Guests: Dr. Tom Overton, Cornell University; Dr. Marty Faldet, GPS Dairy Dr. Overton presented on this topic in a Real Science Lecture series webinar on July 10, 2024. You can find it at www.balchem.com/realscience. This episode takes a deeper dive into the conversation.
Dr. Overton presented on this topic in a Real Science Lecture series webinar on July 10, 2024. You can find it at www.balchem.com/realscience. This episode takes a deeper dive into the conversation.
Dr. Overton begins by reminding listeners of the vast number of changes occurring in the fresh cow during the first two to three weeks after calving. Body fat and protein mobilization, some systemic inflammation, the potential for elevated NEFAs and ketones, and calcium dynamics all play a role in how the fresh cow starts her lactation period. (7:31)
When consulting with clients, Dr. Faldet uses research to guide his decisions. He likes to implement a 14-day pen for fresh cows, ranging from 10-17 days. He evaluates things like stocking rates, lockup times, and cow comfort, along with fine-tuning a diet for each individual farm setting. (9:14)
The panel discusses the importance of increasing effective fiber along with starch in fresh cow diets. Without adequate effective fiber in the diet, the risk of acidosis increases, resulting in cows going off feed. There is no silver bullet; each farm’s fresh cow diet is going to be different due to different forage bases and timing in the fresh cow group. (13:02)
Both Dr. Faldet and Dr. Overton stressed the diet is only one component of a successful fresh cow program. Other critical pieces include stocking rate, availability of feed, water quantity and quality, and cow comfort. Dr. Faldet suggests that if you do all these non-diet factors right, you could probably maneuver closeup and fresh pens a little differently and make the diet work with the ingredients you have. Dr. Overton’s group is conducting survey work evaluating the variability in particle size in closeup diets. A pilot study showed that as particle size variability increased, so did fresh cow health issues and poor postpartum metabolic status. (19:10)
Protein requirements of the fresh cow were another topic of Dr. Overton’s webinar. He described a recent experiment evaluating standard and high metabolizable protein concentrations in the diet for closeup and fresh cows. The postpartum MP gave a big milk response, around 15-16 pounds per day for the first 21 days after calving, with a carryover effect of 11-12 pounds of milk for the next 20 days after all cows went back on the same diet. It’s important to note that lysine and methionine were fixed regardless of treatment, so it seems that other amino acids are probably involved in the mechanism of action. (23:06)
Dr. Overton described an experiment designed to evaluate starch and fiber in fresh cow diets where higher fiber digestibility and increased corn in silage resulted in less fiber and more starch than anticipated in the diet. Fresh cows were a bit of a trainwreck, but the problem was resolved once another couple of pounds of straw were added to the diet. On the other hand, you can go too far with increased fiber in fresh cow diets, which results in ketosis, lower intakes, and less milk production. (35:19)
The panel then discusses far-off programs, fat supplementation in fresh cow diets, and vitamin and mineral concentrations for fresh cows. (42:37)
In summary, each panelist shares their takeaways. Dr. Elliott reminds listeners that we should think about starch, fat, fiber, and protein together and how they influence each other rather than considering them individually. Dr. Faldet’s take-home message is to know what your targets and bookends are and really hone in and implement your fresh cow diets accordingly. Dr. Overton suggests that the industry will shift to evaluating fresh cow diets as their own thing rather than trying to tweak a few things from your high cow diet. Implementing fresh cow diets consistently and well is going to be important. (53:30)
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Scott Sorrell (00:07):
Hi, I am Scott Sorrell. I'll be your host here tonight at The Real Science Exchange. And we're here to welcome Dr. Tom Overton to further discuss the webinar that he gave. Just a couple short weeks ago Dr. Overton had joined us for the Real Science Lecture series and presented a, an insightful webinar titled Turbocharge Your Fresh Cow Diets, and he presented that back on July 10th. You can access that webinar at alchem.com/real science. And now, Tom, we're really looking forward to digging deeper into this conversation tonight. But, but first I'd like to welcome you back to the Real Science Exchange. It's, it's been a minute. I, you were, you were part of one of the first ones, but it, it's been at least two years since you've been here, so welcome back and, and what's in your glass tonight, Tom.
Dr. Todd Overton (00:56):
So, thanks for having me, Scott. What's in my glass is gin and tonic minus the gin
Scott Sorrell (01:02):
Dr. Todd Overton (01:07):
Tonic? Oh, probably either Tank Ray or Bombay Sapphire or something like that.
Scott Sorrell (01:12):
All right, cool. So Tom, I see you brought a guest with you tonight. Would you mind introducing your guest and why did you decide to invite him? Yeah,
Dr. Todd Overton (01:20):
So Marty Fette from GPS Dairy, again, I've known Marty a long time, and, you know, he's part of a very progressive group in the, mostly in the upper Midwest that feeds an awful lot of cows.
Scott Sorrell (01:30):
Yeah. So Marty, really looking forward to the conversation tonight. I've heard your name forever and met several of your teammates, specifically Jim and King, but I've never met you, so I'm really looking forward to the conversation tonight. Would you mind kind of telling us a little bit about yourself and GPS?
Dr. Marty Faldet (01:47):
Yeah, sure. Thank you again for being invited, Tom. I appreciate that. And Balchem, we're putting this on. Looking forward to the discussion we're gonna have today GPS dairy. We do, you know, I was telling Scott A. Little bit. We do have a podcast. We call it Dairy Cast. You can just jump on it on the GPS dairy website, and there'll be a dairy cast tab. You can just jump on that or you can search it through any podcast you know I guess libraries or, or sources that you have that will also provide it. So that's been something we've been working towards in terms of our team. You know, it's a group of nutrition consultants, mainly in the Midwest, like Tom mentioned earlier. And yeah, we work a lot in different areas. I work some in Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas. Others work across Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota. We get down in Nebraska and Texas and try to stretch out from there.
Scott Sorrell (02:46):
Excellent. So again, looking forward to the discussion tonight. Don't wanna fit my forget my co-host, Dr. Jeff Elliot. Jeff, welcome back. It's always good to have you here. What's in your glass tonight, Jeff?
Dr. Jeff Elliot (02:58):
Well, I guess in recognition of the hot summer here in Texas, having a little tequila, even though it feels a little bit early for it, but, you know, that'll help me get through this podcast with Tom. I I usually need a little help when he's around, so. And just a little side note, Scott. So Marty and I worked together both in our previous lives when I came outta grad school in one of my jobs, we were consultants with the same company. So Marty and I go way back as well. And then of course, Tom and I were in grad school together at
Scott Sorrell (03:31):
L Wow. So, you know, these guys Do you do yeah, I mean, good stories you can share
Dr. Jeff Elliot (03:38):
We may have to edit all those. So
Scott Sorrell (03:45):
All right. Very well. Well, tonight Jeff, I'm having, I'm having what they call a rock valley that spirits, it's a single malts whiskey. And this is it's, it's a little local distill. They're, they're starting to pop up kinda like little brew pubs, but I found it interesting. This one is mashed fermented distilled and bottled by the milk family. And it's in from long Eddie, New York. So that's what I'm having tonight. So guys, as we discuss turbocharging your fresh cows, let's first toast to a great conversation this evening. Cheers.
Dr. Jeff Elliot (04:23):
Cheers. Cheers.
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Scott Sorrell (05:35):
So, Tom, I'm gonna jump right in. As mentioned you presented on the Real Science Lecture series back in July. Can you kind of just start us off by giving us a 30 foot overview of what your presentation was all about? Yeah,
Dr. Todd Overton (05:47):
So, you know, one of the things that's been interesting is that you know, fresh cow diets aren't new by any means, and Marty can attest to that, I'm sure. But, you know, I think we've had some research to go on in the last few years. It's helped us to sort out maybe some opportunities on the starch fiber side, and then also some opportunities on the protein side in these fresh cow diets. And so, you know, by and large, we haven't had a lot of research to go on, but that's, that's changing and, and that then results in opportunities, I think, out there in the industry.
Scott Sorrell (06:15):
Yeah. So you said that you know, the vast majority, right? As as the, the research has been done on the dry cows, why not the fresh cows?
Dr. Todd Overton (06:23):
Yeah, so it's interesting, and, and we're guilty of this too, as some of our program over time, is that, you know, most of us transition cow researchers who are interested in nutrition. We would vary things in the dry period, right? We'd look at you know, control energy diets. We'd look at decad, you know, we'd look at variety of, of, of dietary, you know, strategies, interventions during the dry period. And then after calving, we would just put the cows onto whatever diet the herd was feeding, the research herd was feeding. And so there wasn't really a whole lot of thought put into, you know, what what a fresh cow diet maybe should look like. And, you know, part two of that is if you're interested in lactate cow nutrition, right? Most researchers would be like, well, I don't wanna start these cows until, you know, through few weeks into lactation because I wanna make sure they're healthy and, and ready to go and things like that. So we, we've kind of had a gap there that's kind of needed to be filled. And so, you know, we, we and others have been interested in, in trying to fill that gap.
Scott Sorrell (07:17):
So even though there's not a lot of research, a lot left to be known based on your expend experience, relatively speaking, how important is that, you know, three weeks after calving? How important is it relative to the dry, the dry period?
Dr. Todd Overton (07:31):
Well, there's an awful lot of wheels turning in that cow in that, in that first two to three weeks after calving, right? I mean, you've got, you know, body fat mobilization, body condition mobilization, you've got some body protein mobilization. You've got, you know, potentially in, in, you know, systemic inflammation in those cows, you know, much more so than during the, the pre calving period. You know, you might have, again, you know, elevated concentrations of nefa non certified fatty acids phh, you know, ketones. There's just a calcium dynamics in that, in that fresh cow, you know, again, we're learning more about that all the time too. And so there's just, there's a lot going on there. And so I, I think it is important for us to think about how nutrition might best interface and help those cows get off to a strong start from an intake standpoint. And you know, that's, that's part of what it's all about, right? These cows, you know, if they eat after calving and, you know, good things tend to tend to happen with that.
Dr. Marty Faldet (08:27):
Tom, I have a lot of questions for you. I mean, we've already, as a team discussed some of the concepts I reached out to you know, Weston a little bit, you know, trying to understand, you know, some of that research and where you're going with it. So I, I probably could sit here and ask you questions all evening if we each had a bottle of something to keep us entertained through it all.
Dr. Todd Overton (08:50):
Marty, I'm curious for you, right, because again, I, you know, you, you probably, you've got some herds that, you know, let's, let's go back before this information, right? I mean, you probably have had some herds that set a high cow diet beginning at calving, right? You've had some herds, you have a specific fresh diet. I'm just curious how you approach have approached those over time and, and you know, how do you, how have you assessed? Okay, is this a, you know, are we winning or, or not?
Dr. Marty Faldet (09:14):
Yeah, I think that's where, you know, for me, the research still plays a role in guiding you, you know, and what to do. And so you take that and you move it forward and you implement it on a farm, and then you kind of fine tune it. Trying to manage cost or manage, you know, each farm is slightly different. So a lot of times I do wanna implement a four, I call it a 14 day pen. It can range from 10 to 17. But you know, I always get caught up with farms that maybe say the pen is large enough for a 30 day pen. I'm like, well, that's not a fresh pen, you know, it's just like, to me it doesn't work. You know, a 30 day pen just is meaningless. It's, it, maybe we can lower stocking rates and do a few things to make it successful, but it's just a tough pen to manage.
Dr. Marty Faldet (09:57):
And if I can get like a 10 to 17 day pen and really implement something, you know, that helps, helps a lot. So now you can actually, you know, really move what you learn from the research side into this type of program and kinda give that extra advantage to that fresh animal, whether it be stocking rate and, you know, lockup times and you know, just cow comfort, heat abatement. And then you really hone in on that diet, you know, and each, and the diet to me is I'm always amazed like, yeah, I have what my diet would be like, but you gotta fine tune it for each farm is a little different. And that always surprises me. I'm like, ah, this should work on every dang farm
Dr. Jeff Elliot (10:51):
Yeah, yeah. You start thinking the biology should be the same, but yeah, it's not. So, Marty, can you expand, you know, you said that 30 day fresh cow pen just doesn't seem to work. Can you expand on what you mean by that?
Dr. Marty Faldet (11:06):
Well, I, I guess if you're trying to implement our diet, you know, that you learned that can really help out. You, you can't be a, you know, you can't leave at a high fiber diet, you know, and manage some of that 30 days, you know, that animal just isn't gonna probably survive. She's gonna pull off a lot of energy and probably repro ain't gonna be as good either, and milks gonna be a little lower. But if you could you know, I like to increase the fiber. I think, you know, Tom, just like you mentioned in terms of the effective fiber in that 14 day type pen, I think it's crucial. I think if you can do that and then bring the starch along and you kind of have both parties to that diet, you can really make it work well and manage fresh cow or early removals. We look at a lot of early, early removals along with Deads, and that's our success rate, and usually that goes hand in hand with fresh cow problems.
Dr. Todd Overton (12:04):
Yeah. I, I, Marty, I mean, I totally agree with you on your comments on, you know, kind of 30, 30, 30 day group is kind of a, a nowhere place to be, right? Because Yeah. 'cause The things that, you know, you might do or I might do with fiber to try to get that room and to, to transition, well you're clearly gonna hold those cows back on their, on their feed intakes in, in a group like that. You know, some of the stuff that we've been doing, or Trent Westoff with being a man here, Cornell's been doing with protein. You know, you, you, you're not gonna do that for 30 days, most likely. But can you do it? Can you do it for 10 to 17? I think that's a, that's a good place to live, right? So,
Dr. Marty Faldet (12:44):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (12:46):
So Tom, you shared some research in your presentation relative to carbohydrate and, and fiber levels and UNDF. Can you talk a little bit about that? What have you found from that research? What kinda levels are you kind of recommending today? Yeah,
Dr. Todd Overton (13:02):
So, you know, one of the things that, that has been out there, both kind of in the industry and in the research is that, you know, people have been arguing about starch levels and the fresh diet. You know, do you, do you keep 'em higher? Do you go low? And, you know, what do you do with starch ferment ability? And, you know, there, there's been one school of thought that clearly is, has, has been pushing for lower starch or lower ferment ability. And, but you look at the research results and there's all over the place. And, and so that's one area where, you know, it's like, okay, how do we make sense of this? And so, you know, we had done, you know, minor, minor institute, done some research where they got a, a negative response to a higher starch diet. It wasn't that high.
Dr. Todd Overton (13:44):
It was like 26% starch in the fresh cows. In terms of intake and milk. You know, we did a similar study. We got a positive response
Dr. Todd Overton (14:32):
You know, no more than about 27% starch or so in that diet, you know, you know, a couple points higher than, you know, a couple points higher in forage NDF. So, you know, maybe running, you know, 22, 20 3% forage NDF, maybe 24 on the high end. It all comes back to how digestible the other parts of the forages are on the, the farm as well. Right? That's another key factor because, you know, the more digestible the forage is, the other forages, right? You, you got a combination of like a BMR corn silage, right? Really nice haylage. Then you probably do have some opportunity for a little more chopped straw or whatever you wanna put in there in that fresh diet's just to keep those Romans going.
Dr. Marty Faldet (15:10):
Tom, I just laugh at the whole concept of, oh, you, you gotta feed more straw to a fresh cow because of something you're like, yeah, it actually works better if you do it that way. You know, it's just kind of mind boggling to me as like, no, I gotta keep increasing straws high increasing starch. And you're like, that doesn't make any sense, you know, but it, it actually is real. I mean, I I, I agree with that concept.
Dr. Todd Overton (15:37):
You know, what kind of got us into this in the first place was there was some data outta Greg Penner's group and, and showing a, a big spike in, in that continuous pH loggers in, in these cows. And they measured them at different time points relative to calving. And I think two to five after calving, they had a big spike in, in, in base acidosis in those cows. And so, you know, and I think that that, you know, there's been all this discussion about things that affect, you know, feed intake in this time and things like that. And I think when we're too fermentable with those diets, or not enough physical effective fiber, I think we're, we're making these cows acidotic and we're throwing 'em off feed. And so it's all about trying to get that balance right. And it's probably gonna be different for every farm because, you know, you got different forages you're working with, right? Different timing in that fresh group, you know, so it's, it's gonna, you know, that's where, that's where that's where the talent of, of you nutritionists come into play as you work with your farms to get get good outcomes.
Dr. Marty Faldet (16:33):
I had one of those experiences where the, the fresh pens, they cab a lot of animals a week, so you could figure things out pretty fast. But it was in that scenario where the cows just were loose and I'm thinking, I gotta bring more fiber in. And I, you know, pulled starch back or did some other things and it didn't help. It actually made it worse. And so I had to bring the starch back up with the fiber and then it all kinda you know, just cleaned up. It was just it was just an eye awakening to me, just 'cause you can see it with just a lot of animals. And so when you get a lot of animals, Kevin, you can figure things out pretty fast.
Scott Sorrell (17:12):
Yeah. I'm kind of curious how, how much does how the, the, the cows are fed in a dry period. How much does that impact how you feed 'em in the fresh period?
Dr. Marty Faldet (17:21):
Well, I disagree with kind of what you're, what you lay down in your studies. I truly do. Like 'em, Tom, I I think they gotta go hand in hand. If you're closeup, depending upon what you're doing with the closeup is what you can do with a fresh cow. So they kind of gotta, they kind of kind of gotta mirror each other. I, I don't think you can go one extreme and not the other, or vice versa. I, I think you get yourself in trouble, but Tom, go ahead with
Dr. Todd Overton (17:45):
Yeah, no, no. Right. We've always, and you know, God, I got this, you know, I remember 20 years ago plus, right? And I was a, was a relative youngster,
Dr. Todd Overton (18:38):
You know, you see it work in, in you know, we have a recommendation, right? But recognizing that we're probably not as, as research based as I'd like to be. You know, there's been a couple study, there's been one study out of Obba’s group at Alberta that kind of took a run at it, and they, you know, they actually had like, you know, better results of the high starch diet pre it was, it was just kind of, it was a little bit, you know, just mind you know, just confused almost like, yeah. Right. Okay. This is interesting and kinda confusing, so,
Dr. Marty Faldet (19:10):
Well, Tom, do you think that's where, you know, like all the work that's been done, you know, it's so hard to get that just, you know, really you know, position, right? With all farms, the idea of stocking rate, you know, feed ability, feed ability, feed, you know, ability or, you know, that's available on the, you know, and from the cow, the water, the cow comfort. It's just all that. Like, if you do all that, you could probably maneuver a closeup and fresh pen a little differently and make it work with the feeds you got versus having to just really having that honed in deeper than usual.
Dr. Todd Overton (19:52):
Yeah, and I think that's a great point, right? You know, I mean, diet's just part of it. And so there's so much that goes into, you know, I tell people that, you know, you overstock your cows, right? You know, it doesn't matter. I'm not saying it doesn't matter what you do on, on diet, but you know, you know, all bets are off for that, for that you know, feed program to perform the way it should. You know, we've been doing some research here, field-based research over the last, oh, year or two now, really kind of drilling in on feeding management of these controlled energy closeup diets. And so, you know, obviously we think about things like particle size and moisture and, and things like that. But then also we've been doing basically looking at variability along that closeup bunk on commercial dairies, right from one end to the other in terms of particle size and relate to it.
Dr. Todd Overton (20:41):
And we're finding a lot of variability on some farms. And so we haven't, we're still in the data collection mode, but we had a small study that we did with one of our ex educators up in northern New York that showed actually some, you know, as that, as that variability in that particle size increased in that pre fresh diet along the bunk, more fresh cow health issues, postpartum poor metabolic status in those herds. And there was only 10, 10 herds in the dataset. So we're, we're getting up to 50 herd, about 48 herds just working on land on this current study. We've got about 40 collected. So, I don't know, I think there's things that things that run under the surface at the farm level that we don't always pick up on. And I think that remains an opportunity on some farms.
Dr. Jeff Elliot (21:25):
And maybe I'll ask Marty this, since you're covering a, a wide area and a lot of different type farms, is there any similarities or any problems you see across the board from Texas to Minnesota or in, in the, in the logistics, in the management part of it? Or is each farm different?
Dr. Marty Faldet (21:48):
Yeah, I think what Tom just mentioned is the focused area of why some places are more successful than others. It's that particle length of the straw that you're feeding, and then that conditioning of that diet. So we work hard at adding water to it both sides more than likely. But, and then that straw or whatever that forage, you know, is that you're working with. And I always thought there was a lot of differences, but I would say what, what I'm doing in Texas versus Michigan or Wisconsin, it, it, you know I've actually tried to simplify things. I always thought, you gotta have all in a diet or something in a closeup. I, you, you don't, you know, I just think you do, you know, it's more of my, my issue is probably the bigger issue. It's not, not anything else. So I, I've just been proven or challenged, let's say, to kind of open up that toolbox and probably address it and try to just really focus on consistency and managing costs. I mean, it's still a something you want to do, but if, if you don't do it right, it's gonna be costly no matter what.
Scott Sorrell (22:56):
Tom, one of the areas you discussed during the webinar was also the protein requirements of that fresh cow is a little bit different. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Todd Overton (23:06):
Yeah. So there was about 10 years ago, there was a study done in Denmark. It was a small study, they only had eight cows in the study. They supplied additional protein by infusing it into the abomasum. So these cows had Roman cannulas and, you know, they infused Cain, right? So a perfect amino acid source for obviously supporting milk production. And all they were trying to do was eliminate what the calculated negative protein balance was in those cows after calving. And they got a big milk response. They got a milk response of about 16 pounds per day in those fresh cows. And, you know, and there's no it was unusually big response. And of course, small study, right? So you gotta take that into account. And, you know, they'd repeated it in different ways, you know, a few more cows, not necessarily room cannulated.
Dr. Todd Overton (23:58):
And saw some positive results. And so, you know, that got the attention of us and a bunch of others. And so again, Trent Westoff, who just finished his PhD here at Cornell working with Sabina Mann and I was on his committee, decided to go after this, decided, decided to go after this. And so we looked at you know, kind of a control ish, you know, level of mp and then a high level of MP before calving. So when I say control ish, you know, we were probably targeting somewhere around 1100 grams per day, and you can see in CPS. And then the high was around, ended up being around 6,000 grams per day, a little higher than we were targeting based on intakes. And then after calving, they went on to either more of an industry, kind of standard level of, of protein or an increment that we're shooting for about three or 400 grams per day, more protein in that diet.
Dr. Todd Overton (24:48):
And the postpartum protein really give a big milk response. Not so much for the prepartum protein but the postpartum protein, again, Trent got, you know, looking at data here, right? You know, Trek got somewhere in the range of he got somewhere in the range of, you know, oh, 15, 16 pounds of milk right during the, the 21 days after calving with a high protein fresh diet, and had a carryover response around 11 or 12 pounds of milk over the 20 days after they all went back to the same diet. So at day 22. So that, you know, that's caught our attention. And I think it's, you know, we, we certainly have dairies, nutritionists kind of, you know, playing around with this out in the, out in the field and, and, you know, we're kind of, we're learning as we go. But it's been kind of been an interesting finding. And, and the, the literature's pretty consistent. The cows, the cows who were had the higher protein before calving did get a little better response to the high protein after calving, but it really wasn't much. The big effect was that fresh cow you know, protein supply.
Dr. Jeff Elliot (25:54):
So, Tom, any speculation on the, the why behind that? Like just more limited than we thought, or is there something else going
Dr. Todd Overton (26:03):
On? I, I think there's something going on there. I mean, of course, you know, the one thing we did, one design consideration in that study, and it's, it's important I think to mention it, is we actually fixed supplies of not lysine, methionine across the treatments before calving and again, after calving. So it was, so it was really looking at the, all the other amino acids and because we formulated on a grams per m cal of me basis, and, and that didn't change between the treatments. So so we basically fixed supply of amino acids that we know are important in that timeframe. And so, you know, of course, a lot of those amino acids are glucogenic. You know, a lot of them probably help promote, you know, promote some fat, fat oxidation liver, you know, I think there's also just stuff that we don't, you know, we got some data on, you know, at least on the, on the stuff that Trent looked at, didn't look like we really affected protein mobilization, which is interesting. So again, there's just, there's, there's things going on there that we just, you know, continue to, to have, to try to figure out, figure what's going on there with their biology. So
Dr. Marty Faldet (27:05):
Yeah, to me it almost is like, well, protein's limited, it's tougher to feed, you know, for the animal to get the protein from her body reserves or something like that. Whereas energy, she can mobilize a few things. She can do a, you know, adjust differently. And so I, I, I guess it makes sense, you know, to me, and maybe the rumen, you know, the rumen can't produce enough bacterial protein because of the intake and just the size of it. And so you're just not able to, to make that work. Or either that or the modeling programs aren't right. Huh?
Dr. Todd Overton (27:38):
Well, I think, yeah, no, no, that's a fair point. No, Marty, I think that's a fair point, right? Because there's, there's no model that would, that would, that would predict that response, I don't think, right? Yeah. and you know, you think about our modeling or, you know, for milking cows anyway, you know, those programs and CNCPS among them, right? They're all, they're all based on cows and established lactation, right? And so you've got some things going on here that, you know, are different in that fresh cow. And so, you know, it's just a matter of, of, you know, understanding that, understanding that biology. But, you know, yeah, I mean, I, I just tell people I, so the models don't,
Dr. Marty Faldet (28:15):
Well, I love that you fixed the lysomethionine. I think that tells a, a different story. I mean, it truly does. I mean, I, I really enjoyed that part of it, and I had, that was part of my question that I was gonna have, so thanks for bringing
Dr. Todd Overton (28:26):
That up. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing in our minds. There were enough studies showing, you know, responses to methionine during transition period by itself, responses to lysine as well. And so, you know, I remember Sabina saying, I don't wanna do just another methionine lysine trial. I want something, I want something different. And so, yeah, that stuff's I think we're just getting it, getting it accepted for general dairy science. So we find it at Cornell Nutrition conference proceedings, but it'll be out there in full form here shortly.
Dr. Marty Faldet (28:56):
Yeah. The other part of that question you know, that Jeff asked too, has to do with like, well, how do you still do it but manage protein levels? Or do you have to worry about total protein in the diet and you know, alfalfa versus maybe a grass forage, you know? And so I was just trying to, you know, the, the RDP type of, or RDP guess it was being, you know, pretty low. And so you're like, it is just an interesting dilemma to try to formulate around that. And then which way could you go? Like how could, how could you do it differently but still do it the same way in terms of the result on the animal?
Dr. Todd Overton (29:33):
Yeah. I mean, our protein levels weren't crazy by any means in that high diet and that high lactating diet, I think they were, I should pull it up. I think they were like 15.4 or something like that.
Dr. Marty Faldet (29:42):
Exactly. It was something so lower. Like what
Dr. Todd Overton (29:45):
Do that, you know, I think, I think there's, there's a couple things, right? I think our, you know, our school of thought here you know, for what it's worth is, you know, we think that that some of the recommendations out there for our RDP or are too high, right? And so maybe there's, maybe there's some room there to, to pull that back a bit. And so, and, and again, you know, we focused our, our protein feeding on, you know on some animal protein and then high quality animal protein blend and, and some bypass soy, you know, most of it was done with bypass soy. I think we had, you know, you know, we did a lot of it with, with, with that. That
Dr. Marty Faldet (30:23):
Is what it took. Like I, I tried to replicate just what you did, and I think it ended up being like a 17.25 type of diet to hit those numbers using kind of that protected bean meal soy type of thing. And, you know, that, I don't know if there's an upper limit of, you know, lysine coming, you know, using, using your animal protein type products like blood type of thing. Yeah.
Dr. Todd Overton (30:49):
Yeah. So anyhow, so yeah, we're, you know, we're you know, we, again, we're, we're finding this literature overall to have some consistency to it, which gives you some confidence still, again, still early, I think in the days of, of interacting with nutritionists you know, relative to, you know, people trying to implement things on farm and then, and then and then seeing, you know, seeing what they, what they think they see, right? So, you know, in our, in our case, right, I mean, if, you know, if you're gonna get a response to something like this, it should be obvious in whatever startup milk metric you you're looking at, right? Whether you look at startups or, you know, weak four milk and some of the, some of the, you know, in some of the herd management software programs or whatever, you know, whatever your flavor is relative to, to early lactation milk. So
Dr. Marty Faldet (31:39):
Yeah, definitely gonna implement that you know, on some farms and get it up and running quick is already started on a couple. And that's exactly right. I mean, it's pretty easy to manage four 12, you know, 4, 8, 12 type of front end wheat milk numbers and, you know, look at fresh cow metrics. A lot of herds track it. Well, and so this should be pretty easy to, to see.
Dr. Todd Overton (32:04):
I think the one thing I'm seeing though, and some with some nutritionists that interact with 'em is that they're actually running kind of already in between our two.
Dr. Marty Faldet (32:12):
That's, that's where I'm going, you know,
Dr. Todd Overton (32:13):
They're already kind of running in between, right? You know, kind of our, our control and our, and our high treatment, right? So they're kind of running like in the middle. And so, and we don't know what that, you know, again, you know, the, the old adage, right? You know, if you have two points, you can always draw a straight line, right? Well, we don't know if it's a straight line response or not, right? I mean, you know, so, you know, so we just have the really, the two data points. And you know, so that, that's another factor I think that comes into play and especially if people are, are actually kind of formulating in the middle already
Dr. Marty Faldet (32:45):
That, yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. 'cause That is, I'm like in the middle of the closeup, in the middle of the fresh, you know, I come around a 54 if you had to put a number to it and you know, you had a 47 to 59. And so I'm like, okay, you know what? I, I wasn't too bad off, out there
Dr. Todd Overton (33:05):
And I, you know, again, I was seeing, you know, I, I would see, I would say in general, 51 to 54 in that, in that, in that post Calvin diet. So again, I, I realize we're, we're in the de we're in the details now relative to, to things, but still, well,
Dr. Marty Faldet (33:20):
Thanks for putting it kind of on a dry matter intake, kind of, you know, all those I think it helps kinda review it and take out the intake part of it. 'cause A lot of us have intakes all over the board and closeups and fresh, I think even across farms. I try to kinda hone in on them, but it's, they're still variable. They just are.
Scott Sorrell (33:40):
Tom, I'm kind of curious how well do we know what the amino acid requirements are of that fresh cow? 'cause I'm, I, I, I'm wondering, you know, how, how well do we really understand the microbial flow? They're, they're eating less, and I'm kind of wondering maybe do they have requirements for other amino acids that we don't normally think about for lactating cows?
Dr. Todd Overton (34:04):
Yeah, I mean, nobody's really done I mean, mostly amino acid work has been methionine lysine and starting before calving and continuing after calving. Right? Nobody's really, to my knowledge, really tried to parse that out between you know, dry period only versus fresh only. You know, you, you think about some of the glucogenic amino acids like Alanine and Glutamine, which, you know, we normally wouldn't balance for, right? Nobody's really done that work, to my knowledge. And so I think there are some, you know, there's probably some other opportunity there to think about other amino acids.
Dr. Marty Faldet (34:38):
Hey, hey Tom, one of the things, you know I had down on my notes from your, you know, your presentation and stuff, you know, that whole fiber thing, like, you know, sometimes I'm trying to understand like what is the, you know, you said what metric, whatever you look at, but if you could talk a little bit about that ketosis challenge you had and then, you know, we all wanna flip back to the close up to rectify stuff. And, you know, don't realize a lot of times it can be just in the fresh pen is the issue. You know, you don't have to even go back and change it if you haven't screwed that up. And it's the same, don't, don't screw it up.
Dr. Todd Overton (35:19):
So a little story on how we got onto this thing in the first place, right? So we were, we were doing that lower high starch fresh cow fresh cow trial. And, you know, we did what we usually do, we formulate our diets and you know, we get forage samples and formulate diets and off we go. We actually had a dry period component in that also. And so, so we started calving cows. And we just had a train wreck. I mean, we had like you know, essentially we, we had like, I don't know, like four DAs out of like seven cows on one treatment, you know?
Dr. Marty Faldet (35:59):
Yeah. Not fun, you're saying not not a fun, we,
Dr. Todd Overton (36:02):
Yeah, I won't mention the grad student's name, although if they listen to this, they'll know exactly who they're, but like, it was one of those deals where it's in strong ketosis starting like three or four days after calving. And before that point I'd be like, okay, three to four days after calving gotta be the, gotta be the closeup diet. Gotta be, gotta be the close. And that was, that was our, our mindset. But, you know, we had luckily we had a lot of data, you know, 'cause you had the daily intakes. We ran a bunch nefa you know, intakes were fine. I mean, intakes were, were just fine. On target. We had some, some diet analysis that tracked out.
Dr. Marty Faldet (36:40):
And you're talking intake and the closeup was
Dr. Todd Overton (36:42):
Fine. Closeup was fine. Yeah. Freshco intake sucked. Right? Right. Okay.
Dr. Marty Faldet (36:46):
I just wanna make sure FreshCo
Dr. Todd Overton (36:48):
Diet FreshCo intakes sucked. And, and so, you know, I was like, you know, if, if if, if it's the dry period, then everything that we think about relative to dry cow feeding has gotta be wrong because everything was like spot on. And so, so then we started looking at the fresh diet, and what it turned out was is that the the, we had BMR corn silage in the diet fresh diet. And then we had we had haage in there as well as the forage base. Didn't have a lot of straw in there. I think we had like, I don't know, half a pound, no more than a pound and Oh wow. And son of a gun, if the, if the fiber digestive, I think we had more starch in the corn silage than what we had analyzed.
Dr. Todd Overton (37:39):
We had much higher fiber digestibility in both diets and both forages. And so we simply were feeding, you know, you know, we were feeding, we were several points lower on NDF than, than what we thought we were. We were higher in starch than what we thought we were. And these cows just, just train wrecked. And it was kind of interesting is that the cows, the cows fed the lower starch diet. So the cows fed the, the high starch diet with lower than intended fiber. They were, they were the ones really having health issues. Wow. The cows fed the lower fi, sorry, the lower starch diet with, with also the lower fiber than intended. They, they still had health issues, but it wasn't as bad. And then and then, so we basically, I mean the, everybody was, I mean, the grads, you know, everybody was screaming, right? The farm wasn't happy because these cow are just a trek. The veterinarian wasn't happy. My grad students was like, oh my God, I'm not gonna get a PhD. Which she did. Okay. But just, you know, everybody was,
Dr. Marty Faldet (38:42):
Jeff and I are going like, yeah, we could have got fired. You know, we would've been,
Dr. Todd Overton (38:46):
Yeah, how do you fire yourself, right, in this case. So, but anyway, so we so what we did is we're like, okay, we just don't know fiber in this diet. And so that's when we just said, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna crank a couple more pounds of straw in here chopped. And, and the, the issues went away immediately. And we had, we didn't have a, we calved, you know, 80 cows more without a da, without a da, and almost no other health issues whatsoever. So that was kind of our kind of aha moment there. And it's, it's interesting when we, when we put it back together, trying to look at before and afters, which is more of a case study than anything else you know, again, those cows fed high starch and, and low fiber were a disaster. The cows fed in terms of intake and, and other parameters were looked at, the cows fed the, the the cows fed the lower starch diet, regardless of fiber were kind of in the middle. But kind of to our surprise, the cows fed the combination of that higher fiber, higher starch, their intakes just took off better than the other than anybody else. And
Dr. Marty Faldet (39:50):
That's what I would agree. That would, that's how I would see that.
Dr. Todd Overton (39:53):
So it, it was kind of, it was, it was, we didn't expect to be there, but that's kind of how we, how we got onto it. Now, we, we've done some subsequent work. We tried to, it's not published yet, or it's published in different places, but we've also learned that can you go too far with, with pushing fiber, the fresh cows? And the answer to that is Absolutely. And you make them keto. So, you know, so, and that was, that was another, that was another mistake. I'm, I'm not too proud to admit, to admit mistakes. We ended up using a Kansas hay in that, nothing against Kansas. But we had a Kansas hay that was like 50% UNDF it was a 39% NDF alfalfa hay with 50% of that NDF being undigested. And so we overshot, we overshot our targets on UNDF in that fresh diet. And so yeah, we made these cows lower intakes, poor energy balance, more ketosis, less milk.
Dr. Marty Faldet (40:46):
Yeah. So when people say, Hey, when you have ke ketosis, what's it from? You're like, well, it could be this, or it could be that
Dr. Todd Overton (40:52):
Saying. But I think in the field, you know, when nutrition, when we started working with nutritionists on some of this, I mean, they, they would end up you know, we would end up, you know, not half a pound to a pound of straw, right? And let's say it's a higher corn silage based diet. We might be, you know, one to two, two to two and a half. But, you know, and let's say it like in a 42 pound dry matter pack, right? For a fresh cow or something like that, you know, so we, we would end up higher than most people would go, but but not where we
Dr. Marty Faldet (41:30):
But yeah, I mean, typically I would say a pound is, is normal. And then, you know, if you got something weird, you're working with, you know, I, I'm not scared to go off to two pounds, but I haven't been much above to, but I could understand you probably could do it, just rearrange other forages and, you know, make it work.
Dr. Todd Overton (41:48):
Yeah. And again, I'm, it's not so much about just amount of straw relative, it's more probably just about, you know, how, how are we complimenting the other forages in the diet, right?
Dr. Marty Faldet (41:56):
Yeah. Fiber dynamics.
Dr. Todd Overton (41:58):
Yeah. And I mean, clearly, you know, you look at some of Michigan State work where they got nice responses to, and I showed this in the webinar. They got nice responses to high moisture corn you know, in, but in conjunction with a higher forage fresh diet, those cows stalled out on intake by 10 to 14 days. And they didn't, their intakes really didn't move again until they got transitioned on to a lower fiber or lower forage fresh diet, or lower forage, I'm sorry, high cow diet, you know, so, so back to your notion where we started, right? With that 10 to 17 day fresh group, you know, 14 day plus or minus, that's probably not a bad place to live, I think on, yeah, if you can,
Dr. Marty Faldet (42:37):
So this might be a little side note, but I still believe that we haven't, I mean, the far dry cow program, you know, I realize managing energy level is the key component to that. And I've lived and died by that, you know from the earlier days, I still believe we are gonna figure out that we're doing stuff not where it needs to be, you know, in terms of maybe the calf or, you know, setting something up a little better more than just you know, maybe it's the quality of forages. I mean, we try to keep forages clean and, you know, no more are we doing any type of crappy forages to the far dry because, you know, they're, we gotta get rid of it type of thing, you know? So we're, we're doing something there and we're trying to clean it up, but I, I bet research wise, there's gonna be more to it, huh?
Dr. Todd Overton (43:29):
Yeah, I, I think so. Right. We tend to, we tend to key in probably a little more on energy in the far off than we do close up, right? Yeah. You know, because I, I also think it's, it's, you know, if you've got a big pile of corn silage, right? It's pretty easy to, pretty tempting to, to just, we're gonna, you know, increase that a little bit far off. And before you know it, our intakes are high, our energy's a little high. And you know, I do think the, the research on keeping energy's down, at least for the cow right, at least makes sense for the cows intake post calving. 'cause That's pretty consistent showing, you know, far off energy levels controlling for getting the cows off to a good intake start. But I agree with you. I mean, the, the calf, you know, you know, are we doing anything, you know, are we doing anything in utero? You know, to to that, to that, you know, calf that's gonna be born. And we don't think we have any evidence of it. Those trials generally don't show any difference in birth weight. That's only one metric. Okay. Right.
Dr. Marty Faldet (44:29):
Yeah. Well, what about the, the high you know, this MP per pound of dry man or research that you just did, what about on the repro side on that front end? You know, if we get the milk, do you think the re
Dr. Todd Overton (44:43):
You know, I, I don't know, right? Come right with it, meaning better or poorer or what, or
Dr. Marty Faldet (44:51):
I, I would assume better, you know, if the animal's just feeling, you know, performing better, I would think she's gonna bring it all the way.
Dr. Todd Overton (45:00):
But yeah, I would, I would think so. But I don't know as we've got the, I don't think Trent's track, I don't know if we've got the numbers in that trial to really look at that, so, but it's a fair, you know, it's a fair comment.
Dr. Jeff Elliot (45:12):
Yeah, Marty, it's basically, we don't know what we don't know, and we probably will. I mean, it makes sense. I think we all consider those far off cows, the least important animal on the thing. So it hasn't been researched done, but then you look at the fresh cows, we're really just now getting the research with them and they're may be the most important. So I find it interesting. But you made a point earlier about the bookends with fiber and starch, et cetera. So to maybe both of you, where does fat we bring that component in with fiber and starch? How does that fit in together?
Dr. Marty Faldet (45:53):
Well, just, you know, I've been down that road with the research coming out to go a little higher, go a little lower, you know, back, you know, in the Wisconsin days early coming out, I mean, you were told to not feed fat. I think it was Barton's data, right? You know, you were pretty much told to leave fat, you know, low and she doesn't need it. And you're probably creating a, a bigger problem if you do. I don't follow that logic anymore. I probably more around that 5% ether extract type fat level. I do feed a couple pounds of cotton and maybe a half a pound of, you know, a, a combo fat type of thing. You know, it's trying to figure out, well, am I a gonna be a palm person or a combination of different fats, you know, how are you gonna do it? And so I've been down that road of all palm, no palm, you know, on this fresh diet. And, and
Dr. Jeff Elliot (46:50):
Marty, you've gotta identify yourself. Yeah, you gotta be a palm or not, you know,
Dr. Marty Faldet (46:54):
Yeah, and I, I would say I'm not a a oh palm right now, but definitely there's, there's, it's interesting, you know, Tom, it, it's I'm trying to hang in there and, and not flip flop so much, if that makes sense.
Dr. Todd Overton (47:10):
Yeah. You know, we really don't feed any added fat pref freshs typically so close up. And I added fat. I'm talking about,
Dr. Marty Faldet (47:18):
Yeah, I don't either. I was mainly saying fresh, yeah,
Dr. Todd Overton (47:23):
Fresh diet. I just look at one of our fresh diets, 4.8% ether extract. You know, we basically have like, you know, six tenths of a pound, of a blend of a couple different commercial fat sources. So we're, you know, half pound, six tenths of a pound. Cotton doesn't come, cotton doesn't come into our diets all that often here anymore. It used to come in more than it does now. I don't see cotton very much on the farm, so if we're feeding fat, we're usually doing it from commercial sources or increasingly seeing some plen some high oleic soy beans out there, or conventional. So but yeah, I, I don't, you know, there's, there are some interesting data I'd like to see a little more on some of the Omega-3 fatty acids in their anti-inflammatory properties, because we know that inflammation is something in the fresh cow. But, so that may, you know, we may, may, we may evolve our perspective over time a bit, but for now, we haven't gone crazy with fat in, in a fresh diet.
Scott Sorrell (48:25):
So, so far we've talked about starch, fiber, protein, fat, anything else, Tom? Do we need to pay any special attention to vitamins, minerals in that fresh cow diet?
Dr. Todd Overton (48:38):
Yeah, you know, we've got a little bit of data. There's not a lot of, you know, we tend to boost, like I might see in a high cow diet and Marty comment here, I mean, calcium's around 0.8 or 0.9%, we tend to feed a little more calcium than that to a fresh, you know, like 1.1 or something like that. I would see herds transitioning from like a higher magnesium presh diet around 0.45, down to like 0.3. That seems like a big, you know, magnesium is important in calcium metabolism, so we tend to boost that a little bit too. You know, maybe to point, maybe to point 0.4, you know, something like that. We played around with some of the commercial sources you know, and, and you know, I don't have kind of more anecdotal than anything else. You know, but yeah, those are big probably be the big things. I mean, you're gonna cover your bases, your vitamin E and things like that as well, and that fresh cow diet as well. But, you know, not nothing, nothing major from my standpoint. Beyond that, I mean, Marty, what your perspective is as somebody who lives this lives and does this every day?
Dr. Marty Faldet (49:43):
Well, I think the protected chos, right? You know, being, you know, reassured being on top of the list for sure, in terms of what you're doing. And, you know, in terms of chromium's kind of finding its way into diets for me with some of the research and what they're doing and the cost coming down. So just feels like you can you know, the return is a little bit better. You know, and yeah, in terms of minerals, I guess I work a little potassium a little higher, probably use potassium carbonate to do it type of concept. You know, a kind of hydrated potassium carbonate, a source more than potassium chloride. So I, I do kind of work that a little bit, but I keep up, I looked at kind of your, your specs and what you did, and I would support a lot of it.
Dr. Todd Overton (50:29):
So yeah. And yeah, I wasn't thinking choline, but yeah, the meta-analysis of choline is, is solid relative to production, production responses and things like that. So it's got a nice body of literature there.
Dr. Jeff Elliot (50:40):
Yeah. So let me, let me ask you on that. I go to a lot of these dairies and they can be large dairies too. And you say, do you have a fresh cow pen? Yes, we have a fresh cow pen. Do you, do you have a separate fresh cow mineral or pre-mix? And most of the time they don't. They're feeding one to all of them. So the, so the, I guess the dilemma is how do we get those extra vitamins and minerals if you wanna feed some choline or something else, how do you get that in there? Have, have you found that to be true Marty, when you're gonna these dairies and well,
Dr. Marty Faldet (51:17):
When you get the micro machines or you get some other fine mixes, you can get it implemented, you know, into a fresh pen. But I, I hear what you're saying. I think that is the dilemma on how you influence that fresh cow diet. You pretty much gotta have some kind of a fresh cow mix, fresh cow, I don't know, people call it a pack or something. I usually have fresh cow mixes that are separate so I can really hone in on the things we talked about today. And so you, you get, yeah, you gotta get
Scott Sorrell (52:07):
Well, I don't know if you guys noticed, but they did flicker the lights. That means it is last call. What I'd like to for each of you guys to do is just kind of give us a couple a couple, three takeaways from today's conversation. You know, whether it's a, for a consulting nutritionist, dairy farmer or, or, or a student out there. So take your pick. Jeff, would you mind if I start with you on that?
Scott Sorrell (52:40):
The economics of feeding reassure precision release choline reassure is fed during the transition period. And because it's fed for such a short period of time, it costs just $15 per cow. And yet the benefits will continue to generate income Throughout the year, cows fed reassure produced five pounds more colostrum, which pays for your reassure investment on the very first day of lactation cows. Fed reassure also produce five pounds more milk per day every day. That means after the first day, every day is payday, invest in reassure during the transition period and recoup your investment on the very first day of lactation after that. You got it. Payday.
Dr. Jeff Elliot (53:30):
Sure. Thanks for having me on. It's great hearing from Marty and Tom. Of course. You know, I think my big takeaway, especially after hearing these guys talk, was historically the research where we've talked about starch by itself or what should the fiber be, or should we feed fat or not feed fat or, and where should the protein be? But a lot of this conversation was we need to be thinking about 'em all together and they influence each other and where do they need to be? To me, that's, that's something we need to think about rather than thinking about 'em as individual components.
Scott Sorrell (54:07):
Yeah. Great comments, Jeff. Marty, you've been a great guest. I really appreciated having you on today. Great questions, great conversation. So, so thank you for that and would love to have you back again sometime if, if you wouldn't mind. Absolutely. But do you have any yeah, do you have any final comments for us?
Dr. Marty Faldet (54:27):
Well, I think it, it stems off of what Jeff just said is kind of know it for me. It's just know what your targets are, like what really works for you, and just hone in on it and know your bookends. You know, that Tom kind of talked about on some of the fibers and starches. I mean, there's ranges you can be in, but know what works and, you know, implement it well.
Scott Sorrell (54:49):
Yeah, excellent advice. Tom. Final words. Yeah,
Dr. Todd Overton (54:52):
I think, again, I think, you know, over time we're gonna be looking really more at this fresh diet is its own thing, right? Rather than, okay, I've got a high cow diet, I've got a protein mix, I'm just gonna tweak a few things and, and call it good. I think it's gonna be its own thing. And, and I think getting our minds around that relative to how we implement that on farms, you know, consistently and well, I think is, is, is gonna be important. So thanks for having me too. It's been fun to, to interact with you guys today.
Scott Sorrell (55:19):
Yep. Yep,
Dr. Jeff Elliot (55:21):
Yep.
Scott Sorrell (55:22):
Yep. Thanks for coming along guys and spending some time with us. It's been a great conversation and I just want to thank you. Also want to thank our loyal audience for coming along with us once again. I hope you learned something, hope you had some fun. I hope to see you next time here at Drill Science Exchange where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (55:41):
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