Guests: Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University; Dr. Mark Hanigan, Virginia Tech University; Dr. Alex Hristov, Penn State University; Dr. Chanhee Lee, The Ohio State University This episode comes to you from the 2024 Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference, where Balchem sponsored a Real Science symposium titled “New Discussions in Amino Acid Nutrition.” Each of our guests presented at the symposium, and their presentations can be found at balchem.com/realsciencemedia
This episode comes to you from the 2024 Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference, where Balchem sponsored a Real Science symposium titled “New Discussions in Amino Acid Nutrition.” Each of our guests presented at the symposium, and their presentations can be found at balchem.com/realsciencemedia
Dr. Van Amburgh presented “Amino Acid Nutrition for Maximizing Milk Component Yield.” When considering nitrogen efficiency, we generally compare intake nitrogen, which includes non-protein nitrogen, against milk nitrogen. In high producing cows, aggregate amino acid values are running about 70 to 73% efficiency. But when we work that up to total intake nitrogen, then we're down to 30 to 35% efficiency range. How do we reconcile ruminal nitrogen requirements to a point where we can optimize the capture of recycled nitrogen and reduce the amount of nitrogen that's being excreted in the urine? (2:27)
Dr. Hanigan presented “Understanding Amino Acid Bioavailability.” Our current methods for measuring bioavailability don’t all have the same precision. One of the classic methods, intestinal disappearance, has very low precision. Methods that rely on dilution of a marker or a label in blood or milk have much higher precision. Dr. Hanigan’s lab has worked to modify a carbon-13 labeled amino acid method to allow for evaluating changes in the supply of amino acids in the diet. (5:01)
Dr. Lee presented “Current Understandings of Lysine Nutrition in Dairy Cattle.” Rumen-protected lysine has more variable responses than rumen-protected methionine or histidine. Amino acid requirements were developed based on the role of amino acids as the building blocks of protein. But there are many roles of amino acids which may influence their requirements. Dr. Lee suggests including that type of information in our modeling may increase the consistency of responses to feeding rumen-protected lysine. (11:24)
Dr. Hristov presented “Histidine: A Limiting Amino Acid for Dairy Cows.” His group has worked with rumen-protected histidine to develop a dataset to define requirements. Microbial protein has considerably less histidine than methionine yet they are secreted at about the same level in milk and are metabolized similarly. All this together points to a higher histidine requirement. (18:02)
The panelists agree that the advent of genomics have resulted in a rapid change in high producing cows and with that, their amino acid requirements (and other nutrients) are also changing. It’s a challenge for feeding and nutrition programs to keep up with rapid genetic change. (21:02)
A question was posed by the audience about how Dr. Van Amburgh used amino acids to increase butter fat. In the research he presented, the diets did not overfeed fat and fed a blend of fatty acids, and also increased the sugar and pulled back the starch. (28:35)
A discussion of histidine follows, including its unique body reserves, its role in hemoglobin concentrations, and its potential impacts on metabolic energy efficiency (34:08)
Dr. Zimmerman asks about plasma histidine in very early lactation cows. Dr. Hristov is currently conducting a fresh cow experiment to assess this. His hypothesis is that because of low dry matter intake and high metabolic demand for amino acids, there will be a response to histidine supplementation. Dr. Lee agrees and feels that the fresh cow stage may be one of the most practical ways we can utilize rumen-protected histidine (39:39)
A question from the audience about the use of blood meal in lower protein diets sparks a spirited discussion among the panelists. (41:55)
In closing, each panelist provides a takeaway. Responses range from bioavailability of rumen-protected products to challenges to progress for ruminant amino acid research to comparing biological potential and economic response. (46:58)
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Scott Sorrell (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the pubcast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. We're here at the 2024 Tri-State Nutrition Conference, where Balchem just presented and sponsored a symposium titled “New Discussions in Amino Acid Nutrition”. Speakers on symposia today was Dr. Mike Van Amberg from Cornell Topic that he covered was amino acid nutrition for maximizing milk component yield, followed by Dr. Mark Hannigan from Virginia Tech. His topic was titled, understanding Amino Acid Bioavailability. Then we followed that up with Dr. Chanhee Lee from the Ohio State University. His topic was current understandings of lysine, nutrition, and dairy cattle. And then last was Dr. Alex Hristov, Penn State University. And his topic was histamine, a limiting amino acid for dairy cows. And so, if you'd like to listen to these, so if you're listening to the podcast, these presentations are now available at balchem.com. Slice real science media. So why don't we get started, Mike, we'll jump right in with you since you were our lead off hitter. Give us just kind of a brief treetop level idea of what your presentation was about today.
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Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (02:37):
Thanks Scott. I think the high level concepts were, we need, you know, generally we tend to overfeed nitrogen to cows right now and that we need to feed less. And that looking at nitrogen efficiency in the traditional way may be difficult to allow us to move that. So we probably need to look right to what she's excreting and then use that as our, our balancing tool, look at urinary nitrogen excretion and then and balance that out with rumen and rumen ammonia. And then once you get that figured out then you can move right to amino acids.
Scott Sorrell (03:19):
So for us novices out there, can you better describe maybe what nitrogen efficiency is exactly, Mike?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (03:25):
Um, historically we look at nitrogen efficiency as the, the, basically the aggregate efficiency of amino acid use in cows. We generally tend to talk about intake nitrogen, which includes all the non-protein nitrogen. Right. Um, and then run that against milk or milk nitrogen. Right. And I think that confounds it a little bit because in a monogastric we would be looking at amino acid nitrogen to tissue output or eggs or whatever it is you're trying to do in a chicken or a pig. Whereas in cows, we tend to incorporate all nitrogen. And I think that confounds that a little bit because if you look at the aggregate amino acid values in most of our high producing cows, they're actually running about 70 to 73% efficiency on an aggregate level. Right. Which is, you know, pretty good. But when we, when we work that up to total intake nitrogen, then it gets confused and now we're down in that 30, 35 range. Right. Which is a little unfair to the cow. Right. So this comes down to our biggest problem in terms of what we do in the field is how do we reconcile those ruminal nitrogen requirements to a point where we can optimize the capture recycled nitrogen and reduce the amount of nitrogen that's being excreted in the urine.
Scott Sorrell (04:53):
Alright. Dr. Hannigan, you were second on the list. Can you kind of give us a brief overview of what your presentation was all about?
Dr. Mike Hanigan (05:01):
Well, as Mike pointed out, I mean obviously the cow has amino acid requirements. You know, we have some knowledge of those. And the first starting point is, well, what is the supply from our diet? And that's, you know, been an issue really relative to the ruminant industry relative to the monogastric industry because they can feed the animals directly, look at, you know, diet minus feces or diet minus ileal and get a pretty good estimate. And we've got bigger challenges 'cause we have to sort of account for the ruminal losses. And so you know, I basically just tried to summarize that there's, you know, at least four valid methods of measuring this. And the issue is not really validity of those methods, it's more the precision of those methods. And so they don't all have the same precision. And one of the classical ones we've used is sort of intestinal disappearance, and that has very low precision. You know, we can't really get enough numbers to be able to use that. And so other ones that, you know, have higher precision, you know, would, would be the ones that rely on dilution of, of a marker or a label in blood or in milk. And those actually can allow more animal numbers as well that can get our precision up just from mass volume.
Scott Sorrell (06:15):
Right. And you were kind of talking about the method that you guys have put together. Um, would you mind talk just a little bit about that and how you work, how you work that?
Dr. Mike Hanigan (06:25):
Yeah, and, and, and it doesn't really originate with us. We modified it and, and, you know, and made it sort of more usable. But It's the idea that if you take a, a, a labeled amino acids, so these are stable isotope labeled amino acids labeled with carbon 13. So there's no, you know, a risk to animal health or your health or anything else. And if you include those in the diet or into the animal, not in the diet because we still have that RU problem, but if you can either infuse those into the intestine or into the blood at a constant rate, well then you set up a scenario where if the supply from the diet changes, that ratio of labeled unlabeled will change and it changes inversely, right? More from the diet will reduce, you know, the, well lower the ratio of, or labeled unlabeled less from the diet will increase that. And that's the concept behind it. And then it's just a matter of trying to, there's, there's, you know, some complexity because it takes quite a while for that to all equilibrate with the whole body. And that's the big problem, right? We can't afford to feed the cows that isotope for 40 days to get 'em to is to steady state, right? And so there's, there's a bunch of tricks that we use to try to get it done in a much more expedient time.
Scott Sorrell (07:42):
You know, one of the things that you said that I took note of is thatand, and a lot of your talk was around rheumatic protected amino acids and yourwork in evaluating the bioavailability of those. And, and you made a comment that some of the actual bioavailability is quite different than perhaps what perhaps a manufacturer is saying. If, if a nutritionist was wanting to know what is a bioavailability of a product that they're using or feedstuffs that they're using, what would you recommend to them?
Dr. Mike Hanigan (08:16):
Well, I'm hoping that, you know, most of the, the, you know, the producers of these products actually are doing assessments right? With, with one of these valid methods. And if you provide the data to the end user, then they should be able to make a decision based on that. Now, one would always question, okay, is, was it done properly? And I think it's up to the end user to, to look into that and make sure that it was done properly and to assess whether or not they, you know, they think the gene is good. Uh, we haven't really done a lot of comparisons among products because that's a good way to, to not have any friends at all at the end. Okay. We have evaluated a lot of products and we've provided a lot of numbers with as low as, you know, best precision as we can. Uh, most of the ones we've looked at honestly, are prototypes. They're not products on the market. We're trying to help make better products.
Scott Sorrell (09:12):
Yeah, makes sense.
Clay Zimmermann (09:14):
I have a question for Mike, actually. Um, so there was a slide up there I had not seen before today, the herd in northern New York that was quite interesting. The when you introduced Thelen beans into the herd. So there were three columns of numbers under both fat percent of the protein percent. What was the third column
New Speaker (09:43):
Represented? That was the genomic holsteins.
Clay Zimmermann (09:47):
Okay.
New Speaker (09:47):
Those were all bulk tanks.
Clay Zimmermann (09:50):
Wow.
New Speaker (09:52):
Yep.
Clay Zimmermann (09:53):
Amazing.
New Speaker (09:54):
Interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Scary too.
Clay Zimmermann (09:57):
Yeah. What was the, what was the butterfat? It was a well, or 5, 5 3. Yeah.
New Speaker (10:03):
Yeah. But you know, this is, I was, I walked to the back of the room, the nutritionist is now left, but I walked to the back of the room and he was telling me about a herd in western New York that he works with, and the herd's averaging 5% butter fat right now. Right. Which means that, you know, some of those cows are 5, 6, 5, 7, 5, 8, or six, right? So, where these cows are at right now in their capacity to make butter fat is incredible. The, the, the same capacity exists for protein, right? We just haven't, for whatever reason, we're not tripping that trigger the right way yet. And I don't know what it is that we need to do to get the cows to, to push up the protein the same way we're getting the fat. All I can think of is it's more energetically efficient to just add a couple carbons to the end of that carbon chain and keep moving, and it is to do all the protein synthesis for the, for their casing. But yeah, there are herds out there doing remarkable things right now, especially if they've been on IVF for a long time. Right. And really shorten that generation interval. Right. You know, I used to make jokes about jerseys being like water buffalo. I used to, I'm beginning to think we can do Holsteins and make 'em look like water buffalo if we just figured it out.
Scott Sorrell (11:15):
So I'm gonna go withClay's idea. We're gonna go withChan, why don't you kind of give us a real quick overview of what your presentation was about today?
Dr. Chanhee Lee (11:24):
So today I talked about, potential factors that may cause the variable responses to feeding Roman protective license. Uh, it was not just a license, it's probably about the Roman protective meth and probably his opinion. Um, what Iuh, talked about is the reason, Dr. Hannigan said if we delivered the right amount of amino acid and increased it cows will respond. Um, however, if you look at the individual studies and between studies there are something that westill that we have to understand to increase the response, especially from a particular license. Um, if you look at the individual studies for Roman protected lyin, the responses are not as good as Roman protected meth or Roman protected histamine. So what Ihave been thinking is, so now we developed a good models Im, I'm pretty sure those are this is very good models.
Dr. Chanhee Lee (12:33):
Um, but we all know that those requirements of amino acids were developed based on protein building with blocks. But maybe we are missing something from that concept because there are a lot of different rules of amino acid other than protein building blocks. So what Iuh, suggested or what I included in my presentation, understanding those laws, I'm not sure if we can understand everything1% of individual amino acid about different roles other than protein building blocks. But Next Amino acid research we may need to spend time and put our effort to understand more about amino acid aurora other than protein building blocks. So next uh, 10 years later, when we, when it is time to update our models, maybe if possible, we can include those information in the model. So then I, I'm pretty sure that we can increase the response to feedingroom protect amino acid or additional supply of certain amino acid, and we can make that that respond more consistent. Uh, that's what I mainly talked about in my presentation.
Scott Sorrell (13:59):
Now, one of the questions I had is, looking at your data, that a lot of those studies were 10, 15 years old. And I was curious if we had adequately characterized the bioavailability of those products going into that study, and if that did not contribute to some of the variations in responses. Do you have any thoughts relative to that? I think,
Dr. Chanhee Lee (14:21):
Uh the, what we don't know, I, I, I, I'm pretty sure the, so there are many papers available about the differences between in vitro and in vivo papers bioavailability. And what I miss what we miss at in this about the bioavailability of r protect amino acid is once we have a bioavailability from a certain method, we use it for all the time, for all lactation cows, middle lactation cows, or any d or any diet basal diet. But I think depending on high forage diet, high starch diet or early lactation cows because they have a low intake passage relate will be different. Um, bioavailability might be different even this is the same product, bioavailability may vary. I think that's another area that we have to research do the research in the future. Alright.
Scott Sorrell (15:22):
Very well,
Clay Zimmermann (15:23):
I, I think maybe to add to that too, and I think maybe Mark brought this up in his, at the end of his presentation, maybe it was in yours too, Chan, but the the hold feed stability aspect Mm. Is it's pretty overlooked right now. Right? There hasn't been much research looking at that, but I think that may be playing a role here as well,
Dr. Mike Hanigan (15:46):
So that, you know, that certainly could add to the variability among studies. Right? I mean, you could, you could all use the same product and if it was handled differently, it could end up with different results. Okay. The, the other thing I, you know, that concerns me a little bit and you know, I, I understand sort of, you know, that we need to feed these, you know, feed in the, in the end, right? So we gotta make decisions, and it may not be on the best knowledge, but I think one of the things we need to really be careful with in these meta-analysis is if we just look at, for example, one amino acid, and you, I think Chan, you showed that lysine that you had three or four studies that had dry matter intake responses. Well, as soon as dry matter intake changes, all bets are off.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (16:28):
Okay. That's not an isolated study anymore. You cannot either can't use it or you gotta account for all the, all the energy and all the amino acid changes. And so I'm a little bit worried that we might have some variation, you know, even in what we say is our numbers, just because of trying to pull all this disparate data together to get something out of it. And, but no doubt there's a positive response to them. It's just trying to understand, okay, why is it different? One of the things that we did, you know, for the nasa, because, you know, we had a lot of critical people on the committee, rightly so, you know, is you know, we, we had to assign values to all those different room protected amino acids if we're gonna use them. And if we weren't going to use them, we couldn't get past methionine and lysine and maybe hissene, there just wasn't enough data.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (17:18):
And so I had to show some of the other committee members that Okay, we didn't bias our results by what we assigned to those. And the way I did it is we had infusion studies as well, and then we had the non-used, non rumor protected. I showed that the errors, you know, for each one of those subsets were the same, that they weren't biased. Okay. So I don't know that I have, you know, in that paper, which is also in press, whether we have all the correct bioavailability assigned to all those different amino acids. But it sure
Scott Sorrell (17:48):
Looks good on paper. Okay. Yeah. Good point. Uh, Dr. Rista, we haven't heard from Penn State yet. Uh, why don't you give us just kind of a brief overview of thought yourtopic was relative to histidine?
Dr. Alex Hristov (18:02):
Yeah, sure. Well, I talked about histamine, one single amino acid, butI was thinking when you were asking the other speakers herehow slow progress we make in ruminants with amino acids compared to pigs and chicken. I mean, these guys are feeding entirely on an amino acid basis, and we are still struggling defining requirements for these three amino acids. Uh, so my talk was basically about our work with his at Penn State Which started with feeding a low protein diet for ammonia emissions for environmental reasons. And then we realized that the amino acid that seems to be the most efficient in this kind of diet was histamine. So then we started, feeding improvement protected histamine ora number of years and experiments. Um, I think we have a pretty good data now to dataset to kind of define at least in this range of milk production milk, milk protein, and um, dry meth intake and good protein content of the diet, what, what the histo requirements are. But that was my talk about mostly histo.
Scott Sorrell (19:28):
Yeah. Thank you for that. Uh, you know, one of the things that I found curious, I've often thought that microbial protein was among the best protein you could feed an animal. And yet you tell me that it's very low in histidine. So from an evolutionary perspective, you'd think that would be higher, but may can, can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Alex Hristov (19:46):
No, I have to correct you. It's not very low on in histidine. Okay. It's simply because we are comparing to methin and methin because they are metabolites the same way. And we know methin is important: amino acid in dairy cows. So when you, when you compare these two there is about, in our data, at least up to 20, 27%whoahi done mein. And that also brings all the other responses in terms of uh, metabolism, protein supply and microbial protein proportion of metabolism, protein, and so on. So I wouldn't say it's too old, it's just lower than methane,
Scott Sorrell (20:30):
Lower than methionine. And yet, I believe, if I heard you correctly, you need them about the same proportions though, in the diet.
Dr. Alex Hristov (20:38):
Well, in fact, you need more histamine than methin because of this deficiency uninor not deficiency, but who's in microbial protein. Yeah. And, and they are secreted in milk at about the same level, and they are metabolites similarly. So all this together clearly shows that you'll have a higher requirement forster than battalion.
Scott Sorrell (21:00):
Okay. Very Well, you know,
Dr. Mike Hanigan (21:02):
If I could just add a quick comment on the evolutionary side. I mean, we gotta remember that cows up until the last 150 years when we started selecting for 'em, really only needed to make four or five liters of milk. Okay. Exactly. That. That's the most. Exactly. Yep. And so we're now asking them to make, you know, 50 or 60 liters of milk, and we can't assume that they would've evolved to this point because we only gave 'em a hundred years to do this. So,
Scott Sorrell (21:29):
Yeah. No, well said. Makes a lot of sense. And it reminds me of Mike what you started out with your presentation with how cows have changed and how rapidly they're changing. C can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (21:43):
Uh, sure. Scott, the, the, the, the advent of genomics has, has really changed everything. And, and what's exacerbated that is the fact that there's enough money out there now because of the progress they can make where they're, they're now shortening the generation interval through IVF. Right? So now we have, now we have, instead of 4, 5, 6, 7 year generation intervals, we're, we're now down to, you know, a year and a half at best. Right. They can get embryos out of a four month old heifer or less. So, you know, with the young sis, they're just moving right along at a speed that is way beyond anything we've ever experienced before.
Scott Sorrell (22:25):
I know it's hard to look into the future, Mike, but do you expect this to continue to accelerate? What, what the, the, the change?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (22:33):
Yeah. Yeah. The geneticist Wiggins wrote a paper that said they think from their side that they're at, at the maximum genetic progress right now. Yeah. What they're not accounting for is what the dairy producers are doing with all of this embryo technology. Yeah. And that's just accelerating it. And it, you know, it looks almost exponential. Right. And that's, I don't know what that means.
Scott Sorrell (22:59):
Interesting. And I think
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (23:00):
If it, well, what it means to me is if they were a pig, we'd have a couple different genotypes by now, right.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (23:06):
Right. And, and we'd to, to Alex's point, you know, where they say three grams of, of lysine per m cal of de, you know, and they get a new genotype, then they say 3.1, and everything else is a relationship to that. You know, we're, we've made that kind of jump already since genomics, and which means we really don't know where they might be.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (23:27):
Right. That's, I think that's our biggest problem, right? If we, we only are able to get that potential expressed if we can feed them Exactly. And
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (23:36):
Manage things. Exactly, Mark.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (23:37):
And we, we don't really, we didn't really have a good understanding before, and now they've changed another twofold and we aren't keeping up.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (23:44):
we are not keeping up.
Scott Sorrell (23:46):
That's a great discussion. Carrie. I'd like to go to the audience. We got a question out there.
Speaker 9 (23:51):
Actually, it was just a comment relative to somebody mentioned the evolutionary limit on the bacterial protein. I thought I saw in the audience drr that I'm, but when I have talked to other microbiologists about histo, and as we look at the industry and having a encapsulated histo and Roman supplyit's a, it is a very expensive, energetic mechanism for the bacteria to produce histamine. Um, and so one of that limits is why you don't see a high proportion of histamine in the bacteria protein. That is compared to lysine or some of the others, it's extraordinarily expensive. It's got three s. It's got that extra energetic, so they, so fundamentally, you know, going back to, to Mark's comment, historically, the bacterial profile has never had the level of excess energy to devote to, you know, accelerating histamine production. Um, that's why we're going back to fermenters, et cetera, to produce a commercial product.
Scott Sorrell (25:05):
Yeah. Excellent comment. Thank you for that. Anybody wanna expound on that?
Dr. Alex Hristov (25:10):
Uh, no. Um, I, I mean, it's, it's a good comment. I I just think evolutionary discounts just didn't need that histamine that the modern cow needs or will need if we keep increasing milk production milk protein, and then at the same time try to feed the whole protein diet because of environmental reasons in terms of producing these amino acids, that's another thing. UhI was in a meeting last week and there were pig nutritionist there, and apparently they're start feeding histamine now to pigs, which I didn't know. Hmm. Uh, but they are going down the list, apparently. And now they're including histamine in their synthetic amino acid supplementation. So in terms of cost uh, to, to produce it, and uh, then of course it has to be protected. Now, things may be changing in the future if you know, the big people and the poultry people feed it.
Scott Sorrell (26:20):
Right. Could I, could I ask a question of those two over there?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (26:20):
Absolutely. So, so along the histidine thing, so Mark Garner, when he was working with Jim Russell, they came up with this, they identified this bacteria, Ella, his deformance that converted histidine to histamine. Right. Is this, what do you, you know, and I have no idea, I still, 'cause nobody started, kept up with this bug. Is, is this one of the reasons this is a limiting amino acid in a cow is because they're converting the histidine to histamines in the rumen, and we just don't get enough flow out of the rumen. Does anybody, you guys got any insight on this? Because it's been something that's been bugging me.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (27:00):
I don't,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (27:01):
No. So
Dr. Alex Hristov (27:05):
In one or two of the studies thatSusanna did, we worked at histamine ru histamine, and there was no change at all. I cannot directly answer your question.
New Speaker (27:16):
Oh, no. But that's good to know.
Dr. Alex Hristov (27:17):
There was no difference in with supplemented, not supplemented diets in histamine Okay. Concentration in the rumen
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (27:26):
Indirectly, that probably answers it. Right. That's good.
Dr. Alex Hristov (27:29):
Indirectly.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (27:30):
Wll, I mean, it looks like the animal's very careful with histamine supply. It doesn't, it doesn't waste it.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (27:35):
No, no. That's why I wondered if it was the bacteria kinda getting in the way of our efforts. Um,
Dr. Alex Hristov (27:42):
Good question. Uh, that's, that's a good good discussion and, and good point there to,
Dr. Mike Hanigan (27:47):
Well, you know, in a side, you know, direction from that is, you know, we tend to look at feeding animals, you know, from a, we have to look at it from a cost basis as well. And so do we, do we focus on the ones that give us the biggest milk protein response? Or do we focus on the ones that give us the biggest economic response? Right. Because histamine may be a very good one for, I think for doing milk protein, but it's expensive. Okay. And so it's not an economically attractive thing right now unless the poultry and swine people start, you know, feeding a lot of it so we can get the cost down. So maybe we should be looking at some other ones just because of economics, not because of you know, order of, of requirement in our perceptions. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (28:32):
Yeah. Kerry, you got another question out there for us.
Speaker 10 (28:35):
Dr. Amberg, you mentioned in your studies you had really good producing cows getting decent butter fat, but you were able to use amino acids to jump that, but fat quite a bit more. Can you talk to the practicality of how you went about that?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (28:51):
Yeah. Yep. Because I, in the interest of time, I didn't give you all the stuff that we did. Not that there's any real secrets there. So, you know, the amino acids I laid out, the other things that we did to make that happen is we, we actually pulled the fatty acids back and we've made a blend of fatty acids. So I'm looking at C 16, or C sorry, not C 16, C 18, or C Yeah. C 16, 18 1, 18 2. Not overfeeding, because Adam's lock, some of the data coming outta lock's lab would say, if we overfeed the fat, the denovos will decrease. Right. The cow, he's, words are, the cow gets lazy. I don't, I think it's just energetic efficiency, but we want more de novo and more mixed. So pull back on the fat, don't overfeed the fat, have a blend of fatty acids, increase the sugar and pull back on the starch.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (29:43):
Right. One of the things that I think is missing in this whole thing, we get focused on acetate and we forget that maybe we need a little bit more butyrate. And if you think about high pasture diets where you're probably at 2% starch at best, and you might be 25% water, water-soluble carbohydrates, it's completely inverse from what we do with cows here. Right. And those cows make plenty of fat. Right. With and, and still have enough propionate to make decent milk. So I think there are a couple things we need to do, increase the sugar and, you know, will Hoover and a bunch of those guys, you know, 25, 30, 40 years ago, would always suggest five to 7% sugar in our diets. And that's kind of where we will settle out, you know, pull back on your fatty acids, make sure you got the highest digestible NDF you can possibly get. But you know, that's a crap shoot on most dairies today because you just don't know what you're gonna get. And then bring your amino acids in and don't over feed the fat.
Scott Sorrell (30:41):
Mike, just to confirm, were those your steps to optimize energetic efficiency?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (30:45):
That was art of it,
Scott Sorrell (30:46):
Yep.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (30:49):
But I went so fast through
Scott Sorrell (30:50):
Yeah. I've giving you an opportunity if you want to expound on that a little bit more. I please feel free. I just did it. Alright. Very well.
Speaker 10 (30:57):
This may be a dumb, really dumb question, but there's a, a fake meat that uses soy root le, I don't know how to pronounce it, like hemoglobin, which is he protein, does that have histidine in it? And if so, could we genetically modify a, some crop to produce more histidine? You're talking about hemoglobin? Yep. Yeah. The stuff that Impossible Foods uses it to make redin their thick meat. Okay. I not sure what they, I'm not sure what it's like. It's abin is definitely, it's what's that? Hemoglobin is a source of his, yeah. But this is produced by in soybean roots Lakehemoglobin, it's a he protein. So does it have histamine?
Dr. Alex Hristov (32:02):
Uh, okay. I'm not sure what they, I'm not sure what they use, but hemoglobin is definitely a source of histamine.
Scott Sorrell (32:09):
Alright. Very well. Um, let's see. I did have our kind of on histamine one other question I had for Alex. Yeah. Is so I was intrigued by some of the research that you've shown saw positive responses to histamine. I'm kind of curious, how long does that take for that response to happen?
Dr. Alex Hristov (32:28):
Yeah. SoI think we estimated that, you know, these body reserves of histamine, if you have a histamine deficient diet hemoglobin carine can supply histamine for up to seven weeks. But these are extreme estimates. Uh, I would say probably no more than four weeks before you start seeing drop in blood histamine. So in four weeks you'll have enough histamine coming from this histamine depos to maintain blood histamine and you won't see a deficiency. And that, that can be a problem in a Latin square type ofdesign experiment.
Scott Sorrell (33:19):
Right. And I would think in the crossover design as well. Yeah. That, yeah.
Dr. Alex Hristov (33:23):
Oh, crossover is basically a Latin square is a crossover. Yeah. Uh, but that, but that's one unique feature about history and there is no other amino acid that has this kind of body reserves. Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (33:37):
And that maybe explains why, you know, when people do crossovers that are on, based on proteins. So like, you know, the study that Van DeHart published a year or so ago, one week, I mean within one week it was a full response in both directions Yep. And infusion studies that Metcalf published one quite a few years ago. 'cause we had looked at it on that project within three milkings. We were actually seeing most of the response. But it's protein. It's not, it's protein. Yeah.
Dr. Alex Hristov (34:06):
Yep.
Dr. Chanhee Lee (34:08):
Can I, can I ask a quick question about histamine? Um, so we recently, we finished one experiment with histamine. Um, it was different levels of uh, dietary protein diet supplemented with different amino acid. One of the major amino acid was histamine. Uh, we conducted experiment for six weeks, if I remember correctly. We didn't see any difference in dry matter intake. We didn't see any difference in milk yield and milk protein yield. Uh, but we found histamine was numerically decreased. It was not significant in the blood, but we found hemoglobin level was decreased. So my hemoglobin is very important to carry oxygen to the body. And that is utilized for energy synthesis TPI mean but is it changing hemoglobin level in the body? Do you think it's gonna change the metabolic efficiency of nutrient ization in the body?
Dr. Alex Hristov (35:22):
Uh, if you ask methe que the answer is, I don't know. Um, maybe that drop in hemoglobin you have seen is because it was supplying histamine, what it was used to, to supply histamine. Although you don't, I didn't see differences in plasma histamine. Right.
Dr. Chanhee Lee (35:43):
Um, sothe hemoglobin level dropped when histamine was deficient. When we brewed and protect histamine, the hemoglobin level was higher.
Dr. Alex Hristov (35:54):
Went up. Yeah. Yeah. So exactly what we have seen as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is possible. Shanghi. Um, I just have to say though, the differences that we see in histamine hemoglobin are very small. There are statistically significant, but the body will maintain hemoglobin levels as much as possible. Yeah. Because it's such an important Yesuh compound. Yeah. So there has got to be some metabolic of hemoglobin. Yep.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (36:34):
If you so drawing maybe from another source, if you feed nitrates Right. You can, you can tie up and and reduce methane. That's right. Yeah. But of course you get nitrate over spill into blood and it, it binds with the hemoglobin and ties up some of the oxygen care capacity. Exactly. And if I remember right, I mean, those studies we're seeing 10, 15% hemoglobin, you know, tie up and the cows were still performing fine. So it sounds like what you're saying is no, it's not going to be enough to change energy within
Dr. Alex Hristov (37:07):
This, within this
Dr. Mike Hanigan (37:08):
Yeah. Within that range.
Dr. Alex Hristov (37:10):
Range. Yeah. Yep.
Dr. Chanhee Lee (37:12):
Thank you.
Scott Sorrell (37:14):
Carrie. Any other questions from the audience?
Speaker 9 (37:18):
how'd you explain amino acid carry over defects?
Dr. Mike Hanigan (37:22):
We never see 'em. I do longitudinal study. It looks for him, and we don't see them. I mean, I think uh Dr. Kristoff's data is very, very compelling. And I, and I buy that for histamine. We've never seen it for any other amino acid. They basically flip over in three or four days and, and, and nothing seems to be hanging on, you know, creating a carryover effect.
Speaker 10 (37:46):
So Alex, given the data you showed on carry over the applied question is, how long do I wait after starting to feed histamine or other amino acids to see whether I have a response? And, you know, in a farm situation, what's your response to it?
Dr. Alex Hristov (38:10):
Well, to, to repeat what Mark said, I, I think you will see it right away for melanin, lyin for histamine, again, if you really are overfeeding, I mean I overfeeding is a rough term, but if you are feeding above requirements, let's say if we know where the requirements are of metabolism protein, you probably won't see a response to histamine. So you have to be at or be below. And, and I still think that you'll see a response within,
Speaker 10 (38:48):
So, if you start with, if you start with an insufficient diet below requirement for his, you think the response will still be quick still. That
Dr. Alex Hristov (38:59):
If you start feeding this whole protein diet, now, of course it'll take weeks before those body reserves are exhausted to at least diminished supplying histamine to maintain blood histamine levels. And then you'll start seeing a response. But if you are talking about farm conditions, you are not gonna feed those that died from day zero and start feeding histamine from day zero. You'll be probably feeding this war protein diet for a period of time, and then you are starting supplementing histamine, then you will see a response, I would say almost right away in a week or a couple weeks. That's good. Yeah. Yeah.
Clay Zimmermann (39:39):
So what is happening with plasma histamine levels in very early lactation cals?
Dr. Alex Hristov (39:49):
Good question. Somebody was talking about, oh, Shanghi was talking about fresh cows and transition cows. We do have a histo in, I won't call it the transition cow experiment going on right now because it is actually a fresh cow experiment. We started three days after having these studies are extremely difficult. I didn't want to do them, but I mean, that's pretty much the only thing left with his history, at least for us to do. So that's why we are doing it. Um, my guess will be because of the low dry intake and of course the high metabolic needs for amino acids, the response will be there. We are at about, I mean, of course we have 240 cow hertz until we get all the cows in the trial takes months and months. But we are at about35 cows at this point. And over the peak of the, the experiment, so soon we'll know we'll have the results from this.
Dr. Chanhee Lee (41:02):
I think testing supplementation for uh, fresh cows is more practical way that we can utilize and protect HIIN if the concept about the HIIN deficiencies Correct. Uh, which is the microbiome protein supply and HIIN low HIIN concentration in microbes. So that's, that's what I was thinking about his students to maximize efficiency effectiveness of providing
Dr. Alex Hristov (41:32):
Room protective history. Uh, yes hi, the other thing is that we always, I don't, I mean, you may have different opinions, but we tend to feed more feed RUP in this stage of the rotation. So that may mask the history problem a little bit. Yeah. But generally speaking, you are correct.
Scott Sorrell (41:54):
Gary, I think we have another question
Speaker 10 (41:55):
On these low protein diets. Let's just say 15 fives low protein diet, and do you feed much of the blood meal or blood meal derivatives in those cases because you're having to make up through all the other meal acids?
Dr. Alex Hristov (42:12):
So what, when I say wo protein, i, I mean be, whoa, 15 and a half, but 15 and a half, let's say is a good, is a good target if you have blood meal and it's a good blood meal, and if it's a reasonable price, that's the best source of both lysine, histamine. We don't, because we are trying to monitor the amino acid and balances. But that will be a way to, you know, supply histamine.
Speaker 10 (42:44):
We did, I said, but in your studies, you're not using any blood meal No. Because of variability of the blood meal?
Dr. Alex Hristov (42:51):
No, not because of variability. Because we want to controllet's say histamine deficiency or his supply by itself, by itself. Not, not by the other menino acids that come with blood meal.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (43:07):
Uh, I'll jump in there. So we've got somewhere we've gone down to 13.5% on crude protein if you want to use crude protein as your metric, and Yes. In those situations I don't know how to do it without blood meal. Yeah. Right. Um, but, and the cows will perform well, we've gotten 45 kilograms of good milk out of about 13.5% crude protein. But, but to your, to the point that's been made that the variation around, you know, we, we conducted one experiment where we had tested the digestibility of the, of the blood meal. Thought we had it all worked out. The cow said, Nope. I was yelling at everybody. Right. 'cause I thought something was wrong. They weren't feeding them. Right. Come to find out that the blood meal switched from the time we tested it to the load we finally got.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (43:57):
Right? Yeah. Uh, and then it corrected itself, right? So we have this beautiful study where, you know, we did it, we got something different and it came back again. Um, but it's maddening, right? Because you don't want that to happen on a dairy. So, you know, I don't, we don't feed, we still feed some blood meal, but we do it in a guarded fashion because I don't know how else to get some of these amino acids when you're trying to bring the, the, the true protein down or the, the nitrogen down far enough. You know, it's, it is a bit of a problem.
Dr. Alex Hristov (44:28):
I have to say though anytime we went down to 14 or below 14%, we have always seen a decrease inin, in production and DRT intake, milk production and DRT intake. Maybe we don't have the magic cows that Mike has up there, but
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (44:48):
Not the cows. Alex, it's not the cows.
Dr. Alex Hristov (44:51):
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (44:52):
They're all the same cows man.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (44:53):
All the same cows man.
Dr. Alex Hristov (44:55):
In, in our case. Uh, and, and we didn't feed the blood meal, obviously. Yeah. Um, yeah, we did see a decrease in production.
Scott Sorrell (45:05):
Hmm. Gary, I thought I'd seen a hand over here at one point in time. I don't, I don't know if they've left or not. Any questions? Uh, over there?
Speaker 10 (45:15):
Hello? You know, back in the day we used to be trying to get a spike in milk production from supplementation at a 16% for what, what would've been a normal for some protein. And the place we got, it was not from lysine or histidine, it was from methionine. Now, are we just working with a different animal? Not a different animal, excuse me, for even having suggested that a different scenario when we're looking at these very low protein diets. Do you get nothing from methionine when you're feeding a 14.5% protein diet?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (46:02):
No, I, you know, to do that, Tim, it's a great question to do that. In my book, we're feeding probably somewhere between, if the cows are consuming 70 to 72 m cows of energy, we're somewhere in the 80 to 82, maybe 84 grams of metabolizable methionine. So methionine is basic. What you're hearing from me is that I already took care of the methionine
Scott Sorrell (46:43):
Very well. So I think I'm gonna call last call, gentlemen. Um, I usually wait until I'm done with my bourbon, but I got a triple this time. And so I, I'm not gonna,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (46:53):
I was gonna ask you about that
Scott Sorrell (46:54):
That was quite hefty, wasn't it?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (46:56):
Yeah, a little bit.
Scott Sorrell (46:58):
Well, I, I, I restrained myself. What I'd like to do is ask each of you to kind of give us one key takeaway, maybe something you learned or maybe a piece of advice that you'd like to impart to your audience here today. Um, and, and clam, I'm gonna start with you if you don't mind.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Tonight's last call question is brought to you by Nitro Precision Release Nitrogen. NitroShure delivers a complete TMR for the room microbiome, helping you feed the microbes that feed your cows. To learn more about maximizing microbial protein output while reducing your carbon footprint, visit balchem.com/nitroshure
Speaker 5 (47:41):
Sure. Yeah. So, obviously amino acid supplementation is very critical. Um, as the genetics are changing on these cows we're really seeing some pretty amazing response partially related amino acid feeding. And I thought all the talks were great, actually. Really, really blended, blended together quite well. Um, and I think some other key points were you know, be careful about you know, where these bioavailability numbers are coming from and and, and how you're handling these products.
Scott Sorrell (48:24):
Yeah. Yeah. Great comments, clay. Dr. Lee, I'm gonna go with you next.
Dr. Chanhee Lee (48:30):
I agree with clay. Uh, I'm personally interested in bioavailability ofr protected amino acid because this is the key information that we can increase the response to feeding r protect amino acid, and also make the consistent response to feeding r protect amino acid. So there are many methods available. Um, the Dr. Hannigantalked about what we need to look at if we have a viability and what are available. Um, I kind ofuh, he showed the approach that we have to take to get a good information, have a right information from our about RPO amino acid.
Scott Sorrell (49:16):
Yeah, great comments, Dr. Histrov.
Dr. Alex Hristov (49:22):
Yeah, I would say that nitrogen is coming back. We've been all crazy about methane, at least in the, in my world in the last years. But nitrogen has been there, is here, and it'll come back. And if nitrogen is here, we'll always be talking about amino acids in animal nutrition. And that will just continue, hopefully, will make even a fraction of the progress that the monogastric people have made in the next few years.
Scott Sorrell (49:59):
Thank you. Mark, what kind of comments do you have?
Dr. Mike Hanigan (50:03):
Yeah, I think as we, as we move forward, you know, from an industry and particularly a science standpoint, we continue to discover, you know, new things, right? But sometimes we get caught in this trap of thinking, okay, well, I have to maximize milk protein, or I have to maximize microbial protein. I have to, I have to find the best amino acid. You know, it has to have the highest bio vulnerability. All of these have economic costs, right? For industry application. And so the best may not be, and often isn't the most economical decision, it's somewhere off of the best. And so I would challenge, you know, the idea that we have a 45% limit on nitrogen efficiency. I think it's higher than that because we are not allowing ourselves to say, okay, we're gonna accept lower microbial output, and then we're gonna make it up with RUP or amino acids or whatever. You know, if we knock that off the table, we never are going to get beyond that, beyond hungry. Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (51:01):
Excellent comments, Mike.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (51:04):
Yes.
Scott Sorrell (51:05):
Bring it home for us. Yeah,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (51:06):
Well, I, what Alex said and what Mark just said, I, I, I said I fully agree with all of that. I think the, where we're at right now, and to play off of what they just said, the cows are changing. We need to figure out how to challenge ourselves to, to work, to understand what our cows have the capability of. And, and that's gonna play into everything that, that everybody just said here. Right? We're gonna have to kind of take off our blinders and say, Hey, this, it isn't just one thing, but we have to work pretty hard to, to sort it out because it will have to be economic. I think the question, you know, to, to Mark's comment, and I always, I struggle with this mark, you know, what is the economic response, but what is the biological potential, right? And I think we gotta go figure out what the biological potential is and then decide is that economically viable or not, right? Because right now, you know, our milk protein price right now sucks, right? So there's no incentive to make more milk protein but we make all the milk fat we possibly can, right? And it doesn't seem hard to do that because we can't figure out how to move the protein. So I think we're, we're going the right direction, but we gotta keep challenging ourselves to figure out how to do that, right?
Dr. Mike Hanigan (52:17):
And so we have to have that full response surface for all Exactly. Right. All those relationships, right? That's right. So we can move up and down it as we need to, because tomorrow the market's different, and the next day it's different.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (52:27):
Yeah, that's right.
Scott Sorrell (52:28):
Yeah, exactly. Excellent comments. Gentlemen, I want to thank you guys for joining us today. It's been a great symposia and a great podcast to the live audience. I want to thank you for joining us for our100th episode. And so if you'll join me in a quick drink, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers.
Dr. Mike Hanigan (52:48):
Cheers, cheers.
Scott Sorrell (52:51):
And I'd like to thank our loyal listeners for joining in. Once again, I hope you learn something. I 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 2 (53:03):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email anh.marketing@balchem.com with any suggestions, and we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five star rating on your way out. You can request your Real Science Exchange t-shirt in just a few easy steps, just like or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange. And send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Balchems real science lecture series of webinars continues with ruminant focused topics on the first Tuesday of every month, monogastric focused topics on the second Tuesday of each month, and quarterly topics for the companion animal segment. Visit balchem.com/realscience to see the latest schedule and to register for upcoming webinars.