Tonight, is our second installment of what we call our legacy series. The legacy series honor those individuals that have a profound impact on our industry. For this conversation, we're going to zero in on the history of transition cow management. We are joined by Dr. Ric Grummer and Dr. Heather White from University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. Jesse Goff of Iowa State University.
Guests: Dr. Ric Grummer, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dr. Jesse Goff, Iowa State University; Dr. Heather White, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Tonight is our second installment of what we call our legacy series. The legacy series honor those individuals that have a profound impact on our industry. For this conversation, we're going to zero in on the history of transition cow management. We are joined by Dr. Ric Grummer and Dr. Heather White from University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. Jesse Goff of Iowa State University.
Dr. Ric Grummer discusses the transition cow and the feeding process of pre and postpartum cows from an energy deficit standpoint as well as the lactation dry periods. 8:00
Moving into today’s research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Heather White discusses her work on liver cells. She discusses the different studies on cells done by manipulating treatments and then using that data to determine what to do in a cow study without using thousands of cows in the process. 23:47
The discussion continues with Dr. Jesse Goff sharing about his studies involving milk fever. These studies branched off of a Norwegian scientist’s studies on AIV silage and making haylage by pouring hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid onto the forages. 31:45
Then Dr. Heather White discusses NEFA and the profile of fatty acids. She discussed manipulating the fatty acids in the blood and the impacts of those fatty acids. 43:00
As a veteran of the field, Dr. Jesse Goff discusses where he sees the future of immunology. He discussed his studies on the effects of calcium as well as manipulation of the immune system. He also discussed the options to help treat animals coming out of the COVID pandemic by manipulating messenger RNA to boost various immunological parameters to boost the immune system at the right time. 47:42
A fruitful area of research around protein imbalance was discussed by Dr. Ric Grummer and how it effects the postpartum cow. 55:00
Dr. Jesse Goff and Dr. Ric Grummer discuss more on the transition cow and how there is still a lot of research to be done on storage of protein during lactation and transition cycles. 58:40
As promised, “The Grummertini” also known as a Tangueray Martini Up & Dirty with Ric’s variations
Tangueray Gin
Up (no ice cubes)
Dirt on the side (side of olive juice)
Shaken & Poured
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:06):
Good evening everyone. And welcome to the Real Science Exchange. The podcast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Tonight is our second installment of what we call our legacy series. The legacy series will honor those individuals that have had a profound impact on our industry. Tonight, we're going to zero in on the history of transition cow management. For many years, the transition cow has been overlooked, not receiving the focus or attention we now know she needs to maximize production and efficiency in the next lactation. Tonight, we're bringing together three icons in transition cow management, representing decades of experience and knowledge. Their collective history will allow us to look at the past, present, and future of transition cow research. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrel, one of your hosts tonight here at the Real Science Exchange. Our first guest joining us at the pub tonight is no stranger to our discussions. In fact, all three of our special guests have joined us this past year for either a Real Science webinar, or they've been part of a Real Science Exchange. Dr. Grummer, welcome to the, the exchange. Um, our listeners may have heard that you've had some health challenges recently, but I understand that you're on the road to a full recovery.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:01:23):
I sure am, Scott. I was diagnosed about two years ago, or a little bit more than two years ago with a rather aggressive form of bone marrow cancer, uh, which required me to go through a bone marrow transplant, which was done. And it all went very well. And today I'm as healthy, I think, as anybody else. I'm feeling great and it's great to be alive and I feel very blessed to be alive.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:51):
Oh, that's great. Great news. Ric, looking forward to seeing you here in the not too distant future.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:01:55):
The lack of hair is not due to any current chemotherapy or anything, It's just my COVID hairstyle.
Scott Sorrell (00:02:03):
Yeah, I understand. Yeah, Mary's a very nice barber.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:02:06):
Yup. She does a great job of putting the clipper through it.
Scott Sorrell (00:02:10):
So I don't need to ask you what's in your glass tonight. I've seen you order these many, many times so many in fact that we have lovingly called it a Grummer-tini. So can you kind of walk us through, um, how you go about, uh, app, uh, ordering a Grummer-tini?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:02:27):
Well, in the days of, of going out a lot into restaurants, I would order of Tanqueray martini, tanqueray meaning a gin martini op, that means without ice cube shaken and poured. I'd order it dirty, which means a little bit of olive juice and I'd ordered the dirt on the side so I could put it in myself. And, uh, it was, it was an ordeal to get one of these ordered, but it's a great drink. I've simplified it now in, in retirement is basically a couple ice cubes and a little bit of gin and olive juice.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:04):
Okay. That's excellent. Yeah. It used to take you quite a while to order those in a couple of trips back and forth from the bar for the bartender to get them right, it seems like. But we're going to, we're going to take and put that recipe in the show notes so that if you want to make one at home, you can certainly do that. Ric is joined by Dr. Jesse Goff, Jesse what's in your glass. And can you tell us any stories about how you met Ric?
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:03:29):
Well, margarita, nothing special. Whatever's cheapest on the store shelf. How did I meet Ric? Well, where we really got to know each other was on a 2001 NRC committee. And he and I both did the transition chapter there and worked on various other chapters together and then apart. That was probably the start of it. And we became actually, the whole committee really became pretty good friends with each other. It's something they should have charged me tuition. I learned, learned more in that three years than and I did an all school as far as nutrition goes. Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:04:12):
Very nice. Now, for those of you that are watching on YouTube, you might notice that both Dr. Grummer and Dr. Golf had the same background that's because they are together right now at this very moment, broadcasting from Ric's bar in his basement. And they're actually sitting side by side. So I understand Jesse, uh, and Ric, you were going to do some fishing today. Did that in fact happen?
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:04:36):
Not yet. Not yet. It took me a little longer to get up here and I made a couple, we just chatted
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:04:46):
We've reminisced for a little while and we're going out immediately after this. So we're anxious to get out there.
Scott Sorrell (00:04:52):
Alright, very well.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:04:55):
The name of the bar by the way is “Ed's croppie hall” And that's because if you look over my shoulder here, there's a mounted croppie, and that crappies name is Ed. Oh, Ed was caught when my daughter was 13 and it was rather nice one so my father mounted it for my daughter. So that's why we're down here at Ed's crappy hall.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:19):
And my guess is your daughter named Ed?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:05:23):
My daughter named it Ed. Yes, absolutely.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:25):
All right. Great. Um, our third guest tonight is Dr. Heather White. Heather represents the next generation and transition cow research and will carry on the work started by Dr.’s Grummer and and Goff. Heather, welcome back to pub- you were one of the first guests on the Exchange when we started this back in 2020. What’re you drinking tonight, and do you have any favorite stories about Ric or Jesse?
Dr. Heather White (00:05:49):
Well, thanks first for having me back. I'm having a whiskey old fashioned, so, uh, making sure we represent Wisconsin well here, although I'm not at the cottage with Jesse and Ric. Um, I first met Dr. Grummer, the esteemed professor, when I was in graduate school. Um, and we had went through a lot of the research, uh, that he had done and I met him at a conference and felt just so, uh, proud of myself that he talked to me, just a random young grad student, and really made an impression on me then. But I got a chance to work with him quite a bit more after I came to Wisconsin as faculty through research collaborations, worked with him quite a bit. Uh, I haven't gotten to work with Jesse as much as closely or on any NRC committees, but maybe there's still time for that.
Scott Sorrell (00:06:42):
Hmm. Excellent. And finally, my trusty co-host Dr. Clay Zimmerman is able to join us clay. Uh, did you mix up any Grummer-tinis for tonight's occasion?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:06:52):
I did not. Not tonight, Scott. Sorry.
Scott Sorrell (00:06:55):
Yeah. You're driving and on vacation actually.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:06:59):
Yeah, I've been driving all day, so... Scott what's, what are you drinking tonight?
Scott Sorrell (00:07:03):
So tonight, um, you know, one of our guests on a previous, uh, pub cast, uh, ordered Heaven's Door, and I don’t know if you can see this, but it's, it's inspired by Bob Dylan and the decorations on the front of the bottle here is inspired by, uh, Bob's, um, uh, artwork. Uh, and he's an artist now, who knew? But anyway, uh, it sounded good. I got it. And I, I can tell you, I would recommend it. It's, it's an excellent pour. So would recommend that. To get us started tonight, Ric let's get right into it. Can you share a bit of the history behind, uh, transition cow research and, and where was it, uh, when you first started out in your career?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:07:45):
If you actually looked over my publication list, I probably have one that's most cited, which is a review. And in that review, I stated the transition period is three weeks prior to calving until three weeks post calving. That's nothing I created or invented or started, but for some reason, everybody, when they start by saying, well, the transition period is such and such, and cite that paper. So it's kind of nonsense that, that that is the case. But when I, when I started in this, I think we understood that this time when the cow would go from the dry period to lactation was, was one of tremendous change and one of tremendous stress. And probably the mineral people were ahead of us in, in investigating milk fever rather than the more organic or lipid related diseases. I think at the time I came into it, a lot of emphasis was not on the transition count, per se, as starting before calving.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:08:53):
A lot of the emphasis, on the protein and energy side was actually on the postpartum cow. And so we would hear many, many talks given about feeding the early lactation cow and how critical it was to feed that early lactation cow correctly. And that much emphasis was given on, well, what about pre-partum? And again, maybe the exception would be, would be the milk fever story. So, so it was a little bit, uh, raw as far as what, what was going on pre partum. There was some acknowledgement that we needed to adapt the rumen microorganisms to, to grain. And so there was the message to maybe start feeding that cow a little extra grain before calving or to steam her up so that the bugs would get acclimated to the, the higher star slow, and the higher acid production came with that. But beyond that, there wasn't really a lot talked about,. And again, most of the emphasis was on that early lactation cow.
Scott Sorrell (00:10:02):
So you talked a little bit about, you know, you set the parameters 21 days before ,21 days after how, how good did you set that? And, and, and if you were to do that again, what would you set the those days at?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:10:15):
No, again, it's not, it's not really something I set, but I, I think those parameters are really set by the biology of the cow and the physiology of the cow. And really it's a period in which the changes start to occur pre calving in, in really quite dramatic fashion. And same thing. I think post calving, maybe we talk about 21 days. Maybe it could be 28 days, but again, it's, that's when the major challenge is from an, an energy deficit standpoint. So I think from a physiological standpoint, that's a pretty appropriate time period. Uh, you know, I maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's probably still pretty close.
Scott Sorrell (00:11:00):
So if a 21 day transition period is appropriate pre calving, do we need a 60 day dry period?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:11:09):
Well, that's, you know, that's, um, a good question. Um, you know, there's, there's a certain concept that, you know, when we dry a cow off, she needs a rest of, again, probably maybe four weeks, six weeks, whatever. And, um, you know, I never quite understood that physiologically. Why, why an account needs a rest? Um, clearly there's been some research looking at shortening the dry periods, and we were fairly involved with that. Maybe one of the disappointments in my career in that more of that wasn't adopted. I think we showed fairly clearly along with others, especially cows that are going through their second dry period that they can, they can get by just fine with a 30 day dry period. But, but that 60 day dry periods have been entrenched, entrenched in people's minds for a long time. And that was just, uh, that was dogma. And it was a tough one to change, but personally, I feel that yeah, cows can, can get by with a shorter dry period.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:12:20):
Ric, just to be clear on that, but not, not after the very first lactation, right? You're not, you don't want that shorter dry period then?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:12:28):
Right. It has, it has to be the second dry period. The first, the first dry period, those cows react a little, a little differently. Um, and they, they seem to need a longer dry period. I think, I think for that animal probably 45 days is adequate. Um, but they do seem to get short-changed a little bit. If you go down to 30 days with that kind of an animal, it's the more mature animals that are, are really physiologically mature, so to speak that that seem to be able to do just fine. But you know, the people who tried it many times said, oh, it didn't work for me. And I, and I think, I think it gets down to the fact that if you give them a 30 day dry period, those that actually calve early, um, then they get a much shorter, dry period.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:13:18):
And, and that, that animal, you know, maybe, maybe suffers a little bit and, and the thing you gotta keep accounted, and the many studies that were done, all those animals were included in the data. So overall they're in the data set, but it's still, people were reluctant to do it. I think people were reluctant to do it because it might cause a change in facilities. It changes your ratio of dry cows to lactating cows. Um, there's just a lot of reasons, I think, that it didn't work out, but we, you know, we thought conceptually, it was great. Yeah, you may, you may chop a little bit off that peak lactation, but she gives it by extending her lactation. And by dropping that peak a little bit, you lessen the negative energy balance and that has metabolic benefits as well as reproductive benefits.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:14:09):
Jesse, what is, what is your take on the dry period length from your perspective?
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:14:13):
Well, I think Ric, Ric thinks he's disappointed because they haven't adopted it. Well, I, I think he'd be surprised to find that there are people were adopting shorter dry periods, just not to the extent that down 30 days. And, and I think what drives that in many ways as he suggested was space. But the other one is that the days carrying a calf is, you know, plus, or minus eight or nine days, depending on the breed. So if you shoot for a 30 day dry period, you're going to have some cows that are less than that and seemed, and you can correct me, seem pretty clear that 30 days was kind of the minimum. If you drop much below that, you start seeing a bigger impact on milk. And so to make sure most of them are getting at least 30 days, I see a lot of farms going to 45 days or 42 days dry.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:15:05):
I think the counter argument there is that, and there are some data sets, some actually very large data sets where that data is included. If a cow is programmed to dry off for 30 days, but it actually only has a 10 or 15 day dry period because it calves early that, that isn't called out, that data is actually in there. So, so that doesn't, that doesn't scare me off, but I can understand the dairy producer, if that producer’s got a top cow that peaked at, you know, 140 pounds in the last lactation. And he tries giving her a short, dry period, and this time, by gosh she only gave him 110. Well, you know, that concerns them. That that's a reason that they might say I tried that, that didn’t work. So, you know, I understand the reluctance. It's okay. I'm not, I'm not offended.
Dr. Heather White (00:16:02):
You can't give a day back if a cow calves early, but you can manage the other end. So if you shoot for 45 days and one of them calves at 30, she still good. If you shoot for 30 and she calves at 20, there's nothing you can do about it anymore. Right? If you shoot for 45 and she goes long, there are some things you can do. So you can flag cows that had a 60 day dry period, 70 day dry period. And you can adjust management on the other end to avoid the repercussions of too long of a dry period. So there's a, a backup plan on that end, whereas there's, there's not necessarily a backup plan to recover that potential lost milk if it's too short. So maybe managing for something like 45 give some more flexibility.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:16:45):
This doesn't evolve into it an hour discussion on dry period length, because that's just...
Scott Sorrell (00:16:50):
Had enough of that? Clay, you were trying to say something there. I think you were muted again.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:16:55):
I was asking, I was asking what they're doing at the university right now, as far as dry period length.
Dr. Heather White (00:17:03):
We still, we still shoot for 60, despite Ric's best efforts. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (00:17:11):
Ric sounds like you want to change the subject. I was going....
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:17:13):
They never listened to me when I was on faculty. I don't expect you to start listening to me now.
Scott Sorrell (00:17:22):
Let's change the subject and talk a little bit about fatty liver. I understand that some of your early research, um, was on fatty liver. Um, how did, how did you get into that research?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:17:34):
Yeah, that's, that's a, a great, great question. You know, I came to the university of Wisconsin and one of the things that you have to do is you is have to start an innovative and an independent research program. And so when I came to the university, one of the things that I was intrigued by was fatty liver in dairy cows. And in graduate school, I had actually studied liberal protein metabolism as it relates to milk fat depression. So I had a pretty good knowledge of lipoprotein metabolism. And so when I started at the university, I thought, well, we got this cow and we know that she's susceptible to fatty liver. You know, at that time we thought shortly after calving. And, um, I thought, well, what's, what's the issues. What is that? We have a high rate of need for mobilization and uptake by the liver.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:18:31):
And we know that occurs, so that's part of the problem. But the other side of the equation is what about getting fat out of the liver? What about exporting it? And so I thought nobody's really approach the problem from that end. Well, I was very fortunate to come to university and a colleague of mine, LouarmOntono was a year ahead of me in, in being hired. And, and he and his first graduate student had started to develop a cell culture system. So my first graduate student, I actually went to Lou and I said, Hey, you know, could we work together with your graduate student and, and use the cell culture system to study fat export out of the liver. And he, you know, he was gracious and said, sure. And so we did that. And, um, my first student, Barry Cleppy, um, who's now a veterinarian and he started and I said, well, Barry, the first thing you have to do is you have to culture liver cells.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:19:30):
And, and I said, you know, work with Lou’s student Bob Ielo. And, and so he did that and he, he took these bovine liver cells and he came back and he said to me, I can get them to take up fatty acids from the media, but they're not putting anything out. And I said, well, keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. And he did, and he failed. And he did, and he failed. He couldn't get them to export fat out of the liver. So I said, go down to the eighth floor with a physiologist and get a rodent, try culturing some rodent liver cells and see if he can get it to work. So he went down and they were working with Guinea pigs and so we cultured Guinea pig cells, and same thing. They take up fat, but they wouldn't export fat out of the liver. I said well, keep trying, you know, when I was with first students, you know? Try harder, right?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:20:24):
Work, longer, more hours. Right? Well, finally, it comes and plops on my desk and paper that documented that Guinea pig liver cells aren’t very capable of exporting fat. They're just not good at it. They're very slow rates of exportation. So then we thought, huh, maybe that's the issue. And so sure enough, uh, we documented that rumen, and we actually started with goats then, rumen and liver cells did not export fat out of the liver at a very high rate. And, uh, so that really started my intrigue on, on fatty liver. The big question at that point in time was why aren't these cells exporting fat out of the liver? And I used to tell my students when I like, think of it, think of it as a, as a car. If a car doesn't run- Why doesn’t it run? Well, two possible reasons. There's something wrong with it, mechanically or it's out of gas.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:21:24):
So I tell him where I think this is mechanical. I think there's some gene that isn't there being expressed and they just can't do it. Certainly not that they're out of gas because we're giving a media with all sorts of nutrients in there. There can't be any possibly limiting. And sure enough, I was wrong on that one too, as, as determined at a later date, that there probably is limiting nutrients. And I won't give a shameless plug here, but, you know, we ended up, you know, finding out that at least it seemed like choline might be able to, to prevent or alleviate fatty liver. And of course, interesting. Interestingly enough, Lou and myself gave up working with hepatocytes altogether, Because you know, it was, it was very expensive. About every other graduate students couldn't do it. And we were sacrificing calves and you know, that's not always fun. And, and so we both just dropped it. And lo and behold, Heather White was trained by one to Lou’s former students. And so she came along years later and resurrected the procedure and she's done a wonderful job of continuing work on hepatic metabolism using that cell culture system.
Dr. Heather White (00:22:44):
For the record, those same challenges still exist.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:22:48):
Yeah. About 50% of the students can do 50%.
Dr. Heather White (00:22:52):
Yup, and and it's still expensive and it's still challenging.
Scott Sorrell (00:22:57):
Well, Heather, that's a great segue. Why don't you just fill us in a little bit on what you're doing with your liver cell work?
Dr. Heather White (00:23:02):
Yeah, for me, it's, it's a model, it's a tool. So it doesn't replace doing cow studies, but it gives us really incredible insight into mechanism like Ric talked about. How is it, how is it happening? What's the machinery, what's the genes, what are the proteins that are involved? And we can put, you know, huge factorial studies on cells that would take thousands of cows and, you know, way too many liver biopsies. And so it gives us a lot of ability to manipulate treatments and see what's going on. And then that information informs either what we do in a cow study. Maybe it helps us narrow down treatments or treatment combinations, or it can help explain what's happening to the cow, back to the mechanism. So if we keep seeing something in a cow, whether it's a change in milk composition or a change in liver lipids or any of those, um, you know, sometimes it's really hard to get at how that mechanism is happening in the cow when every animal’s eating a different amount and has different genetics and all of these things.
Dr. Heather White (00:24:04):
So we can dig into that, uh, more closely in a cell culture model. So we've used it to look at methyl donors, choline, methianine. We've used it to look at fatty acid treatment combinations where we can put the fatty acids together in combinations that mimic the NEFA in the cow, whether it's pre partum or postpartum. And then look at gluconeogenesis and oxidation of fatty acids and triglyceride export and other pathways. And so that's been a key part of complimenting cow studies in my research program. And ironically or coincidentally, we do do the surgery in the same sink that Ric and Lou did. And we use the same cell culture room, although it has been renovated since then, thankfully. Um, but it, there is a lot of history there. So
Scott Sorrell (00:24:57):
Jesse, as a veterinarian, what's been your experience with fatty liver in transition cows?
Dr. Jesse Goff (25:03)
Don't get it.
Scott Sorrel (00:25:07)
Just don't get it. Great advice.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:25:10):
You know, uh, in the United States, we had such a different form than what was in all the veterinary textbooks, which was all based on European literature, that described the different type of ketosis that was readily treatable by a bottle of glucose and put more grain in their diet because most of those were in grazing situations, and then the cow went on her merry way. And that's what was in all the vet textbooks until probably the seventies when, some folks at Iowa State and then Ric and a few others started seeing all this fatty liver develop so quickly in the cow. And it seemed, now we can argue about whether there truly is a separate type for the United States, but it seemed like our ketosis was occurring much faster and was much less amenable to treatment.
Scott Sorrell (00:26:04):
Is that just simply because they were mobilizing more NEFA in our systems?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:26:10):
Well, I think it was a, I mean, I think that the dogma was that need for mobilization was, was maximized post calving and, and people thought, well, you know, it's worse as energy balance gets worse. And that it was, uh, an event that happened, you know, 7, 10, 14 days post calving. And I think one of the things that really brought the disease into focus was the observation that, that the elevation in NEFA and the most extreme elevation occurred on the day of calving, or at calving time. And that this was a part of the normal physiological process of Calving. Um, she goes through endocrine changes that are conducive to fat mobilization. So basically that spike in NEFA comes right at calving. And when I got into this business, you know, fatty liver was a postpartum disorder. Well, it's, it's there, you know, and it can develop in 24 to 48 hours and that NEFA spike at calving can, can cause it, so, and, and that sort of what changed our emphasis of, well, okay.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:27:32):
If it's happening at calving, let's, let's go back and look at what we can do prior to calving to, to try to minimize that, that effect. And so I think part of it was just learning more about the physiology of the cow and when certain events were happening.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:27:48)
Yeah. It seemed, it seemed like prior to that study, of Ric’s, um, prior to that, I think we were all in this mode that the NEFA was, were accumulating slowly as the animal and more and more negative energy balance. I don't, I think that paper would set the table as far as how this was occurring. That really was something definite about the day of calving and right around the time of calving, this cow reacted differently than she would later. Well, oh correct me now, I remember a Jerry Young did some studies where they went out to like two weeks and starved cows and that didn’t give them fatty liver.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:28:28):
And, uh, but if you starved them on day one or one or so they got terrible fatty liver. So there was something different about the way they metabolizing those fats. Did I get that right? Am I thinking right?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:28:43)
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. That, that he went several weeks past calving and trying to feed, restrict animals and reduce fatty liver and couldn't do it. Um, that, that spike in NEFA is, is actually what led us to what we call the stuffing experiment. And I thought, well, that, that, that peak that's occurring at calving is because on that day of calving, these guys are hardly eating, you know, so yeah, that's probably makes sense that the NEEF levels are going through the roof.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:29:14):
So we took fistulated cows and we force fed them and didn't allow them to go off feed, but the spike in NEEF was still occurred. So that, that told us that it was something inherent in the physiology of the parturition that contributed to it. And that being said, my colleague, Lou Armantano still tells me that that study should have never been published. And the reason why is we had two groups of cows, one group that we allowed to go off feed and another group of cows that we force fed through the rumen fistula. Well, Lou says the cows that you allowed to go off feed, were they fistulated?. And I said, no? Oh, you're confounded. And that study should never been published. Yeah. I guess he's, you know, like always Lous is right. Um, but my defense was that, that we at the university of Wisconsin and I, and I hope it's still the same way, we did not discriminate by genetic ability to produce milk or how fancy the cow looked, whether she got a fistula or not. It didn't matter whether you're a beauty queen, whether you made a ton of milk, if you were needed for an experiment, you got fistulated. So anyway, he's correct from a strict standpoint. That probably should've never been published
Scott Sorrell (00:30:48):
While we're on it. I talked about nutrition. Jesse, can you tell us a little bit about the work that you've done? I know that you're known for doing work with milk fever. Can you tell us a little bit about your work?
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:31:00):
Um, you're looking at probably the luckiest guy around. I work with really good people and, uh, had the opportunity when I was with USDA to try crazy things. So, unbeknownst to most people, the decalve story actually started, uh, back in the 19- late 1940s with a couple of American veterinarians who were riding the hillsides of Pennsylvania. And, uh, most, most at that time, a lot of cows that got no fever, maybe 25 to 30% would get what's called a relapsed milk fever and have milk fever the next day. And you'd have to be back and treat them again. Well, they were running around the countryside with an organic acid and all it it's like this big, the name, but, uh, they were using that to acidify the cows after they gave the first bottle of calcium and they never had to go back for relapsed milk fever.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:31:56):
The problem was, it took this much to, uh, to do that treatment. It took this much to kill them, so it was very potent stuff. But, uh, they were on the right idea, but nobody recognized. And then the Norwegians, uh, Inger Dishington and to her group, uh, had some AIV silage, which most Americans have no idea what that is. Arturo Ivor Tannen, he won the Nobel prize in sometime the mid thirties for developing the silage. In Scandinavian countries, you can't grow a high sugar content grass, and you don't have the luxury of drying it out in the sun very much. So are making haylages just by pouring hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid onto the forages. And then when they got done, they needed to feed it. Some cows and Inger Dishington was smart enough to notice over time that the cows that got AIV treated silage, grass silage, they didn't get milk fever.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:33:03):
And, uh, they were using these Norwegian red and whites, which are Norwegian reds, which have a lot of milk fever and Swedish red and white, which have a lot of milk fever. So she came to America in 1971 and presented that research. And you, you can still read the papers. But, uh, my major professor was a fellow named Travis Littledyke, and he was at that meeting and he came back and he says, you guys gotta, we gotta try this. And I was a new graduate student, and this was 1978 when he said, well, yeah, you gotta try this. Um, this is, uh, an approach we need to think about. We put that stuff in front of cows and could not get them to eat it. That cow’d go for days, and then she'd eat it. She would not touch it. So that kind of killed the whole idea.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:33:51):
We could never get the cows to eat it, but, uh, Inger Dishington got it to work. She had almost everything right about how it was working, uh, how to get it done, I think, and this is a sad commentary. This may be where I need to get another drink. Um, Inger was a woman in Norway and, uh, she did this study. It was scientifically very great. So to reward her, what they did was put her in charge of the microbiology department at the veterinary college. And she never touched nutrition again. And the good news is that when we started getting all that stuff done, she was in a nursing home. And one of my colleagues went to visit her and tell her, oh, these guys in America, they're using your idea all over the place. And apparently she was quite, quite thrilled to hear that, and she was in her nineties by them.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:34:51):
So what did I do? I don't know! We started trying to figure out ways to get cows to eat anions, and when we could get them to eat it, there was no doubt about it that it prevented milk fever. And I was very lucky to have, uh, Jim Miller Tennessee help us out with a couple of grad students, Paul Gainer, and Fran Muir. And we all worked together to try to prove how this was working and learned that it accelerated vitamin D metabolism and accelerated bone calcium release. And then we started looking at acid base balance. So probably my big contribution was trying to figure out acid-base balance in the cow and how to manipulate it, and why feeding certain salts did certain things. Um, and then trying to define where you wanted to be in terms of acidity to make the hormones work.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:35:45):
And it turned out parathyroid hormone, uh, became inactive when cows were alkaline, and you just needed to get them out of an alkalotic state, and all of a sudden the hormones work. It turns out the receptors take on a poor shape, which was not unheard of. Insulin that was known, the other way. Uh, people have diabetic ketoacidosis when they go in the hospital, you can give them all the insulin they want. Their blood glucose can be 500 milligrams per deciliter, give them insulin, nothing happens. But if you first treat the acidosis -in this case, you're treating acidosis- give them sodium bicarbonate IV. Then you give them insulin. Their blood sugar comes right down. So this idea that acid-based physiology manipulated hormone receptors was not novel, but maybe the idea that we applied it to the cow was somewhat novel. I, uh, I strongly feel that, uh, I'm just very lucky. I was in the right place, the right time. And I had, uh, good guys around me that helped me.
Scott Sorrell (00:36:57):
Ric, I know that you've done a lot of nutritional research in transition cows. I've heard you give a, a few presentations, one of which was called as I believe is called “Insulin Resistance: Friend or Foe”. Talk a little bit about, um, I think the Goldilocks diet in that, in that talk, what would you say are some of the key takeaways from, from those discussions?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:37:18):
That talk was actually created- you, you may not remember this- but, but you guys approached me, whether I'd give the breakfast presentation at Cornell. At that time, there was such an anti NEFA movement that was going on. And part of this was generated by the Goldilocks movement that you got to feed this diet, minimize fat mobilization. Part of it was caused by the hepatic oxidation theory that if you get too many fatty acids going to the liver, it depresses feed intake, et cetera. And I just, I just got to the point where I said, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Um, you know, NEFA’s are pretty important. This is, this is part of the homeostatic mechanism of the cow to bring from the reserves to support lactation at a time where the cow’s just not consuming enough energy. And, and if you take away NEFA and you get too extreme with that concept, you're gonna have a downstream effect on, on milk production. And through a summary of studies,
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:38:31):
I, I think that yeah, that is probably the case. If you do some of these methodologies to suppress NEFA, that there's going to be that downstream effect on lowering milk production. So I was, I was purely trying to play the devil's advocate when I gave that talk. It was when I thought I was going to retire for good, I didn't, but I, you know, I thought that was one of my Swan presentations. Um, so I, I kinda, you know, just went out and said, Hey, here's the opposite side of the, the viewpoint on that. And, uh, you know, how it plays out? I don't know. So I had, and that's probably where we can have Heather join in. I, you know, I'm, I'm convinced that there is a trade-off, um, that occurs and that sometimes you, you kind of have to choose, choose what you want.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:39:32):
And, and there are some dairy producers, and there are some, I would say, countries that really emphasize health of a cow and minimizing any sort of problem. And, you know, you go over to countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, whatever, you know, they're eight to five. And when they go to bed, go in for dinner and they don't want to go back out to the barn at night, you know, I understand that that's, that's reasonable, but I just, the takeaway message that, that I have from that is okay. If you're going to go that as your emphasis, you might sacrifice a little bit on milk production. Maybe if you want to try to maximize milking, you may, you may suffer some of the potential consequences of heightened NEFA. Um, so, so it's maybe a choice thing. And, you know, I've been, I've been out of circulation now because of a health issue and COVID for two years. And when I agreed to do this, I said only, only if Heather White can be part of it because she needs to, first of all, correct us old farts, because sometimes we get set in our minds and ways and, and get pretty close minded as, as well as give an update on where the status of things are. So I I'd appreciate Heather's comments. And, and Heather, give us, give us a low down on what you think, where it's at now or where it's going to go in the future.
Dr. Heather White (00:41:04):
Yeah. I remember the introduction to that talk. I believe it went something like this: Ric was handed a microphone. He said, they told me I could talk about whatever I wanted and I'm about to retire. So here it goes. And he laid it all out. And I, I think it's, as Ric said, his goal was to be the devil's advocate and to challenge the dogma. But while, sometimes that's what we need to do. Right. It's just to think about, uh, just because we've learned it just it's what's in the notes or the reviews or the textbooks doesn't mean that it is fact or It is always going to be that way. So, um, that's one thing that I appreciate as challenging dogmas sometimes. So I agree you can go too far with anything, right. Everything in moderation. And I think NEFA is an example of that.
Dr. Heather White (00:41:53):
If we take it away completely as challenging as that is to do, but if we take it away completely, we really limit the liver's ability to do what we're asking it to do right then, which is to make energy and glucose when it doesn't have its typical fuel sources. And so the liver's relying on NEFA a lot as are other tissues. What I think is really interesting now is we're getting to a point where we're finding out that it's not just about the total of NEFA’s. It's not just about how much fatty acid is there, but more specifically it's about the profile of fatty acid. Okay. So that's all well and good, but if it's about the composition of fatty acid and the amount, then can we manipulate the concentration and can we manipulate, not just how much is there, but can we manipulate what the profile of those fatty acids are?
Dr. Heather White (00:42:41):
And we know, you know, like Ric said, this is mobilized fat. Okay. So how do we manipulate that? Well, can we, can we do something different in the late lactation period? So the cow has stored a different fatty acid profile, so she's mobilizing different fatty acids. Or nutritionally, can we feed something different so that what's in circulation is a different profile. And I think that there's two sides of this that we're still pushing forward. One is understanding how to manipulate the fatty acids that are in the blood. And the other is what is the impact of those fatty acids, especially the bioactive and the functional ones on gene expression in the liver and the mammary gland and adipose and muscle. And if we understand both sides of that, can we put them together so that we can intentionally regulate things that lead to better outcomes?
Dr. Heather White (00:43:30):
And so I think that we figured out NEFA is good. We need some of it. We don't want to extreme cases, but more importantly, uh, the composition of that NEFA could be used to our advantage if we can further our understanding there. So I've enjoyed working in that area because we still don't know all the answers there. And I think that we can, we can push further still. So, um, and some of the fatty acids have bad impacts too, right? Some of them are inflammatory and some, uh, you know, we can talk about milk fat depression, but we can also talk about regulation in the tissue level. Um, and so I think that there are a lot of different nuances to that.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:44:09):
So Heather, do you think, uh, do you think we need to look at manipulating, uh, fat during the trial period?
Dr. Heather White (00:44:18):
Yeah, that's a good question. Um, that might work. I actually tend to think late lactation would be our better chance at manipulating it because that's, when she's going to, uh, try to replenish some of those adipose stores. We don't really want her to create a lot of extra body condition during the dry period. So I'd avoid overfeeding it then. Um, so, you know, I've got some interest in looking at, can we intentionally influence it in late lactation? Um, and, and see if we can do that.
Scott Sorrell (00:44:50):
Do you have some insight into what specific fatty acids you'd like for her to store?
Dr. Heather White 00:44:55):
Not yet. Okay. No, we, we have done some, but, uh, some of the fatty acids that we know regulate different genes are not the fatty acids that she would store. So those will have to come from dietary sources, some of the unsaturated polyunsaturated, fatty acids, longer chain, uh, those aren't the fatty acids she's going to store. So we might need to give those through a nutritional intervention. Uh, so it's, I think it's complex. It also depends on how you mix them, because if you give just one of them, use a cell culture model. For example, if you give just one of them, you don't get the same reaction as if you give two of them, but the two of them have to be in the right proportion. So it's about figuring out which one you want to spike in, in essence, which ones you want to increase relative to the others. Uh, but you still have to have that background profile there to elicit the response in most cases.
Scott Sorrell (00:45:50):
You know, it it'd be remiss if we didn't, uh, discuss immunology and I'll, I'll throw that to you. Uh, Jesse, what can you tell us about some of the work that you've done and maybe the future of where, uh, immunology is going or needs to go, uh, as it relates to the transition cow?
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:46:07):
Well, again, this was another topic that really only surfaced in the mid eighties and, and a couple of colleagues. Mark Kirlian, Jim Roth, and Brian Nanakeactually got in on this and described this a diminution of immune function around the time of calving beginning about 10 days, two weeks before the captain. Usually it didn't recover until two weeks after they calved. So cows were immune suppressed. Since that time, I think, uh, certainly our group, showed the effects of calcium on that. We tried, we actually tried to do Ric stuffing experiment to put a cow back in positive energy balance to see if we could manipulate that, uh, immune system, and it turned out whatever we did with negative energy balance was undone by other issues with the cow. So negative protein balance, poor calcium, all these things are contributing to an animal who's immune suppressed.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:47:07):
And now there's a talk of how this cow may be in an inflammatory state, and that we need to start talking about toning down that immune system. So it's important to have a ramped up immune system when the cow first encounters a bacteria, virus, or whatever else it might consider a pathogen. But after that, it's supposed to ramp down. And when it doesn't ramp down, that's when you get a lot of tissue damage. So we had, we had noted as part of our work, how, uh, something as crazy as retained placenta was actually a manifestation of a poorly functioning immune system. Until that time I think most people were stuck on the idea that there's hormonal imbalances, which there may still be, but certainly there's something about a poorly functioning immune system that's associated with this failure of the fetal membranes and the maternal membranes to separate. And then this carries on down the road, cows that were in negative energy balance had more risk of developing nitritus. And that was also linked to poorly functioning neutrophils and, and, uh, particularly the neutrophils, but even the lymphocytes to some extent. So this whole area of immunology, um, number one, it's extremely, extremely frustrating to work in because the assays that are being used to assess animals function are really untested. Is that the right word? They're just not what we hoped they would.
Dr. Heather White (00:48:52):
Finicky?
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:48:53):
Finicky. And even when you do them, or you think you've done them correctly, or you've done them repeatably, um, you're still kind of throwing up your hands in the air about what does it all mean? And so a challenge experiments are really what's needed, but they're extremely expensive to carry out. Um, we did a few of them, um, that were published and Mark, Mark Curly really led the way on this. Um, then he started all the experiments with granular side colony stimulating factor as a way to boost the immune system that eventually became a product by Elanco. But apparently it's, it still needs some work on it to make it in the field, but there's, there are, there are some things that we're learning that will hopefully lead us to options to, to help treat the animal. And I, I think actually one of them is going to come out of this COVID epidemic, this idea that we can manipulate messenger RNA and use it as a way to boost, uh, various immunological parameters, what we call cytokines, um, for a short period of time and boost the immune system at the right time.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:50:05):
I think that's going to be, uh, a tremendously exciting future endeavor. It's it's the one I'm going to put it out here- Ric may disagree- I think it's the hardest nut to crack in terms of fixing this transition cow. Energy is, is always number one or two, let's say that. Calcium, we got lots of tools fixing. Protein? I think we're getting better at, um, you know, keeping cows on feed. I think we've learned a lot better how to keep, keep that going. I love Rick Grant's latest work with particle size and manipulating that to get another kilo of dry matter in his cows. We got some tools, the immunology and negative energy balance are still kind of waiting for the, the thing that can really fix cows on farm easily.
Dr. Heather White (00:51:00):
And I think it's further complicated because those two certainly interact with each other. So if there's an inflammatory state, then nutrient partitioning is affected and a fatty liver may persist and ketosis may not, might not be responsive to treatment. And we think that's confounded by immunological status. So then those two only make our job harder when they're both present together.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:51:25):
Yeah, we need it. We need a strong immune system when you go in. So I always, I always liken it to, uh, attacking Iwa Jima- John Wayne, right? And so, uh, if, if we got it, got a small army and you send it up against the, uh, you send the army and very likely you're going to get defeated, but, uh, if you can send a large army in that's well-armed, you can defeat this, this beachhead right away. But once that beach had, uh, fails and, and the invaders take hold, it's very hard to get rid of them. And so this is where we see the chronic inflammation states that are, seem to be so devastating of the cow, and guys like Barry Bradford and, uh, uh, on montage are hitting us all the time. It's this idea of, we need to suppress that immune system using aspirin or NSAIDs or other things, and it seems to have some benefits. So picking and choosing the right time to apply these things.
Scott Sorrell (00:52:31):
Heather, the two gentlemen here on the screen with you, they've laid quite a foundation for you to, to stand on, to work forward from. And maybe I'll ask this question of all three of you. Um, what would you like to pass on to Heather and have her work on, or, and, uh, or Heather, uh, to ask you, or what do you see the future being? When you'd look into your crystal ball, what do you see needing to be done over the next 10, 15 years?
Dr. Heather White (00:52:59):
Where do you want to start that? Should I say mine first, or have them lay out challenges?
Scott Sorrell (00:53:05):
Let's let's have these guys, uh, lay out some challenges for you.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:53:09):
You're up first big guy.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:53:11)
Oh, well, first of all, the reason somebody becomes a faculty member at a university, especially post tenure, is to have independence and to be able to do any darn thing they want to do. So I'm not, I'm not about to sit here and tell Heather what to do. She's, she's a very capable person to determine what, what the priorities are for the next 10 years. I would say that when Jesse mentioned we had tools for a lot of things, you know, calcium milk fever, et cetera, you know, you'd be brought up to the word protein. And I always said that if, if I had to go back to the university and start a research program, that's, that's the one area that I would attack. Um, and so maybe she can give an update on this, and I know it's not specifically your area, but to me, it just made very little sense that we took this early postpartum cow, we put her in a negative energy balance set.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:54:21):
That's always talked about. What, what was seldom talked about was the protein imbalanced, the negative protein balance that they go into and, you know, with energy, we're handcuffed, you can't, you can't just keep adding fat or adding concentrate or whatever, or you'll blow up the rumen. And so, but we can, we can really effectively increase the protein content of the diet or that undegradable protein content or the specific amino acids in a protected fashion. So maybe as an update, where has that gone or has it gone anywhere? But I always thought that that was a fruitful area of research. And, you know, I would have kicked me into kind of a new arena, but, but that always intrigued me as you know, why, why, why have we kind of ignored that in that transition period? We've, you know, we've always talked about it, I think with the lactating cow and the high producing cow and meeting her requirements. But the boy that's a real protein imbalance that occurs there. But anyway, I'm not going to tell Heather where she should go with that, if she would like to make a comment on that and where we stand on that now, again, I've been out of the loop.
Dr. Heather White (00:55:34):
Thanks, Ric. Um, yeah, you're right, it's not my area specifically, but I do always make a plug when I'm talking about negative energy balance. And I try to remind folks that it's negative energy balance, it's negative protein balance, negative amino acids specifically, and negative nutrient balance. There's a lot of nutrients- you mentioned choline earlier. We talked about methionine limiting amino acid, and it's not just about energy, even if that's the one that a lot of us focus on the most. And I think that we have made good progress doing a hone in on that to where we're now talking about how much metabolizable protein do we need to get post ruminal and how much of specific amino acids, which ones are limiting so that we can keep overall crude protein low so we can manage nitrogen waste, but we can more customize what the cow is getting an amino acid profile. So she is getting what she needs. So a lot of great people working in that area. And I agree it's, it's still, we're far behind non ruminants because they don't have the challenge of the rumen changing the amino acid profile, but we're making a lot of progress.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:56:43):
So here's my editorial, which Ric is probably going to slap me, but, uh, the close-up cow diet, I think we've over analyzed it. We have got high energy diets. We've got low energy diets and when they're managed, right, they both work. I think the Goldilocks diet is probably easier to manage, but I'm not convinced that if you raise that energy a bit and you are a really good manager and don't overcrowd cows, cause that never happens, right. And if you don't overcrowd them and you're a good manager, you can make that high energy diet work well and maybe get a little more milk. But in reality, that that rarely happens. We worry so much about where calcium levels should be, where DCAD levels should be. We've got a pretty good idea where those should be.
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:57:43):
And maybe shouldn't be, if I was a young guy today, what I'd worry about is that transition cow. Cause I don't think if I feed her more protein or less protein in the closeup diet, I don't think she stores that protein and then can all of a sudden use it when she needs it during lactation. I don't think there's lay bile pools. We need to supply it to her when she calves, and for those first two weeks. So I go on a lot of farms and I see some farms that have a special, fresh cow diet, and I always ask them. And in my mind that seems to make sense, we're going to feed a special diet to meet that special needs of that cow that’s eating less feed. So what are we going to put in it? Well, what you usually see is that they added a lot more, not a lot, a few more pounds of forage and cut the grain because they're always concerned about displacement of abomasum, and that strategy maybe helps with displacced abomasum, but are you really meaning the energy, the cow better, or you actually making it worse?
Dr. Jesse Goff (00:58:53):
And it same with protein. If you're not upping the protein in that diet, um, negative protein balance is going to get worse. So I have these thoughts in my head about what I would love to look at. Um, but I only got three cows at home. I don't, I don't think I'll ever get this accomplished, but I think if I was a young person, I'd be looking at that fresh cow diet a lot more, or maybe, maybe even eliminate it if it doesn't do anything for us.
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:59:23)
Well, um, first of all, I agree with you a hundred percent. I can, I'll, I'll take as much blame as anybody for shifting the gears to how we feed the cow pre fresh is so absolutely critical. And I was a champion of that message and it was all because, uh, you know, there was a time where we just thought, wow, what can we do pre partum to avoid these things postpartum?
Dr. Ric Grummer (00:59:56):
And you know, the reality, I agree with it, that, that cows, you know, she's, she's not real picky before calving with what, what exactly you got to do. I agree if I was going back to steady quote, transition cows, it would be that post fresh transition cow. What do we do during those first three weeks? So maybe we, maybe we've come full circle because when I, when I started that the emphasis was more on their early post partum cow. The problem with the research back then is nobody wanted to start doing research with a fresh cow because these cows are horrible to work with. You're in a university setting. You have a limited number of cows that are available to your disposal. They're highly variable at that point in time. And variability means you need more cows for power. So nobody wanted to deal those cows.
Dr. Ric Grummer (01:01:01):
So everybody would start their studies at three weeks post calving because wow, that's, you know, that's when they're peaking, right? That's when the big challenge is, that's when we really got to focus our attentions and that was too late, you know, that was, that was just way too late. And then again, I'll take the blame for swinging the pendulum to pre partum, but I, I don't disagree with the Jessie that I think, I think we got to get more people to step up to the plate and run studies with cows from zero to three weeks postpartum, and to get enough of them to have the statistical power to come up with some meaning
Dr. Jesse Goff (01:01:40):
I'll, I'll leave you with something that impressed the heck out of me as a young guy, uh, Paul Chandler, who was at Tennessee for a long time, Virginia tech, um, he came to talk to us veterinarians. He said, you guys always make the mistake of studying the sick cows and trying to figure out what made them sick. And he says, what you really should be looking at is the cow who is making 40,000 pounds of milk and figure out what the hell is going right. And, uh, what they're doing right. That you guys in research haven't figured out. And I, it always stuck with me. We were always focused on the broken cow and trying to fix her. And, uh, I think about Paul Chandler's words a lot.
Dr. Heather White (01:02:23):
Yeah. I was just going to say I'll uh, before you guys beat yourself up too much, in your defense, we may have come full circle on this, but I would say that the circle is relocated. So you guys have shifted it. And what we did for pre fresh diets 50 or 75 years ago is very different than our options now. So yeah, I agree completely. You can feed a Goldilocks diet pre partum, and you can make it work. I also go onto farms that are feeding higher energy pre partum, higher body condition, cows, that some people don't like pre partum. And if you're a good cow manager, you can get a lot of fat corrected milk out of those cows. And you can, you can have a really good herd. You can't ignore them because they, they have different needs than a cow that was on a Goldilocks diet.
Dr. Heather White (01:03:09):
So I think that there are a lot of different strategies. So I agree, we understand a lot more now and Ric, maybe we have come full circle, but I think the circle has been shifted. So, uh, Jesse, one of the things you just hit on is one of the things that I would say is a big focus of mine moving forward. And that's maximizing what we can learn from the individual animal variation, instead of considering it variance, that's a problem. That just means you need more animals. So we did a study not long ago, where we challenged animals, uh, pre partum with high energy and then postpartum at 14 days, we feed restricted them. And it's that classic model. You even referenced it earlier. Let's try to induce it so we can study it because in the research herd, we don't have a lot of fatty liver and ketosis unless we do that.
Dr. Heather White (01:04:00):
And you know, the, the fun thing in that project is there were cows that weren't challenged that still got fatty liver in clinical ketosis. And there were cows that were challenged that were very resistant to it. It took us two weeks of feed restricting them, and they still never got to the same level of level of clinical, fatty liver, clinical ketosis that we expected. And I think studying those individual populations is really useful. So we need to have adequately powered size studies. We need to have enough cows to detect differences, and we need to be really cautious to remove cows because they don't fit the average or they don't look like the others, because I think those are the ones we can learn the most from. Um, so that's that study is something where we've been working on a while and it was a lot of fun to really dig into that.
Dr. Heather White (01:04:47):
We did some RNA seek and some other things on that to, to really see how much we could get out of it. Um, the other area that I'm continuing to be excited about is beyond just energy protein. Focusing on nutrient partitioning and how we can specifically meet the exact need of the tissue at the time. So if we can feed something, not just at the level of, oh, I fed energy, but is it that it was propionate or that it was for fermented propionate, or that it's lactate or that it's a specific amino acid, and shifting the nutrient partitioning so that we can influence how the tissue is using what's there. I think that's how we will influence feed efficiency so that the cow can make more with less waste and less input. And for a long time or several years, Lou was involved in the first round of this work and colleagues at other institutions were at other universities, we talked about feed efficiency and a mid lactation cow. And, uh, we're still doing that. And I think that's where we have to start, but we can't ignore the transition period there either, because I think there is a margin to improve her efficiency or at least be aware of it while we're trying to maintain her health and helping her reach peak. So that's something that I think will keep us going for a while as well. Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (01:06:08):
Fascinating stuff. Uh, and I could do this all night long guys, but uh, they just called last call and you guys got some fishing to do. So what I'd like to do is ask you guys to give us two takeaways from tonight's discussion, two things that a nutritionist, perhaps a dairy farmer can take a take home and use on the dairy farm today. Why don't we start with you Jesse?
Dr. Jesse Goff (01:06:34):
Well, I get disappointed sometimes when I go on a lot of dairies, especially smaller dairies that will insist on treating cows for, older cows for milk fever by giving a bottle of calcium toevery cow, that's their preventative program. We have good tools, at least in that area, that work, you have your choice of tools, pick one of them and use it. Don't sit by and do nothing because we've, there's plenty of research now suggest how much money you're leaving on the table. So that that's a simple one, those smaller dairies. So that's a, that's a depressing thought, isn't it?
Scott Sorrell (01:07:16)
Heather why don’t you go next.
Dr. Heather White (01:07:17):
Yeah I'll use that as a segue instead of leaving it as a depressing thought, my takeaway is that our toolbox is full of options. So no matter what size farm you are, no matter what your management style is or what your access to resources is, there are options that are available to help. Whether we're talking about milk fever, ketosis, or management, a pen size or, or pen moves. Any of those things. There are a lot of options out there. And for me, it's really, if we use ketosis as an example, some farms have someone in the fresh pen every day and they don't mind taking a blood sample and running it on a cow side meter. And that's how they manage it. Some farms don't have that and they'd rather do something nutritional that just keeps the prevalence low. And I think that our job from my perspective as researchers is to do things, to do research that can help answer questions, but then get tools out there that are varied in approach. So there should be an option for every farm to use to help improve whatever the challenges they're facing. Um, and not one answer is right for every farm. But if we keep studying a lot of varied approaches, then there's almost always something that can help, whether it's a prediction model, a tool, a nutritional intervention, there's some tool that fits the bill in most cases.
Scott Sorrell (01:08:42)
Ric- final words?
Dr. Ric Grummer (01:08:46):
Wow. Um, you know, one thing that I heard over and over again as a faculty member was from dairy producers was that I don't pay any attention that university research. It doesn't apply on my farm. It's, it's done under, uh, you know, conditions that aren't like are on my farm or commercial farms, et cetera, et cetera. And, and to a certain extent that that that's true. Um, there are many times during the waning days of my career, where I told people, you know, we're never going to get these answers at the university because we just don't have enough cows and enough replication to get it done. And you're, you're going to have to, you're going to have to supply the answer on your farm. And so one of my message to dairy producers would be, you know, keep an open mind to, to work and study your cows and observe your cows and trying new things and see what works for you.
Dr. Ric Grummer (01:09:49):
The flip side of that is are, there are some things that you can't do on the farm that can only be done at the university. And so make sure you are supportive of your university, supportive of the scientists like Heather White so that they can, they can take the questions that you can't possibly answer. And look at it perhaps on a more fundamental level at the university. And don't scoff at that kind of research because that research is sometimes the foundation of things like DCAT, cation balance, et cetera. Um, so, so let's collaborate, let's work together. The only other message that I would say is that I had 26 great years at the university and left earlier than most people leave the cozy confines of the ivory tower. Um, but I think, I think the hiring of Heather White shows the merit in kicking us old farts off to the side, bringing in new blood, new thoughts, new methodologies, new techniques, so that we can keep, keep research going and, and progress growing.
Scott Sorrell (01:10:58):
So, Ric, I've got one final question for you to kind of reflect on your career. What kind of advice would you have for, uh, other people as their beginning of their career or, or perhaps even in the middle of their career? What, what kind of advice would you have for them?
Dr. Ric Grummer (01:11:14):
I mean, the one thing that I think I successfully did in my career was admit when I was wrong and yeah. And that's something that I think all researchers need to do is they need to take a critical look at the totality of the data. And if their theory or idea or whatever, you know, ends up not being right or interpreted in a way that probably wasn't quite correct- innocent mistake. I mean, you know, just, but just admit what is wrong.
Dr. Heather White (01:11:46):
Well, and it might not even be a mistake. It's the best you could conclude at the time with the knowledge. There's no reason to say, oh, I'm never going to redefine what I think is the new truth. Because well, 10 years ago I published this and said, this was the answer we learn more every day. Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (01:12:05):
Well said! Heather, Jesse, Ric: it's been a real pleasure. I’ve enjoyed having you guys here tonight. I've enjoyed the conversation. The comradery, enjoyed hearing all about the history and the kind of excited hearing about the future that we have ahead of us. Jesse, you said that it's the forks in the road that lead to breakthroughs and I couldn't agree more. Um, you've all showed us that there are alternative paths to great discoveries. So thank you very much for that. And, and also thank to, uh, like to thank our loyal listeners for stopping by the Real Science Exchange once again, to spend some time with us here, uh, if you like, what you heard, please remember to drop us a five star rating on your way out. Don't forget to request your Real Science Exchange T-shirt. You just need to like or subscribe the Real Science Exchange and send us a screenshot along with your address, the size of your shirt to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Our real science lecture series of webinars continues with the ruminant focus topics on the first Tuesday of every month, visit Balchemanh.com/realscience to see upcoming events and past topics. We hope to see you next time here to Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.