This Real Science Exchange podcast episode was recorded during a webinar from Balchem’s Real Science Lecture Series. You can find it at balchem.com/realscience.
This Real Science Exchange podcast episode was recorded during a webinar from Balchem’s Real Science Lecture Series. You can find it at balchem.com/realscience.
Feeding behavior of dairy cows is inherently tied to their dry matter intake (DMI) which is tied to milk production. If we want to change a cow’s DMI, it must be mediated by changing her feeding behavior. (00:23)
In a multi-variable analysis, Dr. DeVries found that DMI was most associated with feeding time and meal frequency. It’s important to allow the cow to maximize the amount of time she can spend at the bunk eating, as well as the number of times she can get to the bunk each day. In one study, about 30% of the variability in milk fat content in cows on the same diet was explained by their meal frequency, where cows who had more meals per day had higher milk fat. Dr. DeVries also talks about the impacts of feeding behavior on cow efficiency and rumen dynamics. (2:13)
As soon as a cow sorts the TMR put in front of her, she consumes a diet that’s variable in composition to what we expect. Cows who sorted against long feed particles had lower milk fat and milk protein concentrations. In another study, Dr. DeVries retrospectively analyzed cows with a low vs high risk of ruminal acidosis. Cows in both groups had similar DMI but a tendency for high-risk cows to have lower milk yield and numerically lower milk fat. Combining these resulted in significantly lower fat-corrected milk for the high-risk cows. Given that the diets and DMI were similar, the difference was attributed to sorting, which can have quite negative impacts on individual and herd-level production. (10:00)
Cows spend nearly twice as much time ruminating as they do eating. Rumination reduces feed particle size and increases surface area, leading to increased rates of digestion and feed passage. In a recent study, Dr. DeVries’ group calculated the probability that cows were ruminating while lying down using automated monitoring data from previous experiments. Cows with a higher probability of ruminating while lying down had higher DMI, milk fat, and milk protein than cows who ruminated while standing. This highlights that cows need not only time to ruminate but also space for sufficient rest. (16:44)
Diets and diet composition should be formulated to encourage frequent meals, discourage sorting, and stimulate rumination. Forage management factors including forage quality, forage quantity, forage type (dry vs ensiled), and particle size all play important roles. In a study with fresh cows, Dr. DeVries’ lab fed two different particle sizes of straw: 5-8 cm vs 2-3 cm in length. While DMI was the same over the first 28 days of lactation, cows fed the long straw spent more time with rumen pH below 5.8 because they were sorting against the straw. This also resulted in a yield difference, as the short straw-fed cows produced about 165 pounds more milk over the first 28 days compared to the long straw group. Dr. DeVries also comments on the use of feed additives on rumen stability and feeding behavior (22:54)
More frequent feed delivery should generate more consistent consumption and better feeding behavior, and improve rumen health and milk component concentration. Shifting feed delivery away from return from milking, while still ensuring cows have abundant feed available, results in more consistent eating patterns. Dr. DeVries emphasizes that we push up feed to make sure it’s present at the bunk, not to stimulate cows to eat. We want to make sure that eating behavior is driven by the cow: when she's hungry and goes to the bunk, we need to make sure feed is there. (30:02)
Dr. DeVries indicates we want to minimize the time cows are without feed completely. An empty bunk overnight plus a little overcrowding resulted in negative impacts on rumen health, including more acidosis and reduced fiber digestibility. Increased competition in overcrowding scenarios results in cows having larger meals, eating faster, and likely having a larger negative ruminal impact. In another study, every four inches of increased bunk space was associated with about 0.06% greater milk fat. Herds with high de novo fat synthesis were 10 times more likely to have at least 18 inches of bunk space per cow. (40:04)
In closing, Dr. DeVries’ biggest takeaway is that how cows eat is just as important as the nutritional composition of the feed in ensuring cow health, efficiency, and production. Collectively, with good quality feed and good feeding management, we can gain optimal performance from those diets. Dr. DeVries ends by taking questions from the webinar audience. (43:40)
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Moderator (00:00:00):
The following podcast is taken from a webinar titled, “Understanding Dairy Cow Behavior to Optimize Nutritional Management”, presented by Dr. Trevor DeVries from the University of Guelph. To view the full webinar and access the slides referenced during this podcast, visit balchem.com/realscience and use the search bar to jump to this webinar from May 13th, 2022.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:00:24):
We're gonna talk about understanding dairy cow feeding behavior to optimize nutritional management. And as was introduced, what I'd really like to cover is really a compilation of the data and, and studies that we've conducted over the years related to this topic area. First, introducing why behavior and specifically feeding behavior is important. And then talk a little bit practically about how we apply that knowledge when it comes to diets and, and nutritional management on farm. And so to jump right in to ask the question, why do we care about feeding behavior? The first and, and probably simplest answer that I can give is the fact that feeding behavior of dairy cows is inherently tied to their dry matter intake or their overall intake level. And if we want cows to change their level of dry matter intake, then that must be mediated through some change in the feeding behavior of cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:01:23):
And we know that in the dairy business, the business is to make milk. And one of the limiting factors is the amount of nutrients that cows consume to be able to produce that milk. And while we do look for efficiencies as well still at the end of the day, the total amount of milk that a cow produces is going to be tied to the total amount of feed that that cow can consume and the amount of nutrients that she can convert into milk. And so if we want that cow to alter her intake level or consume more feed, that has to be done through some kind of change in feeding behavior. And that's really because the intake level of the cow is really a mathematical function of her feeding behavior. If we think about how many meals a cow has per day, it's really the number of those meals per day and the size of those meals.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:02:17):
And if you multiply those two things by simple math, you get the dry matter intake level of the cow. Same thing goes with the amount of times cows spend feeding, for example, she spends a certain amount of time at the feed bunk per day. She's going to eat her feed at feed at a certain feeding rate. And if you multiply those two together, you get her dry matter intake. And so for a cow to consume more feed, she either needs to say, spend more time eating, eat fast, or some combination of those two things. And same thing goes with the meal patterns of the cow as well. The question becomes is, well, what is the most important when we think about what are the most important aspects of feeding behavior for that cow? And realistically, all these things that are shown here, meal size, meal frequency, eating time, eating rate, are all contributors to the overall eating behavior and, and entering intake level of those cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:03:11):
Now, we have tried to model this out in the past to look at, okay, which ones might be explaining, say, the most amount of variation in that dry matter intake. And this is data from a study that we conducted a few years back where we took data from previous studies actually, and then ran a multi-variable analysis to look at which variables best predicted dry matter intake and, and other variables that we had in that data set. And what we see in this case here is that dry matter intake was most associated with feeding time and meal frequency. So how much time the cows were spending at the feed bunk per day, as well as how often there are going there for a new meal over the, over and across the day. And in that dataset both the rate of feed consumption as well as the size of meals were also correlated with dry matter intake, but not explaining as much variability. And so what this tells us is it's important to maximize or allow at least that cow to maximize the amount of time that she can spend eating at the bunk, as well as the number of time she, she can get there. And we can think about then what type of dietary factors, as well as management factors might be conducive to that type of behavior. And we can also think of there's certain things that may limit that cow.
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Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:05:26):
So if you think of these cows here that are consuming a lot of feed, if they're not able to spend at least say four or five hours per day at the feed bunk, that might then limit how much feed those cows can actually consume at the end of the day. Now, in addition to how much feed the cow consumes, we also know that the eating behavior patterns of cows can directly relate or or influence how the cow actually digests her feed. And we think about the, the function of the rumen and the health of that rumen. And one of the things that immediately comes to mind is say, cows having very large meals eaten very quickly. And what happens in those cases is that you get a very large or quick accumulation of feed in that rumen that's associated with a very quick digestion, and particularly of, say the most rapidly fermentable carbohydrates a quick pool of of volatile fatty acids gets produced that drops RU in pH and that drop in pH.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:06:32):
And that accumulation of acid may then have influences on RU function, including say decreasing the activity of the fiber digesting bacteria potentially blocking some of the bio hydrogenation that occurs there, which may then trickle down in terms of having effects on things like milk fat production in that cow. And so it shouldn't surprise us then that we see direct links between the eating patterns of cows and some of those productive outcomes like milk components as well as the overall efficiency of digestion in those cows. And this is just an example of that from a study from a number of years ago, just showing an association now and again, not very strong, but it's still there. And, and what we're seeing is about 30% of the variability in this case, in this dataset in milk fat content in, in cows that are all on the same diet, all eating a very similar level of dry matter intake, same diet about 30% of the variability in that being explained by their meal frequency, whereby those cows that are having more meals per day, having greater milk fat.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:07:39):
And we can think about the cause and effect there being, basically the potential for those cows who are eating more often, having a more steady flow of nutrient nutrients into the rumen, avoiding those large within day depressions in rumen pH stabilizing that rumen, and potentially minimizing the risk of things like milk fat depression, optimizing bio hydrogenation and fiber digestion in that rumen. All things which may at the end of the day contribute to say better milk fat in those cows. In addition to that, we know also, as I mentioned before, things like efficiency of production can be influenced there as well. And this is some data that comes from an Israeli group from a few years back whereby they took cows and classified them based on their efficiency. And in this case, they were looking at their residual feed intake and classified cows as being either of low, medium or high efficiency.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:08:35):
And what they observed when they looked at the temporal eating patterns of those cows is that they saw a difference in those eating patterns whereby those cows that were highly efficient. So in the, in the darkest line here, the solid black line here, those cows not only consume a slightly less amount of, of dry matter intake, which we typically see with more efficient animals, but they're having lesser kind of peaks in their dry matter intake at these times of the day when we see the cows eating after milking and feed delivery and during those time periods actually having a slower rate of consumption as well. So things that I described before were not only positive from an intake perspective, but also could have a positive impact on just the dynamics of the RUS in those cows as opposed to those cows that were less efficient, not only having bigger meals during those times, but also eating faster during those time periods.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:09:28):
And it's very encouraging 'cause there's I believe some newer data coming out to that verifies this work suggesting that yeah, cows that are more efficient have what I would describe as these kind of better eating patterns. They tend to have more meals, they tend to eat slower across the day in addition to the time course of eating. One of the other aspects of eating behavior that I find fascinating but also and probably equally as important is what the cow actually consumes. And what I mean by that is does that cow actually put the eat the feed as it's put in front of her? And, and, and we often look at cows eat and, and we watch them sort feed and we, we kind of shrug it off or, or we may do that, but we realize that the minute the cow starts sorting that feed, even though we provide her a TMR that's designed to be homogenous and and prevent that kind of behavior from occurring, the minute the cow starts doing that, she ends up consuming a diet that's variable in composition relative to what we expect.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:10:34):
And when we put all kinds of time and effort into putting good diets together, we expect those diets to be consumed as they are formulated and put in front of those cows. And the minute they're not then we start to see variable production outcomes relative to what we expect. And, and we have some good data to, to really show that. And I like going back to this data that we published about five years ago from another study whereby we are looking at the sorting behavior of individual cows that were all, again, a similar stage of lactation, fed a similar diet in producing a similar amount of milk. And what we observed in this study is that the amount of sorting that those cows were doing on those diets correlated very well with their milk component production.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:11:28):
And if you look here on the top left of the screen, this is an association between milk fat and sorting of long particles. And what I mean by long particles are basically these particles that sit on top of the Penn State Shaker box, where a hundred percent would mean that those cows are eating exactly what's put in front of them, and less than a hundred would be sorting against those long particles. And so if we look really from right to left what you see is that those cows that sort more against those long particles, so are selecting against fiber and long forage particles, we see those cows having lesser milk fat percentage. And again, not a perfect relationship. We know there's a lot of things that can influence milk fat percentage, but you see here, in this case, over a one full percentage point spread in milk fat production across cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:12:20):
Each of these each of these data points represents one cow week worth of data. So average data for one cow over one week. And what you see is that there's a one point or percentage point spread in milk fat that we can explain by variability in sorting behavior of those cows. And that's very significant. And we see a very similar on the bottom left right here similar relationship with milk protein as well. And again, when we think about sorting, we often think about fiber in the influence on the rumen dynamics in terms of acid production. We think about buffering, et cetera. And if cows aren't consuming enough long fiber, then, then those things that we talked about earlier get thrown off when we increase risk of milk, fat depression, et cetera. But we also know that the minute the cows sort, the balance of nutrients that they're consuming gets thrown off.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:13:12):
And that's why we also likely see this association with milk protein, which we know milk protein percentages is inherently more difficult to change. And it's gonna be highly related to the, not only the total volume say of microbial protein that's production, but also the balance of amino acids that those cows are actually consuming and absorbing. And again, if cows are sorting their diet, they're not going to have that balance, and we're gonna see these variable results between cows and even within cows and in some situations. Another kind of neat example of how that sorting behavior can have very significant effects on, on production is from a study that we conducted a few years back, which I'll refer to in a few moments here as well, whereby we're looking at the feed sorting of early lactation cows fed diets that varied in, in particle size.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:14:04):
And one of the things that we did after the study was actually look at those cows that were, say, more prone to ruminal acidosis in those first four weeks of lactation, which is kind of the time period when we expect to see some of the most occurrence of ruminal acidosis since we classify cows as either high risk or low risk of ruminal acidosis based on the amount of time and area that they, they were spending with depressed rumen pH and then compared some of their production production characteristics. And so in the case of the study, this is over the first four weeks of their lactation, those cows that were low risk and high risk actually consumed a very similar dry matter intake level. And so no difference statistically in terms of their dry matter intake. What we did observe was that there was a tendency for those cows that were high risk for acidosis during that time period to have lesser milk yield.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:15:00):
And so they produced a few kilos less milk per day as compared to the low risk cows. When we looked at their milk components and specifically fat, we saw no statistical difference. However as we know, milk fat is very variable, particularly in early lactation with cows mobilizing fat as well at that time period. And what we observed in that case was that those high risk cows numerically had a little bit lesser milk fat than the low risk cows. And putting those two things together, the actual milk yield and milk fat. And when we corrected that milk then for fat content, when we looked at the fat corrected milk, we saw a significant difference in production between those two groups of cows. I'm showing you all this and, and, and going on this or, or walking you through this all to, to really drive home the point at the end of the day that there was really nothing difference between these groups.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:15:57):
Given that they were all fed similar diets, they're eating the same amount. The only thing that we could really explain as different between these two groups of cows was the level of sorting that those cows were doing of their diets and early lactation. And if you're interested in digging down into that data, it urge you to take a look at the paper that's cited there on this page. And, and what it, what it drives home is the idea that that sorting can have very significant negative effects in terms of individual and even herd level production, as we've shown in other studies.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:16:31):
Now, what I've talked to you most about so far is kind of the ingestive behavior of those cows at the feed bunk. The other part of feeding behavior that we need to think about and consider is that post ingestive feeding behavior, and that's the rumination behavior of the cow. And rumination, as we know with ruminant is, is hugely important. Cows spend nearly twice the amount of time they spend ruminating as they do actually eating feed. And that rumination is inherently important for keeping that rum working and healthy. And first and foremost, cows are spending significant amount of time chewing their feed to reduce the size of feed particles, increase surface area, which is then going to increase the rate of digestion, which is gonna increase the rate by which that feed will eventually pass from the rumen, and also then translate into a quicker return to eating at, at the end of the day.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:17:25):
And so the post ingested behavior is really linked to that ingestive behavior of those cows in that the quicker cows can basically process the feed that they have consumed that's going to then translate into a quicker return to eating and, and is potentially going to be then linked to their overall dry matter intake level. And I'll show you an example of that in here in a minute. And then at the same time, we also know that that chewing behavior at that time also plays an important role from saliva production of buffering capacity of the rumen as well. And so it helps keep that rumen stable that way also. And so, as I was just mentioning it doesn't then necessarily surprise us that that post ingestive behavior of rumination is then also associated with dry matter intake level in cows. And again, this comes from that same study that I described to you earlier whereby we associated various behaviors with say dry matter intake as an outcome.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:18:25):
And what you see here, again, is a correlation between rumination time and dry matter intake where each of these dots or points on this graph represent one cow week worth of data. And again, lots of variation there. Some cows ruminating very little some cows spending a lot of time ruminating over 10 hours per day. But if we key in on kind of our high intake, high production cows, what we see is that those cows that are consuming a lot of feed are also needing to spend a significant period of their day ruminating. And so if anything limits that rumination time, that could potentially have a negative trickle down effect in terms of how much those cows are then able to consume and may negatively affect the feeding behavior of those cows as well.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:19:13):
Related to that it's, it's good for us to also consider when cows ruminate. And so thinking of this practically, we, we know that obviously cows ruminate when they're not eating. And so when cows are eating, they're not ruminating. And we typically expect cows to be ruminating during those periods of the day when cows are not at the feed bunk. And generally that would be kind of the rest periods of the day, and we typically would associate rumination with the resting behavior of dairy cows. And, and there's been some speculation over the years whether or not that rumination that occurs during that time may be more important than we. We do also see cows ruminating while they're standing up. But the bulk majority of that happens when they're resting. And some of us have questioned over the years whether or not that's important for that cow or not.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:20:01):
And we started to dig in this a couple years ago with a little study that we did to look at where cows ruminate and, and specifically if they do that ruminating while they're lying down or standing up, whether or not that also correlates to some of their some of their intake and, and production indices. And so this is some data that comes out of a, a study that we published earlier this year in JDS communications whereby we took data again from previous studies and calculated a probability that cows were ruminating at the same time that they were lying down given automated monitoring that we had of, of, of those different behaviors. And what we were able to demonstrate is a positive correlation between that. So those cows that had a higher probability of spending more of their rumination time while lying down versus doing that ruminating while standing those were our higher feed intake cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:21:05):
And, and again, this, what this highlights is that cows need the time, as I mentioned before, but also the space to ruminate in terms of making sure that those cows have sufficient rest time so that those cows can ruminate efficiently and then also then eat efficiently at the same time as well. And, and I think that really kind of ties together some of the concepts we've had over the years related to cow comfort and why rest time is so important for cows. It's not only important for getting those cows off their feet, but it's particularly important for giving that cow that adequate time for her to rest but also ruminate during that time period, which is going to then have a positive impact on digestion and then even influence then the eating behavior of those cows. Following that.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:21:53):
And interesting the study, not only did we associate that ruminating while lying probability with intake level, but also with milk components in those cows as well. And so not only did those cows who had a higher propensity to ruminate while lying down versus standing up have higher intake, but also had higher milk fat and milk protein as we see both a positive association with, with both of those milk components here. And so potentially also a benefit just from an overall room and function there as well in terms of that position while ruminating. So that kind of covers the theoretical part of my presentation in terms of why feeding behavior is important. I wanna switch gears now and talk a little bit more practically in terms of what this means from a nutritional management standpoint and how we really use this knowledge when it comes to diets and dietary management.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:22:54):
And my first take home on this is that diets and, and diet composition should really be formulated to encourage consumption of basically a diet that has that good eating behavior. So small frequent meals, hard to sort stimulate rumination. And, and that's easy for me to say. We could spend an hour talking about all the different dietary factors that might be related to that. I'm gonna summarize this very quickly here today and say that first and foremost, it comes back to proper forage management. And various aspects of forage management are key in terms of encouraging that good eating behavior. And so things like the quality of forage more digestible forage is going to, as I mentioned before, and I'll come back to in a few moments, is gonna lead to better eating behavior. It's gonna not only be digested quicker, but then result in potentially a quicker return to eating more meals per day.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:23:52):
More dry matter intake. The quantity of forage is gonna dictate that eating behavior. And so if you've got a higher forage diet, it's gonna take longer to eat versus a say a lower forage diet. And in some cases, if we're in areas where we don't have high levels of forage and we have very low forage diets, that poses increasing challenges on the eating behavior of those cows because those cows can eat those diets much quicker. And so then we need to think about what other management type things may influence that eating behavior as well. Forage type plays a big role there, dry forage versus inside forage. And then one of the biggest ones is the particle size of the forage. And one of the things that we've learned over the years is and, and we've had a lot of discussion on is, is the fact that yes, while cows need effective particle size to stimulate rumination and keep that rumen happy, at the same time, we don't need excessively long particles.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:24:52):
Because what happens in that case is that those long particles not only don't get consumed because they're often just sorted away, but also take longer to digest resulting in longer eating times, longer chewing times as well. And I like to show one example from a study that we conducted a few years ago just to highlight how small differences can have a pretty big impact on, on the eating behavior and, and production outcomes that we see in our cows. And this is a study that we did about five years ago looking at the diets of fresh cows whereby we tested the straw particle size in those diets. And so those, this was a fresh cow diet that we fed for the first 28 days in milk. And we varied the particle size of straw that was included in a small amount in that diet and either cut that straw at five to eight centimeters, so about two to three inches in length, or about two to three centimeters, so about one inch in length, and fed that over that time period.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:25:54):
And what you see here is the dry matter intake level of these cows. And based on this graph, it's pretty obvious that their overall feed intake level of those cows over those first 28 years of milk was exactly the same. And so no difference observed there. Where this data got interesting is when we looked at the rumen pH profile of these cows, we started to see differences. And in this case here, we see that those cows that were fed the long straw diet had much more time spent below a rumen pH of 5.8. And so, which would be typically a cutoff of subacute room acidosis during that time period, as opposed to those cows fed the shorter straw diet where they had more consistently lesser time with depressed room and pH. And given the fact that they were eating basically the same amount of diet we had to start thinking, well, okay, what else might be different between these groups of cows?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:26:50):
And really, again, similar to the data I showed you early, the only real difference between these two groups of cows was the fact that those cows fed the longer straw diet were sorting that diet significantly more than those fed the shorter chopped diet. And as a result of that consuming on paper the same amount of dry matter, but the composition of that dry matter being very different, and in this case, resulting in a very different room in pH profile over those first 28 days in milk, and then resulting in some production differences in those cows as well. And milk production is highly variable in the first month of lactation. We know that. But in this case here, what we observed was in terms of cumulative milk production, we saw that those cows on the short treatment tended to produce about 75 kilos or about 165 pounds more milk over the first 28 days in milk. And so biologically, that's a very significant kind of difference in milk production, again, based on a very small difference just in terms of dietary particle size, influencing the behavior of those cows, influencing the physiology and then production of those cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:28:04):
Other things that we can do beyond kind of macro dietary things, we can think of micro, kind of dietary factors, which also may influence the feeding behavior of cows. And I I threw up on the screen here, example of say, feed additives, which we know stabilize rumen conditions. And again, there's, there's more things here, but things like meninsin bicarb b supplements, all known and, and shown in various work to have an influence on rumen conditions at the same time. And specific to the studies that have cited herein what we observe in a lot of these cases is that not only is an effect on the rumen environment influence, but then also the feeding behavior of those cows. And, and again, it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, we don't know. It's likely the fact that the rumen gets stabilized that has a positive impact on the feeding behavior, which then kind of further improves the rumen conditions of those cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:28:58):
And, and those two things feed into each other. At the end of the day though, it's, it's interesting to see that because it shows, or it really highlights that link between kind of the stability of the rumen as well as the eating patterns of those cows. And just an example of that, again, to, to highlight, this is one of those studies that I just cited on the last slide. This was a study whereby we were feeding high production cows a yeast product, and observed changes in the eating behavior of those cows with the supplementation of that yeast product whereby we saw those cows consuming not only more meals per day at a smaller size. So things, again, that would be conducive to a more stable rumen environment that translated in terms of these cows into greater rumination time, as well as greater milk fat content.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:29:49):
And so, again, that potential there to modify even the rumen environment and this having an impact on the eating behavior of those cows beyond the diet. The other thing that we can consider is how we actually manage dairy cows at the feed bunk to influence their eating behavior. And one of the things that we need to consider in that realm is when a cow actually does go eat at the feed bunk and, and what are kind of the motivating factors for that? And the first and most simplest answer to that question is, well, she's going to do that when she's hungry. Well, that begs another question, and that's when is a cow hungry? And really and, and probably most simply a cow is gonna be hungry when she basically digests the feed that she's consumed, she's absorbed the metabolites from that, and she's also internally processed those metabolites, absorb those modified those and, and and use those within her system.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:30:56):
And there's a kind of a complex set of feedbacks which are going to then influence her desire to, to then go kind of refuel herself. And so probably the most simple way of thinking about this, and I I like to use this visual in my presentations is the quicker that that cow can really digest her feed and pass that feed from the rumen, the quicker she can refill it. And, and that's what we see from a feeding behavior standpoint in that when cows do a good job in terms of digesting their feed and, and then also absorbing those end products of digestion and and, and utilizing those within the body, we see a quicker return to eating and, and we see higher dry matter intake levels in those cows. Now, probably the single biggest limiting factor to that, as I described before, is something like forage quality.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:31:54):
We know forage quality is king not only to get the most amount of nutrients from that feed, but at the same time the quickest digestion rate of that feed so that that cow can return to eating much more soon. And so, first and foremost, eating behavior and dairy cows should be driven internally. It should be driven by the hunger of the cow, which should be primarily in, in influenced by the quality of the feed that that cow consumes. Now we also know that cows will eat at certain times of the day. Typically when we look at say, dry manner intake over a 24 hour period, we'll see that she has peaks in, in feeding activity often in the morning and afternoon. Some people have described these as, as diurnal patterns or corpuscular patterns whereby cows follow a certain time of day.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:32:43):
Now they, they may do that to some degree, but we know that even more influence on those eating patterns is things like management events. So cows will have their largest meals after feed delivery milking and even, and sometimes after feed pushup. Now, of those things, what our research has shown collectively over the years across a variety of studies is that the primary driving factor for a dairy cow fed A TMR is going to be the timing and frequency by which that feed is delivered to them. And, and specifically fresh feed across the day. And, and we've seen that a number of times in, in various studies whereby feed delivery is that primary factor that drives those cows to the feed bunk. And as a result of that, when we vary the frequency of that, we see a stark change in the feeding behavior patterns of those cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:33:34):
And this is one example of that where we fed cows more often, we went from once to twice to even four times a day, and we see cows spending more time at the bunk having more meals per day, slowing down their rate of intake, and at the same time also actually exhibiting less feeds, sorting behavior whereby those cows actually consume a more consistent diet in that case as well. Now, I'm going through this pretty quickly, but what I wanted to get to is the fact that these things then have an influence on, again, these changes in feeding management influence, the feeding behavior these cows, and then have a potential impact on the production of these cows. And this is some interesting data that comes from the northeast US from a few years ago whereby they were looking at herds that were classified as having high de novo fatty acid content versus say, low de novo herds.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:34:26):
And what they observed in that case is that those herds that were classified as high de novo fatty acid content in the milk tended to be five times more likely to feed at least twice versus once per day. And we know de novo is also, as you see here on the screen from that work, highly correlated with milk fat content. And, and so again more frequent feed delivery should generate more consistent consumption, better feeding behavior, not only in time, but also in composition, improve room and health and improve milk components. And that's something that we see consistently over and over again. This was verified or I guess corroborated by a study that we published just earlier this year in the Journal of Dairy Science, in this case with robot milking herds that were feeding PMRs at the feed bunk. And again, in this case comparing PMR delivery frequency of once, twice and three plus times a day. And, and I say three plus because most of those herds were actually using automated systems feeding anywhere from five to eight times per day. And what we observed similar to that previous study, was an improvement or a higher proportion of de novo fatty acid in the milk of those herds that we're feeding multiple times per day, again indicative of say, improved rumen environments in those cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:35:48):
Now, one point I wanna make is that delivering feed multiple times per day might not always be practical. And, and again even going from once to twice a day can be difficult in some scenarios. One of the things that we need to think about is the fact that, as I mentioned before, cows will eat at different times of the day and will eat on other cues as well, including return from milking. And so we don't necessarily need to say time our feed deliveries to match up perfectly with say, the return from the milking parlor. And in fact, if we stagger those things and still ensuring that say cows have an abundance of feed available to them when they return from milking, what we see is we see more consistent eating patterns. And this was a study we did a few years back whereby we shifted feed delivery, which was being done twice a day from milking, which was three times per day in this case of the study.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:36:44):
And by shifting that feed delivery away from milking, what we did was we created basically more stimulatory points across the day whereby cows had more meals, they slowed down their rate of intake, and at the end of the day, what we observed was an improvement in feed efficiency in those cows whereby we saw the, the rumen of those cows working a lot more efficiently. And so just an example of how we can take advantage of that knowledge too, of the eating behavior of cows and modify our feeding management practices to take advantage of that. Now, I'd be amiss in this presentation not to also talk a little bit about pushing up feed and making sure that feeds present at feed bunk when cows go there. And again, we spend a lot of time looking at this. We, we, we push up feed to make sure it's present at the bunk.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:37:34):
I make that point all the time. We don't push up feed to stimulate cows to eat. And and I think that's still a bit of a misconception in the industry. There are some people that still kind of promote that idea. The, the idea that cows are stimulated to eat by making sure that feed gets pushed up is, is, is kind of a dangerous one. We want to make sure that that eating behavior, as I mentioned before, is stimulated internally. It's driven by the cow. When the cow goes to the bunk because she's hungry and she wants to refuel, we wanna make sure that that feed is present and available for her. And if it is, then she's going to have that good eating behavior pattern that we observe. If that feed is not there, then that then has a negative influence on the behavior patterns of those cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:38:21):
Those cows may choose to wait, stand, stand more, lie down, less, they may choose to go lie down and, and forego an eating opportunity. And so those things can be detrimental to those cows. And so we see some of those feeding behavior effects. And this is just one example of that from a, a survey study we did a number of years ago we're correlating lying duration and feeding management on, on farms in Canada. And what we observed was that there was a positive relationship between the lying duration of cows, so how much time cows are spending lying down, and how many feet pushups those cows have per day. And what we observed is 0.1 hours for every two feet. Pushups doesn't sound like a lot, but between the herds that we were observing, that was about an hour difference in lying duration. And so that's a huge amount of time that we can keep cows off their feet and lying down simply by making sure that they have feed available to them.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:39:14):
And then that pays dividends in terms of potential production. And we've seen that again consistently in in many on-farm studies. This is our, probably our most recent data. This is from 200 farms. Again, these are robot farms in Canada whereby most of these farms are using automated feed pushup means. But what we observed even across that is that for every five extra feed pushes per day, we saw extra milk yield on those farms. And so again, just making sure that that feed is there when those cows want to be eating is going to make sure that those cows are not limited in their feed consumption.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:39:52):
Okay, two other things really quickly here as we wrap up today's webinar we do wanna minimize time that cows are without feed as well completely as we think about kind of end of day and feeding levels of cows. And, and the reason for that is the minute we have those cows with an empty bunk, it's going to change their eating behavior, not only potentially reducing the total amount of feed that those cows consume, but it also means that the next time those cows actually do get feed delivered to them, they're going to have a larger meal that's going to be probably eaten too quickly and have a negative impact on their rumen environment. And this is some neat data that I like to go back to, comes from Dr. Rick Grant's lab at the minor institute, whereby they simulated a kind of empty bunk scenario by restricting feed from 1:00 AM to 6:00 AM and then also overcrowding the bunk a little bit as well, and looking at the impact that that had on those cows. And what they observed in that situation is that with an empty bunk overnight, which we'd see in, in many cases, a on small and large farms alike in addition to some overcrowding, what they observed was then that translated into negative effects in terms of the ru health of those cows, more ruminal acidosis, as well as reduced fiber digestibility in those cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:41:14):
And then related to that, and, and one of the reasons for that, again, is that not only does that limited feed availability, maybe influence the eating patterns of those cows, but also the competition that those cows incur when they are overcrowded. And what we know is that when cows are faced with overcrowding or, or high stocking densities, which is quite the norm within the industry, we see stocking densities often on farms of 2030, even 40 or more percent or of overcrowding on our free stalls and, and especially on our feed bunks and in three and six row barns. That does then change the eating behavior of those cows whereby those cows have larger meals, they eat quicker, having a negative impact potentially on the rumen environments of those cows. And so it shouldn't surprise us then that we see associations between things like bunk space and the milk component production of cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:42:09):
And this is again, a, an older study from my group of a cohort of Canadian herds whereby we observed that across a cohort of farms whereby their bunk space availability per cow range from 14 to 39 inches, every four inch increase across that range was associated with about 0.06 percentage points, greater milk fat. And similar to that, and, and from the same study I described to you before this study from the northeast US looking at herds with high de novo fatty acid content in their bulk tank milk, what they observed in that case of that study was that those herds with high de novo tend to be 10 times more likely to have at least 18 inches of bunk space per cow. And that 18 inches is kind of a magical number so to speak, because that's really the cutoff by which we see a six row barn or three row barn having around 18 inches of bunk space.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:43:07):
So anytime that we've overcrowded that scenario, we're gonna see less than that amount of space per cow. And so in those cases where those cows don't have sufficient space, they're going to change their eating behavior, and that's gonna come at the detriment of the room and health of those cows and the milk component production of those cows on those herds. So that gets me to the end of my webinar here today, and I thank you for your attention. Just want to quickly reiterate probably the biggest take home here, and that's really how cows eat is just as important as ensuring as a nutritional composition of the feed and ensuring cow health efficiency and productivity. And so it's really not only what cows eat, but it's also how they eat. And, and so to modify that though, we do need to think about, yeah, what, what feeds we do provide, how we manage that feed, and then how that feed is managed at the bunk and the environment of the cow. And, and collectively with good quality feed as well as good management of that feed, we can really gain optimal health and, and efficiency and productivity from those diets. And so with that, I would like to thank you for your attention here today. I'd like to thank the various funders that make a lot of the work that I've described in this presentation here today possible. And hope that we can answer a few questions for you yet here today. So thank you very much.
Scott Sorrell (00:44:31):
Well, thank you Dr. Dre. Before we get started answering questions, we'd like to share a brief video and then we'll be right back to answer the questions submitted during today's presentation.
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Scott Sorrell (00:45:51):
We've got one from Muhamud. Does shifting feeding night feeding in summer affect eating behavior?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:46:00):
Yeah, no, very good question. There, there are some studies that have been done to look at that and I know practically some people have looked at that. One of the challenges that has been observed in the studies that have been done with with that scenario is it does shift the eating behavior of the cows. And so if we feed them, say in the summertime at night, we will see that those cows will shift their eating behavior. They'll have their largest, longest meal at that time period, which doesn't necessarily have to be a negative thing, but what we do end up seeing then is that they, they almost have two large of a meal. And so that by the time those cows get back to the next afternoon in the, say the four to six hours leading up to the next feed delivery, their feed consumption is very low because that's the hottest time of the day.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:46:55):
There's the feed that's sitting in front of them is already 18 to 20 hours old, and those cows do not have a strong desire to be eating at that time period. And so what we end up was with almost more of a slug feeding type scenario whereby those cows are probably eating too much, they can eat up to 40, 60% of their dry matter in those overnight periods and then have very little intake during the day. And my preference would be to see that intake spread out as much as possible through the day. So if we are going to be doing that, that I would still like to see feed delivery occurring during the daytime as well, at least fresh feed delivered to keep that feed quality fresh and then also keep those cows motivated to go into the feed bunk during the day as well.
Scott Sorrell (00:47:45):
Alright, very well. Next question comes in from Daniel. Could you please comment about interpreting data on sorting behavior at the group level? Does it reflect sorting at the cal level?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:47:56):
Yeah, good question. And I could have showed if I had lots of time today, we could have showed you more studies where we've looked at that at a group level as well. The answer is yes and no. We have looked at sorting at a group level again, that's gonna be influenced by the feeding level of the cows. So again, if, if you're feeding cows to very low refusals, it can be very difficult to interpret that, right? Because we don't know, right? If you just see a few corn scraps left kind of on, on, on in the feed bunk, it doesn't necessarily mean you saw a ton of kind of within day sorting within that group. If you're feeding for a fairly significant amount of feed refusals, let's say like at least three to 5%, and you see a very drastic difference between the refusals and what was delivered to those cows, then that probably indicates that there was significant sorting going on.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:48:50):
And what our research has shown is that when we do see that, that is reflective of the group itself and we've correlated that to reduced production and even efficiency of production at a group level, that still doesn't necessarily mean that you don't aren't seeing variability within cows in terms of that sorting behavior. So even if you don't see kind of changes between cows or, or sorry, at a group level, it could mean that you have different cows sorting that diet based on the time of day they're getting to the bunk that can be influenced by, say, crowding conditions. So if you've got an overcrowded bunk, you've got certain cows getting there early sorting that feed other cows coming to that bunk before the feed gets pushed up again. So other kind of interactions with feeding management there as well that can then influence what those cows consume. And, and I think that's why in a lot of those cases, when we start to see overcrowding, we see poor feeding management feed availability, we start to see if you start looking at the data at a group level, you see more variable production. And that's because of that variable eating behavior of those cows.
Scott Sorrell (00:50:01):
Alright, next question comes from Lauren Engle King from the University of Alberta. Can you comment a bit on what influences cows to increase their selection of long forage particles? Is it primarily when cows are acidotic or experiencing other metabolic disorders?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:50:17):
Yeah, that's, that's a good question and that's something that we have observed both experimentally kind of from an induction standpoint as well as observationally where particularly cows that are experiencing ruminal acidosis and early lactation as well as at other pine points, we do in some situations see a shift in the eating behavior of those cows and go back to an older study that we did as part of my postdoctoral research years ago with Dr. Karen Boman in Canada, we induced ruminal acidosis in cows. And what we saw was that the, the day that we induced acidosis, they completely changed their sorting behavior. They went from sorting against fiber for sorting for those long forage particles. And following that, we've observed that in a, a couple other studies in, in early lactation. Then there's been other groups that have shown similar type responses where those cows who are experiencing low room pH will in fact change their sorting behavior to select for long fiber.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:51:27):
Now what's unknown is, is how much cows need of previous experience to really make that kind of decision to change their eating behavior. We know that previous experience and, and specifically post ingestive feedback will strengthen those kind of responses. And so classical work looking at cows eating, say anti nutritional factors, they, the minute they do that, then the next time they're exposed to say, a plant that has that anti nutritional factor, they may decrease their consumption or not consume that. And the more often that happens, you see that stronger response. We saw that in our acidosis induction trials whereby we actually repeated acidosis on cows three times, and by the third time, the cows were starting to even refuse to eat the grain that was put in front of 'em because they knew that that potentially was gonna make them feel or throw their rumen off. And, and, and what I would assume make the, make them feel kind of crappy as a result of that. So so there, there is likely some learning that a companies that how much innate kind of response there is in cows, I don't think we we know at this point.
Scott Sorrell (00:52:43):
All right. Very well. Next question comes from Dr. Jim Aldrich. Have you looked at differences in feeding behavior between the two styles of a MS force flow versus free flow?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:52:54):
Yeah, that's a, that's a good question. Not directly in terms of comparing feed bunk visits. Again we don't have kind of research capability to, to be able to do that and quantify that really well. Observationally though. And, and basically I think my best kind of guess on that is simply to look at how often cows in forest or or or guided flow type systems, robot systems are accessing the selection gate, which is gonna tell you not only how many times they're going to the robot, but potentially how many times those cows are getting to the feed bunk. And one of the things that we do observe in some of those guided flow systems is cows not getting to the feed bunk as often per day as we would like. And so we would typically describe for A TMR and even a PMR, we'd like to see cows have at least say eight to 10 meals per day or more.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:53:58):
And what I've observed in some of those guided systems is cows say only having four to six gait passes per day, which would mean that they're not having any more than say, four to 6:00 PM MR meals per day. And so in those cases, that could have a negative impact on on, or that could be an a negative kind of eating behavior pattern and, and have a negative impact on the digestion and digestion efficiency of those cows. We do see in those cases we see a lot more gate passes and, and sometimes people interpret that as those cows having more meals, but that not may always be the case either because in some of those cases those cows are actually having the same meal but they're chasing say, water that might be in a different location in the pen. And so they're having to go through their gate, have a meal, and then go find water and then come back to the feed bunk and still kind of continue on the same meal.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:54:51):
And so I think that's an area that that really still needs a little bit more work and, and redefining. What we do know, and, and I didn't talk today, but the, the idea of, of multiple meals per day not only from a room health standpoint is hugely important across all systems, but in a robot system, it actually is hugely important just from a milking frequency and a milking interval standpoint because both in a free and guided system, we see a direct kind of relationship between when those cows go to the feed bunk as well as their milking frequency. The idea behind a box robot type system is to try to promote as much consistency and milking behavior and spread that out as much as possible across the day so that we're maximizing the efficiency or, or the time use of that robot throughout a 24 hour period. And to do that, we need cows eating across a 24 hour period and not all necessarily eating at the same time. And, and so then feeding management feed quality becomes even more important under those circumstances.
Scott Sorrell (00:56:01):
Very well. Next question comes from Chen Guild. Chen would like to know how do cows bunching impact feeding behavior and rumen health?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:56:12):
So the question is how cow bunching behavior influences? Yeah, yeah, good question. And, and I can honestly say I don't have any kind of empirical data to to give you kind of my, my or to give you a, an answer on that from experience of being in particularly hot climates where we see more cow bunching behavior. And, and what my, my gut feeling is in, in those situations is that again, that what you're observing in those cases is cows end up spending more time standing and actively and not kind of engaged in the behaviors that we want them to be engaged in. And so that inactive standing is gonna be taking out of their time either at the feed bunk or in their resting time and potentially, as I talked about today potentially have a negative impact on their, their kind of efficiency of rumination there as well.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:57:18):
You, you will observe, again, if you watch cows that are standing and, and holding pens, and sometimes we say, okay, the cows are ruminating, they look calm, okay, that's fine, but we don't want them spending too much time doing that. And same thing goes with cows bunching in a barn. Even if they're ruminating, it might not, that might not be the most effective or efficient rumination for those cows. We'd rather those cows were comfortable in lying down somewhere. And so anything that we can do to minimize that type of behavior often related to barn design, airflow and, and cooling is, is gonna have a, a big impact on kind of the overall time budget of those cows.
Scott Sorrell (00:57:57):
Alright. Nice answer. I got a couple questions coming in from Kenneth. Do you have any data on the usage of large portions of silage in the diet? Does acid load for silages affect the behavior of cows? My experiences as a nutritionist at many with many high producing herds is that wet diets defined as 42 to 46% dry matter does not always decrease dry matter intake if the moisture comes from the inherent moisture of the silages and or brewers. But if we add water to the same dry matter content, then we see drops in dry matter intake when we go over 52% moisture. Is this just a, a coincidence or not?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (00:58:41):
No, that's, that's, that's a really good question. And it goes back to some older data that we published again about 10 years ago looking at moisture content of diets and the influence it had on feeding behavior and feed sorting behavior. And, and we saw similar whereby when we actually on high well they weren't even necessarily high forage diets, but kind of moderate forage diets whereby we added water and brought the moisture content or the dry matter content down less than 50%. We, in some cases observed increase in sorting and actually lesser dry matter intake. And whereas in other cases you don't see that. And, and, and so I, I still encourage people to to try get diets that are difficult to sort as high moisture content as possible, whereby we're still maximizing dry matter intake. Some of the difference there. And I think what, what that person might be getting at with the question is the fact that if silages themselves are not that stable, I would say as a channel of a general term, if they're not as good quality as we'd like aerobically stable then what we're gonna see is when we do add water to those we increase the risk of kind of secondary fermentation, particularly in warmer weather.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (01:00:02):
We'll see that increased risk of secondary fermentation yeast and molds waking up and, and that feed going off much quicker and the cows pick up on that from an eating behavior standpoint, and we see more sorting of those diets and we see lesser dry matter intake. Whereas if those silages are wet to start with but have good fermentation and have been preserved well, they've been packed well, they've been preserved well in the bunk, then it doesn't necessarily have a negative impact even if we add a little bit more moisture. But it probably comes back to the overall quality of those silages to start with that's gonna influence that response of the cows.
Scott Sorrell (01:00:42):
Alright, and Kenneth's next question is, do you have a view on the type of energy in the diet fats versus star versus sugars and which will stimulate dry matter intake from a hormonal or brain point of view?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (01:00:58):
Can you repeat that so I can proof this?
Scott Sorrell (01:01:01):
Yeah. Do you have a viewpoint on the type of energy in the diet, be it fats, starches, sugars, and which will stimulate dry matter intake from a hormonal or brain point of view?
Dr. Trevor DeVries (01:01:15):
Yeah, no, that's a good question. And that comes back to, again, some of the post ingestive. I think it's, it's largely related to some of the kind of post ingestive feedback that that cows do get from the feeds that they consume and obviously the metabolites that are produced in the room and and absorbed. I think some of the current kind of theories, if you think about the, say the hepatic oxidation theory one of the primary drivers to or influences on eating behavior would be really say prop loads coming out of the rumen and influence on the, on the liver and how quickly those that gets processed at the liver. And then that also having an influence or, or having a direct kind of impact then on brain signaling in terms of the eating behavior of those cows.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (01:02:08):
And where most of that often comes from is, is from starch. And that's why there's a lot of discussion and, and consideration of around say starch content of, of say fresh cow diets and, and the influence that that may have on overall dry matter intake and, and more kind of consideration for getting alternative energy sources into those cows. So I think there's kind of that basis there. I'm trying to remember, sorry, I'm talking in a bit of a circle here. Trying to think. Are they asking what was most important or I lost it?
Scott Sorrell (01:02:49):
Yeah, if you had a, had a preference of one of those.
Dr. Trevor DeVries (01:02:52):
Yeah, I, I guess, I guess the thing is everything's, everything in life is a balance. I, I would like to say, right? We, we we can probably, and that's where we see some of the benefits of a lot of the studies that have fed alternative energy sources. We're seeing a lot more interest in feeding fat energy sources to both dry cows as well as fresh cows. And the right, and again, I'm not a fat expert, but we've seen more, more balance in that and type different types influencing cows. A lot of the work that's been done looking at feeding sugars shown very positive. We know sugars do not get digested the same as starch in the rumen do not necessarily cause the same negative impacts in terms of acidosis and, and we see very positive impacts of that in terms of energy balance in cows and early lactation. Question got at the end of the day comes back to, okay, well how much can we feed of those alternative energy sources from a economical practicality standpoint and, and, and, and at the same time making sure that those cows are receiving the, the nutrients that they need or the energy that they need for, for their production.
Scott Sorrell (01:04:08):
On behalf of Balchem, Dr. DeVries, thank you for joining us today.
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