Guests: Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University; Dr. Robb Bender, GPS Dairy Consulting & Dr. Mike DeGroot, EDGE Dairy Consulting Gathering around the pub to discuss the latest version of the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS) version seven is Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Dr. Robb Bender and Dr. Mike DeGroot.
Gathering around the pub to discuss the latest version of the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS) version seven is Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Dr. Robb Bender and Dr. Mike DeGroot.
Extension expert and professor of animal science at Cornell University, Dr. Van Amburgh guided the conversation by briefly touching on the history of the system and the changes to the latest version. He mentioned what has now evolved to a software platform with many equations, essentially began as a 30 year old spreadsheet. 5:45
For nearly three decades the dairy industry has been using various CNCPS versions to formulate rations and create management plans. While each version brings an added level of accuracy, Scott Sorrell, podcast host and director of global marketing for Balchem, asked what the dairy industry can expect from this improved version update. 8:42
Dr. Van Amburgh mentioned ultimately it’s all about finding a balance between the cow and the model. He added the new version moves away from the crude protein concept, but brings forward a three pool model of neutral detergent fiber (NDF) digestibility and gathers all the nitrogen recycling pools to improve nitrogen efficiency. 12:11
While the publishing timeline is yet undetermined, the last major difference between version six and version seven is resolving the amino acid requirements through fill and flux efficiency, Dr. Van Amburgh went on to mention. 14:51
Joining to discuss how his team utilizes CNCPS is Dr. Robb Bender, Manager Partner Consultant at GPS Dairy Consulting. He mentioned his team leverages the opportunity to fulfill rations through the system using the NDS platform and asked about the impact that variable criterias of forage selection has. 22:55
Dr. Van Amburgh said the most important number for forage moving forward is the 12 hour number given the labs are as efficient as possible. Ultimately, he added with high quality forages the earlier the time to estimate the length it takes to fill the fast pool the better. 24:31
While NDF is correlated to feed intake, uNDF is in fact forage remaining after digestibility within 240 hours. Dr. Mike DeGroot, owner at EDGE Dairy Consulting asked about the impact of uNDF in various rations. 30:15
The impact stems from cow performance changes, mentioned Dr. Van Amburgh. Adding to the research that version seven includes are several evaluations on forage fiber and the inversely related digestible and indigestible pool. 31:20
Within version seven, understanding the chemistry of feed additives and the nutrient values they offer is also a high level factor. In fact, Dr. Van Amburgh mentioned the updated version includes a 2015 study over water soluble carbohydrates, the extended study of starch and also the impact of sugars in any diet formulation. 44:42
So what does the future of CNCPS look like?
Short term, Dr. Van Amburgh said he is working on a database that offers a full calf, heifer model and transition calf phase. He added working to frame the fatty acid and amino acid requirements is the next goal. 55:15
Dr. DeGroot wrapped up the conversation, mentioning he is looking forward to the new version of the CNCPS because he believes that as new models get better, science also gets better.
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:08):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podcast we're leading scientists and dentistry professionals meet our 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. As all dairy producers are looking for ways to be more profitable, maximizing component production and improving feed efficiency is top of mind for everyone at the dairy. Back in September, we were joined by Dr. Mike Van Amberg from Cornell University for one of our most popular webinars on the Real Science Lecture series to date. He gave us an overview of what has changed in the new C N C P S version seven. You can view his full webinar at bache.com/real science, but today we get to sit down with Mike and two of his guests that he brought with him today and dig a little bit deeper into the new version seven. So, welcome back, Mike. Good to have you back here.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:01:01):
Hey, Scott. Great to be back. Good to see you, everyone.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:05):
Yep. And so this is not your first time at the pub, so you kind of know the drill. So what's in your glass tonight?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:01:11):
Just a second. I have some in my real science class here, I have some Avor, which is a space side scotch.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:19):
I think that's the first. You had that on the very first podcast as well. If I am correct,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:01:24):
I think that's probably true. Every time I'm talking about the scene, CP, S, or anything related to feed chemistry, I get that because Pete Banus would call that a pedestrian scotch. Ah, and so in his honor, I'm gonna drink another pedestrian scotch. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:39):
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:01:48):
Yeah, Rob Bender and Mike Degru. Got to know them well. I think I knew Rob when he was a grad student yet. So that says a little bit about both of us. Yeah,
Dr. Robb Bender (00:01:57):
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:01:58):
So I've known, I've known them both a long time. You know, primarily I know them now is a really good nutritionist in the field, both using some as or one version of the CN c Ps or another. Right. So that's, that's really how I interface with them now.
Scott Sorrell (00:02:15):
Very well. Rob, tell us a little bit about yourself your business, and maybe how, when, if you can remember when you first met Mike?
Dr. Robb Bender (00:02:27):
Yeah, I think I may be first met Mike at dairy Challenge when I was in grad school. I was involved in coaching the UW Madison dairy Challenge team there. It's, maybe I met where I met Mike. Not entirely sure. But I'm a nutritionist with GPS Dairy Consultant based outta Watertown, Wisconsin, halfway between Milwaukee and Madison. I spend my time in Wisconsin in lower Michigan, and our team of 20 works predominantly in the Midwest. And then we get outside the Midwest a little bit to other parts of the United States and across the world a little bit as well.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:09):
Very well. Then our next guest Mike Drut. Mike, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:03:15):
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been a long time since I met Mike Van Amberg. It was back in 2003. I was in Phoenix, Arizona. And he and some other various esteemed colleagues were sitting in the front with their arms crossed looking at me. So I did get to meet. I presented an open relationship with him. I'm out here in California. I do work in California and Colorado myself, and I have two partners out here with Edge Dairy Consulting, and we just brought a fourth guy on who's just starting with us. So we're hoping to turn him loose on some cows here in the next year. So yeah, it's been a great opportunity to work with Mike on this in the model, and looking forward to the discussion today.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:58):
And finally, I've got my co-host back, the lovely and talented Dr. Clay Zimmerman clay, you know, the drill. What's in your glass tonight?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:04:08):
Uh, I'm traveling today, so water today. Okay. All right. What's in your glass?
Scott Sorrell (00:04:14):
Well, tonight I went back to the kind of one I've been hitting recently. It's Yellowstone, right? And so I love that show. And so I love to, you know, get myself a, you know, a nice sniffer here of some Yellowstone and, and enjoy the show. So I had that on Sunday and, and having it again today, so, and in a rut. So anyway, that's, that's what I'm having today.
Speaker 5 (00:04:38):
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Scott Sorrell (00:05:01):
Mike to get started. The big question of the day is when are we gonna have version seven available to us?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:05:10):
Yep. Scotty, that is the question of the moment. And we're working as hard as we possibly can. Where we're at right now, you know, and I'm, I'm pretty transparent and honest about this, the, so I'm gonna give you a little bit of just some background to understand where we're at up until now. The C CPS IP
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:06:13):
So what we're doing now, and the reason it's taking so long, and we'll come back to this, but what we have to do now is we have to build it into some sort of a software platform. We're not gonna make the interface, my antique term would be a D all, essentially. So we're gonna build the D all, and then we're gonna hand that to all the licensees. We'll give them the input addresses and the output addresses. So, it will be a package thing. They won't be able to open up. There'll be nobody playing in the code anymore because it's just too sophisticated, right? There are too many interactions. And that's what's taking so long that that's really what's, it's led to this real lag now because, you know, it used to be that we could just throw it in the spreadsheet and send it out to everybody in the liquidy split. We're done. Now all of a sudden we've got this process of being partly a software shop, right? And we're, we're, we're gonna not do this cuz we're not that good at software development. But we've been working with a company first we had to find a company. We found a company Andrew Lapeer is working in a post as a postdoc right now. He, he's leading that effort. We're hoping when all this is done, that by May, we have that part done by that we can then ship it to the license holders.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:37):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:07:39):
So, if anybody's wondering how complicated that architecture is, it was on slide five of your real science lecture here back in September. Yeah.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:07:48):
Scott Sorrell (00:08:45):
There's a lot that goes into creating, a new version. Would you mind kind of just kind of giving us a very top-line idea of the process you go through? How do you know it's time for a new version? And then what are kind of some of the big steps, you know that you, you go through it, in getting it to the field?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:09:05):
Then, the scene c p s is kind of a unicorn in that regard. Because some of what we're, some of what we're doing, you know, is there's, there's a little bit in there that's probably 30 years old. Right? There's a little legacy information in there that we build on as we go. So how do we do it? Scott, I think in the end I think the last step is to do the cows, do the cows in the model? Agree. If we, if we give, if we put some diets together and we do what I call boundary testing, I'll use Andrew Lapier, one of his Ph.D. studies. You know, we have this optimum, what we call an optimum amino acid profile on an M Cal program basis. But if you look at the data that we developed that from, there's a range around that, right?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:09:55):
There's the standard error and standard deviation. So, one of the studies that we ran, and this is how we feel like we're making progress, is, you know, Andrew went down one standard deviation based on that data for all essential amino acids. And then we went up one standard deviation, and then we had our optimums, and we ran that study and looked at what the cows said, you know, and the cows told us, Hey, you know what, if you go down one standard deviation, I'm not gonna be as productive if you run at your optimums, I'm pretty productive. If you go much above the optimums, I don't care. Right? Which told us, yeah, you could probably add a little bit more, but economically it's not going to be worth it, right? You don't have to feed 250 grams of lycine
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:10:44):
And that we walked away from that saying, Hey, you know, these optimums as a starting point for a first-generation version of this model look pretty good, right? The cows in the model agree. So, you know, that's, that's one example, Scott, that, you know, helps everybody understand what we think we need to do to make sure that this thing is ready. And especially on that topic, right? It, it's you know, my joke used to be Vita Cow like a pig, right? But that is one of the ways that they formulate amino acids for swine is grams per m cal. So,, we accomplished that. Boy, we better test it well before you tell everybody else they can go out and do it
Scott Sorrell (00:11:31):
Very well. Mike, one more question from me, and I'm gonna turn it over to the the consultants to, to dig a little deeper. But during your webinar, you talked a little bit about what were the significant things that changed with this new version or will change with this new version. So why don't you get to this a bit of an overview of that, and then I'll a ask the consultants to kind of dig into each of those areas a little bit more.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:11:55):
Well, the first thing we did, and again, some of this big picture stuff, we converted the model to a nitrogen basis. So in effect, we're moving away from the concept of crude protein. We'll bring it to the surface so people feel comfortable with diets, but, but establishing the model on a nitrogen basis actually helped us a lot as you move nitrogen through the compartments, right? So if a cow consumes 700 grams of nitrogen, 700 grams had to enter the room, and it now has to leave, 700 grams have to leave the room. And in some form or another, the basic principles of soluble insoluble degradable, that kind of stuff are still there. But when you don't do it as a percent right, which is a ratio, essentially, all of a sudden it allows you to reconcile those amino acids much better as you get to the small intestine and towards the mammary gland.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:12:52):
So that cleaned up a bunch of noise. And, and as, and, and because feed as it degrades forages, especially, you know, 6.25 doesn't work as you remove carbohydrate and protein from the structure of a plant and you get more to the indigestible materials. So again, there's some non-uniformity in all of those things. So you
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:13:45):
And that's, that's really, that was really when we finally figured, you know, we've kind of known that there probably wasn't a homogenous pool, you know, even though we didn't really, nobody ever treated it as different digestible pools. That was probably the, the biggest thing we could have done to resolve the amino acids and the, and the supply of amino acids. And because it, if you look at any, at least in our hands, the factor that affects amino acids supply the most is digestible ndf has nothing to do with amino acids or protein. So multiple pool ndf, having the protozoa in there, cleaning that all up. Let's see, what else get getting well, just getting all the nitrogen pools full recycling and all the nitrogen pools together, so, so we can actually do much better accounting and that allows us to improve the nitrogen efficiency.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:14:45):
And then I think the l you know, the last big step the big difference from 6 55 is how we resolve the immuno acid requirements. There's probably something that I'm leaving out, but those are the big ones we'll be able to do fill and flux, I think. There we go. The, the user, and this is not to, this is not to sound like I don't like something, but we do a lot of decision making off particle size. And there's nothing wrong with particle size, except most of our particle size discussions are in the absence of how much NDF is actually in the remin at any one time. And, and we, we don't actually think about that when we're thinking about particle size. We just get focused on, well, the particles aren't big enough and, and I wanna know, you know, well, how many grams of NDF are actually in the room?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:15:33):
And is that really what the problem is? Not the particle size? So in this version, because of how we have these calculations set up Rob and Mike are actually gonna be able to say, Hey, my, the RUS on these cows should hold about 82 or 8,500 grams of NDF at steady state. And if their diets are are formulated and it says, oh, they're only gonna be at 7,400 or 7,600, and all of a sudden we know that Ru's not really full of N D F. And that may be partly what's causing acidosis and poor feed efficiencies and not just the particle size. So we're gonna hopefully add more information to that kind of decision making.
Scott Sorrell (00:16:15):
You know, I recall a discussion you had on with protozoa and modeling that as well. Can you talk a little bit about that, Mike, and, and how that's different than before?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:16:24):
Yeah. Protozoa in the original model, you know, the original C C P S Submodel was the, the primary architect and the microbe side was Jim Russell. And Jim was a brilliant microbiologist. He did not like protozoa cuz he couldn't figure out how to isolate them and grow them up and manipulate them. So anyhow, we had had protozoa in Protozoa ear, our kind of ghosted in to the, in, in version six, and all the prior versions as just something that consumes bacteria. So the, so the growth rate on a bacteria, the maximum growth rate is 0.5 grams bacteria per gram of carbohydrate per hour. And, and what those guys came up with, and this was probably a, a gym charlie, Pete van decision making process was, well, they're going to eat so many of the bacteria, so instead of growing 0.5 grams per gram of carbohydrate per hour, we're gonna grow 0.4 grams per gram of carbohydrate per hour.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:17:27):
So they basically said, Hey, these bugs are gonna grow up and then the bacteria or the proso are gonna eat them, but they're not actually gonna be delivered to the small intestine. And you know, so there's this little black box thing going on there. Now we've actually added them to the model and we have to have them eat bacteria now
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:18:08):
Mike, were we underestimating then? Or how was that working?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:18:11):
Yeah, yeah, no, good question, Mike. We grossly underestimated the little buggers and we when we built the submodel, and I, I know I know Jan Dykstra had to struggle with this, but I never really understood Jann's model and how he set that up cuz he's got protozoa in there. But we had to figure out do they flow with the liquid passage rate or the solid passage rate, right? And in the absence of any information, we associated them with the solids because that's how the bacteria flow. So the moment we started trying to formulate diets we couldn't get an MP prediction that made any sense because the protozoa weren't flowing out appropriately and they were hanging around in the room and just eating all the bacteria. So, so we had like a up to a 40 pound bias on MP prediction off our data
Scott Sorrell (00:19:44):
Mike, I'm going gonna go out on a limb here of my, my, my knowledge, but it's my understanding that protozoa are also involved with methane production. And I'm just kind of curious if, if there's anything we know or can model relative to methane and protozoa?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:20:03):
Yes, we can Scott. That, that is on our radar. We have we have, we have a, we have a bare bones model for that interaction. Protozoa make a lot of hydrogen. This is where this comes down to ProTool, make a lot of hydrogen in, in the Archie bacteria, like to hang out with them and grab that hydrogen. So, so that symbiosis is there. I think that I'm, but I'm convinced the, it was, you know, 20 years ago we wanted to, to denate the rus get rid of all the protozoa. I am convinced that that would actually all, all of our data say so far that that's not a good thing. So we, we just wanna keep the ProTool, keep them happy. We gotta figure out how to do something else to the, to the methanogens, but yep, there's an interaction there.
Scott Sorrell (00:20:56):
Version eight.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:20:57):
Yeah. No, it'll be version seven. No, no. Oh, okay. I'm, I'm at a, I'm at a, speaking of older age, yeah, we're, we're contemporaries, right? I'm, I'm, I don't anticipate a version eight coming out at least not in my watch. But, but I do think we can work on those interactions, Scott. That is a good point. And we are, there's a concerted effort. I spent my morning in four hours of meetings that get at something like that. So yes, there's a lot of people that want to figure out how to, to, to make some nutritionally have some impact on methane production.
Scott Sorrell (00:21:32):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Robb Bender (00:21:43):
Yeah. We've used C N C P for quite a while on our team. So when I joined the team in 2015, we've we had been using it already and a few years before that as well, from my understanding. Yeah, we do all our rations through C N C PS modeling through NDS platform. And we do quite a bit of group share group experience, ration share different type things like that on a monthly basis to try and compare notes related to modeling outputs as it applies to the practical on-farm things going on that influence influence the model. So, so yeah, we use it on a regular basis.
Scott Sorrell (00:22:29):
It says you look toward version seven, what, what kinds of things you're looking forward to and capabilities that maybe you don't have today.
Dr. Robb Bender (00:22:38):
Yeah. One of the things I wanted to dig into a little bit with Mike is the fiber digestion models and and you know, your comments about slow pool, fast pool, U N D F Mike, what, what are the impacts of different u n df time points, either from the endpoint stand, the standpoint, the 1 22 40 kind of concept versus, you know, a 30 hour U N D F or any of that kind of stuff? What are the impacts of, of either selection of those different criteria on forge lyes or you know Yeah. The ones you're using to formulate the diet. So can you talk a little bit more about that?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:23:19):
Sure. yeah, so, so how did we come up with the, some of the numbers that we used and how is that evolving? That's also kind of an interesting side topic. So, so when we, when we hatched this idea the Europeans were ahead of us in terms of publication and, and I've got a bunch of stories, but, you know save the stories the Northern Europeans had about the same time we were doing it in the lab. These guys had come up with an INCI two process where they put five grams in a bag, put it in a cow, and it took 'em 288 hours to get to A U N D F, right? What was exciting about that, at least from my perspective was that they could find a U N D F and it had nothing to do with the surface area calculations that Conrad St.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:24:17):
Pierre and Weiss and Van Suta came up with, right? So the 2.4 times lignin and all those things, you know, to, for better or for worse, it invalidated them and said, Hey, there's, there's some, there's some dynamic biology going on here that doesn't fit the chemistry. So that emboldened us to keep doing it. And that's where we got to the two 40. We had to come up with something that a commercial lab could do, cuz nobody's gonna run in SIT two s all the time. The reason we ended up at two 40 in application was because when you talk to the commercial labs and you ask them how well characterized are those samples that are sent in? And they say, sometimes we don't know what it is, it just gives us a chemistry, right? Which is why some of these labs now take pictures of everything to make sure that you know, you know, that's what they received.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:25:10):
Because those are, you know, it'll be green and it might be ground or not ground. You don't know what percent alfalfa is what percent grass. The two 40 number was an insurance factor to say, no matter what, this is where we hit a true u no matter what it is. Okay? Now if you back up the curve, now the correlation between one 20 and two 40 is very high. So we probably could learn to predict that now that we have so many thousands of samples run. And, and we've recognized that. But at the time this was such a new concept that we had to stick to our, our principled approach and say, we know you get the real answer here, right? As you back up the curve, now you start getting into really interesting information. You know I would've advocated for a 12 hour, you know, I was advocating for 24 hours and the industry said, no, we're not going to do that cuz we don't have any N I IR equations.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:26:11):
And I said, that gives us the best number and we know we're always in the fast pool. And they said, no, we, we've got our N I R equations for 30 hour, that's our compromise. I said, okay, then we went 31, 22 40, right? And that would give us the three pools. Well now what's everybody asking for? For corn silage especially, everybody wants a 12 hour. Okay? You know, what's fun about that is we've learned enough now to recognize that biologically that's a good number. And it's not just noise. Because when I advocated 12 hours, I had the, and I'll say this out, I had some of my colleagues, I won't name names, I had some of my colleagues telling me, that's because you're not good at your in vitros. And I said, well, I don't believe that to be true. So we, we tested that and it wasn't true.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:27:05):
It was real biology. And so now we're going to 12 hours. So one of the most important numbers we could have for any forage moving ahead is a 12 hour number. As long as the lab has got good methods, right? And there's no lag in it 30 hour works, you know, 30 hour in some of these forages is at the inflection point between the first and the second pool. If it's a high quality forage you know, alfalfa especially can hit you by 96 hours depending upon the leaf to stem ratio. But again, I think most of these labs don't know if they've got a pure alfalfa, right? And, and how much leaf is in there versus stem. So there's still this, this kind of unknown when we send those samples into some of these labs and we're not always good at characterizing it.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:27:58):
You know, I'm, I'm not sure I answering your question completely, but I know, I know with really high quality forages we need that early time point to better estimate how it's gonna fill an empty, that fast pool is highly correlated with room and emptying. And if we don't get that right we can have problems. If we don't know the true u we can hit fill effect on you too. On, on, oh, we can hit fill effect on the U not knowing how large it is. Right. And I've seen that happen in, in various places around the country and the world.=
Dr. Robb Bender (00:28:35):
I've, I've found it interesting to that point, I found it interesting that our industry has spent so much time trying to figure out the U N D F pool, right? Whether it's one 20 or two 40 or whatever, getting away from the 2.4 times malignant concept and spent a lot of time on the U N D F piece, but really all the action is happening on the front end of the curve, right? And that's kind of what you're talking about. Yeah, but I, I guess your, you know, your point, it's been hard enough to, to truly understand the U N D F without even, so we can figure out potentially digestible fiber, right? Without even getting to the digestion rates on the front end of it. But I, I would imagine that's more and more where we'll be heading in the future, right?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:29:16):
Yes, yes. Absolutely. If you wanted, you know, I'll come back to the Irish pasture grass, boy, we need a, we need a you by 24 hours. You're almost at the inflection point on some of those Exactly. Good grasses, right? So at 12 hours is absolutely necessary, but we have some good forages here that behave the same way. And, and that information, I think can be really useful, I think in the future will help us a lot. And I'm, I'm glad we've progressed to that point that we're, and I'm glad that the n I r I'm sincerely glad everybody embraced it, right?
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:30:14):
Rob, are you looking at grams of, of U NDF in the ration? Are are you, you guys looking at that number? That's something we've been kind of focused on here lately. We're playing around with the earlier time points as well, but we've been kind of set on 31 20 and two 40 as we're moving
Dr. Robb Bender (00:30:28):
Forward. Yeah, I would definitely agree. Watching that number has been interesting. So we, we do look at it. There's times when the changes that I think that I see don't reflect cow performance changes. And I'm not sure exactly why that is. I think things like cotton seed may influence that a little bit and there might be some other things, you know, different forage, different forages. But yeah, I would definitely agree, Mike. I mean that, that is the focus point, but the times where it doesn't match up with cow performance can be frustrating cuz you, you think you're seeing a change and it may not be real.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:31:09):
Well, and that kind of brings me into my next question. So, and Rob and I did not plan this, but
Dr. Robb Bender (00:31:14):
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:31:15):
Version seven is, is, you know, we're, we're doing a lot of work on trying to evaluate these speed stuffs that we're feeding and feed libraries and stuff like that. Are we updating that? How, how are you guys going about that in version seven? Yep, that's a very crucial part. I think we do a great job as an industry on forages, but like Rob mentioned on cotton seed or anything like that, we've had a hard time getting to work with some of these labs and we're, and we're getting it done, but how do we evaluate these speed stuffs moving forward?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:31:45):
Yeah, so I I second what you just said. The, the industry's doing a lot of work and we don't have all the information on the non forage fiber sources. We have some I had a grad student a few years ago. That paper is actually about ready to submit. But it's a snapshot, right? We did all the n we did as many non forage fiber sources as we could get our hands on. But we need more information on those. They behave differently than a forage. There's no slow pool because there's no cross-linking. They don't have to do that structurally. So you just basically have a digestible pool in an indigestible pool. I think the harder part about some of that cotton seed being one of them, or that's not a homogenous thing, you know, you've got two different types of fiber that can be digested
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:32:40):
And you got a passage rate issue, right? So when you guys tell me it doesn't work you know, when I hear that and I've heard it and I'm, we are, we are trying to figure out how to manage it. You know, if you call it a concentrate, it's gonna go to a faster passage rate in the model. I'm not sure. Right now we have, especially in six five, we can put in the right kind of digestibility in seven, you will be able to do that, right? Because it, you'll get the two pool behavior where there's a digestible pool and, and then it just plateaus out to indigestible. But we are, we are building that feed library, we're building that into the current feed library. We need more data. Actually, just before I got on this call, Andrew, for very different reasons, said, you know we probably at a point where we gotta go back and pull the data sets, redo the data sets that we did for the 2015 paper, update it and add all this information in to get it right. And so that would, that would lend to your comment there that sometimes it doesn't always add up. And I think that's just because we're, we're missing some information or, or the structure of the current model just doesn't know how to make best use of it. How's that?
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:34:03):
The same on passe too, Mike, right? Like on these commodities?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:34:08):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:34:12):
Yes, yes, yes. I've got a grad student right now who's part of his PhD has been learning to master this crazy expensive mass spec that I have in my lab. But there's, there's actually no our H P L C methods have kind of failed us here lately. So we've moved, we, we upgraded our lab to a, to a mass spec and lc, mass speck. But when we did that, we realized, hey, there's no standardized method for getting amino acids out of that machine. So his PhD has been building that system. So now what we've gotta do is we've gotta start lining up all of these feed stuffs and start running them through there to make sure that we have captured some of the variability around the immuno acidic content of some of these, you know, forages are easy, soybean, canola, those things, you know, we, we, we don't have to do much work there, but it's all the other things now that we're thrown in front of a cow that we don't have characterized, you know?
Dr. Robb Bender (00:35:15):
Yeah. I think from a, you know, Mike Deru from, from the standpoint of just understanding the commodities, right? I mean, just macro nutrients on commodities, making sure it matches up with feed library and the differences you might see as important, let alone the modeling end of things.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:35:32):
Yeah. that, that's it's interesting you guys bring that up because to to, to Scott's point about protozoa and methane and everything else, there's a lot of pressure to port the CN c p s to lots of other places in the world and trying to try, you know, India, right? I'm being asked right now to really engage India, right? I, and I, there's reasons that you say yes, and there's reasons that you say no one of the reasons, but what that does for us, you know, to, to your question here guys, and Andrew worked this up for them. So one of my colleagues is over in India right now talking to the National Dairy Development Board, and they said if we wanted to build our own library over here for our Indian conditions, what's it gonna cost? Well, to be able to run an N I R comfortably, you need at least a thousand wet chemistry samples, right?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:36:36):
Just to be able to have enough data to get a good equation. And, and they gave us a, they said, well, we've got, we've got a quarter of a million dollars, how much can we get done
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:38:00):
Who's, who's can we get the producers of those things? Will the cotton board pay for some of that feed chemistry? You know, will the almond board pay for some of that feed chemistry? Cuz I, you know, they're the ones that are trying to get rid of the byproducts. So if we can get them to actually any up, then it's not too bad. But I, I don't, I have a relationship with the Alman board, sort of, but not anybody else. So it'll be interesting to see how we can get this done.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:38:26):
So Mike, globally is the, is the feed chemistry there globally for the C N C P S model?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:38:34):
Yeah, I, so Clay in the US North America's good. There's good labs, there's good labs down in South America, and there's some really good labs in Europe now. They're mostly all, one of the shortcomings is a lot of those labs are solely n i r. There's, there's some wet chemistry labs over there, but what I'm learning about the wet chemistry labs is they still can't quite get some of the basic chemistry done correctly. So they can't get their NIS to work. Right. And I won't, I won't name names, but there's a couple of them that we're trying to figure out how to help that. You know, if, if we do the same sample, we can be, we can be 10 to 20 units off on ndf, right? So, so there's an, and I think that's simply because for some of those labs and for some of the people over there, NDF is still a new thing. Right? It's, they're, they're coming out of the the, some labs is still run crude fiber, a lot of labs that run crude fiber
Scott Sorrell (00:39:39):
Yeah. Yep.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:39:41):
In Europe. So Yeah. So we, there's a little hiccup there, clay, but, you know, we're making progress. We're making progress.
Scott Sorrell (00:39:48):
Mike, a bit of a curve ball. We're talking about the different forages in places like India, but what about different species like water buffalo? How, how relevant is your biology to water buffalo?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:40:04):
Have you have, do you have,
Scott Sorrell (00:40:05):
Have
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:40:05):
You been walking around the hallway here, Scotty of Morrison Hall
Scott Sorrell (00:40:09):
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:40:16):
Send me a bottle after that question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yes. Yes. The, the request, the request is there, Scott, that we, we actually build a water buffalo model. You know what? And it's not gonna be that hard because the Rus, the ruen, the only difference is a water buffalo is a boss indicus. So they don't, they, they just, you gotta kind of deal with them like you would any animal from that that side. And they got a slower metabolism rate, they got a lower maintenance requirement. We just have to build that all together.
Scott Sorrell (00:40:57):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:40:58):
And there, there are data out there nds actually because they originate in, in, in Italy, they actually have a Mediterranean water buffalo model. So you can formulate a diet for a lactating water buffalo, and I know where they got their data. So I can, I can do that if I have to.
Scott Sorrell (00:41:17):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:41:18):
Yes. But that wasn't on my to-do list, Scott
Scott Sorrell (00:41:22):
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:41:25):
But you know, there's
Scott Sorrell (00:41:26):
A lot of, there's a lot of 'em out there, Mike. There
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:41:29):
Are, well, and that's a requirement to your, to your question, that is a requirement for India.
Scott Sorrell (00:41:35):
Yeah.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:41:36):
If we're going to be in India doing this with CN c p s, they do, they do have a lot of crossbred cattle. There's a lot of indigenous cattle that have been crossed with jerseys and Holstein. But there's a, there's an awful lot of water buffalo too, that you have to take care
Scott Sorrell (00:41:52):
Of. Yeah. Quick story. I was at the Western Dairy Management Conference several years ago, and we had a, a big meeting with folks from India, Pakistan. Bangladesh was there. And they said, Scott, we want you to set beside this swan, very large dairyman for dinner tonight. And I had, so I sat down and, and had was having dinner, and then I decided to ask him, so I understand you're a dairyman. How many cows do you have? And he just kinda looks at me like, I don't have any cows. I said, oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were a dairyman. I am
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:42:26):
Scott Sorrell (00:42:28):
4,000 water buffalo that he milked twice a day by hand. So it's interesting.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:42:35):
Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (00:42:37):
World.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:42:38):
Yep. The largest water buffalo dairy that I was on south of Rome was 7,000. Wow. And the guy quit his, he owned it. He quit his law practice because he made much more money milking his buffalo than he being a lawyer.
Scott Sorrell (00:42:57):
Yeah.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:42:58):
Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (00:43:00):
Very well, clay any areas you wanna dig into?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:43:06):
So my mike, we talked about fiber earlier. What about on the stark side? Any, any changes that there
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:43:15):
In version seven? There won't be any change immediately, clay. I, I will have a, I will have a PhD student starting in January whose sole focus is starch. So I'm hoping in, you know, as we progress here, there's no expectation that she actually builds a new starch submodel. But the expectation is with the sponsor that we figure out a way to standardize the analysis and to be able to give better information back to somebody who's formulating a diet. And you know Cumberland Valley, Ralph Ward, you know, put out that soluble starch, you know, concept. And, and I, I, I looked it over and I know exactly what it means cuz we've seen the same thing and I, but we don't know what that really is, right? Is that un polymerized starch? Is it yeah, we don't know. So we just, we really need, we really need somebody to dig into that so we can get a much better handle on it. So we can model it hopefully a little bit better than we are, but right now we don't, we won't have any changes.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:44:33):
Mike, on that same note, you mentioned sugar several times in your, in your presentation. You wanna dig into that a little bit more?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:44:42):
Yep. So we are, we are, yeah. We are going to put out some information here. When we published a paper in 2015, and I can make this announcement here, when we published a paper in 2015 we put in water soluble carbohydrates. We were being pushed really hard by some other chemists to do that. The industry was kind of moving that way. What we've learned since then in, in all of this around feed chemistry is that probably is, is the wrong metric for the C CPS right now. Partially because if you use water soluble carbohydrates day in and day out, you're gonna get negative soluble fiber pools and that just confounds everything else that you're doing. So we're most likely gonna, well, not most likely, we are gonna go back to say we want everybody to use ethanol soluble carbohydrates. And then what's the by difference gonna end up in the soluble fiber pool and for grasses as fructans to extend that though we don't, this may be something that we embrace with the student who's gonna look at starch because I think starch is gonna bring us over into the sugar realm a little bit.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:45:57):
We're probably gonna do some more critical thinking about you know, five versus six carbon sugars and, and where that plays into this whole thing. That's Charlie Sniffen. For years Charlie Sniffen would ask me that question, what are you gonna start looking at five versus six carbon sugars? Well, maybe now Charlie, I don't know. We'll see again, that's the problem with all this stuff is, is as much as we think it's important as and is in, as interesting as it is, I don't know who pays the bill
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:46:51):
Sugars have become really important in my diet formulation here lately, especially as I think about pushing components and not just milk yield. And in our, my northeast diets, I can, I can throw in a little bit of sugar along with everything else we're doing, bring the starch down a little bit and actually push milk components more effectively than just a little bit more starch. So how, how learning how to do that and being able to describe those sugars a little more effectively would be good. And we know it boosts protozoa. That's why those, those pasture cows, the protozoa proliferates well and so fast is because there's, you know, there's 20% sugar in those pasture grasses.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:47:37):
Well, and out here in my neck of the woods too, Mike, where we don't have ample fiber a lot of times, you know, we're pushing things like almond holes that you mentioned. So, you know, we've played with our sugar numbers trying to push those up as, as efficiently as we can. So we kind of know the limit if you wanna talk about it.
Dr. Robb Bender (00:47:55):
So.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:47:56):
Yep.
Dr. Robb Bender (00:48:03):
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:48:05):
I'm curious, I'm curious what you're finding in your, in your conditions.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:48:08):
I ran up to 12% and cows have been
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:48:11):
Okay. Nope, that makes sense to me. That makes sense to me. You know, that's, that's the funny when you say that, that makes perfect sense to me because when you look at I'll go back to the Irish cows, you know, they're 20 to 25% water soluble carbohydrates in 2% starch. It's, it's completely opposite of what some of our tmr are here. And the cows are ha happy as all get out right. In making good
Dr. Robb Bender (00:48:32):
Components. Yeah. I was gonna ask, you touched on protozoa again and, and you talked about it early on. I, I wanted to dig into that a little bit more if we could. Cuz from a practicing nutritionist standpoint, what do we need to know about the model changes related to protozoa? Ah, I, I can appreciate I think what you're saying around developing the model and everything you went through on the protozoa end, but what do we need to know out in the field related to protozoa?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:48:59):
Yep. So, so right now, great question. And it's been a frustration of mine around this whole sugar thing. We know when we add sugars to diets, I'm gonna come back to that and I'll get to the protozoa because I think the two things are tied together. When we add sugars to the diet, we do that for a couple different reasons. Sometimes we do it because we know for whatever reason it enhances fiber digestibility and we don't fully understand that. But we can get, if you look at the literature carefully, when you add a little bit of sugar, you can get a little bit higher fiber digestibility. We know that it will enhance our, our components. We'll get some more butyrate, things like that. The primary sugar users in the rumen are the protozoa. And, and that's one of the things that people ask me all the time and say, Hey Mike, you know, I added some sugar to the diet but my MP didn't change.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:49:51):
Or maybe it changed, but it was a really small number. Why didn't that MP number go up? Why don't I see more microbial growth? And the reason you don't is that we're focused only on the bacteria and the pool that will really benefit from that sugar. One of them will be the protozoa. And so adding the protozoa to the submodel, when you add sugar, you should see this increase in microbial yield. And that will be one of the updates here is that, you know, when you, when you see the MP supply or the amino acid supply, however it comes, however we, we throw it out there you're gonna see bacteria, protozoa, endogenous, you know, all these kinds of things and broken out. So you'll, you'll actually have the capacity to manipulate that pool. Cuz, cuz now we can feed it cuz it's there.
Dr. Robb Bender (00:50:45):
And so to that point, I would imagine, you know, where Mike was talking before about his sugar levels out, out farther west, I would imagine it's quite a bit more impactful in, in those kind of markets, right? Where your sugar levels are significantly higher than what we might see in upper Midwest, for example. I mean, we're still feeding sugar, we feed a fair bit of it, but we're not at that kind of level typically,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:51:07):
Right? Yep. It it'll be very, should be very impactful at that point. Again, just removing the black box aspect of this whole thing and being able to give us more information, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, my my joke is, you know, there's still, there's been quite a bit of art in ruminant nutrition and I'm trying to remove the art artist part of it and make it more quantitative so we can all see it. Right? Makes us all better artists. It's just that it becomes transparent now.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:51:34):
Well, and going back to like body weight for example, I mean that's a huge portion of what goes into this model, right? And yeah, that art versus science, I agree with you Mike on that, is making sure those are correct inputs that we're putting in on our end. So
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:51:49):
I hope with all of this technology that's coming out, somebody figures out how to get a scale that works really well in and out of the parlor, something like that. Not expensive, but it shouldn't be as hard as it is to get that kind of a metric. Yeah. It just shouldn't.
Dr. Robb Bender (00:52:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe using cultco data isn't the best way to measure body weights, right?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:52:16):
No, no, generally not. Although, you know, when the beef, when, when the, when the cow coal cow price is better, we're sending some better cattle. So it's not all there
Dr. Robb Bender (00:52:28):
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:52:31):
Not lately.
Scott Sorrell (00:52:32):
Mike, as we, as we get toward the end of our time here, I'm kind of curious about what you see the future of the C N c s c p s being, right? You said there won't be a version eight, or at least not on your on your watch, but Right. It's not going away. And so where do you see it going 10 years from now? And then as a follow up, I'm gonna ask the two consultants, if they had a wishlist, what would they like to see changed and updated? Whether it's from a usability perspective or, or functionality, any of that? So start with you, Mike.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:53:03):
Okay. So, so first off, one of the things we're gonna add, and this is, I don't know if this is a version seven thing or just probably the last iteration of six, but it will follow a along pretty closely. We will have a Catherine Heifer model so we'll be kind of birth to death. And I was just on a call with a former grad student who's now I bought back some of his time to finish this. We started it and then he graduated and left and we never finished the full model. So we are working on that right now and trying to pull that together. So there'll be a full calf and heifer model with the transition calf, right? We've got enough data to, to to, to build it through the weaning phase. So we're, we're pretty happy about that.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:53:47):
I think the future one of the things that we, you know, besides the methane, you know, the, the environment aspect of the C N C P S getting to fatty acids. So we're gonna frame out, we're gonna frame out fatty acids pretty quickly in this thing. We, the, the, the beauty of the current system is the, the framework is there. We now have the protozoa. The protozoa have a really interesting fatty acid profile. We've got a bunch of bacterial samples. So we're gonna generate all that information. And then, and then start to figure out, you know, I, I don't know if we'll go as far as all the bio hydrogenation, but I'd, I'd like to get to the point where we could forward predict milk composition and not, not that we're gonna get to the point where I say, you know, it's gonna be 4.79, just to the point where we'd say, this diet should allow for an increase in milk fat. This diet may inhibit your milk fat. Right? Just kind of a qualitative thing to get started with. If we get better at it than that, we'll see. We tried doing that. I, I, I assembled just like we have this informal fiber working group. I assembled what I called the fat guy working group. Just happened to be all guys at the time. That would probably, I know that would change. Now I all
Speaker 7 (00:55:11):
That remark,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:55:13):
It wasn't, it wasn't a personal comment, clay discipline.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:55:26):
And so, so we had started down that road of trying to figure out how to frame out a fatty acid model, but then the, the immuno acids ran right over it. Right? And, and that, that took priority. So I'm coming back to it now with version seven. And we wanna be able to get, I, you know, you guys have heard me say this before, I think the cow has a fatty acid requirement, just like she has an amino acid requirement, right? They're not just energy sources. It's just like essential versus non-essential clay
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:56:15):
And Adam and I were like, we don't think that's a good idea. And one of, one of the reasons for that, and we were gonna run a study we think we both had the idea that the protozoa are the essential fatty acid reservoir for the cow. Hmm. Because she doesn't, she either she can elongate some fatty acids, but she actually needs some essential fatty acids. And, and they have a more eukaryotic, you know, cell wall, which would lead to more central fatty acids about the time we're about ready to pull the trigger on the study. Oh, Dick Wallace, Richard Wallace at the Row Research Institute publishes a study showing exactly that, how the, how the protozoan engulfing these, these fats and these lipids and then moving them downstream, right? Basically acting as a vector to the cow. So we never ran the study.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:57:11):
So that, that, that kind of stuff, we wanna be able to get to that level of detail because I think that will help us figure out how to modify milk composition, how to improve just efficiency of use of nutrients on behalf of the cow. Other big things 10 years from now here's a left hand idea. And I wasn't the guy, I was definitely not the person to come up with this. So we're sitting with a bunch of software architects and they're looking at the structure of the C N C P S. And one guy was being really quiet,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:58:00):
How the hell are you gonna do that? He goes, well, he says, looking at what you need and what has to happen and what this model would do. He said, we could put this in the cloud. And he goes, an AI system could do all of your diet formulation. You feed the information and it, it spits everything back out and then it learns, right? Because Rob would send stuff to the cloud and Mike would send stuff to the cloud, and eventually this AI system would learn what do we know? What do we don't know? What's the most important metrics? Cuz it'd be using this mass amount of data. And then we would just be facilitating all of that. That's intriguing. I don't know what the hell it means, but these software guys can see it. So yeah, maybe in 10 years this is running in a cloud someplace and it's informed me. Cuz the other thing about that conversation was it would inform our research about what we should go focus on because they, they can't, we can't identify what's causing this outcome in the cows. Interesting, funny outcome.
Scott Sorrell (00:59:01):
So, yeah. So Robin, Mike, what kind of if, if you were to give Mike some pointers on what needs to be and this or the next version, what, what might that be? Yeah, I
Dr. Mike DeGroot (00:59:11):
Found about a year on the kaf and heifer deal, but I'm glad to hear that it's coming out. So it's definitely been on my wishlist. You know, one of the things that we're seeing in our industry too is, is more and more of this data. So some interaction with some of the, you know, s c r callers or things like that. So tying in the rumination side of to what we're actually doing, I think that's a big step as we move forward. And also with our feed programs too, with our feed management software that we have on farms, being able to have some interaction with that. And I know that's been talked about and coming down the road, but those are some of the things that I see on the wishlist moving
Dr. Robb Bender (00:59:47):
Forward. Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:59:49):
Good input.
Dr. Robb Bender (00:59:51):
Yeah, those are
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:59:52):
Taking notes on this by the way.
Dr. Robb Bender (00:59:54):
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:00:50):
Yeah, yeah, no, those are really good points guys. You just triggered you just triggered something. The, the at least the, the first version of seven has to have some sort of a management model on the front end. And we're, we're, we think there's one out there, we just have to go grab it and kind of massage it a little bit. And the reason for that, it won't be as sophisticated out of the gate is what you guys are talking about, but the, this model is dynamic so you can't just give it a 24 hour feed intake value and expect it to give you an answer. It'll fail actually. It just doesn't give you anything. It actually has to have meals. So we actually need some sort of an environment behavior model to allow it to eat. And we'll probably do it crudely at the beginning and have you guys kind of say, do you have four major meals or five major meals or six major meals? And then kind of let it oscillate through the day in some uniform. It's gonna have to be some uniform manner until we can figure out how to do the non-uniformity that you're all talking about. Those are really good points.
Dr. Robb Bender (01:02:00):
That sounds like another input we gotta put in there, Mike
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:02:06):
Well, I'd like to, yeah, no, it is, I'd like to simplify it to, to that, to your point though, I don't know how to do the feed delivery thing cuz I can't tell you when I'm doing dairy fellow's case studies, how many times we walk, how much time, how many times. Even now when we walk into a barn at, you know, we walk into a barn at, at eight in the morning, you see one thing. But we always come back to the barn somewhere between 11 o'clock at night and five o'clock in the morning, how many empty bunks we see, right? And it, it just drives me crazy. Right? And they can't figure out why they don't have any components why they can't make any milk. So I don't know how to do that one, but, but we, we do I'd like to say, Hey, are you in a six row barn, a three row barn or a four row barn?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:02:52):
What percent overcrowded are you on the stalls? And kind of make it checkbox kind of stuff. And if you had any information on, you know, do you have rails or do you have headlocks? You know, just some things like that that allow us to kind of get to these bigger picture characterizations. We could probably learn to, to make some behavior out of that. Trevor's DRIs has some ideas. We've, we've partnered we've partnered with him, but we've brought in him and Rick Grant into these conversations and we're trying to kind of figure out how do we build a, a behavior model that would get at some of that.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:03:28):
So, so Mike, I'm curious, what would constitute a major meal?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:03:32):
Most of the major meals that ice that we see now? That's a good question. And you know, and I'm, I'm, somebody can argue with me about this cuz I, and cuz I, I'm not gonna fall into my sword on anything here, you know, feed, feed delivery in the morning right? Is, is in having feed delivery there when the cows come out of the parlor Yep. And having it fresh and ready. We know we get a lot of intake in that particular feeding bout Right. Consistent pushup. Right. Every time we, every time you push up, usually in a high cow pen, you got cows going back to, to grab some food as long as they're not overcrowded Right. Feed delivery again. Right. So you're, and every time, you know, if you're milking three times a day when they come back, you're always, there's always a major meal on the backside of a trip to the parlor. Right. As long as their feed is pushed up and accessible and they're not too overcrowded.
Speaker 8 (01:04:31):
Yep.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:04:32):
Yep. So there's, there's a few big indicators there that us that you can kind of use to kind of get at, well, how many meals should they, you know, so if you say you're milking three times a day, well there's three meals you got feed delivery, if it's once a day, there's another major meal if you gotta push up every, every six hours where there's some more, right? So you can kind of get to a a bare bones kind of, this is my in, this may be my intake pattern on this farm. The the card part is, is if they're running out of feed at 10 or 11 o'clock at night, then
Dr. Mike DeGroot (01:05:06):
Action will work well with that Mike with some of these other companies, right?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:05:10):
Yeah. Well I'm that, and that's, you're right on those, those collaborations can be really, really important here. And I think that's getting us into this era of, you know, for better or for worse, we call it big data, right? Just gotta figure out how to grab it and make use of it and put it in a form that we can all use it. There's a lot of computer people out there that would love to help us do that as long as we can figure out how to get it done. Yeah,
Scott Sorrell (01:05:33):
Guys, it's been great conversation. I've enjoyed every minute of it, but they just flicker the lights. That means one thing. It is last call. So with last call, what I'm gonna do is ask each of you guys to kind of give us a couple key takeaways and, and for the consultants I'm gonna ask you to give us kind of a, a practical takeaway not only for yourself, but for, you know, fellow nutritionist out there and then, and then Mike maybe from more of a, an academic perspective. I'm gonna ask you to close us out and, and give us an idea of what you think are some of the key elements of the, the the new version or, or the conversation today.
Speaker 5 (01:06:11):
Tonight's last call question is brought to you by Nitric Precision Release Nitrogen Nitros Sure delivers a complete TMR for the room and microbiome helping you feed the microbes that feed your cows. To learn more about maximizing microbial protein output while reducing your carbon footprint, visit b.com/nitro. Sure.
Scott Sorrell (01:06:34):
And so with that clay, I'm gonna start with you.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:06:39):
Yeah. So, so actually some of it's what we hit on there at the end so that, you know, the dynamic nature of the model. I think that's that's I'm really looking forward to, to that piece of it. Certainly from our perspective and the and looking forward, the and Mike you hit on this at the end too, was I get questions all the time about, about predictions and particularly predicting milk components through the model. So that's you know, anything we can do there would, would, would be a big help.
Scott Sorrell (01:07:20):
Yeah. Yep. Rob, couple key takeaways.
Dr. Robb Bender (01:07:25):
Yeah, couple that I got. We didn't talk about it extensively, but you started out with the shift to the nitrogen basis on everything related protein model. I think that's great. And then I, I really appreciate the sugar discussion and the protozoa coming out of that. That's something I haven't probably spent as much time on as I should. So it's good to know and learn and, and be a part of that. And my last takeaway is that whenever I listen to Mike, Ben Amber talk about models, it's really good to have a drink in my hand. So
Speaker 7 (01:07:56):
Dr. Robb Bender (01:07:57):
Makes it more interesting.
Speaker 7 (01:07:59):
Scott Sorrell (01:08:07):
Rob, I kind of messed up. I should have asked you in the very beginning, what are you drinking tonight? What's in your glass? Why don't you give us that now?
Dr. Robb Bender (01:08:13):
Ah, yeah. This is Wisconsin perennial fashion. So yeah. Orbell Brandi.
Scott Sorrell (01:08:19):
Yep.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (01:08:29):
Well, I second the alcohol in hand. I appreciate that, Rob
Scott Sorrell (01:08:32):
Dr. Mike DeGroot (01:08:34):
I'm actually drinking a Jack Creek Pinot. This is from one of my old clients who used to be a dairyman and him and his wife John and Shelly Stra started a winery a couple years ago, and it's one of my favorites, so that's what I'm
Scott Sorrell (01:08:46):
Very nice. Awesome.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (01:08:48):
Yeah, so some of my takeaways today you know, especially on the time points, I think we all kind of have a standard in our head of what we look for when we're comparing forages and things like that. And, and I think the model helps us put that into what we see with the cattle. I, we've already been working on some of these, you know, earlier time points, like 12 hours and things like that. I think that that's where we're gonna be able to go with this model. I'm excited about that from a, from a fiber standpoint, is being able to analyze these fibers and tell the differences on some of them too. You know, as we're starting into 20 right now, we had a really hot late summer, so we're seeing some of these fiber digestibility in the toilet compared to where we were feeding on some of the 21 corn silages.
Dr. Mike DeGroot (01:09:32):
So I think that's gonna help us a lot when we're that when we're doing that. We didn't talk a lot about this too, but kind of looking at those grams of essential amino acids per mega cow, you know, are we still focused on certain amino acids or as we're learning more about these feed stuffs, are there other amino acids that we need to be focused on trying to maximum components in yield in these cows? So, and, and just, you know, the overall, when you're, when you're using the model making sure that our inputs are correct on that. I, I'm, I'm really a stickler on that as far as trying to get weights and walking distances and things like that as we're moving forward. So I'm excited for this new model. It, it kind of, you know, when the new versions come out, the art part of it, Mike, that we, we do as nutritionist, we kind of have our, our standards of what we're looking for, and every time the model gets better, the art does go down and the science gets better. So I think we can actually look at how these animals are performing and, and I always leave it up to the cows, like you said, the cows tell me whether it's working or not. So this has been a great discussion and thanks for having me on
Scott Sorrell (01:10:37):
It. Yeah, well said Mike. Well said Dr. Van Amberg, final words,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:10:42):
Scott Sorrell (01:12:05):
Well, thank you for that, Mike. Mike, this has been a, a, a good conversation. Very interesting. I want to thank you for the, the guests you brought along tonight. Robin, Mike did an amazing job, right? I appreciate the the academic conversation as well as the practical conversation. They did a great job of bringing that to bear. This is an important tool, right? And we got, don't wanna put a lot of pressure on you, Mike, but there's a lot of people out there waiting for it,
Speaker 9 (01:12:30):
So
Scott Sorrell (01:12:33):
May it is, we're gonna keep your, keep your feet to the fire.
Speaker 9 (01:12:37):
So
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:12:38):
They are, they are. All right. Well, thank you all.
Scott Sorrell (01:12:44):
I appreciate the rock
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:12:45):
Captain. Maybe, maybe if old fashioned I'll do better.
Speaker 9 (01:12:50):
Scott Sorrell (01:12:55):
I don't want it, to go without thanking our loyal listeners. You know I wanna thank them for joining us tonight. You know, we're always looking for ideas topics that you want to hear about. And so we'd appreciate hearing from you if you would just send us an email@andh.marketing@balchem.com with, with any ideas, or conversations. We'd really appreciate it. And, and with that, we, we hope you learned something. We hope you had some fun, and we hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (01:13:28):
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