what we've seen in the meta-analysis and across the other studies. But I was baffled. Why did the cows not respond immediately like they have in every other study? What did we do wrong? So I'm looking at this data and I keep looking at how steep this milk production increase was in the beginning.
Dr. Heather White (15:28):
And I had to ask myself, do I think that cows could really have rapidly increased that much more during that period? Are they producing at a level where it takes time to see that advantage? And so then my savvy PhD student went back to the meta-analysis and said, well, our cows are making 33% more milk than the average in the meta-analysis. And in fact, you're making 20% more milk than any other study in the meta-analysis. And that really gave me a pause to think about the scale in this study. So what I have here are the milk yield and the ecm from the meta-analysis. Again, you've seen these figures and then the supplementation period for our study and the post supplementation period. So these cows were making a ton of milk right off the bat. They were doing what we wanted 'em to do.
Dr. Heather White (16:20):
And I think that's why we didn't observe an increase until the post supplementation period. So when we calculated out E EC M was 37% greater, but we still saw, if I go back here, we still saw that 4.6 pounds per day advantage with the regular dose supplementations. All right? So how is this happening? What's the mechanism of choline to have an impact and have that carryover or hangover effect longer term once we're done feeding it, and we're still observing benefits. Historically, we thought this was primarily due to liver lipids. And the question to Barry at the end there, he got at this, we thought that cho's role as phosphate choline facilitating V L D L export was a key. It was keeping cows from having fat accumulation. And this is just general data across cows, no treatments here. We know that there's a characteristic increase in liver lipids around the time of calving, and that cows recover from that which is pretty unique to cows compared to other species.
Dr. Heather White (17:31):
For example, in humans, it's really hard to get a reduction in liver lipids without surgery or pretty significant diet and exercise interventions. We also know that if we induce fatty liver, there's a protective effect from choline. A lot of that was Rick drummer's work. Josay presented some of this earlier out of Florida showing the same thing. And so if that's, if that's it, then that should be able to explain it all. And so a few years ago, we did some cell culture work. And when we culture hepatocytes, bovine hepatocytes, each of these blue nuclei a liver cell we can induce the same kind of lipidosis that we see in the transition cow. We put fatty acids in the culture that mimic what are circulating in the cow at transition and those cells will take up and accumulate fat. So this is an, a useful model.
Dr. Heather White (18:24):
Like Barry pointed out, cell cultures a model. It's not perfect, but it gives us really valuable insights. And so when we do that work, we could see that choline supplementation increases oxidative capacity, increases energy output decreases KE tone bodies, or B H b decreases triglyceride accumulation, and can increase gluconeogenesis and V L D L export. Now for the sake of time, I'm not gonna show you all the metabolites we looked at in our cow study, but for the most part, the circulating markers that we can measure in the cow agreed with this. And so that seems a pretty realistic representation of what's happening. So when we supplement choline, we're having an impact on liver metabolism. And that impact at the time seems to have a long lasting effect. So even though we're only feeding it in the pre partum and postpartum time period, we're able to influence long lasting metabolic capacity of the liver, which is really powerful if we think about what we're asking her to do as she approaches p lactation.
Dr. Heather White (19:29):
But there's another way that we've learned that choline has an effect, and that's as a methyl donor. So methyl donors are simply a labile methyl group. So a carbon with three hydrogens, but the important part is that it's donatable. Okay? So not every molecule that has a carbon is a methyl donor. This is a, a carbon with three hydrogens that I can give to you to another molecule and donate it. Okay? So there are some pretty key methyl donors that are important to us. And diets. Methionine has a methyl group here. Choline has three methyl groups, as does does beane, and then folate. Arguably the most important methyl donor in human nutrition has one as well. So these methyl donors have a role, and I'm not gonna go into it today, but this is where we get into the interactions of choline and methyine, and we hear about sparing and methyl donating, but it's also where we probably have the most potential to influence long-lasting effects on liver metabolism and the offspring.
Dr. Heather White (20:32):
So we have to peek into other species a little bit to see what happens when we deplete methyl groups, a lack of methyl donors across species. A lot of this done in rodents, results in increased liver inflammation, decreased liver oxidation, and decreased methyl donation. So what does that mean when we think about DNA in a developing fetus that is constantly being methylated? So there's a high level of methylation required in a developing fetus or developing offspring, and that this pre partum cow that's getting ready to take on this metabolic challenge of making 150 pounds of milk a day pretty quickly is also developing a fetus that is importantly the next generation for our lactating herd. Okay? So what does that mean to the calf in utero? Now, there was some work out of Florida and I won't spend long on this, but it was really supportive that we should not ignore the calf.
Dr. Heather White (21:39):
I am guilty as a transition count nutritionist. I ignored the calf completely until about two years ago. So I am part of the group that just thought, oh, we don't need to worry about the calf. Although fetal programming was always really intriguing to me. It just wasn't a part of our studies. So in this study, we made sure to follow them based on some work out of Florida that showed improved growth. This was in heifer calves born to dams, fed choline, and also in the bull calves regardless of if they did an L p s challenge or not, okay? They interestingly also observed benefits to the calf health. So this shown here, certainly just a representative tidbit of their data. They have quite a bit of data from these studies that if calves were exposed to choline and utero, they had reduced percent of fevers, okay?
Dr. Heather White (22:36):
And they had improved immune maturation and lung development. So this was enough to make us to help us justify looking at the calves in our study. And I mentioned it was the biggest study we ever did. So that carried on. We followed all of the calves just like many of the farms across the country. Our research farm currently breeds the bottom half of our genetics to beef semen. Are, is that pretty commonplace around here at this point? I think in Wisconsin there, there is a very nominal number of farms not doing this. So we have the female Holstein calves about 50%, and then we had about 50% male and female Angus by Holstein cross calves. We did make sure that our maternal treatments were balanced by what type of calf the cow was carrying, so that was taken care of. Now, I wanna take a few minutes to talk about how we did this.
Dr. Heather White (23:33):
Barry noted colostrum and differences in milk based on who's contributing or who had, who had caved at that time. In our study, we ensured that calves received colostrum from the same treatment that her dam was on. So she didn't receive her dams colostrum, she received colostrum from another dam in that treatment group. Okay? We did have an increase in colostrum yield with choline supplementation, which Barry mentioned as well, while we had maintained bricks readings, so same quality, but more of it, which the farm staff was pretty happy about because they don't like it when we do things that decrease colostrum volume. They get pretty antsy. The other thing we did was we fed milk replacer. So we didn't want the fluctuations. We typically at our research farm feed pasteurized waste milk. We didn't want the variations of choline content depending on what cows had contributed.
Dr. Heather White (24:31):
And so we fed a milk replacer that had a choline concentration intentionally meant to match what's in milk. So not an artificially high supplemental colon concentration, because we really wanted to focus on the effect of dam on this. All right? So with that milk replacer, we had a step up program. So for weeks one and two, they received an amount of milk replacer, then they stepped up in amount. So that's why I have growth broken out here in one to two and then three to eight weeks, because that represents when there was the step up. So we observed no difference in birth weight by treatment, but we did observe a tendency for improved growth in one to two weeks. But we did not see that in three to eight weeks. Now, how many people here work with calves and will tell me that everything always goes perfectly when you're feeding calves?
Dr. Heather White (25:27):
It didn't for us either. So challenges happen on farm, even if they are on a research study. It turns out they don't read the memo that says calves must remain healthy. They definitely did not read that memo for us. So at this point for context, it was about January, February in Wisconsin doing a calf study while masked and six foot distanced because we were under restrictions. And the calfs started getting bloat. Okay? So this was a new territory for us. We were feeding a high plane of nutrition to these calves, and temperature was definitely fighting against us on milk replacer. So we worked with the calf crew and got it rain pretty quickly, but we did have quite a bit of bloat that happened in the calves. And so we, we dug into that a little bit more to see what was going on and to see what what we could learn from it.
Dr. Heather White (26:25):
So first of all, there was no evidence of a treatment effect on bloat respiratory s score or fecal score. So we were monitoring all of these things, no difference by treatment. And there was no interaction of the maternal treatment and blow on that one to two weeks average daily gain. We wanted to make sure that wasn't just a product of bloat and there wasn't an effect there. But what was really interesting was that we had an interaction of maternal treatment and bloat on calf serum L B P. Okay? So we heard a little bit about L p s challenge earlier, and we also heard a little bit about natural l p s that would happen through leaky gut. Lps binding protein or L B P is one of the markers we can use to tell us how, how strong the gut integrity is, and if there might be a challenge from that.
Dr. Heather White (27:16):
And so when we looked at the control treatment, so how I have it split out here is the lighter bar are calves that had no bloat. They had a bloat score of zero, okay? And the darker bar are the calves within that maternal treatment group that had a bloat score of one or more. So they might have refused milk, they might have had a more severe symptom of bloat. And what we saw was, as we would expect, the control, the calves of control dams that had bloat had higher L B P. This didn't surprise us at all. What did surprise us was that when we looked at the calves from the dams fed choline, we did not observe that increase in L B P. Okay? And so in this way, the calves seem to be more resilient to that naturally occurring challenge. Now, this is retrospective.
Dr. Heather White (28:06):
This is not a challenge we induced. We didn't do an LPs challenge like Barry's group did, but it's something that would happen naturally and we would see on farm. And so we were really interested to dig into that and to see that result. And so the overall 10 or the overall interaction was a tendency. This difference was significant. And there was no significant difference or tendency between the blo, no bloat and bloat in the choline treated offs, or the choline cavs borne colleague treated dams. All right. So what about the beef cross calves? So when we dug into this data, I'll break out things that had an interaction by male and female, because I think one of the things we need the most right now is some baseline data. At least in Wisconsin, we're trying to figure out what our benchmarks should be.
Dr. Heather White (28:53):
And so part of the role of this data was to provide some of that. So I have male and female birth weights. There's a sex effect on birth weight as we would expect, but no treatment effect, no treatment effect on average daily gain, one to two weeks. Again, then we have the step up in how much milk replacer they received. And we had a significant time by interaction primarily driven by male calves that were growing faster in a linear manner by maternal choline dose. Okay? Now, was this because of the methylation that I postulated in the beginning? Were we able to see a difference in methylation that can explain these differences in patterns of growth? In the calves? Yes. In the male cross calves, there was a increased global methylation pattern observed, but not in the female calves. Okay? So that doesn't explain the changes in growth in the female calves, although there were also differences in energy growth and gut integrity markers.
Dr. Heather White (30:01):
So that's all data I have if you're interested in, but for the sake of time, don't have all spelled out here. This was also although a little bit surprising, not totally surprising, because we know across species and different maternal diets that male offspring tend to have more pronounced methylation patterns with and without dietary intervention. So this could be a sex effect. It could also be that since we only measured global methylation, it wasn't sensitive, sensitive enough to detect it. So we did not dig into specific gene expression data here, but we did follow the beef cross cabs even further. So it is a lesser known fact that my master's degree is actually in meat science. And I spent a lot of time working with carcass quality and pigs and beef cattle before my co-mentor pulled me over to the dairy cow side of things.
Dr. Heather White (30:54):
So this was one of those projects that came full circle. Cause it let me go back towards something that I had spent a lot of time doing before. So we followed these beef cross calves until they could no longer be called calves. We followed 'em out all the way to processing. But around the time, eight eight to 10 months of age, we actually put them in a feed efficiency study to look at what their growth was during that growing phase. So overall, two to nine months, we saw a linear increase in weight. Okay? This is here in kilograms based on maternal choline treatments. So the more choline the dam consumed the more those calves weigh across time, two to nine months. And although linearly significant these numbers are fairly close here, but a little bit in change in stature of the animal by height, when we put them into that individually housed feed efficiency part of the study, we did observe treatment by sex interactions that changed dry matter intake and feed conversion rate.
Dr. Heather White (32:05):
And so again, mostly occurring within the males. Again, not super surprising, but providing good benchmark or baseline data for, for those that are looking at beef cross animals, we did find that there was increasing R P c effects to linearly decrease plasma insulin and tend to decrease glucose concentrations in these animals, which was intriguing enough that we wanted to follow them out to processing. And so we worked with one of our regional processors. We actually raised these animals all the way up and sent them off for processing to collect data. So not super intense data. This is all stuff available from the packing plant. But at 16 months of age, there was a sex effect on finished live weight, no treatment effect from the maternal treatment. And you could see that we did fairly decent on these carcasses grading out mostly choice and some prime carcasses.
Dr. Heather White (33:06):
And so for farms looking to diversify their income stream, we need to make sure these animals are desirable enough to, to get taken out by a processor. So that was interesting. What was even more intriguing was that we did in fact shift marbling score. Okay? So at 16 months the marbling scores are shown here, but there was a linear increase in marbling score that was significant with R P C in the maternal diet. What's the most interesting about this is not just that we increased it numerically or that there was a difference because we're not getting compensated on this yet, at least not in our region. What's intriguing though, is across the literature, there are no nutritional interventions that can improve marbling score. We can certainly wreck it, right? We're raising beef animals. Those animals have a genetic potential for their marbling score, and then we're trying to not damage that.
Dr. Heather White (34:03):
We're trying to not decrease it. But this in utero exposure seems to be really seems to have some potential to increase. Marbling score certainly needs to be repeated but very intriguing to us. All right, so to wrap up again I have a lot more data from this study, but I hear lunches next and I'm pretty sure there'd be a mutiny if I showed you all of it. So if you have questions about specific parts of it, please come see me. The first paper is submitted, so it should be out soon. The paper on the calves is in preparation. I'm happy to talk through any of the data, but big picture stuff here. Strategic interventions nutritionally during the transition period can have long-term impacts on Cal and Cath. The mechanism of R P C choline action is through improved liver function.
Dr. Heather White (34:55):
This seems to be much more involved than the traditional liver lipids that we used to think of as being the benefit of choline. Supplementation. Supplementation during the transition period tended to increase energy corrected milk, and that was consistent with the amount of increase we've seen across the literature, even though these cows were making quite a bit more milk than what was in the meta-analysis. So even those highest producing cow herd you're working with our data would support that. You should see an increase in milk there. Energy, correct in milk. The postpartum production relative to pre partum intake, which I didn't share but was actually decreased with choline supplementation together with some of those long lasting metabolic effects suggest that there are changes in metabolism and nutrient use efficiency. This is really intriguing for me because I'm a part of a national and international feed efficiency grant.
Dr. Heather White (35:53):
And so this is something that we spend a lot of our time working on. Supplementation of cows with R P C choline also improves calf growth, immune function, and metabolic health, and supported carcass quality in the beef by dairy cross calves and higher supplementation rates higher than the recommended dose if you're thinking about what you feed in the field of R P C resulted in further benefits in the calves, but not additional benefits in the cows. And then if I could take the liberty as the last speaker of tying together across all of the talks we had some great talks this morning. It's always fun to follow talks that take care of all the background work so you can jump right into data. What are our take home messages here? So I think one thing that's clear is that there's consistent postpartum production benefits observed with choline supplementation in the transition period.
Dr. Heather White (36:47):
That seems to be the case, even in very high producing cows and with cows with the highest genetic merit for milk. So Barry commented on a PTA interaction, PTA for milk, PTA for somatic cell. We dug into that in our data as well, and we did not observe the same interaction he did when we accounted for the difference in lactation. So again, thinking about the PTA of milk as we have younger animals that are more genetically advanced, when we account for a lactation, we don't see those same effects. So I think that's something we've gotta think about as always feeding the herds that we have in front of us. And then also regardless of body condition score, Joce showed that really well. How is this happening? I think there's enough mechanistic data now that it's clear. It's through shifts in metabolism and nutrient partitioning to support improved or increased production and either maintained or improved health.
Dr. Heather White (37:44):
Okay? So depending on the cow study, sometimes we see improvements in health on a clinical or subclinical basis. Other times we see changes in the metabolic markers of those in utero programming provides added benefits to the calves. Keeping in mind that when we're supplementing a pre partum cow, we've got our next generation developing in utero. The benefits on calf growth and health are observed with maternal choline supplementation. We have improved feed efficiency to finish weight and improved marbling and Angus by Holstein animals. So again, this is something a lot of producers are doing to diversify their income stream. It's great to have this as an added thought. And I would add these things, calf health marbling, transition, cow health, those are things we don't usually count for in our R roi, right? When we're calculating out if something is economically viable or efficient.
Dr. Heather White (38:37):
We're not accounting for the morale buster that is sick calves, but I lived that on our research farm. I know many of you have when you have a lot of sick calves or when you have sick postpartum cows, it can really have havoc on the farm and morale. So those are things that I think are worth thinking about, even if we don't count the sense on those. How is this happening? Likely through increased colostrum yield. We have that in two studies now. Berries and ours increased global methylation patterns and changes in calf metabolism. So both direct and indirect effects of being in that, in utero environment during colon treatment to the dam. So with that wanna acknowledge the team that did this? No study can be done without a great team of students and farm staff. Certainly I had a great team during this.
Dr. Heather White (39:29):
Henry Hodor was the lead PhD student on this study. He's since completed his dissertation, now works at Purina Nutrition. Billy Brown was a postdoc in my lab. Now assistant professor at Kansas State had a whole other team of people that helped with the study. During covid, we had to have a team, and we had to have B team that was completely naive to a team. So they did the stuff in the lab and on the computer so they could go out to the farm if we needed 'em. And I was out at the farm about two or three days a week helping execute this one showed some work from Florida. So wanna acknowledge those collaborators there, and is always grateful for the funding sources that allow us to do the research we do.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (40:09):
So Heather, what's the response been to the the beef on dairy data in Wisconsin? You've talked about this, some of Wisconsin.
Dr. Heather White (40:17):
So I have, I, we had a couple regional meetings that I shared some of the data. It's been pretty exciting. One, because everybody's doing it. Nobody knows what to benchmark it to, so people are just excited to see some data they can compare to. And two, when I presented at a meeting that was predominantly beef cattle, nutritionist and researchers, they they were really excited about the marbling data. I was in my mind underselling that a little bit. And they were super excited that we may have a way to improve marbling because it's something, as I said, there's not a nutritional intervention for us in the dairy world. Those are free benefits in my mind, right? Because we're feeding the transition cow based on the impact to her. If we can have an impact on calves, that's, that's a bonus.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (41:02):
Heather, a consistent response in liver of cows is an increase in glycogen content. What are your thoughts on the mechanisms for that?
Dr. Heather White (41:11):
Yeah, thanks Jose. That's a good question. We can pause going to lunch and answer your question here. So the glycogens really interesting. That was something I measured in grad school on for some reason. I feel like there's a period of time that we stopped measuring it, and then you recently restarted Josie. It is consistent response, and we do observe it in our cell culture model as well. I think the mechanism of that is through increased nutrient partitioning through gluconeogenesis in the cell culture model. We don't have the mammary gland stealing all the glucose, so we can study it kind of as a pathway itself. And there does seem to be an ability to upregulate that, that's kind of important. If we think about glycogens role as a really transient glucose precursor, it's a quick response mechanism. And see that's interesting. Unfortunately, we were not able to do biopsies during this study, so I can't tell you if it happened here. But at least in the cell culture work, I think the pathway or the mechanism is through the nutrient partitioning shifting more carbon through gluconeogenesis.
Scott Sorrell (42:17):
That was a great presentation. And this is also last call. Dr. White had a great summary of the data behind choline that shows the impact across multiple generations. She also hit on something very inter interesting. She said, we don't usually account for these benefits when calculating the r ROI of an intervention. How should nutritionist account for this going forward?
Speaker 3 (42:39):
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Dr. Clay Zimmerman (43:05):
So there obviously are, they're obviously milk production benefits. Those are easier to calculate. But we do need to keep in mind these carryover benefits in production carryover or the hangover from, from positive hangover, from from these, these cows be being, being fed room and protected colon. So, you know, we, we've measured full lactation responses in these cows now. So in in Dr. White's study we measure response out through 105 days, but we've done it throughout, through, out through 280 days. Those responses stay for the full lactation. So we need to take into account really a full lactation milk yield benefit, first of all. Secondly, the more we're learning about benefits in the calves born to these cows, you know, we have to start assigning a value to that as well. You know, what is, what is that, what is that worth to the dairy having having healthier calves that that, that are gaining better, you know, really out to first calving.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (44:22):
And what benefit would does that have on on potential increased milk yield and those resulting heifers. The other piece to look at, of course, are Im improved health benefits. If you look at the meta-analysis that was done out of Jose Santo's lab, and, and and Heather refers to that quite a bit during during her presentation we did, we did see a significant reduction in retained placenta and less clinical mastitis. So there are a lot of things, you know, economically to take into account. When you're feeding room and protected coaling
Scott Sorrell (45:11):
Clay. The the research that she shared was, was actually amazing. You know, we, we, we typically think of coal or not. We, we've heard many times from producers and nutritionist that coals were problem cows, right? These weren't problem cows. These were healthy cows and high producing cows. What can you tell me about that?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (45:32):
Yeah, so it, it was very interesting. If, if you, if you look at her data, the the milk yield, the milk yield of the cows in this study was 30% higher than the, than the average of the meta-analysis that was published back in 2020. So these cows, these cows averaged over 122 pounds of milk. During the trial. The energy corrected milk yield was 37% higher than a meta-analysis average. So, so they had high components too. I mean, these, these cows were really, were really producing. So, you know, we, we certainly have thought that all along that, that all, and the meta-analysis shows that, that no matter what the level of milk production, all cows, all cows are responding to room protected colon. What it tells me is, you know, we're, we're, we're nowhere near the full expression of the genetics that are in these cows, right?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (46:41):
The, the world record cow produced, I think it was over 78,000 pounds of milk in a lactation. So that, you know, there's tremendous genetic capacity to make lots of milk and milk components. So if we can supply these limiting nutrients, these required nutrients to the cow when she needs them, we'll, we'll get a more full phenotypic expression of the genetics in these cows. You know, we've been making huge genetic improvements for decades in these cows. So col, you know, coal coaling is certainly one, one nutrient required by the transition dairy cow that will help ex fully more express her kinetics.
Scott Sorrell (47:31):
Hmm. Yeah, that's a great summary. Clay. You know, another thing that kind of you know caught my ear was the, she, she had a 50% increase in colostrum, and that, you know, that on top of what we saw at Dr. Bradford's research where he had an 80% increase in colostrum. What, what's going on there? What, what's causing an increase in colostrum quantity?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (47:59):
We, we don't fully know that yet, but we're running some other studies to dig into that more. I think, you know, I think part of what's happening is as we're, you know, as we're supplementing, so obviously this is all happening during the pre partum period, right? We're, we're, we're affecting colostrum yield by feeding it the last 21 days before calving. Now we get additional benefits feeding it 21 days post calving, but the colossian benefits happening pre-cal. So we certainly are, you know, we're having positive benefits on liver health, so we're probably increasing glucose production, actually, I'm sure we are. There's data out there suggesting that we're increasing glucose production to, to, you know, to set her up to make more collage. And we, we do see, you know, we do see some small increases in dry matter intake, and that's all beneficial to this, to this pre partum Cal Cal, you know, shortly before calving. It certainly makes us wonder, you know, are we, are we increasing more secretory cells in that mam gland and really ramping her up for more production? We do consistently see, you know, increased milk yield in cows that are, that are fed rumor protected colon, so it makes sense that colostrum yield would go up. We don't see it in every single study, but we've seen some pretty dramatic increases, both at Michigan State and Barry Bradford's work and, and in in Dr. White's work at, at the University of Wisconsin.
Scott Sorrell (49:39):
Hmm. Thank you for that, clay. Clay, as always, it's been a pleasure hosting these podcasts with you, and I really appreciate your time and insights. As a reminder to our listeners you can find all four of the podcasts in the new revelations in transition, Cal Nutrition series on your favorite podcast app or visit alchem.com/podcast. And you can find those on our website. You can also see the complete presentations and download the slide decks at alchem.com/real science. Just search for the 2022 Cornell Mini Symposia. As always, to our loyal listeners, thank you for coming along for more than 60 episodes and sticking with us to explore more topics. We hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
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