RumiNation podcast

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A tartalmat a Jefo biztosítja. Az összes podcast-tartalmat, beleértve az epizódokat, grafikákat és podcast-leírásokat, közvetlenül a Jefo vagy a podcast platform partnere tölti fel és biztosítja. Ha úgy gondolja, hogy valaki az Ön engedélye nélkül használja fel a szerzői joggal védett művét, kövesse az itt leírt folyamatot https://hu.player.fm/legal.

This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil

1
How To Pitch Yourself (And Get A Yes) | 300 27:52

6 napja27:52

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27:52

We made it— 300 episodes of This Is Woman’s Work ! And we’re marking this milestone by giving you something that could seriously change the game in your business or career: the skill of pitching yourself effectively. Whether you’re dreaming of being a podcast guest, landing a speaking gig, signing a client, or just asking for what you want with confidence—you’re already pitching yourself, every day. But are you doing it well? In this milestone episode, Nicole breaks down exactly how to pitch yourself to be a podcast guest … and actually hear “yes.” With hundreds of pitches landing in her inbox each month, she shares what makes a guest stand out (or get deleted), the biggest mistakes people make, and why podcast guesting is still one of the most powerful ways to grow your reach, authority, and influence. In This Episode, We Cover: ✅ Why we all need to pitch ourselves—and how to do it without feeling gross ✅ The step-by-step process for landing guest spots on podcasts (and more) ✅ A breakdown of the 3 podcast levels: Practice, Peer, and A-List—and how to approach each ✅ The must-haves of a successful podcast pitch (including real examples) ✅ How to craft a pitch that gets read, gets remembered, and gets results Whether you’re new to pitching or want to level up your game, this episode gives you the exact strategy Nicole and her team use to land guest spots on dozens of podcasts every year. Because your voice deserves to be heard. And the world needs what only you can bring. 🎁 Get the FREE Podcast Pitch Checklist + Additional Information on your Practice Group, Peer Group, and A-List Group Strategies: https://nicolekalil.com/podcast 📥 Download The Podcast Pitch Checklist Here Related Podcast Episodes: Shameless and Strategic: How to Brag About Yourself with Tiffany Houser | 298 How To Write & Publish A Book with Michelle Savage | 279 How To Land Your TED Talk and Skyrocket Your Personal Brand with Ashley Stahl | 250 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music…

RumiNation

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RumiNation is a series of conversations with key influencers in the North American dairy and cattle industries. The discussions focus on topics such as animal welfare, management, profitability, productivity, longevity, and sustainability.

62 epizódok

#Science #Tech #Biology #Jefo #Animal Welfare #IT Management #Productivity And Longevity #Profit

RumiNation

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62 epizódok

#Science #Tech #Biology #Jefo #Animal Welfare #IT Management #Productivity And Longevity #Profit

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RumiNation

1
Jean Fontaine, président fondateur de Jefo, sur l'alimentation du bétail et l'évolution de l'industrie 20:38

1 year20:38

20:38

Chapitrage et résumé Vicky Brisson ( 01:54 ) Tout récemment, Jefo a fêté son 40ᵉ anniversaire. Pouvez-vous nous raconter les débuts de Jefo ? Jean Fontaine Ça prend un petit peu de temps à expliquer tout ça, mais les débuts étaient très modestes. J'ai commencé à 25 ans avec le choix de faire faillite ou de commencer à faire de l'argent. Dans le domaine des luminaires, c'était le bicarbonate de soude qui était granulaire contre les Américains qui avaient le monopole du marché. Donc on a commencé modestement dans une maison avec un appartement qu'on a modifié avec des bureaux. Aujourd'hui, on a le campus Jefo à Saint-Hyacinthe et c'est un centre d'information. Jefo a commencé au Québec, ensuite en Ontario, après le reste du Canada et le marché mondial. Le petit pas, c'était la bonne technologie pour grandir sans s'enfarger. […] Vicky Brisson ( 03:06 ) La culture de Jefo est centrée sur «Life made easier» ou «La vie ne plus facile». Qu'est-ce qui a inspiré cette mission et est-ce que vous pouvez nous donner quelques exemples de la manière dont vous et vos employés incarnez cette déclaration ? Jean Fontaine La vie est plus facile, ça résumait l'approvisionnement plus facile avec différents fournisseurs. L'entreposage pour les produits, on dit en anglais «Just in time», l'approvisionnement spontané; il y a tout chez nous. Et, avec la recherche, on rend la vie plus facile aux chercheurs parce qu'on a rassemblé plusieurs marchés différents avec le même objectif de faire plus avec moins. Donc, ça a été ça qui fait le slogan «La vie en plus facile» la première fois et depuis tout le monde accepte que c'est vraiment ce qu'on fait. Vicky Brisson (4:31) Avec l’arrivée de l’intelligence artificielle, quels sont les principaux défis que les producteurs devront relever ? À votre avis, quelles seront les principales caractéristiques de ceux qui vont réussir à s'adapter ? Jean Fontaine S'adapter. S'adapter au changement. Vous savez que la plus grande crainte des gens c’est de changer. Donc, l'agriculteur et l’agricultrice vont apprendre à mieux mesurer ce qu'ils font. Avoir accès à leurs données, que ce soit la température, la qualité des fourrages, tout ça grâce au système d’intelligence artificielle. Ils vont être capables d'avoir une plus grande précision. Et quand on peut mesurer ce qu'on fait, on peut l'améliorer. Sans mesure, c'est très difficile de s'améliorer. Donc, c'est une voie que personne ne peut éviter. […] Vicky Brisson ( 05:36 ) Depuis plus de 20 ans, vous apportez des innovations à l'industrie de l'alimentation animale avec la technologie Jefo Matrix. Est-ce que vous pouvez nous expliquer pourquoi c'est important de micro-encapsuler les nutriments ? Jean Fontaine C'est un concept. Si on se rapporte au tout début, quand j'ai commencé en 88 à vendre des acides organiques enrobés pour compétitionner les facteurs de croissance chez le porc, on s'est moqué de moi. Aujourd'hui, le monde des médicaments a beaucoup baissé. Les additifs alimentaires qu'on donne chaque jour pour moduler la flore intestinale […] sont de moins en moins à la mode, puis même à certains endroits, ils sont bannis. Avec la technologie de matrice que nous avons, on prévient le bris de nos molécules, de nos nutriments avant d'arriver à l'intestin où ils sont absorbés […]. Sauf que nous avons découvert qu'en enrobant avec des matières grasses 100 % végétales, on vient qu'on traverse le rumen à 85 % et on relâche lentement avec la lipase qui brise le gras les nutriments qui sont bénéfiques pour la vache laitière ou le bœuf. Dans la volaille, la même chose s'applique. On va résister au PH acide, au phytate, au calcium, au soufre qui vont venir lier les différents nutriments et les rendre indigestes à l'intestin. […] Vicky Brisson ( 09:27 ) Vous observez depuis plus de 20 ans l'impact de la nutrition de précision sur les animaux. Est-ce que vous pouvez résumer pour nos auditeurs quelles sont les principales observations que vous avez pour ces animaux ? Jean Fontaine Première chose qu'on peut voir, c'est l'efficacité digestive. […] La principale raison pour laquelle nos jeunes hommes et jeunes femmes quittent les fermes, ce sont les problèmes liés au vêlage. Donc, quand une vache va vêler, les gens préviennent avec différents traitements qu'ils ont appris à faire parce qu'il n'y avait pas la technologie que nous avons aujourd'hui. […] Avec notre approche de précision intestinale, on livre ça tout ensemble ces fameux coenzymes, ces cofacteurs d'enzymes et les oligo-éléments. […] Vicky Brisson ( 11:15 ) En tant que visionnaire dans ce domaine, quelle est, selon vous, votre contribution au monde des vaches laitières ? Jean Fontaine Si on réussit à améliorer le vêlage et à avoir une vache qui va pouvoir faire plusieurs lactations consécutives parce qu'elle a une meilleure santé générale causée par cette nutrition de précision. Je pense que nos éleveurs gagnent beaucoup. […] Vicky Brisson ( 12:23 ) Vous avez créé avec succès une entreprise familiale. Pourriez-vous nous expliquer comment vous avez favorisé la collaboration et l'harmonie entre les membres de la famille tout en bâtissant une entreprise prospère ? Jean Fontaine Ça c'est une bonne question. Parce que pourquoi les enfants s'intéressent à ce que j'ai construit ? C'est qu'ils ont compris que j'avais du plaisir à faire ce que je fais. On peut guider les gens par l'exemple. Les enfants ont vu que j'avais du plaisir à recevoir des gens, à visiter des gens, se créer un réseau d'amitié à travers le monde. Parce qu'on a l'avantage dans notre industrie de vendre ou de fournir des produits et des conseils toutes les semaines, tous les mois. Nous, dans notre industrie, on établit la proximité. Chez Jefo, on aime recevoir les gens. Ici, au campus et même chez moi, on a développé cette amitié de proximité avec les clients, les fournisseurs. C'est important. Si tu n’as rien à vendre, tu n'as pas de produit à vendre, ce n’est pas bon. D'avoir des fournisseurs, mais pas de clients, c'est pareil. Donc, tout est relié ensemble. Mais je crois que mes trois enfants, Émilie, Jean-François et Anthony ont su apprécier ceci de mes 40 ans de vie d'affaires. Et aujourd'hui, ils vont prendre le relais. […] Vicky Brisson ( 18:07 ) Pour conclure, pouvez-vous nous faire part du message que vous souhaitez transmettre à la prochaine génération d'entrepreneurs de l'industrie ? Jean Fontaine La plus belle chose que je peux leur suggérer, c'est de ne pas avoir peur du changement. […] Le changement qui s'en vient va être impressionnant. Certaines personnes ont peur du mot : intelligence artificielle. Elle est là pour nous aider. Il faut accepter le changement et oser. […] Moi je vous dis que la vie est pleine de belles choses. Il faut s'amuser à la désirer.…

RumiNation

1
Jean Fontaine, Founder of JEFO, on Livestock Feed and Industry Evolution 23:29

1 year23:29

23:29

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn ( 02:05 ) JEFO recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. Can you share with us and with the audience the story of how JEFO started? Jean Fontaine JEFO started very modestly. I was out of school, 25 years old, and I had a choice to declare bankruptcy or try something. And I had a vision to offer our industry different source of material, to be more competitive. And it started like that. The snowball effect started gradually with one or two products, then the other ones were added altogether. So, simple start, amazing development. Chris Gwyn ( 02:49 ) This started and centered our culture of “Life, made easier”. Can you share with us what inspired this mission and give a few examples of how you and your employees embody this statement? Jean Fontaine After meeting with some experts who guided us about establishing our motto “Life, made easier”, we realized that we make life easier for the buyer, and their supply chain, with our quite fair size inventory warehouses. Life made easier by sourcing with our expertise, we know what is a product that fits. And, with the efficacy. Then, life made easier for the truckers. We have a nice system of logistics, able to make quality pallets the way we ship our products. So, it's life made easier for everybody in the chain of activity. […] Chris Gwyn ( 04:44 ) We've seen over the last few years the idea of artificial intelligence gaining interest across the world as the livestock industry keeps evolving rapidly. In your thoughts, what are the main producer challenges and market changes that you foresee and what will be the key attributes of those who successfully adapt to these changes? Jean Fontaine Farmers need to get access to their numbers and to have them handy to be able to know what's going on rapidly and correct the situation. Before AI, it was not easy to take a note and then put all these things together. Today, there are more and more tools to do that. Some companies offer on-site, cameras, and sensors that can feel the water flow, the temperature, the ammonia level, and the behavior of animals. So, all this will bring precision and the farmers will know what's going on. And sometimes we don't realize they have a hell of a challenge in their life. Many factors must be controlled. So, to do that, AI will bring us tremendous capacity. And then you have to adapt to change. The future with AI will change the planet. […] So, there's no reason that people can object to this change of knowledge. IPhones have been around for 15 years. Can you imagine your life without an iPhone today? Try to figure out your life today with no portable phone and then no smartphone. We can talk to the vets before they get there. They can have an edge about what is going on. Chris Gwyn ( 07:30 ) I know for over 20 years, Jefo Nutrition has brought innovations to the livestock and poultry feed industry with this Jefo Matrix Technology. Why is it important to microencapsulate nutrients like coenzymes in animal nutrition? Jean Fontaine It was believed that the rumen of the cow would do everything for the cow. Initially, we discussed having some AD plus B vitamins be protected to escape the rumen. Maybe you leave like 10 or 15 percent in the rumen to nourish the bugs and to go bypass. […] Today, we have discovered that very small quantities bypassing the rumen make a tremendous impact. From the expertise in ruminants, we went back to poultry and swine, and we discovered an amazing approach. And the concept for us is to prevent feeding the pathogens in the intestine of the cow, of the pig, of the poultry. And we have developed data on that aspect that is intriguing to a lot of people. Now we have the capacity to go after the rumen and after the stomach in monogastric. […] Chris Gwyn ( 10:44 ) Can you explain how we do that within the Jefo Matrix Technology? Jean Fontaine Our technology uses vegetables, 100% vegetable carrier, fats, which have high melting points. We have some specific formulations of carrier with fatty acids and triglycerides, that will allow it to be released in the small intestine. We know how to slow the lipase to have a delivery further down in the intestine. This is why we're gaining so much momentum with the customers. Chris Gwyn ( 15:08 ) Often in meeting with clients, they express to me the admiration they have for the entrepreneurship and the visionary aspect that they see in you. In this area of a visionary in the field, what do you feel is your contribution to the world of dairy cows? Jean Fontaine The contribution is to bring precision to the intestine of the cow for nutrition. People have injected vitamins. People have done a lot of drenching the cows. It was all behaviors to compensate for the problem they have at calving. Our technology, to protect against rumen degradation, has allowed us to give them a solution which is much less demanding on staff. The first reason people will leave the farm, the young guys, is the problem of calving their cows. They never quit because they drive the tractor. They never quit because they pass the broom. They hate to grab the cow and drench her and all the other precautions because of calving issues. When the placenta doesn’t get out, they hate the smell of the barn and the cows suffer. If the placenta gets out with the calf a couple of hours later, as they do with our solution, we make their life easier. It's another phrase that fits. It's life made easier for calving problems. Our contribution is to give maybe more fun to the farmers solving their main problem of calving. Chris Gwyn ( 17:02 ) Could you share the key factors or strategies that contribute to the seamless integration of the family dynamics into a business and how you've worked to foster collaboration and harmony among family members while building this thriving business which is Jefo? Jean Fontaine I was so surprised to learn that 85% of companies die with their president. I was not conscious of that. Today, I'm lucky, out of seven kids, I have three who are old enough to be involved with us. Émilie, Jean Francois, and Anthony. I think I transmitted to them the passion for what I do. I retired 42 years ago. Now I play the role of the president of the company. I play the judge’s role; I play the father’s role. I am still an actor, but I play roles. Today, the kids realize it's valuable. People respect and appreciate if you give your time for a purpose. To define the purpose of life, it's a challenge. The first time I was asked the purpose of my life; I jammed the question. So, we have to find out our purpose in life and share that fun of helping others. If you are useful, you have a future. I teach my kids to be useful, to be passionate, to love people, to accept also to be their friends. So, I teach them: The more you give, the more you get; the more you give time, attention, help, and love, and you can talk about money as well. Whatever we can do for others won't come back to us at a high speed. So today, for me, it's a very big emotion to know that when I leave, people will do that. Success, if it's only one life, is not success. Success is measured in time. So, I have many chances to be successful. Chris Gwyn ( 19:09 ) Could you share insights into how you strategically built and nurtured your professional network or circle of people who influenced you, advised you, and networked with you and what key principles or practices you believe contributed to the growth and sustainability of Jefo? Jean Fontaine It may sound easy to say, but we have the privilege to be in an industry where we have to be friends for a long time. If you sell me a house, I'll buy my next one maybe 20 years from now. It won't happen every month. In animal feed, we have to fill the pipe. So we need to talk to each other on a regular basis, weekly, monthly, quarterly. So we have a business of developing proximity and friendship. If you have proximity to people, you learn about their problems, their issues, and their challenges. Can we help them? Sometimes, yes, we can. This is making a rich relationship with the customer. And if the customer is happy, you have a good business. It's a fruitful business and it can be contagious. They're going to talk to others. I teach my staff to be lazy and I'll define laziness: Do it right and make people talk about you. Your reputation will be your best future. You have to be useful to somebody. If you're not useful, you're going to be out with the game. Chris Gwyn ( 20:48 ) As we conclude, maybe a message that you can pass on to the next generation of entrepreneurs in the livestock and poultry feed industry. What would you share with them? Jean Fontaine Don't believe the past will be the future. Whatever happened in the past without AI, without all these technologies, would not necessarily be proof for the future. We have to change. The world we are addressing is something invisible. So, we have to be open, and love change instead of avoiding it. Please be all excited by the change for the best. We are living in the best time for the human race. […] We have to be hungry for change and not fear to adapt and progress together. And this is needed for everybody together. Not one guy, one company, one team. Everybody should be in the same kind of thinking pattern.…

RumiNation

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Impact of Stocking Density on Milk Production and Profitability 24:58

1 year24:58

24:58

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn ( 02:11 ) I'd like to know a little more about why you became interested in researching ideal topic density. Dr. Albert De Vries I actually had an intern student from the Netherlands, and that student was very interested in welfare. And I said: If we just do welfare in the US, maybe that's not of primary interest to producers, although I understand our producers are all interested in welfare aspects as well. But I'd like to put dollars into whatever we do with cows. And so we did a little digging and came up on the topic of stocking density, the economics of stocking density. It's really a fascinating topic because there are some welfare implications but there are clearly also economic implications. […] Chris Gwyn ( 03:23 ) What are the key influencers of the economic return when you're evaluating where a farm is evaluating its optimal stocking density? Dr. Albert De Vries I think we should start by defining, what we mean by stocking density. Different metrics of that. We're not talking about dry lots here. We're talking about free stalls. We were also not interested in fresh cows or dry cows, which I think all experts agree should not be overstocked. We're looking at lactating cows. And we also did not think that feed bunk space was a limiting factor. So, in our research, we really looked at the number of cows over the number of stalls in a pen. And if that is 100%, then you have one stall per cow. And if it's like 120%, you have 120 cows for 100 stalls. So that is where we sort of limited our research to. And secondly, I think it's important to get the economic principle right. What are we trying to optimize here when we're talking about economics? […] Chris Gwyn ( 11:20 ) In that study, you looked at milk production. Did you look at component yield? Dr. Albert De Vries I think we looked at component yield, but I don't remember seeing anything necessarily, because, of course, we get paid for components. I don't think it was very clear that either fat or protein, for example, was reduced by overstocking. Chris Gwyn ( 14:10 ) If there are some other issues that you wanted […] to highlight, we can do that. Dr. Albert De Vries I haven't really said much about welfare yet. I mean, the student I work with was really interested in that, and I think it needs to be on our minds, too. So, if we say we just want to take care of the cow, we probably don't want to overstock. Cows are probably compromising welfare, perhaps a tiny bit only if we start to overstock, and more when we overstock more. So, we don't know how to square that with profitability. But obviously, that needs to be in our mind as well. […] Chris Gwyn ( 16:34 ) Can I ask you a further question about that? Because I'm not an economist, but where does cash flow come in if a farm needs to increase cash flow? Does that kind of counter go against optimal stocking density in low milk pricing? Dr. Albert De Vries I think you're on the right track there because we assume our fixed costs are independent of the number of cows. So, we would add cows to it up to the point of maximum optimal stocking density, which implies that, for that pen, the highest cash flow. And so, with low milk prices, we reduce cow numbers, because if we don't, our cash flow is going to be even less. So, cash flows, in this analysis, and this is obviously what I call a steady state; we sort of permanently are at a high or a low level of stocking density, but it's the same thing. So, the question becomes practically different: Well, my milk prices change, and I may or may not have the cows. What is the long-term response to stocking density? Those are harder to answer because, again, we don't know the long-term response to stocking density per se, but essentially, when we optimize our stocking density, we're optimizing the cash flow, the amount of cash made there for that pen on that day over time. Chris Gwyn ( 20:40 ) As we wind up, I always like to ask, what are some of the key take-home points for producers and nutritionists and lenders, in fact, and veterinarians, when considering evaluating the impact of a stocking density on the farms they work with, what would you recommend they look at? Dr. Albert De Vries If I put on my economics glasses, if you will, then I think overstocking a pace. And like last year in the US, we had actually good milk prices. […] At the same time, we learned through the research that it sort of is farm-dependent in terms of prices and what are the losses that you observe. And so we have a spreadsheet available for listeners that they can work with, and play with. Probably the easiest way to get there. If you go to Google and you look for “dairy stocking density calculator Florida”, I think we end up number one on the Google search list there. And there's an EDI extension publication there. And that publication lays out what the research was about, hopefully in not too scientific terms. And there's a link to a calculator we used as well that we made available for folks to play with. […]…

RumiNation

1
Demystifying De Novo Fatty Acid Synthesis 21:04

1 year21:04

21:04

Timestamps & Summary Vicki Brisson ( 01:44 ) As an introduction, can you explain what de novo fatty acid synthesis is? Dr. Débora Santschi To me, the fatty acids are basically if we would take that black box of fat, the milk fat test, open it up, and look at what's inside of it. So, if we take, for example, a herd that is at 4% fat, if we open it up, we can see what makes up that 4% fat and see where those fatty acids come from. […] The de novo fatty acids are one of those groups of fatty acids we find in the total fat. It represents, depending on the herds and the cows, roughly between 25-30% of the total fat. And those are the fatty acids that are synthesized in the mammary gland of the cow. […] Vicki Brisson ( 04:00 ) What impact does that milk fat composition have on the cow? And what are the periods when the fatty acid profile is more likely to vary? Dr. Débora Santschi I think it's very interesting to look at it from a cow’s side and also from a herd’s side. So, if we take the cow example, a cow in very early lactation, we all know that she's using her body reserves to compensate for that very high demand for milk production. In that case, a big chunk of her fat content will be preformed fatty acids. So, in very early lactation, we see roughly 50, or sometimes even slightly more, as a percentage of her fat being the preformed fatty acids. And in that case, the de novo will be very low and increase slowly over the first 45, 50, and 60 days of lactation. […] If we look at it on a herd level, when we do some ration change, when the forage digestibility changes, but we don't notice too much. All those little effects can also have an impact on the de novo content of the bulk tank sample. In that case, because bulk tank samples are often analyzed very frequently, then we can get a rapid insight into something that we might not have noticed on the farm level. […] Vicki Brisson ( 05:46 ) Knowing that the fatty acid profile of milk matters, what can we do to promote the production of de novo fatty acids? Dr. Débora Santschi The de novo fatty acids are the result of being produced in the mammary gland from rumen volatile fatty acids. So, everything that we can do to maximize rumen volatile fatty acids will have a positive impact. So, we often focus on the ration. So, of course, having a highly digestible ration, well balanced with all the nutrients that are required, is really important, but we need to keep in mind everything around it. […] Vicki Brisson ( 07:33 ) Can you expand on specific nutritional solutions that our listeners may want to consider? Dr. Débora Santschi The way we train our people, and I just want to mention, we have a lot of information that is available directly on the website as well to help understand and find solutions, because it's going to be very herd specific. But when I look at a herd, I look at the fat test, and the protein test, because those are values we know and we handle very well. I look at the MUN value because to me, it's important to look at the overall protein balance as well, and then I go and look at the fatty acid profiles. I always start with the de novo, then look at the mix, then look at the preform. That's my way of addressing a report. […] Vicki Brisson ( 10:01 ) Beyond just the amount of de novo fatty acids produced is also the variation in fatty acid levels. So, what are the impacts of that variation in fatty acids and how can we address it? Dr. Débora Santschi Very good question. I think, again, there's some information on the cow level, there's some information on the bulk tank level. I like to work on the bulk tank level first because it's every second day in our case, so it helps to get a very accurate and up-to-date overview. However, the downside is that it's only on a farm level, it's an average, and I have no idea of the distribution of it. […] When there's a lot of variation on the bulk tank, we see it a lot in the inconsistent feeding herds, in the herds that have a lot of changes in the ration, where the forage composition is not very constant. […] Vicki Brisson ( 13:44 ) Can you help us understand or explain the link between B vitamins and fatty acids? Dr. Débora Santschi To my knowledge, there hasn't been too much specific research combining the two, I think that's a very interesting area to explore. I think if we take one step back and look at the whole picture, rumen health, optimizing the bacterial populations we have in there, and making sure that this is all functioning well should also be reflected in the de novo synthesis. […] Vicki Brisson ( 16:23 ) Can you just expand a little on the tools that you have at Lactanet and that you offer your producers on how to monitor de novo fatty acids and how they can use that as a decision-making tool or to help them identify possible issues on the farm? Dr. Débora Santschi At Lactanet right now, back in 2020, we launched what we call PROFIlab. That's our milk fatty acid monitoring tool, currently available in Quebec, and in some Atlantic provinces, at the bulk tank level for now. […] We do have a prototype for the cow level. We tested it with some of our advisors, and some of our farmers. So, 2024 should see that prototype become a real tool, this time not only in Québec, but across the country. […] Vicki Brisson ( 19:13 ) Can you share your take-home messages? Maybe three or so for nutritionists, vets, and producers when they think de novo fatty acid synthesis in milk? Dr. Débora Santschi I'll say the first one is that black box. I like to see it like that. We're opening up the fat and understanding better what makes up that fat. So, get a deeper insight into your fat test, which is what we're being paid for. Second one, dare to use it. Just try. Just try something. Ask questions. Get the information you need to start working with it and try to have that value change. Try to cause an impact on that de novo value to make it move. And you'll see how it can be powerful for your herds. And the third one is, please, any suggestions, any ideas, any questions? You're more than welcome to contact us because as I just said, I think that's how we learn altogether and that's how we can make it even better and then share that information back. […]…

RumiNation

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Cow-Calf Separation in Dairy Farming 32:19

1 year32:19

32:19

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn ( 01:57 ) Animal welfare and perhaps its impacts on health are hot topics in the livestock industry today. Can you please share how you became interested in these topics? Dr. Marina Von Keyserlingk That started probably in my head, let's say 25 years ago. As you alluded to in the introduction, I did a Ph.D. in Animal Sciences and I was trained initially as an experimentalist and as a ruminant nutritionist. And I worked in the feed industry in a number of roles for over seven years. And during my time, sort of at the end of my PhD, and also working in industry and coming from a farming background, what I was noticing and what was becoming very evident to me is that society was asking a lot of questions about where their food comes from. We had passed the time when society in general just trusted farmers to do the right thing. […] It wasn't necessarily that people wanted to become vegetarian. It was they just wanted assurances that animals had a reasonably good life. […] Chris Gwyn ( 06:02 ) Talk to me about how we maximize the amount of time that cow and calf spend together if that's what we're trying to do, and also to be realistic about the management procedures that a producer can or will implement at the farm level. Dr. Marina Von Keyserlingk I'm going to start a little bit further back than just that question. Why are we even talking about cow-calf separation? And ten years ago, I remember trying to apply for some money from the dairy industry and was basically told: Go away. […] Generally speaking, what's happening is that society is starting to ask questions. And society's question is, when people see dairy, do they see a situation or do they hear about the fact that the calf is taken away? We provide assurances that the calf is going to be fine and the cow is going to be fine. […] When we weigh all of the evidence on the health side and also on sort of the welfare behavior production side, I can't give you strong evidence to justify the separation. So, for instance, calf health, we say we do this because it's better for the calves. But what is the mortality rate of dairy calves in North America? We applaud when we can get it lower than sort of 6 or 7%. The beef industry would go broke if they had mortality rates at that. So, there are a lot of examples like that. Mastitis rates. Keeping cows and calves together is highly protective for mastitis. What's one of the biggest economic costs for farmers is mastitis. So, we have this situation where we don't have a lot of scientific evidence to justify the practice, but what we do have is 100 years of tradition. […] It's not a question of if it will become part of the conversation in North America. It's just a matter of when. So, you know, there's a farmer in southern Ontario that is keeping cows and calves together. I've talked to veterinarians in Quebec who are working with farmers that are trying to do this. Is it all working really well? Some things work well, some things are a disaster. […] Chris Gwyn ( 15:03 ) Do you have any hints of what can successfully work on a dairy? Dr. Marina Von Keyserlingk A lot of it is anecdotal. I would say the questions are actually a lot more fundamental than that. Like for instance, how long? Nobody really knows. […] The only thing we know is from the beef industry, where we keep them together for six, seven or eight months, which is closer to when they wouldn't wean naturally. I had to pick a number. We picked four months. Is four months right? I don't know. […] Chris Gwyn ( 19:04 ) We don't really know what the system really looks like, right? We're talking about contact. As you say, it could be a full day, half day, it could be a partial day, it could be through a window, could be in the same pen. I mean, this is all the stuff that we don't know and probably the stuff that maybe scares us a bit in production. Dr. Marina Von Keyserlingk Exactly right. And it scares us because at least here in North America, let's just take Canada, for instance. We still have whatever 70% of our farms are, tie-stalls. How would this ever work in a tie-stall? I mean, we are transitioning out of that. I would not invest in cow-calf contact work in a tie-stall facility right now. […] Change is scary. But change also brings opportunity. […] I understand how difficult it is for farmers because change is really hard and it's super scary, especially in those markets where they don't have supply management. […] Chris Gwyn ( 23:05 ) What are the deep holes and research that are needed over the next five to ten years to help the dairy industry understand and find practical solutions for that cow requirement? Dr. Marina Von Keyserlingk I think it's an exciting time in that area because it's almost a blank slate. I think, as I said earlier, I think issues are going to be: How long? What does contact mean? Chris Gwyn ( 28:30 ) Tell me about some of the take-home messages you'd like to leave talking about cow-calf contact and what needs to be considered moving forward. Dr. Marina Von Keyserlingk The number one message is: Don't be afraid of the conversation. […] I think what the dairy industry needs to do is figure out how to keep the consumer because there are a ton of alternatives out there. We want the consumer to want to buy milk, to buy yogurt. And a lot of that comes down to values. […] My other take-home message, just one other one, is I truly believe that the thoughtful person on the street doesn't expect us to change overnight, but they expect us to get better every day. And those are two very different things.…

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Exploring Opportunities and Challenges in Dairy Beef Feeding Systems 29:18

1 year29:18

29:18

Timestamps & Summary Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 02:01 ) In your opinion, what can we expect to see numbers of dairy and dairy and beef crosses in feedlots in the future? Dr. Pedro Carvalho That's really a hot topic right now. I've been working with Holstein since I started grad school, and in the past few years, we've seen this increasing the utilization of beef semen in the dairy cows. […] There are a lot of factors that are affecting that. The increasing use of sex semen and the decrease in the beef cow herd, probably pushing that a lot. And I think it's something that came to stay. I think a lot of people are learning how to do that in the dairy industry. We still have to remember that the main goal of a dairy farmer is getting their cow pregnant. But I think that it's a great opportunity for dairy farmers to increase their profitability. And the data that we've seen right now also shows a really good opportunity for feedlot producers. […] Total numbers might still be the same because basically, the number of dairy cows is still the same. But what has changed is basically the genetics of those bull calves that are coming to our feedlot. Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 05:09 ) As we're pushing the supply chain and looking at these genetics of transitioning the dairy to utilizing more beef semen, can we expect to see specific British breeds? Or is it just going to be predominantly black Angus? Or would you propose that maybe if we want to look at some other traits, some continental or some exotic, for southern calf markets would be included in the mix? Dr. Pedro Carvalho That's an excellent question. For the past year and a half, I've been talking a lot about this. When we look at the numbers before 2017, we used to have about two and a half million doses of beef semen on the market every year in the US. From 2017 to 2021, we had an increase from two and a half to close to 9 million. And that's how much we're expecting. So, over 6 million doses of increase. […] About half of those are coming from Angus. So, we expect that the majority of those crosses are going to be black-headed animals. In second place, we've seen a lot of Limousin crosses and then Simmental. And the Charolais breed is the one that has increased a lot. They went from less than 25,000 doses being sold in 2017 to close to 600,000 in 2021. So that's a huge increase. […] So, we've seen a good increase in continental breeds, but Angus is still the majority of them. One thing that I can tell you, Greg, for sure, I don't think we are going to be talking about a specific breed. We've seen more variation within breeds than when we compare between or among different breeds. Even the Angus breed. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 15:02 ) [W]hen is the most critical point of the feeding of the dairy beef Holstein or dairy beef animal. And then what would be their typical starting period? Or do they have two? Dr. Pedro Carvalho It always depends. And it's going to depend a lot on the time of the year. We've seen California during summertime. That creates a much bigger challenge than during the wintertime. […] But on the diet aspect, another thing that we've done over the years, and Dr. Richard Zing, who I had the pleasure to work a lot with while I was in California, we would divide the feeding system into three different phases. The 300 days. we would divide into three groups of 100 days. So, those 1st 100 days on feed would be the most critical ones, I would say, especially in the protein requirements. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 24:21 ) And then to wrap up today, what would be three of your top take-home messages of working with dairy beef crosses or straight Holsteins in a feeder situation? Dr. Pedro Carvalho I think on the Holstein side, I would push them from start to finish as much as we can be consistent. They have good genetics, they marble well, and they can produce a really good quality on the beef. On dairy, I think right now there are more questions than answers. I do think that instead of looking for the best breed, we may be looking for the best bull in each breed. […] Something that we are planning to be doing in the near future is, and we didn't touch on that at all, understanding how much the early life management of those calves can impact later. […]…

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Tools for Cow Handling at the Farm Level 16:44

1 year16:44

16:44

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn ( 01:28 ) Can you explain what brought you to the study of cow handling specifically? Dr. Jennifer Van Os I started here at UW Madison about five and a half years ago, and as you mentioned, I'm in an applied research and extension outreach role. And so, I think it's really important that all the work that I do resonates with my dairy stakeholders. And so, when I was new, I went around and met with a number of Wisconsin dairy farmers and other people in the industry to ask them what are the challenges they face when it comes to animal welfare on their farms and what are their needs, how could my research and extension program help? So, one of the most popular requests that I got at the time was, could you please come to my farm and train my employees on the proper handling of dairy cows? And I found that a bit surprising that that was a need that kept coming up again and again, and unfortunately, it was not efficient for me to go around and fulfill this request. But it really got me thinking, how can I direct my research program to try to fill this need that people are asking for better training resources? Chris Gwyn ( 02:33 ) Recently in a presentation you did, you showed some older data from 2018 on what the status of training at the farm level for farm employees interacting with cows was. And you quoted 55% of US dairies providing training on moving or handling dairy cows. And I found this surprisingly low. So, I'm wondering in your work and extension, do you feel in 2023 that this number of 55% is still pretty relevant? Dr. Jennifer Van Os I agree with you, it's surprising. So, those data were from the United States Department of Agriculture and they are now about at least five years out of date. […] But to your question about whether this landscape has changed, I would say I hope so. […] Now the Farm Animal Care Program, in which 99% of our US. Dairy farms participate, they have an explicit expectation that anyone who works on the farm in an animal touch role, whether they're a milker or calf care staff, need to show annual continuing education in cow handling or calf handling. […] I know that in the past years, this has been a significant area of noncompliance where people are still struggling to find the time or the right resources to be able to do this sort of education. Chris Gwyn ( 05:04 ) The concept of low-stress cow movement and working in flight zones […] is pretty well established, yet I understand from some of your work that applying this concept is a challenge. I'm wondering why this is and what can be done to improve this adoption. Dr. Jennifer Van Os I think that's a great question. And that was part of why I was so surprised when I moved here that farmers were asking me for more resources and more training. Because you're right, these principles about the flight zone and using the cow's natural behavior to move them. It's very well established, and we know that it works. […] There was a way I learned in the classroom and in theory, and then there was a way I learned on the farm. And those things didn't always match. […] There has been a trend in the last few years towards what's called active learning. […] You might understand the concept of the flight zone, and be able to answer a quiz, but then when you are actually out there with the cows, these other real-life factors come into play. And so, I think that maybe we need resources that are more engaging, more active, and not just passive learning. Chris Gwyn ( 07:18 ) I believe you're in the process of developing a tool for cow handling training, the Moving Cows educational video game. I'm wondering if you give the listening audience an overview and an update on this project. Dr. Jennifer Van Os Yeah, I'm so excited about this. So after dairy producers asked me for better training on cow handling, I kind of put this on the back burner and thought, I can't be going out to every farm and training their staff how to do this because I need to run a research program. But then inspiration kind of struck out of the blue. I'm not much of a video gamer myself, but my father-in-law is a retired commercial airline pilot. And I think most people are familiar with the idea that before a pilot can fly a plane, even if they're very experienced if they're flying a new aircraft, they have to go through the flight simulator. It's too expensive and too dangerous to put somebody in the cockpit of a plane unless they've had some kind of practice. So, this was the idea I had for cow handling, that we have these passive resources like books or videos that teach you the principles of the flight zone. But to be able to actually put those practices into action, maybe we need a simulator. […] Moving Cows, version one was finished earlier this year, but we kept it private […] But in the meantime, we've compiled a lot of feedback from people who work on farms, dairy employees, dairy owners, consultants in the industry, veterinarians to get their input and make sure this game is relevant for them. And so, we've now compiled that feedback and we're working on version two of the game. So that's currently in process and we're hoping to have a public release by early 2024. So, you can look for it in the Google Play Store as well as iTunes for Apple devices. […] Chris Gwyn ( 14:25 ) Some key take-home messages that producers, nutritionists, and veterinarians, and industry influencers you feel should have taken away from today's podcast? Dr. Jennifer Van Os I think the first takeaway is something we didn't explicitly discuss, but I want to make it explicit, which is a lot of people don't realize that animal welfare is a science. […] The second take-home message is about learning, which is there is definitely a place for traditional or passive learning. Those resources are very valuable. We're producing some of those ourselves. But when we're thinking about people being able to retain concepts and practice them and learn by doing, that's where active learning comes into play. […] And then the last one is: if you would like to test out the game, hopefully, that will become available soon, my door is always open. Please email me if you have any questions. And I really can't wait to put this out there and hope that it can help the industry and help people feel more confident in their jobs.…

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Metabolism in Cattle for Muscle and Overall Development 29:28

1 year29:28

29:28

Timestamps & Summary Dr. Greg Eckerley (01:59) Looking at muscle development, what roles do we see coenzymes play in upregulating energy to help with growth? Dr. Bradley Johnson […] [the] energy needs for both postnatal muscle growth as well as the functionality of skeletal muscle that being contraction, we need a lot of ATP. And of course, we know that the coenzymes are going to assist with this. All the way from the shortest burst of energy that we're going to get to produce ATP and muscle is the ATP-PC system, which is the phosphocreatine system, which within seconds can produce ATP. […] From thiamine to niacin to riboflavin, pyridoxine, biotin, cyanocobalamin, pyridoxine, and pantothenic acid, all these are coenzymes. Very important for energy metabolism for every cell. But it becomes very critical for postnatal muscle growth because protein synthesis is so demanding that we have ATP. Dr. Greg Eckerley (06:37) Can we hypothesize and think that genetic development and advancement have placed a higher demand for certain nutrients that were historically not apt to look at? Dr. Bradley Johnson […] Our thought early on was: if we have aggressively implanted cattle then they must have higher nutrient needs. Certain nutrients like crude protein or specific amino acids or even calories, do they need more energy. And in reality, those growth-enhancing tools did not change the needs for some of these. They made them more efficient. And so today, our cattle genetically and the way we feed them, nutritional management, we have some of the best feed conversions we've ever had in our beef cattle industry worldwide because of our advancements in genetics, feeding strategies, and total nutrient requirements. […] Dr. Greg Eckerley (16:24) Can we utilize certain vitamins like biotin […] in certain feeding period roles to maximize this potential, to alter program metabolism for these animals as they go through the feeding period? Dr. Bradley Johnson I tell you what, biotin is so intriguing to me. I think there's a lot of anecdotal work out there and I think it started in Australia, but a lot of people on the Wagyu cattle, the heavy marbled side, felt they could increase marbling by feeding elevated biotin to ruminants. […] If we feed a high grain diet to finishing cattle, the one B vitamin that's probably going to be compromised the most in the rumen is biotin. […] Dr. Greg Eckerley (25:55) So, in conclusion, would you mind sharing three of your main take-home messages that we talked about today with the audience? Dr. Bradley Johnson First off, I think we often forget the energetic cost, not really cost, but protein synthesis is not a spontaneous event. And we think of muscle as the main protein reservoir in the carcass, obviously. And that comes at a cost. It takes a lot of ATPs […] The other big take-home that I think the one molecule that I'm the most excited about of having direct effects both on muscle growth and marbling is biotin and knowing that biotin affects enzymes similarly to a beta-agonist, I think there are opportunities to enhance muscle growth. […] The final take home is our US. Food and Drug Administration, I think, is going to continue to offer regulatory oversight […] on some of these medicated feed additives, over-the-counter antibiotics, normal growth promoting techniques like implants and beta-agonists that we've become used to using. And, obviously, the more natural alternatives that we can seek and find and utilize in our industry, I think the better off we're going to be in the long run.…

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Understanding and Managing Gastrointestinal Tract Health in Cattle 24:36

2 years24:36

24:36

Timestamps & Summary Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 01:24 ) Do we normally call that intestinal acidosis outside of the agricultural university complex? Dr. Greg Penner I think probably the most common term that's used is hindgut acidosis rather than intestinal acidosis. And it probably makes sense given where we think most of that fermentation activity would occur and where the primary reduction in PH would be localized. Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 02:02 ) What can we do with the hindgut intestinal acidosis? And how is that having an impact? Dr. Greg Penner First of all, one of the things we need to recognize is rumen acidosis and hindgut acidosis often occur simultaneously. And in fact, we probably should reclassify ruminal acidosis to lumenal, so that it encompasses a broader area of the gastrointestinal tract. You're right, from a challenge or mitigating response, it's not easy to deliver compounds that are going to be released to buffer in the large intestine. So, we're really needing to focus more on strategies that promote ruminal digestion efficiently while minimizing or managing the risk of fermentable materials that reach the large intestine. Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 05:19 ) Is there any sort of mitigation practices that we could utilize to help keep that intestinal junction and intestinal villi healthy? Dr. Greg Penner Certainly, our data as well as others have shown that if PH is too low for too long, again, we don't have good thresholds characterized for the hindgut, but we do see a leaky gut, or at least increased permeability of the gut. Our work has been able to show that both outside of the animal using ex vivo conditions and also inside the animal using in vivo markers, we actually see greater permeability responses in post-ruminal regions rather than the ruminal region. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 08:27 ) What can we utilize and look at when we see animals undergoing a medicinal acid challenge? Dr. Greg Penner I think it's really hard to differentiate ruminal acidosis and hindgut acidosis. And as I mentioned earlier, they often occur simultaneously. I think in many cases, we've looked at indicators of hindgut acidosis as evidence for ruminal acidosis. And so we've probably been looking at it backward. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 11:56 ) Do we see an alteration in more pathogenic bacteria or harmful bacteria to the animal which could lead to increased ailments, transition of other things that enterotoxins, and things like that? Dr. Greg Penner There was some nice work done by Dr. Kees Plaizier at the University of Manitoba where they did some grain versus alfalfa induction protocols for ruminal acidosis. And fortunately, they have both ruminal microbial changes. And in some of those studies, they also have hindgut microbial changes. And if I recall right, I believe E. Coli abundance, I think they stopped at a genre level, but E. Coli abundance was increased. And so certainly we get concerned about E. Coli from a potential contaminant of meat or meat products and not something we want to increase concentration of, recognizing not all E. Coli will be harmful or truly pathogenic. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 13:48 ) When we look at the terminal carcass evaluation of these animals, do we see an increase in liver abscess scores from Fusobacterium that may cross this damaged intestinal? Dr. Greg Penner That's a great question, and that's the hypothesis we have. But unfortunately, I have not seen any data that confirms whether fusobacterium is crossing the rumen, crossing regions of the intestine, or both. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 16:15 ) Are there certain production periods for either both beef and dairy that we need to be paying more attention to with those management practices to help reduce those risks? Dr. Greg Penner Let's start on the dairy side. I think probably the greatest risk factor is early in the transition phase. And the reason I say that is there's a number of changes that have likely occurred during that time. […] In terms of feedlot cattle, I think any factor, again, that leads to a reduction in feed intake, even a transient reduction, probably increases risk for rumen and hindgut acidosis. So, these could be things like respiratory disease, it could be heat stress events, they could be transportation events. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 21:52 ) What would be three of the main take-home messages that we have for nutritionists, veterinarians, and producers when we want to help mitigate or strategize systems on farms? Dr. Greg Penner I think the first one is […] that what happens in the rumen influences the more distal parts of the gastrointestinal tract. […] The second one is when we look at the responsiveness of the intestinal regions, they're probably regions that are more prone to leakiness. […] The third one goes back to good standard practices, and I think this will never be eliminated from core tasks or core skills of a nutritionist bunk calling. […]…

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Let’s Talk About Meat! 10:24

2 years10:24

10:24

Timestamps and Summary 1:54 How do you feel about Meatless Monday? Jess Pryles I don’t feel much about Meatless Monday. It’s more of a fad […] 3:23 What can we be doing as an industry and as individuals, family-owned operations to impact our consumer demand more positively? Jess Pryles I think just telling the story, there are a lot of great social media platforms at the moment: Instagram, obviously big but particularly for AG, Tiktok has been extremely successful. There were a lot of big agriculture producers, […] I mean, big accounts on Tiktok, but small, independent ranchers, both on the dairy and the cattle, beef production side, who have hundreds of thousands of followers. […] 5:23 What’s one thing about Australia that you miss, and would love to bring back or have here in the States more often? Jess Pryles You know, I would bring back meat pies. That’s a very classic Australian thing, and the first thing that I did when I landed and got off the plane, I drove to this little pie shop that’s very famous. […] 6:32 What's your all-time favorite beef cut? Jess Pryles I think the point is, we do say for certain cuts to just buy the best you can afford. […] There are other times when you can really afford to get a bit more creative. You know, in Texas tacos, […] I frequently buy select skirt steaks. […] I think if I had to choose my favorite cut, this is very controversial in beef worlds because obviously, I feel like my death row meal would be a ribeye but one of my very favorite steaks, the one I just keep coming back to is top sirloin and top sirloin cap.…

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Principles for a Sustainable Dairy Industry 31:55

2 years31:55

31:55

Timestamps and Summary Vicki Brisson (01:56) Can you share more about the role and importance of amino acids to support the dairy industry’s sustainability initiatives? Dr. Izabelle Teixeira I think balancing for amino acids is really important and can play a very important role in improving sustainability and can be a way of leveraging nutrition to enhance their sustainability. […] Vicki Brisson (04:28) What should [nutritionists] keep in mind when they’re formulating for individual amino acids? Or perhaps should they be looking at them as groups instead? Dr. Izabelle Teixeira I’m biased, right? But certainly, we have the literature support to see that when you look at individual amino acids, we don’t really fully explain the cow’s response, so the lactation performance response. So, looking at the amino acids as a group, we have a better understanding of those responses or why the cows are responding in a certain way. […] Vicki Brisson (06:46) Is there a reason why you looked at these specific groups of amino acids? So let’s say methionine, lysine, and histidine, and then leucine and isoleucine and you referred to the roles as well. So what might be the key differences between these groups of amino acids? Dr. Izabelle Teixeira There were some responses in the literature that we could use. We know that methionine plays a role in there. Lysine plays a role in there. We know that when we look at those amino acids and were, for example, decreasing the protein in the diet, but adding those amino acids, histidine was missing, and then could impair some of the response. So, it’s sort of the basis behind that first group. The other one is we also had in the literature some effects from the brain chain amino acids. So, we know that leucine plays a role in the mTOR pathway that we know is behind the milk protein synthesis. We also use the same basis for our hypothesis on the role of amino acids in milk fat synthesis. […] Vicki Brisson (10:06) Since you’ve done lots of work on dairy goat nutrition in the past, can you please share some of the key nutritional considerations that ruminant nutritionists should account for when they're formulating rations for dairy goats, especially when it comes to energy, protein, and mineral requirements? Dr. Izabelle Teixeira Thank you for bringing that up, Vicky. For me, it was fascinating. I have always looked at small ruminants as a model, […]. But when I started working with small ruminants, especially goats, they opened so many opportunities and created so many opportunities for me. So, throughout my ten years plus experience with small ruminants, I realized some similarities that we can definitely use small ruminants as a model for […] lactating cows. […] Vicki Brisson (15:39) How can we successfully integrate precision livestock measurements and management tools such as precision livestock farming and digital livestock farming? Dr. Izabelle Teixeira I think this is a hot topic. So, pretty much everybody is pointing their eyes on precision livestock farming and there are so many tools out there that can be used, that can be applied. The industries are offering us some possibilities and I think that's great because we need to improve. And we need to understand this precision measurement which is what is there that we can measure but also the precision management. So, how can we implement some tool that can be useful, but also it’s profitable? […] Vicki Brisson (20:42) What nutritional solutions are you currently investigating or looking forward to investigate as strategies to enhance the sustainability of those dairy production systems? Dr. Izabelle Teixeira When I arrived, I was asked to look at two main nutrients, nitrogen, and phosphorus, because that's something important here with all the environmental concerns, and I use different strategies for them. Regarding nitrogen, we are developing a mobile-friendly web-based tool that we can refine the use of mun, so milk urea nitrogen to really understand the response of the animals […] Vicki Brisson (27:49) To wrap up our discussion today, can you share your three take-home messages when thinking of practical solutions to improve the dairy industry’s sustainability? Dr. Izabelle Teixeira I would say the first one is to look at nutrition not as specific boxes like protein or amino acids or energy but in a more interactive way. […] The other take-home message would be to look at sustainability in a holistic way. […] And I think the last one is […] the importance of training because you can formulate the best diet ever if you don’t have the workforce prepared to use that diet for feeding the cows in a proper way, it doesn’t matter.…

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Solutions to Navigate the Current Economy 20:57

2 years20:57

20:57

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:09) So John, in your work in advising agricultural businesses, and perhaps dairies in particular, talk to us about the strain that the current financial stressors of higher interest rates, softening milk prices and continuing high commodity prices cause at the farm level. John Ellsworth I think with inflation that we're fighting, not just in the US but Canada, everywhere, we have just higher-level inflation than we've seen for probably 40 years. And for our younger listeners, they probably never even experienced this before. And so, I was fairly young the last time we had this kind of event with inflation. But costs, the pressure on costs are crazy high and unfortunately, it's being compounded by, I think, out-of-control spending, at least in the US. […] Chris Gwyn (04:57) Talk to me about the practices that you're advising your clients and general producers to put in place to minimize that financial strain and that stress that it's going to cause. John Ellsworth I have really felt in the good times and the bad times, number one, that people need to know their costs. The reality is every operation needs to know what it costs them to produce. If it's dairy, for example, what is your cost to produce 100 pounds of milk? What are the break-even levels? If we measure something, we can understand it and we understand it, we can control it. If we can control it, we can make improvements in that area. […] Chris Gwyn (07:34) Is there anything unique with the current strain or stress that producers need to consider or is it just a matter of if you haven't done it now really is the time to get it done? John Ellsworth I think what's happening is a decrease in revenue on the revenue side, particularly milk specifically and the cost side is happening. I mean, it happens in every downturn, but this has happened a lot faster. […] It's happened at a more rapid pace, which makes it more difficult, more challenging for people, I think. So the speed at which it's happening is pretty daunting I guess is a good word for it. Chris Gwyn (08:46) In the past, you've written and you've spoken a lot about putting in place a business system that will help to manage financial strain and I’m wondering if you could expand upon that point and what it is. John Ellsworth I think it's a good time to use not just financial advisors but all your advisors very closely. […] I think it's time to use your advisors wisely and maintain focus. […] It's important to follow the advice of your advisors, your legal advice, your accountants, financial advisors such as myself, and your nutritionists. I think we have to look for ways to not just cut costs because we never want to cut costs to the point of hurting the performance of your dairy herd, for example. But I think we've got to turn over every stone that's out there, everyone that's available to us. […] Chris Gwyn (14:48) What would you leave with producers and their advisors, some of the key take-home messages key points that you would recommend that they implement or work on today in order to get to the next really positive milk price? John Ellsworth I think you always want to focus on the goal and the goal is to become more profitable, of course, in a difficult time like this. But remember that ignoring the problems doesn't make them go away. And especially on the financial side when you're dealing with bankers […] you got to plan in the good times to overcome times like this. […] So, on the feed side, for example, we try to prepare by having better contracts. That's not always possible, but one of the things I advise people, now, we're seeing feed costs come down. So, should I run out and contract everything? Not necessarily. […] I think it's important to think about laying in tiers. So, if corn is going from $300 a ton to maybe it ends up to 240 or something a ton lay in those tiers. So, if it bounces back up, you've got some locked at the decrease in cost, but you're not trapped with all of it at 275 when it gets to 230. […] I would end with this this too shall come to pass. This is a difficult time we're going through. The bankers know it, the producers know it, and we all understand it. But I suggested to a client recently that they should talk to their vendors, but also talk to their bankers because it's not an unreasonable request in my mind if you have a $400,000 line of credit for feed in a time like this, you may need to increase it to $500,000 or something of that nature. Not an unreasonable amount, even if it's a temporary increase for six months or twelve months, and then go back to the more normal level, I think people overlook that.…

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Importance of Vitamins Stability in Premixes and Minerals 26:12

2 years26:12

26:12

Timestamps & Summary Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 01:34 ) Do we see an increase in interest in vitamin nutrition in cattle over the past years? And if so, what has sparked the resurgence of looking at vitamins again? Dr. Jason Warner When we think about cattle nutrition, I think it's certainly an area that we've seen some increased awareness and interest in the part of the industry over the last four to five years, particularly. And I think when you really take a look at it, that's really primarily due to a couple of different main factors when we think about the increased interest that that's caused. And I would say one of the main factors is that when we think back to four to five years ago, the livestock industry, the animal nutrition industry, experienced a shortage in a supply disruption of vitamins on the market and as a result, there was a pretty substantial price increase. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 04:09 ) I remember that period of time the market was really volatile. It hurt a lot of vitamin suppliers and getting into the product for sure. But when we've changed how we're doing that, what implications could we see due to those changes or anything in the cowherd or even in the feedlot animal? Dr. Jason Warner That's a great question. It kind of depends on how you're looking at the system, whether you're looking at it from a forage-based cow-calf or stalker perspective, or if you're looking at it more from a growing and finishing animal feedlot type of perspective. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 07:01 ) What challenges does it come when we're formulating as well as getting the vitamins to the animal, where can we benefit or what strategies can we help to make sure we're supplying daily adequate needs? Dr. Jason Warner What it all comes back to is understanding how we best properly supplement that animal and deliver vitamins back to that animal. Regardless of whatever dietary situation that we're looking at there. A big challenge that I think the industry has is understanding different sources and vitamin precursors and how those can be supplied to the animal, what the availability is, and what oxidation levels are like with those. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 09:41 ) What type of things are going to be affecting vitamin stability and what were those antagonists that we mentioned? Dr. Jason Warner We can basically have degradation or destruction of those sources over time. The main things that we think about with respect to our fat-soluble vitamins, we think about things like sunlight, and UV radiation, and we know that those can have negative or deleterious effects on the stability of those sources. Heat is another one, and that's a big one. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 13:55 ) When we think about formulating products, are we generally still going to over-formulate to account for some of that loss instead of being right on the nose? Or are we lowering that due to cost objections that we're seeing? Or how are we typically formulating those products today to account for some of this loss that we know that's taken place? Dr. Jason Warner I think what we would really like to do is be able to account for the loss that we have over time and be able to accurately measure it. That would give us a lot more knowledge when it comes to formulation and being able to account for some of those losses. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 16:43 ) Where do we see water and other forage components […] that may get in there and affect nutrition as a whole when it comes to vitamin nutrition? Dr. Jason Warner Water potentially could be something that when we think about water quality, can potentially impact what we can see from a vitamin digestibility and utilization standpoint, particularly, I think about one of the most common challenges that we see with water quality is sulfates or high sulfur content in drinking water for livestock. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 20:16 ) Is there a benefit in your opinion, to protecting some of these vitamins, putting them in a matrix or some form of protected form to kind of guard them through these productive processes to make sure that what we formulate for, what we're paying for, adding it to the product is getting delivered appropriately to the animal? Dr. Jason Warner I think that is an area that could certainly be really well utilized and would have a tremendous amount of benefit just for the industry in general. […]…

RumiNation

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Transition Cow Health and Management 19:36

2 years19:36

19:36

Timestamps & Summary Vicky Brisson ( 01:33 ) Can you share with our audience what are the main diseases you observe and what the economic impacts of these diseases are? Dr. Jessica McArt As a dairy veterinarian, I see all sorts of diseases, and new ones every week, I feel. But the main diseases I see working on farms or with mastitis are early lactation diseases such as hypocalcemia, and hyperketonemia, also known as ketosis. We see a lot of retained placentas. We see cows with metritis, we see lame cows. […] Vicky Brisson ( 04:32 ) Can you expand on the role of a proper nutrition program that supports those fresh cows’ performance? Dr. Jessica McArt I think the important parts are in our dry cows. It really starts there. So, it's very easy sometimes to not worry about those cows. But those are the cows that we're setting up to be successful in early lactation. So, I've really been sold on controlled energy diets in the prepartum period. […] Vicky Brisson ( 05:27 ) There's a lot of possible diseases occurring during this period. […] Can you explain how to best monitor and treat this disease? Dr. Jessica McArt First, I'll explain the idea of calcium dynamics. This is a term we've developed as we look at the calcium concentration in the blood of cows through early lactation. So, all of our dairy cows will experience a reduction in blood calcium after they calve because they begin production of colostrum and a lot of milk. […] And so we can divide cows into basically four types of calcium dynamic groups. […] When we looked at these calcium dynamics, we've seen that what's really important is that cows have increased their blood calcium by four days in milk. And so, the best way to monitor for this currently is by assessing the blood calcium status of cows around that four-day and milk mark. […] Vicky Brisson ( 10:26 ) Can you remind our audience what causes hyperketonemia and beyond that, what impacts it can have on the animal, including health production and even going as far as reproduction? Dr. Jessica McArt Hyperketonemia is a term we use for an excess elevation of ketone bodies in the blood. And that occurs in a lot of our early lactation cows as they go into this period of energy deficit where they cannot eat enough for the amount of energy they're using to make milk. Hyperketonemia itself is not a disease. […] Vicky Brisson ( 12:36 ) What impact do these sampling methods have on our ability to properly predict and address this metabolic condition? Dr. Jessica McArt That's a great question and something that I think a lot of producers work with every day. So, depending on whether you're measuring urine, milk, or blood, you may be measuring different ketone bodies. […] And like any test, some tests are better than others. […] The cool thing in milk is that while there's some daily variation, it's way more consistent than with blood. And so, some of these milk measuring techniques that people are starting to develop may help us get a better sense of the cow's actual energy deficit. […] Vicky Brisson ( 17:16 ) Can you share your three take-home messages for nutritionists, veterinarians, and producers when thinking of practical transition cow management, especially when it comes to preventing and monitoring hypocalcemia and hyperketonemia? Dr. Jessica McArt I think the most important part first is having a good management team to help and talk over some of these things. […] My second is to have routine monitoring. […] And the third one is to implement management changes or prevention strategies that are evidence-based and that you can assess. […]…

RumiNation

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How Mathematical Models Can Help Animal Nutrition 20:44

2 years20:44

20:44

Timestamps & Summary Vicky Brisson ( 02:20 ) In the last decade, modeling is a research method that's growing in popularity. However, mathematical modeling and livestock nutrition has been around for much longer than that. Can you explain models and what limitations they have? Dr. Jennifer Ellis A model can be anything from a single equation to a set of dozens or even thousands of equations, which represent, in our case, the behavior of a biological system. So, scientists will use models to help represent bits of the real world and to either aid our understanding of complex systems or as a tool to help make predictions. […] Vicky Brisson ( 06:03 ) How do models help us turn data into knowledge that actually helps our industry innovate in areas? Dr. Jennifer Ellis If you ever get the chance, you should really take a look at the Ackoff or DIKW Pyramid which essentially describes the steps required to transform data into information and then information into knowledge and then knowledge into wisdom. It's really fascinating when you start looking at that. But essentially, as you point out, data on its own is really just a series of signals. And with just data, we know nothing, right? Data only starts to become useful, or it becomes information when we provide context to that data. […] So essentially, moving us up this pyramid is the task of research, and it's the task of models to translate data into actionable wisdom. […] Vicky Brisson ( 09:04 ) Your lab is unique in the sense that you use models to expand nutritional research for many different species, and that includes dairy cattle, veal, turkey, and horses. Can you share with us how that came to be and how your modeling approach is shaped by what we like to call cross-pollination of many different fields of study? Dr. Jennifer Ellis I started as a ruminant nutrition and metabolism modeler in my master's and Ph.D. And from there, I think, rather organically, I began to get pulled into projects for other species. And in fact, when I went into industry, I was filling the role as a poultry modeler. So, I think throughout my career, modeling has been a skill set. And it's a skill that can be applied to a myriad of problems, topics, and species. And I think across species, animals have more in common than you might think initially. And I think we too often stay in our species silos. […] Vicky Brisson ( 11:50 ) How can models support on-farm decision-making? Dr. Jennifer Ellis At the moment, many models are used and applied by what I call expert users within various companies. And those companies will support producers in making on-farm decisions. So, you think of your nutritionist, for example. And those models are used to forecast different scenarios and how suggested changes may impact outcomes such as performance, sustainability, andeconomics. They can really be used to examine, “what if” scenarios, what if we did this change? What if we made this adjustment? What kind of outcome are we expecting to see now? […] Vicky Brisson ( 13:38 ) Based on your experience, why do you believe that modeling is a skill that students should invest time into exploring and why has that become such a big part of what you do at the University of Guelph? Dr. Jennifer Ellis I think as the agriculture sector becomes more and more digitized, with more and more data being collected, it will need more and more graduates entering the workforce with the ability to analyze and interpret and service these digital tools or models. So, for me, my biggest piece of advice for students now is to actually learn a coding language. Become computationally competent. The challenge the industry has at the moment is that people with that combined skill set, a knowledge of animal production systems plus digital competency, is low. […] I think that that's a skill that will become more and more in demand. […] Vicky Brisson ( 15:21 ) How would you define the future of modeling? What will be the main challenges in this area of research and innovation? Dr. Jennifer Ellis I think the future of modeling is really interesting. And I think what we'll see is the merging of traditional biological understanding based modeling, which we commonly refer to as mechanistic modeling, blending that with emerging data streams and the accompanying machine learning algorithms that are best suited to analyze them. […] For all of these new modeling methodologies, I think the biggest challenge will be getting robust and variable enough data to develop them so that they become good models to make forecasts from. […] Vicky Brisson ( 18:54 ) Can you share three take-home messages for nutritionists, veterinarians, and producers when they consider applications of nutritional models on farms? Dr. Jennifer Ellis Number one: Get more from your data by leaning into modeling and data analytics. […] The second one: Develop those computational skill sets in yourself and promote it in your employees, if not already. […] And the third one is to communicate and get engaged with developers. […]…

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Synthèse ruminale des vitamines B chez les vaches laitières 20:48

3 years20:48

20:48

Timestamps & sommaire 1:45 Est-ce que tu peux nous parler du parcours qui t’a menée à étudier la nutrition animale à l’Université de Guelph ? Vicki Brisson J’ai grandi sur une ferme laitière familiale dans l'Est ontarien. Mes 2 parents viennent de fermes laitières eux aussi. Je me suis toujours intéressée à la santé animale. Depuis la 8e année où l'équivalent au Québec (secondaire 2) jusqu'au début de ma maîtrise, j'ai passé beaucoup de temps sur la route avec des vétérinaires de gros animaux. Ça m'a permis non seulement d'approfondir ma connaissance de la santé animale et des principaux défis auxquels font face les producteurs, mais aussi d'apprendre à établir de bonnes relations avec les partenaires de l'industrie laitière et de collaborer avec ces partenaires-là qui composent l'équipe de soutien des agriculteurs. J’ai décidé ensuite d'aller à l'université de Guelph pour obtenir mon baccalauréat en sciences animales. J’y ai rapidement découvert un intérêt particulier pour le rôle que la nutrition peut jouer dans la santé des animaux. J’ai commencé ma maîtrise à l'université de Guelph en septembre 2019, avec la Dre Jennifer Ellis. Quand j'ai commencé, je savais que c'était un gros défi devant, mais ça m'inspirait, ça m'énergisait. Je n’avais aucune idée ou ça m'apporterait, mais je découvrais un domaine de la nutrition laitière que je n'avais pas beaucoup exploré avant. 00:04:16 Vicki Brisson Ouais donc je vais, j'ai, je me suis plongée dans, c'était la modélisation mathématique, puis l'importance des vitamines B dans les archives laitières. Je me suis plongée dans, c'était la modélisation mathématique, puis l'importance des vitamines B dans les vaches laitières. 9:58 Dans la recherche, vous et d’autres chercheurs avez trouvé des éléments moteurs pour la synthèse de la famille des vitamines B dans le rumen. Comment est-ce que cette synthèse peut satisfaire les besoins ou non les besoins des vaches laitières, des veaux, des génisses et des bovins ? Vicki Brisson Avant de répondre à votre question, je vais rappeler qu’il nous reste encore beaucoup de choses à étudier en ce qui concerne la synthèse ruminale des vitamines. Je ne m'avancerai donc pas à faire des hypothèses qui n’ont pas encore été confirmées. Par contre, au cours des dernières années, une méta-analyse de 50 troupeaux a vraiment démontré une réponse positive à la production laitière quand on supplémente des vitamines B protégées. Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire ça ? En gros ça nous indique que si tous les microbes du rumen étaient déjà capables de synthétiser les vitamines B, quand on le supplémenterait, il n'y aurait pas de réponse. Mais là, la quantité qu’ils produisent n’est pas nécessairement suffisante pour répondre aux besoins de la vache parce qu'on observe une réponse. 18:25 En terminant, pouvez-vous partager avec notre auditoire les points clés de votre étude ? Vicki Brisson En gros, on a encore beaucoup de questions, beaucoup de recherches à faire. Par contre, on a quelques certitudes. Entre autres, les besoins métaboliques qui ont augmenté à travers les années et ça, ça vient vraiment remplir le besoin des vitamines B. Les vitamines B, ce sont des coenzymes essentiels. Ils contribuent à répondre à ces besoins métaboliques. On étudie encore les facteurs qui affectent la synthèse apparente ruminale, puis la part des vitamines B qui en résulte. Mais on sait aussi, selon nos modèles empiriques, que la consommation volontaire de matière sèche, l'amidon et la NDF digestible sont probablement des facteurs clés qui affectent la synthèse apparente ruminale des vaches. Quand on supplémente des vitamines B protégées, ça représente une augmentation directe à l'apport de la vache. Ces résultats-là ont été largement démontrés. Puis, ils suggèrent que les vaches ont en effet besoin des vitamines B et que ces besoins ne peuvent pas être satisfaits uniquement par la synthèse ruminale.…

RumiNation

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Exploring B Vitamin Supply In Dairy Cows 19:13

3 years19:13

19:13

Timestamps & Summary 1:36 Tell the audience about your journey and the research you have been doing for your master’s degree. Vicki Brisson I grew up on a dairy farm, and I really had an interest in Animal Health. So starting in grade 8, until the beginning of my master's, I spent lots of time shadowing large animal vets; they were probably tired of me by the end. It allowed me not only to deepen my knowledge of animal health, but also to learn how to establish meaningful relationships and collaborate with the key players that make up a farmer's support team. I think I found the right path when I discovered a special interest for the role of nutrition and how it can have an impact on animal health. In the summer of 2019, I started my master's degree with Dr. Jenn Ellis at the University of Guelph. Since starting my master's, I have done a deep dive into both mathematical modeling and the importance of B vitamins for dairy cows. Since then, my curiosity about these topics just keeps growing, it really feels like we have only touched the tip of the iceberg. 9:40 Is there some common drivers regarding B vitamin synthesis that you can share with the audience? Vicki Brisson There is still a lot that is being studied when it comes to the ruminal synthesis of B vitamins. Over the last few years, many studies, including a Meta analysis, has demonstrated that positive milk production response to rumen protected B vitamin supplements. There is something happening here in the rumen. There are factors that affect how much B vitamin is reaching the cows’ duodenum. It tells us that while we know that the rumen's microbes can synthesize B vitamins, which responds to supplementation really indicates that the rumen microbes probably do not produce enough B vitamins to support the cow's needs. Your question was about those key drivers that are constant throughout or that can link all the B vitamins together? My first answer to that would be dry matter intake. Because we know that dry matter intake affects the rumen microbial population. 16:59 What would be some of the key points that you would really remind people to focus on? Vicki Brisson I think one of the biggest things, and if you talk to Dre Christiane Girard, she will mention this over and over again, we know that B vitamins are essential coenzymes to support the cow's metabolic needs. We know that whether it be cows that stress during transition, during heat stress or at their peak lactation, we need to support those metabolic needs. We also know that dry matter intake, digestible search, and digestible NDF are likely key drivers. However, the positive production, reproduction, and health responses to supplementation, which represents just a direct increase supply, have been widely demonstrated. They suggest that the cow's needs for B vitamins simply cannot be met only through ruminal synthesis. So those cows need a bit of help. They need vitamin supplementation.…

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Impacts of Stress and Strain on the Reproductive Health of Dairy Cows 24:35

3 years24:35

24:35

Timestamps & Summary 1:41 Could you give us an overview of the biological impact of stress on the dairy cow reproduction? Dr. Matt Lucy I think stress is a big factor in our ability to get cows pregnant. Traditionally, we always thought about the effects of stress on ovarian function. Whether or not the cow had started cycling and come into heat. But more recently, what we work on now is trying to understand specifically how stress affects uterine function and the preparation of the uterus for that pregnancy. 3:12 I'd love you to expand a bit more on that in relation to reproductive outcomes. Dr. Matt Lucy It is important to understand the difference between stress and strain. Are dairy cows stressed? Yes, they are. But it's really the strain that matters. The strain is how that cow responds to that stress. So let me expand upon what that means. If we think about different stressors, a stress is applied to all cows. For example, we have a lot of cows in our herd that make 100 pounds of milk per day. That is the stress. The stress is the production. However, the strain is how she responds to that. And we want our cows to have very little strain. 4:52 There are some in-depth biology and physiology going on behind this, right? Dr. Matt Lucy When we talk about the production of milk, there is just tremendous metabolic shift that occurs in response to it. It just comes down to how cows respond. There is a debate right now among nutritionists involving questions like: Do postpartum BHB really matter? Is it important? Do we need to measure it? Do we need to be concerned? BHB can be a toxic molecule for cows, obviously. We are trying to understand how cows respond to these metabolic changes and figuring out which cows are going to stay healthy in the face of a similar sort of challenge. 6:55 What do you think producers and nutritionists can do to manage those stressors? Dr. Matt Lucy I will start with genetics. We want cows that can handle these stresses. That has been a big change mentally because for many years, we only selected cows for milk production. Now we have probably too many traits. You want the best possible cows on your farm. And genetics really make a difference. But, I would also remind people that the genomics revolution that we're in now is a very young revolution, so we need to keep our eyes on the ball and make sure we got the cows going in the right direction genetically. Once we have the right kind of cows, then, as a producer, you have to manage the remaining strain. You cannot fix everything with genetics, you have to be a top producer and manage the remaining strains like heatstroke, nutrition, bunk space and so forth. Third thing I would say is when we talk about reproduction, people often try to manage itn during the breeding period. But, reproduction doesn't start during the breeding period. Reproduction starts in the transition cow pens. The reason that transition cow pen is so important is because if they get a reproductive disease, or if they get sick, there is always going to be a long-term drag on that cow. 14:49 One topic I wanted to address is glucose. Could you take a couple of minutes just to highlight how that affects the reproductive fitness of a cow? Dr. Matt Lucy Glucose is a really tough molecule for ruminants, because they take on all these nutrients, and they metabolize them. They break them down into smaller molecules. Then they have to resynthesize that glucose in the liver. And of course, that glucose is made for its use for lactose synthesis. Glucose is the master regulator of all the metabolism of a cow. 21:50 If we could just summarize, what would be the take-home points to veterinarians, nutritionists and dairy producers around the world when it comes to stressors and strain? Dr. Matt Lucy I would say, number one, is getting your genetics right. There is no substitute for good cows. But you also need good management and there's no magic, there's no easy way out of good management. The transition cow pen has to be right. And the other thing I failed to mention; the parlors got to be right. The fact that if a cow gets mastitis, from three weeks before to three weeks after breeding, she has lower fertility.…

RumiNation

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Precision Technology to Monitor and Predict Animal Health 11:58

3 years11:58

11:58

Timestamps & Summary 1:24 Dr. King, we would be interested to know what your research interests and projects are. Dr. King I have been working with different provinces, getting producer feedback on how I can assess what stresses them out. What is influencing their mental health and their physical health? How is this related to farm management? And I also want to look at connections to cow health, because everything on the farm is connected. 2:54 Mental health is so important in our world today. And not effectively investigated nor dealt with at the farm level. Therefore, we need to make that change. Dr. King I think it is up-and-coming. People are more willing to talk about it. I am hoping not just to look within dairy farming families, but we are going to do a study with beef producers, and hopefully go out to some other commodity groups as well. 3:25 Regarding the health and well-being of cows, a lot of your research has been looking at the impact of stressors on production, whether it is lameness, overcrowding or feed delivery. What have you discovered when you have looked at these stressors or how they can be identified using position technology? Dr. King Most of my studies were on farms with robotic milking systems. That does not mean that those are just specific to robotic herds. Many of the factors that go into making cows lame whether you have a robot or not, are the same. I can tell you that a lame cow will produce less milk. Even cows with a moderate limp will have reduced milk production by 1.6 kilos per day. Minimal limps are going to impact lameness cow by cow. Farms that had a greater percentage of lame cows, at a herd level, whether it is measured per cow or per robot, were also producing less milk. 8:20 You said it is important to look at behaviour and not just production to single out sick cows. Does that data need to be strengthened along with some activity monitoring, combined with the rumination or some of these systems coming up with their own algorithms that have a scoring assessment could tell you which cow is healthy? Dr. King There are different activity monitors out there, so I cannot say for sure. The ones on the legs, that are more of a pedometer, might be better for looking at health status and heat status. Whereas I think the neck collars, they rather show certain illnesses, but they do not really show lameness. However, they certainly do work for heats. 10:00 Maybe some take-home messages for the audience of what you know of the negative impacts of stressors and how precision technology can help you monitor and pick them up. Dr. King My first take-home message would be whether it is lameness, ketosis, or maybe mastitis, just because it is not severe, does not mean it does not have negative effects on cows. So, whether it is subclinical ketosis or moderate lameness, it is definitely worth doing something about it. My second take-home message is I think it is good to look at multiple sources of information. So, have rumination or activity information and look how it relates to production. Have a holistic picture of the barn to see how cows are doing in order to make the appropriate decisions.…

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Impacts of Stressors on Physiology and Health of Dairy Cows 20:34

3 years20:34

20:34

Timestamps & Summary 2:04 What are some of the common stressors that cows may experience daily on a dairy farm? Dr. Devries The one that gets the most attention is probably heat stress. But there are other stressors that cows may face regardless of environmental conditions throughout the year. The biggest one that we know is social stress. And that social stress can come from a variety of places. Other kinds of stressors: Nutritional stressors. They are not only a stress on the cow physiologically, like a change in diet. Just from a perception standpoint, the cow may also view a big change in diet as a stressor. Finally, just physiological events, like calving itself could be viewed as a stressor. 5:18 Could you expand a bit on how these stressors do affect the cow's physiology? Dr. Devries For example, a stress that causes cortisol spike in cows may lead to a block or reduction in oxytocin release, which may limit milk let down in cows. Probably one of the clearest examples of that is bad handling of cows in the milking parlor. We also know that many of these stressors are more chronic type stressors. If a cow has chronic stress, a physiological response to that would be an increased blood cortisol level, which can have negative impacts on the immune system and even reproductive hormones, leading to reproductive problems. 9:32 How do you successfully measure stress at the farm level? Dr. Devries Our biggest challenge is identifying through research known stressors and being able to walk on a farm and identify those stressors. From a prevention standpoint, or at least an identification standpoint, our easiest thing to do is probably just identify those known stressors and take care of those. We can also look to what the animals are doing. To measure the behavior of the animals, we have lots of opportunities, different activity monitors, behavioral monitors, look for changes in activity, lying behavior, rumination, chewing, all those things could be indicative of stress. But the challenge there is that some of those are nonspecific. 12:18 How do we evaluate that at the farm level? What could be the impact of a single stress versus multiple stresses and do cows hit tipping points of stresses? Dr. Devries That's a really good question and I'm not sure I have the exact answer. What we do in science is we isolate individual factors. In an ideal study, we control everything except the one factor that we're really interested in studying so that we can isolate the effect of that. However, when we go out into the fields of commercial systems, we will often see examples of some of those stressors, but not necessarily see negative effects of those on some operations. Then, we'll go to another operation where it's obvious there is some negative effect going on. So, the question becomes: is there an additive effect, or a compounding effect of some of these individual things? And I would say that that's likely the case. But we just don't have really good data today to support that. 18:41 What are the take-home points related to stressors and dairy cows you would like to leave to our audience? Dr. Devries Well, again, we know that stressors can negatively affect cows. And I think our challenge is identifying those that probably have the biggest impact on our farms and identifying how those might interact and compound. We can do that already, I think to some degree, but we would like data to be able to support some of these things. In the meantime, recognizing that stressors are there and looking at whether there are opportunities to minimize those on our farms and find solutions to those is where we've got to be moving within the industry.…

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Top Strategies for the Most Profitable Dairies 20:25

3 years20:25

20:25

Timestamps & Summary 1:42 John, in your experience, what are the top three characteristics of the most profitable dairy farms? Dr. John Ellsworth I would say number one, high milk production. Number two, I say a successful strategy is limiting the ratio of heifers to cows to 80% or 85%. And number three, solid cost control. When we talked about the high milk production, it doesn't matter how much you make. It's how much you keep. 4:33 Can you expand a bit more on the link between profitability and herd-level production? Dr. John Ellsworth Let me over simplify this: If we are at 65 or 70 pounds on Holsteins. We just don't generate enough revenue to cover the costs. And I'm not talking about the period in the last two years of high commodities and high feed costs. I'm talking about in general. If we don't have the cash inflow, we're not going to cover the cash outflow. And that is never a good thing. 10:11 I was hoping to talk about was the concept of measuring things so that you can control them. Could tell us more on that concept so that it continues to gain traction it deserves? Dr. John Ellsworth The whole concept really holds for almost anything in life you want to measure, or that you can measure. It basically says, if you can measure it, you can understand it. And then some. Think about that. If we can understand it, then we can control it. And ultimately, if we have control over it, we can improve it. So, if you can control something, you're able to make it better. 16:00 What were some of the other key points that you'd like to leave with the audience today about profitability and milk production on their dairies? Dr. John Ellsworth I think if you really step back and look at any operation, I think just about everything's going to go up. So assuming the milk prices stay up, the profits are going to be based on how well you do control these costs. You know, it's been a year since we've seen prices as high, it may be a good time to think about some price protection. Because the fees for put options and things like that on no crisis should be lower than they have been in the recent past. And I think there's some volatility in the market. But the cost of those put options is really based on how far out they go, what price level you set, and the volatility of the market. I think it's going to be a great year for dairymen. But it's going to be a better year for those that really watch their costs as best as they can. And you mentioned earlier, and I meant to hit on this again, I think the nutritionists, for example, and the veterinarians, they don't only offer what they did 20 years ago in terms of services. They give another set of eyes on the operation. They start looking at cow comfort freestall maintenance, etc. But I think it's going to be a very positive year. And I wish the best of everything to our listeners today and hope they have a successful year.…

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Financial Advice for Optimal Farm Management 12:54

3 years12:54

12:54

Timestamps & Summary 1:30 Tell us more on your journey in creating success strategies. How did you get there, and what you found along the way? Dr. John Ellsworth I’m happy to share. Success Strategies is actually based upon a business plan that I wrote with a team of fellow students at Duke University when I was working on my MBA, and in which I finished in 1989. Great program. I had a really good team of people around me that worked with me on developing this entrepreneurship business plan. It took me 10 years to get it off the ground. 10 years of fantastic learning in corporate America. And what it really helped to do was position me to understand both sides of the equation: The borrower, the dairyman, whom I was very familiar with from prior career roles, but also from a lender's perspective. 4:43 When it comes to financial management, what are some of the challenges that you see when working with your clients that are fairly common? Dr. John Ellsworth One of the biggest is literally understanding your cost of production. Not just as an accounting function, but rather being able to anticipate future trends. It's thinking about things before they happen, because the reality is things change, and we need to move forward. Along that same line, knowing your breakeven levels for milk production, feed costs and milk price are crucial. Setting objectives for your business driving forward with a plan that we are pretty certain will work. Working closely with your banker to get the intended objectives and keeping them in the loop, keeping them informed. 7:24 You wrote a paper about the top 10 Things Every business person should know. And one of those points was knowing what your banker is thinking. Could you tell us more? Dr. John Ellsworth It's required that we keep the banker in the loop at all times, about three items in particular: First of all, what you're planning to do, how you're going to do it, the steps you must take, the plans you have, and when you hope to complete it. Second, you need to come to grips with your banker. What you need in terms of financing, and does it make sense for your operation. What are the costs versus the potential benefits of this change? 9:41 What would be the key take home messages about working with a bank relationship and enhancing that, that you'd like to leave with our audience today? Dr. John Ellsworth Number one: As a former bank manager wisely advised me, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Number two: It really doesn't matter where you start, what matters is where you finish. Number three: I would say use your advisors wisely.…

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Optimizing Dry Matter Intake 16:02

3 years16:02

16:02

Timestamps & Summary 01:44 Has the interest in dry matter intake changed over the years, especially in the light of discussions about feed efficiency? Dr. Mike Hutjens The goal on dairy farms is to have healthy cows. Dry matter plays an important role in animal health and immunity. We have to get cows pregnant in a timely manner, because that determines a peak milk production. We are a little late in the dairy industry in efficiency of dry matter while it is a very big topic with swine and poultry. Things have changed over time. We used to call a maximizing dry matter; now we're optimizing dry matter. There are a lot of interesting new twists on dry matter intake and feed efficiency. 03:39 What do you see as the key drivers to dry matter intake? Dr. Mike Hutjens I like to say there are four of them: We call it a fill factor. Cows can only eat so much feed in 24 hours. If we have too much straw, or too much low quality forage, the cow can't eat what she really has to have. The second one, we call metabolic feedback. It simply means that something tells a cow to stop eating. She senses it in her brain. That's why we need to bounce rations. The third one will be non-nutrient factors. It means something in her environment stops her eating. Heat stress, cold temperature or lameness as well as something as simple as an empty bunk are non-nutrient factors. And finally, transition management. How we take cows through the transition program. If we don't have a good fresh cow program, a key feed additives, and B vitamins, that can affect dry matter intake as well. 05:21 Can you share some great examples of farms where they were just doing a great job in measuring and monitoring dry matter intake to optimize that feed efficiency or production? Dr. Mike Hutjens I'll give you two examples: The first one actually is here in the Midwest, they have 3600 dairy cows. And he basically knows exactly how much dry matter goes to each pen that's on the computer of his truck. In the milking parlor, they got a flow meter. So every day, he knows exactly how many pounds of milk comes out of that pen of 400 cows. Every day, he gets a feed efficiency calculation on each pen. Even a better example was in Saudi Arabia. There was an 8000-cow dairy herd, and they feed them 24/7. As each group of cows is being milked, the “the bump reader” would look at each pen and evaluate the quantity of dry matter left, and adjust the next quantity of dry matter to be dropped in the pen. If there was an excess of feed, he would feed less the next time. 08:57 Could you expand on the cost of being inaccurate on our dry matter readings and our number of cows per pen? Dr. Mike Hutjens Feed efficiency is looking at the kilos of dry matter consumed divided by the kilos of milk produced. It's on a per cow basis. So if I have extra cows, we're going to divide that with a wrong number; therefore, that number will be incorrect so our feed efficiency number will shift as well. The other one is just moisture. It rains. It snows. Silage gets wetter and drier. A byproduct feeds get wetter or drier. There is some work out of Wisconsin, in which they actually track that after significant rainfalls, because they didn't adjust the amount of wet feed being added in the silage, cows went down in milk production for three or four days. And in some cases, with cows in mid-late lactation, they don't come back. 13:39 Give us some take-home messages of the sorts of things that you would recommend a dairy producer today to get ahead on dry matter intake and how it impacts feed efficiency? Dr. Mike Hutjens My first take-home message is: You got to measure it. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Number two, feed efficiency has an economic impact. If I can change my feed efficiency to 1.4 to 1.5. That feed efficiency is going to make me about an extra 24 cents profitability in the program.…

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Amino Acids, Proteins and Milk Production 18:58

3 years18:58

18:58

Timestamps & Summary 2:00 Dr. Lapierre, could you expand perhaps for the audience on how you arrived at looking at nitrogen and amino acid requirements of dairy cows? Dr. Hélène Lapierre Well, it has been a long road. And I did my bachelor’s degree at Laval University. Then I went for a master but I was still not decided. I went to work in finance for a while and got attracted back into research. I did a PhD at Sherbrooke University in animal physiology, and then get the opportunity to work with Henry Tyrrell and Chris Reynolds at the USDA in Beltsville, Maryland. Then I got a job at the Research and Development Center. 04:35 You said 30 years in amino acid research has come a long way. And as you mentioned, learning techniques and discovering the techniques were probably a key part of that. Dr. Hélène Lapierre Absolutely. That was a combination of different techniques. The purpose was to look at what was going on within the animal. So we had different techniques, we could use nutrients that were labeled with stable isotopes, which are different from the radioactive isotopes. That allowed us to follow the fate of this amino acid that the cow was eating. Was it going towards milk? Was it going to be oxidized? Was it going to the muscle? What was the trade between the different amino acids in terms of nitrogen shifts? So, yeah, I can talk for the whole afternoon if you want! 05:52 If a nutritionist asks you, what are the key points that they need to think about? What would you relay to them from that? Dr. Hélène Lapierre We really wanted to start with what we thought were the biological concepts that should be underlying all those estimations. So the supply of protein was being revised. To be more specific, the protein that the cows are digesting, more than half are from microbial protein, the other 35% will be from the dietary proteins that are not degraded within the rumen. And about 15% of what's arriving at the entrance of the small intestine will be just what we call endogenous proteins, that are being secreted by the animal within the gut lumen. There was a computer vision of each of those different factions. So microbial crude protein, that was defined based on the nutrient that we digested across the whole tract in the previous system, which is not truly biology because it's occurring within the rumen. We don't want to look at what's occurring across the whole track. So now it's really focused on how much starch is being degraded into the rumen, how much NDF and nitrogen is degraded. 10:18 How well these models are predicting the needs of high producing cows that we see more and more abundantly in the industry? Are we predicting those requirements well? And is there anything different that the new model does to adjust for that? Dr. Hélène Lapierre Well, the prediction of nicotine yield is totally different from what it has been. And in addition, when we develop those models, actually, we do use published values in the literature. But these are cows that have been there before, they are not cows that we want to feed now in the future. So to adjust for that, what we did is that we included what we call the rolling herd average, which is basically the average meal protein yield for a 305 day of production. So we have to input that number into the model. And that changes, just through maths, the different coefficients predicting meal protein yield, so that way, it's being taking into account the fact that the model has been built with cows that have been there, but we focus on the cows that we want to feed in the future. So this is quite a new approach for this model. 11:57 Could you give us an update on your thoughts with that particular amino acid? Dr. Hélène Lapierre We began to be interested in that amino acid maybe 15 years ago. And when we looked at the literature, at that time, we could find a requirement, that was as a proportion of metalloprotein. But this number varied a lot among the different studies that had been conducted, and we wondered why. So then we conducted other works with cows that were fed with corn silage. And we found the consumers ask for animal production that does have a lower footprint on the environment, they really want to see the producers and nutritionists to decrease the pollution that we do have with animal production, including the dairy sector. And actually, what we realized is that, when you want to decrease the protein concentration of a diet, what happens is that the proportion of what is coming from the microbial protein is increasing. About 50% of the protein digested by the cows are of microbial origin. But if you want to decrease the crude protein that you feed the animal, then this proportion might increase to 60–65%. Although we have learned in our classes that microbial protein has a very good profile of amino acid, if you really look at the numbers, histidine in the microbial protein is lower than in the feed ingredients. So when you decrease the total amount of protein that you feed, you increase the proportion of microbial, so you decrease the quantity of histidine at the higher rate, then you decrease what is being fed for the other amino acid. […] 16:04 What would be your take-home recommendations related to amino acid balancing? Dr. Hélène Lapierre I would say to really balance their ration for amino acid. It has been working for poultry, it has been working for pigs, there is no reason why it wouldn't be working for the ruminants. Obviously, the challenge is larger because we need to determine what's being supplied through the microbes to what's not being degraded within the rumen. But I think we have made really huge progress over the last two decades to develop rumen submodels. So really, to focus and forget a little bit about protein metabolizable protein, and look for essential amino acids. And please do not balance diet for crude protein. It is like so outdated.…

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Les acides aminés et les protéines dans la production laitière. 21:59

3 years21:59

21:59

Sections et résumés 00:02:10 À quel moment votre intérêt pour ce sujet a-t-il commencé ? Dre Hélène Lapierre C’est quand même une longue histoire qui a commencé quand j'ai fait mon baccalauréat à l'Université Laval en sciences animales. Ensuite, j'ai trouvé un emploi qui touchait indirectement la recherche, puis ça m'a vraiment donné la piqûre et j'ai poursuivi avec une maîtrise à l'Université Laval, en nutrition aussi. Plus tard, j'ai eu une opportunité de retourner à la recherche, l'attraction était trop forte. J'avais trop aimé ça. C'est quand même un travail qui est fascinant et qui n’est vraiment pas ennuyeux. J'ai fait aussi un doctorat à l'Université de Sherbrooke en physiologie animale, puis j'ai poursuivi avec un postdoctorat au USDA de Beltsville au Maryland avec les docteurs Tyrrell et Reynolds. C'est là que j'ai commencé à apprendre de nouvelles techniques, pas seulement pour alimenter la vache et regarder la production de lait, mais pour trouver des façons de suivre le métabolisme, le destin des nutriments. Donc, si je donne une protéine ou un acide aminé à la vache, qu'est-ce qui arrive entre l'ingestion puis la glande mammaire ? On a développé des outils, pour suivre le destin des différents nutriments : acides aminés, glucose. Pour être capable de comprendre ce qui se passe parce que c'est vraiment la meilleure façon d'avancer quand on réussit à comprendre mécaniquement ce qui se passe. […] 10:50 Est-ce que les modèles qu'on utilise aujourd'hui proposent des choses en lien avec les besoins en acide aminé d'une vache ? Dre Hélène Lapierre Il y a une toute nouvelle équation pour prédire la protéine du lait que l’on s’attend à avoir avec une ration. Et puis, ce qui est vraiment nouveau dans le présent NASEM, c'est que bon, on est d'accord que quand on développe des modèles, il faut les développer à partir de données qu'on a puis évidemment c'est les données d'articles qui sont publiés, donc c'est des choses qui sont déjà arrivées. Mais quand on développe un modèle, on veut le développer pour les vaches qu'on va nourrir aujourd'hui et les vaches qu'on va nourrir demain donc, dans le nouveau NASEM, il y a l'inclusion d'un facteur qui est la moyenne mobile du troupeau, qui représente la quantité moyenne de protéines par vache fabriquée en sur une base de 305 jours. Donc ça permet d'ajuster les facteurs de prédiction en fonction de la moyenne à laquelle on s'attend. 00:13:48 Et au sujet de l’histidine, est-ce qu’il y a des périodes de stress ou de lactation où l’histidine devient plus importante qu'à la normale ? Dre Hélène Lapierre C'est vraiment une situation particulière. Quand on a commencé à travailler là-dessus, il y a 15 ou 20 ans déjà, le dogme était par rapport à des travaux qui avaient été faits en Scandinavie que la lysine était un acide aminé limitant, avec des rations qui étaient à base de graminées, puis c'est resté longtemps comme ça. Mais après ça, on a fait des travaux avec des collègues aux États-Unis et on a démontré que ce n'est pas le fait que la ration soit à la base de graminées, c'est plutôt que dans les rations qui étaient utilisées à base de graminées en Europe, quand les travaux avaient été faits, c'était des rations qui étaient très faibles en protéines. On sait que maintenant les consommateurs exigent de plus en plus que les producteurs, les nutritionnistes, que le secteur laitier en général fasse un effort pour diminuer l'impact du secteur laitier sur l'environnement. Puis une façon vraiment directe et facile de faire ça est de diminuer la quantité totale de protéines qu'on donne à la vache. […] Si on diminue la quantité de protéines qu'on veut valoriser, la proportion de protéines microbiennes va monter à 60, 65 et même 70 %. On a toujours appris dans nos cours que c'était une protéine qui avait un très bon profil en acides aminés, mais si on regarde de plus près là on voit que le pourcentage d’histidine dans la protéine microbienne est assez faible comparativement aux ingrédients alimentaires. Donc, si on augmente la proportion de protéines microbiennes, on diminue l'histidine plus rapidement qu'on diminue les autres de ces aminés et à ce moment-là on peut se retrouver à un point ou l’histidine devient un acide aminé limitant. 00:19:19 Et finalement, quelques points clés que tu donnerais aux nutritionnistes ou aux fermiers qui se questionnent sur les besoins en azote, en protéines et en acides aminés pour les vaches : Dre Hélène Lapierre Je pense que le premier point c'est que tranquillement on s'en va pour équilibrer les rations sur une base d'acides aminés plutôt que sur une base de protéines métabolisable surtout pas de la protéine brute. Ça fonctionne chez les volailles, ça fonctionne chez les porcs, il n’y a pas de raison que ça ne fonctionne pas chez les ruminants, surtout qu'on a développé quand même au cours des 2 dernières décennies, beaucoup de sous modèles du rumen pour bien prédire quel est l’apport. On a travaillé fort pour prédire quels étaient les besoins et on est de plus en plus capables de jumeler les 2. Je pense que dans cette direction-là qu'il faut aller. Pour répondre aux besoins des consommateurs, on vise à diminuer le pourcentage de protéines brutes des rations, ce qui est excellent pour le producteur parce que ça diminuerait les coûts de production, ça diminue en même temps la pollution azotée. Mais si on fait ça, il faut faire attention à certains acides aminés, surtout l’histidine, qui est vraiment à vérifier ?…

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B Vitamins in Ruminants: Hypotheses, Research & Impacts - Dr. Girard 16:31

3 years16:31

16:31

Timestamps & Summary 01:33:00 – Why did you start researching B vitamins, a nutrient that was supposedly useless for the cow? And how did your original hypothesis change over the years? Dr. Girard started to think about B vitamins when she had to prepare a seminar and a review of literature during her PhD. Pregnant at the time and having to take folic acid supplement herself, she decided to conduct her review on folic acid supplement in mammals. She was surprised that there was really nothing about ruminants, especially in dairy cows. When she started to work at Agriculture and Agri Food Canada, she first explored dairy calves because it was more acceptable to look at their requirements. They indeed were pre-ruminants just starting to have a functional rumen. But her main interest was dairy cows, since they are pregnant and lactating for much of their life. Her hypothesis was that if the supply of B vitamins is lower than the needs of the animal, giving a supplement will improve the performance, and the metabolic indicators. Dr. Girard also explains that her and her team discovered that the period with the largest effect was during the transition and early lactation periods. There is no clear mark as to when exactly, but the largest effect was during the first 100 days of lactation. Also, they discovered that folic acid and B12 vitamins are working together and can’t be separated. Dr. Girard explains why. 9:27:00 – What sorts of effects have you seen at the cow level? Dr. Girard explains that they saw an increase in milk production and milk component yield. Also, the cows were doing so while consuming the same amount of food, and while losing less body weight. Their metabolism was more efficient. 11:58:00 – You’ve been working on models to predict the exact B vitamin need of the cow. Are we missing out by waiting for models? The response to the vitamin supplement is currently different among farms and experiments. So right now, we can’t predict the amount available for the dairy cow, and it would be a lot more efficient if we could. That is why Dr. Girard says we need an equation to predict when the supply is likely to be lower than the demand, and in this case, how you can either change the diet composition or use vitamin supplements at the right time. 14:37:00 – What would be the take-home message when it comes to B12 vitamins and folic acid? Dr. Girard says that for dairy producers, it would be interesting to look at the effect of B vitamin supplement, especially during the transition and early lactation periods. For the researchers, it would be interesting to keep studying B vitamins. We need a lot more research on the topic!…

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Vitamines B chez les ruminants: hypothèses, recherches, impacts - Dr. Girard 20:32

3 years20:32

20:32

Sections et résumé 01:43:00 – Pourquoi avoir concentré vos recherches sur les besoins des vaches laitières en vitamines B et comment vos hypothèses ont évolué? Dr Girard a commencé à s'intéresser aux vitamines lorsqu’elle a dû choisir un sujet pour son doctorat. Nouvellement enceinte et devant prendre des suppléments d'acide folique, elle a décidé de faire une revue de littérature sur les besoins en acide folique chez les mammifères. Elle s’est rapidement aperçue qu'il y avait très peu d’études sur les besoins des ruminants. Après son doctorat et lorsqu’elle a commencé à travailler à Agriculture Canada, elle s’est d’abord penchée sur les besoins en acide folique des veaux, puisqu’il était plus facile de convaincre les intervenants des besoins pour les pré-ruminants dont la fonction ruminale est en train de s’établir. Les bactéries qui sont alors présentes dans le rumen ne produisent pas beaucoup de vitamines. Rapidement, elle a fait la transition vers la vache qui est en gestation et en lactation pendant une grande partie de sa vie, et donc qui devait avoir des besoins très importants en vitamines. Son hypothèse était que l'animal est bien lorsque les apports sont égaux aux besoins, et que donner des suppléments pour ramener l’équilibre lorsque les apports sont plus faibles que les besoins devrait donner des effets positifs sur la production et le métabolisme. Dr Girard explique qu’elle et son équipe ont découvert que la période critique est surtout celle qui entoure la transition et le début de la lactation, puisque pendant cette période l’animal est en bilan énergétique et de nutriments majeurs négatif. Ils ont aussi découvert qu’on ne pouvait pas dissocier l’acide folique de la vitamine B12, puisque ces derniers travaillent ensemble. Dr Girard explique en détail comment ils ont procédé pour arriver à ces découvertes, et pourquoi celles-ci ont eu lieu. 10:43:00 – Vous travaillez actuellement au développement d’un modèle pour cibler le besoin exact en vitamines B. Que suggérez-vous : commencer à utiliser les vitamines B aujourd’hui ou attendre le modèle? Actuellement, il est impossible de prédire la quantité de vitamines disponible pour l'animal et les recherches sont encore à l’étape de l’essai-erreur. C’est la raison pour laquelle il faut absolument finir de développer des modèles précis. Mais pour l’instant, on constate des effets positifs. 14:14:00 – Quels sont les effets majeurs observés lors de la production de vitamines B chez les ruminants? L’effet est différent selon les vitamines, mais on constate actuellement que la vitamine B12 a un effet positif sur la fibre NDF. L'acide folique présente également un effet positif. Dans les deux cas, on observe que plus la vache mange, plus il y a de fermentation et plus la masse microbienne se développe. Les plus grands effets positifs sont observés pendant la période de bilan énergétique et nutritionnel négatif, alors qu’on améliore l’efficacité et donc qu'on réduit le gaspillage de nutriments. Tous les nutriments sont alors vraiment utilisés pour le métabolisme de la vache et sa production. 16:52:00 – Avez-vous également exploré les effets de la vitamine B12 et de l’acide folique dans le secteur de la reproduction? En collaboration avec des professeurs de l'Université Laval, Dr Girard a effectivement vu des effets positifs sur la reproduction. L’intervalle entre le vêlage et la première saillie a diminué, et des études concernant le développement de follicules ovariens ont démontré que les suppléments de vitamines accélèrent la vitesse de développement. 18:49:00 – En terminant, quel serait le message clé pour les vétérinaires, nutritionnistes et producteurs laitiers? Dr Girard explique qu’il vaut la peine d’explorer l’utilisation des suppléments dans les troupeaux où on constate que le bilan énergétique est très bas en début de lactation. Lorsque les modèles seront développés, nous saurons exactement comment procéder.…

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Using Nutrients as Medicine for Dairy Cows - Barry Bradford 12:10

3 years12:10

12:10

Timestamps & Summary 01:10:00 – Your shared with me a paper you wrote in 2016 that talked about the nutrition 2.0. Can you explain a little bit more of what you mean by it? We're referring to a new generation of understanding nutrients and how we should feed them. With the discovery in the Human Genome project that there are hundreds of sensors in the genome that are apparently designed to sense nutrients and change cell function depending on the concentration of nutrients, we now have a whole different way that nutrients can affect the body. The new factors just open up a whole different way of thinking about using nutrients to change animal biology. 03:04:00 – Can you expand a bit more on some specific examples of nutrients that might impact cellular function? Every single class of nutrients, minerals, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates have this potential effect. One that we could dig into a little bit is beta hydroxybutyrate. It’s a metabolite that we're really interested in, and it’s what gets elevated during ketosis. Dr. Bradford explains how it impacts the cows, and the studies in progress about it. 05:22:00 – How could dairy producers utilize those concepts or how should they be thinking about it? Dr. Bradford explains that the shifts in weather patterns are explored, along with how we could adapt the minerals fed accordingly. There may also be nutritional strategies that could be applied to target fresh cows and high-risk cows instead of the whole herd. Folic acid is a neat example of a nutrient that has great effects, as studies on mice showed that males that are folic acid deficient will actually confer potentially birth defects on offspring. What experts are working on now will change how we do things over the next number of years. 9:19:00 – How should nutritionists and dairy producers approach thinking about nutrition 2.0? In a competitive commodity business like dairy, people are looking at every penny, and they have to. Focusing on transition cows is a good way to apply nutrition 2.0 principles, as we know from a lot of research that it can prevent major train wrecks for a 2-week window. The carryover benefits are massive. We did a study where we fed a phytochemical intended to be an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory for just the first 60 days of lactation. The carryover effects lasted through 300 days of milk. If you do the math, it’s profitable. You actually reduce disease incidents, potentially improve reproductive success, and have carryover milk benefits.…

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The Key Profitability Drivers of Today’s Dairy Farms with Dr. Mike Hutjens 19:04

3 years19:04

19:04

Timestamps & Summary 01:54:00 – Could you explain the path you took to become who you are today? Dr. Hutjens grew up on a 70-cow grade Holstein farm in the 1950s. He went to a Community College for a year, and then down to Madison to get his degree, where he got a chance to work in a mastitis lab and in the dairy science department. When he met Dr. Jim Crowley and Dr. Dave Dixon, he fell in love with the job and that got him to pursue in that area. He then had a chance to go to the University of Minnesota for 8 years as an extension dairy specialist. When a position opened up at the University of Illinois in 1979, he moved there. 03:52:00 – Could you expand on what you feel are some of the key profitability drivers on a dairy farm today? The first 5 key profitability drivers that come to Dr. Hutjens’ mind are: A successful transition management and feeding program. Feed efficiency (how effective your cows convert dry matter to milk production). Never giving up milk. In other words, in the US, feed costs are up 20-25% (about $0.12 per pound of dry matter). The good cows are going to give 2 pounds of milk, and that's going to be anywhere around 38 to 42 cents depending on components. And anytime we can trade a powder dry matter $0.12 for an income of over $0.40, that's a trade. Focusing on milk components. Milk protein is now really valuable, and it’s probably going to stay that way in the world because people want animal protein. Heifer enterprise. A heifer enterprise can be very expensive, and as a result, we have to have the right number of cows, the technologies, etc. So, we look at profitability. 05:51:00 – Could you expand a bit more on what we should be doing today in our dairy operations to ensure and enhance transition cow health? One of the key factors is going to be unique diets. We’re now looking at 1200 grams of metabolizable protein in the close-up diet when reforming claustrum, and the calf is really taking lots of amino acids away from the cow. Another factor is a fresh cow philosophy, which allows to monitor the cows so that the first 10 or 12 days after calving, we make sure that they are off to a good start before we move them into a higher production group or category. And this can happen on smaller or bigger farms, it’s just a matter of getting the right nutrients in and adjustments to those animals. 7:24:00 – Could you take a few minutes and expand on your knowledge about the role that B vitamins play in the metabolism and the biology of dairy cows? The whole B vitamin is kind of a challenging area. For example, biotin is a B vitamin that really can improve milk production and improve genetics, energetics, and the whole health. While choline is not considered to be a true B vitamin, it’s also very important and certainly the rumen-protected choline products have performed extremely well. Niacin is another B vitamin that comes into play, along with folic acid in terms of energetics and defining sparing in cows. And there's the B12 vitamin that has some effects on the metabolism or propionic acid, which becomes a key resource for blood glucose in the early lactation. 10:18:00 – What is the list of feed ingredients that people should be really considering to meet your objectives of profitability on dairy farms? Dr. Hutjens explains how the rumen-protected choline is going to be a home run as it's working very effectively at increasing profitability and maintaining good liver function. Biotin has also given impressive results on milk production. 12:36:00 – What should producers and nutritionists focus on when they're trying to drive profitability on their dairy farm? A very large study, a meta-analysis, looked at the rumen-protected vitamins on a commercial basis. They found out that on average they were getting about 2 ½ pounds or a litre pound more milk. The probability of having the same effect on your farm is 99,99%. Besides the improvement in milk production, they also could track out animal health and performance, which also gave significant results. The last thing they looked at was getting cows pregnant in the first 100 days, and they saw about a 10% improvement in pregnancy rates. They also saw that it was also cost-effective.…

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Increase Milk Production with Farm Synchronization – Part 2 - David Greene 10:30

3 years10:30

10:30

Timestamps & Summary 01:20:00 – In a previous episode, you expanded on your approach on farm synchronization to improve efficiency. Could you expand specifically on how the feed centre and mixing feed impact the overall farm synchronization? There is currently a great lost of efficiency when it comes to feed centres. To prevent that, David Greene developed what he calls a "feed-zone model concept" that you apply when you design or redesign a feed centre. It looks at all the traffic movements around the feed centre so you don’t have a lot of interference, and you can make it more efficient for the feeding operation group to get the cows fed. 03:22:00 – Could you expand a bit about the experience you had with clients you helped remodel? Time is money, and David Greene’s 5-step model for the feed zone has been proven profitable for his clients. It includes having your ingredients closest to the feed centre, and keeping activities such as off-farm deliveries out the feed zone. 05:05:00 – When you get into a large-scale dairy farm, there are feed deliveries happening all the time and considerations about biosecurity and safety need to be taken. How does it also impact organizing the feed centre? As we mentioned in the episode Increase milk production with farm synchronization, a perfect timing is to feed the cows around 2h ahead of the parlour. If you can make, mix and deliver the feeds from the feed centre to the cow in a timely manner, then it allows you to focus on the cow and to do what’s best for her. That’s the number one goal: focusing on the cow so she’s as productive as she can be. 6:12:00 – Are they big investments needed? Some of the largest dairy farms David Greene has done needed about a million dollars for their feed centre, but they were able to have a return on their investment in about 15 to 16 months. 6:58:00 – What would be the take-home messages for a dairy producer looking at their dairy farm saying, "Hey, I wonder if I’m losing out efficiency in my feed area, what should I be looking at"? The biggest thing is: You need to know where you’re at before you start managing it. You need to understand what it costs your farm to make, mix, and deliver feed. David’s consulting team assesses the farms and break down the opportunities into 14 different areas that it can help with. While you reorganize for efficiency and profit, you also need to take safety into consideration as the feed zone is usually a fast-pace area. Often times, by reorganizing the feed area, David’s team can reduce the cost of making, mixing, and delivering feed by half. Also, the employees are more content, and therefore there is less labour turnover.…

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Economic Situation and Perspective within the Cattle Market 28:26

2 years28:26

28:26

Timestamps and Summary Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 02:05 ) When we see where we’re at with the cattle cycle, where do you think the next three to five years of production are going to go? Dr. Lee Schulz Just to give a bit of background, the cattle inventory cycle has three phases. It has expansion, has liquidation, has a turnaround phase. We’re currently in the liquidation phase. This cattle cycle started in 2014, inventories peaked in 2019, and we’ve been on a slide of inventories over the last several years. Most cattle cycles are nine to 14 years. And so, if you do the math, we’re in year nine of that cattle inventory cycle. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 06:33 ) Have we seen any change in the way that our beef are being marketed, or what’s that in comparison to the domestic market supply? Dr. Lee Schulz I’ll note demand has been incredible the last several years. If you look at it internationally or domestically, it has taken a bit of a step back in the last couple of years, but you compare it to a really high base level when you think about demand. So even though we’ve taken a bit of a step back, we still remain historically in a really good demand spot. And prices reflect that along with the tighter supplies. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 08:48 ) When we look at the domestic market and we see things happening domestically here: interest rates are on the rise, things that are affecting the American household, etc. What would we see at the retail side? Dr. Lee Schulz Well, I do need to commend you. You sound like an economist there, Greg, and because I think you highlight really the issue with demand, it’s not prices. So, the price of beef does not impact demand, it impacts quantity demanded, but it doesn’t impact demand. What we know impacts demand is income. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle (11:04) July 4 and Labor Day are historically great holidays for us protein market when we have a summer barbecue season and things like that. Have you looked at that impacting demand this year or is it going to remain relatively flat? Dr. Lee Schulz Well, I think you can look at the value of wholesale, the choice beef cut-out for this time of year, it’s a record high. I think that points to, yes, we have tighter supplies, but you need the demand to pull it as well. I think you’re seeing very strong demand within the wholesale and retail level that is really spurring prices. […] I think it is really important to highlight it’s not a tight supply situation. The fundamentals there are a little bit easier to understand. We know that much tighter supplies will increase prices. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 12:52 ) What are we going to be looking at in the fall? The best-case scenario with moisture and then maybe worst-case scenario if we maintain a drought consistency pattern. Dr. Lee Schulz That’s really a key question as we look at crop markets for cattle markets. […] So, now we’re really focused on the crop development and conditions which are going to impact that new crop supply here come fall. […] If you look at the report for weekending June 12th, 61% of the nation’s crop was rated good to excellent. That’s three percentage points lower than last year. So, for benchmark it against last year, the crop isn’t as good this time of year, slightly below. It’s also slightly below the five-year average as well. […] So, we’re in a much weaker spot than we were a year ago or in really the last couple of years. […] But I always like to remind folks we have a whole growing season in front of us. There’s a lot that has to go right and a lot that can go wrong that could impact this year’s crop. Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 19:56 ) Can we have an expectation to see cows kill numbers increase, stay the same, or because we’re still in liquidation, I don’t expect them to decrease, so what kind of forecast in the cow kill numbers? Dr. Lee Schulz I’m glad you asked this question because I think there are a couple of keyways to really look at this data. So, as you look at beef cow slaughter year to date, we’re down about 12% compared to a year ago levels for the same period. That’s almost 200,000 beef cows over that period. This comes after last year, we were up 11%, right? Almost about 400,000 beef cows. Now you look at that and say, well, we’re killing a lot fewer beef cows this year, it must mean we may be seeing that turnaround phase. But I’ll remind us that we have a lot fewer cows than we did last year. […] Dr. Greg Eckerle ( 25:09 ) I guess the overall evaluation of the US marketplace seems to be on the upswing then what would be some of the main challenges coming within the next twelve to 18 months? Dr. Lee Schulz I think the big challenge for me is costs. I think when you look at it, not only feed costs as we talked about the crop market situation and potential for a lot of lower prices or at least lower prices as we get into the fall, which doesn’t mean that our cost of gains and dollars per cow are going to decrease all that much. I think they will decrease, but we’ve added a lot of cost to this industry over the last couple of years in the form of non-feed, variable costs, fixed costs, everything really has gotten much more expensive and those are rather sticky costs. […]…

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B-Vitamins and Trace Minerals in Transition Cow Nutrition 16:00

2 years16:00

16:00

Timestamps and Summary Vicky Brisson ( 02:24 ) Can you please explain why and how cows may benefit from an increased supply of B vitamins? Dr. Mélissa Duplessis I'm going to focus on two B vitamins, folate and vitamin B12, as these two vitamins have been extensively studied by our research group […] Christiane Girard, who has tremendously increased the knowledge on B vitamins in dairy cows, demonstrated that plasma folate and vitamin B12 concentrations were at their lowest at calving and in early lactation, respectively. […] a few studies were conducted in order to evaluate the effects of supplementation in folic acid and vitamin B12 during the transition period and in early lactation on dairy cows’ health and performance. […] some showed a substantial increase in milk yield without affecting dry matter intake and plasma indicators of reserve mobilization. And some showed a decrease in plasma indicators of reserve mobilization without affecting dry matter intake and milk yield. […] Vicky Brisson ( 05:19 ) From a practical perspective, how can we ensure that the cows actually receive an adequate increased supply of B vitamins? Dr. Mélissa Duplessis One way is indeed to supplement B vitamins to the animals. Also, previous studies demonstrated that ruminal synthesis of B vitamins is affected by the cow diet and dry matter intake. Thus, it can be suggested that if ruminal synthesis is greater, this will benefit the cow as more B vitamins are available for absorption. Now, can we formulate a diet that optimizes B vitamin ruminal synthesis? It's a great question. […] Vicky Brisson ( 06:53 ) Your recently published papers collected data on mineral nutrition. Can you share with our audience what were the main findings of your study? Dr. Mélissa Duplessis We collected data on 100 Eastern Canadian dairy herds in order to compare dietary trace minerals in commercial settings to NRC recommendations. […] […] we observed that cobalt was fed at 405% over the recommendation, copper at 52% over the recommendation, manganese at 372 percent over the recommendation, and for zinc, it was 65% over the recommendation. This is important to note that these data represent the median, meaning that 50% of dairy herds were well above that. […] Vicky Brisson ( 08:51 ) How would a nutritionist use this knowledge to better balance minerals in their rations? Dr. Mélissa Duplessis First of all, forages are not routinely analyzed for trace mineral concentrations due to analysis constraints. Also, absorption coefficients of trace minerals are low. In a recent […], we obtained that more than 60% of nutritionists had intentionally formulated diets above trace mineral recommendations to ensure cow health and optimized reproduction performance. However, this is not clear in the literature that overfeeding trace minerals actually has benefits on cow health and reproduction. […] Vicky Brisson ( 10:55 ) Can you explain to our audience what is a living lab? Dr. Mélissa Duplessis ( 11:03 ) Living labs are open innovation ecosystems in real-life environments. […] Prior to the start of the project, producers and researchers should meet and discuss to create a sustainable project. Vicky Brisson ( 11:45 ) You recently concluded a project using the Living Lab approach, can you share what you did and what you learned so far?…

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Safety Tips in Silage Management 27:52

2 years27:52

27:52

Timestamps and Summary Chris Gwyn ( 04:01 ) Why the advocacy for safety related to silage management has become so important to you, both personally and professionally? Doug DeGroff It’s because I’m a silage avalanche survivor that it’s near and dear to my heart. I was young and quite confident and with an attitude of “it can’t happen to me.” But my luck ran out on August 27, 2009, while taking a solid sample that I’d done thousands of times […] Chris Gwyn ( 08:32 ) What are some of the key points in the silage safety that you feel are extremely important to share? Doug DeGroff I think the first thing I’d like to say it can happen to you or it could happen to your dairy or your feedlot. […] Once you know that, then you have to be intentional about it. If you’re a dairy owner or a feedlot owner, you have an obligation to those people who work on your business, whether they’re a full-time employee, a contract employee, maybe a silage harvester or your nutritionist or feed salespeople. […] If somebody gets seriously hurt or tragically killed, it’s very bad for your business financially. So training, talking to your employees, talking to these people that are going to be around your silage piles, hanging up, putting up signs, there’s so much you can do. And either you have a good silage safety management program, or you make excuses when somebody gets injured or killed. It’s one or the other. You really don’t have both. Chris Gwyn ( 11:53 ) What would you define as a good silage safety program? Doug DeGroff It starts with sitting down with the employees and going over the risks […] with anybody who’s going to be in the feed area. And not just the risk of it avalanching. There are other risks with silage. There are gases, there’s equipment driving around it all the time. […] Have some standard operating protocols at the time of harvest. […] When you have new employees, make sure you don’t wait until the next training session. They should have a course of what’s going on within days of being hired. […] Chris Gwyn ( 14:43 ) What should employees working around silage management be thinking and what do they need to do differently? Doug DeGroff Certain employees are there in front of piles every single day, multiple times a day. They’re the people with the highest risk because they have the highest exposure. So, they need to be aware of what could be happening when they’re going up, removing tires or removing plastic. It comes pretty good, if the owners haven’t done it, if an employee is asking: “Hey, can you get me a safety harness?”, “Can you get a cable that runs across the length of the pile?” […] I won’t recommend you pitch off bad feet anymore because God forbid somebody gets hurt. I’m the person who made the recommendation. I used to do that. I no longer do that. And I don’t support that. […] Chris Gwyn ( 18:58 ) What's your recommendation for safely sampling silage on dairies on feedlots? Doug DeGroff I’ll start off with what I used to do and why I did it. And then, I’ll tell you how stupid of an idea it was. I liked to sample the pile up and down. So, I would get in the loader of the bucket, and I would go up and down. I get to the top of the feed because that feed is different than this feed down here. And if I went straight down the middle of the pile, I would get arguably a very good representation of the pile. […] I had a five-gallon bucket and I put so many handfuls in every foot to eighteen inches and I mixed that feed up and then I put it in my bag, and I had an incredibly good representation of the pile. It was probably about as unsafe as you can get because at the bottom, the loader backs away because now I can get it. So, I’'m standing there for a few minutes, as much as I can reach, high and low. […] Now, all my dairies, they know exactly what to do. They’ll either face it with a facer or they’ll scrape it with a payloader and knock it and then what they’ll mix it up, spit it out. Then we put another five thousand pounds in it, mix it up, spit it out in a safe place. I would argue that is the best representation of the pile. […] Chris Gwyn ( 23:24 ) Key points that you feel are important when it comes to safety around silage management. Doug DeGroff The most important part of any solid safety program or any silage program is safety. […] We don’t spend enough time on safety until something happens. […] But there’s nothing real sexy about safety, but it’s so necessary. And we just have to keep that in mind. […]…

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Youth in Agriculture: The Future of Food 14:17

2 years14:17

14:17

Timestamps & Summary 1:56 As a young person growing up in dairy operations, tell me about the obstacles that you had to overcome in order to pursue a career in agriculture. Vicky Brisson I was really lucky growing up on my family's dairy farm, because I grew up with plenty of excellent role models, whether that be my parents being involved in the community, strong women when I was involved in forage as well. But I'd say also growing up in the Francophone community in Eastern Ontario, it was that language barrier. But beyond that language barrier, I'd say it's also a language barrier, that disconnect, between what we do in agriculture, and what the people who consume the food perceive agriculture as being. So, I'd say it's really about bridging that gap. We're translating that content, whether it be from English to French or French to English, or whether it be from someone who works and lives agriculture, to someone who consumes agriculture on a daily basis. […] 3:46 Talk to me about your thoughts on the importance of youth in agriculture. Vicky Brisson I'd say first and foremost, youth is the future, right? So, I think it's important to have everyone who's invested in the future of agriculture at the table. And what youth brings to that table is really our passion. We bring a different perspective as well. We're, perhaps some might call us naive, but I'd say we're starting from a blank page. And that allows us to bring new ideas, new perspectives to challenges that have been existing for decades for generations. And youth in agriculture also brings another level of connection of collaboration. […] 7:22 What recommendations would you give to the youth today in pursuing their dreams in agriculture? Vicky Brisson Perhaps my advice a year from now will change. But for now, I'd say that one I'm most certain will not change is: don't be afraid to ask for help. I think of you, Chris. I think of all my colleagues at Jefo. These are the people that have made it possible for me to step into the different growing opportunities that I've had throughout the last few years. That comes from asking for help. We're not alone. If you don't have the answer, other people will have it. […] You need to surround yourself with the right people, people who, again, you'll be able to go ask for help. But those people should also include a cheerleader and a hard truth-teller. Because sometimes you need that wake-up call, you need to be told the hard things. And then ultimately, in order to take action, sometimes it's easier when you're doing it with a peer, someone who will help you stretch to do those hard things to grow outside of your comfort zone. […] 12:56 What are the take-home messages you'd like to leave the audience listening today regarding youth and their journey in agriculture? Vicky Brisson I think between everyone there needs to be collaboration, there needs to be an exchange of experiences of perspectives. And that also comes through mentorship and learning by doing, not being afraid to take action. So really three simple takeaways, but that would be it for me today.…

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Mineral Recommendations in Dairy Cattle 22:42

2 years22:42

22:42

Timestamps & Summary 2:59 I was wondering if you could review some of the highlights for the audience to remind us of those key important areas. Dr. Bill Weiss For most minerals, what the committee tried to do is start at the cell. And we calculate, for example, how much mineral goes out and milk, how much mineral is free if an animal is growing, how much mineral is in that new tissue, and if she's pregnant, how much mineral is being deposited in the fetus, and we start there and we sum all that up. […] 8:29 What can you tell the audience today about the impact of mineral nutrition, whether positive or negative on the gut microbiome, and perhaps where some of the research should be focusing? Dr. Bill Weiss Bacteria need minerals, just like humans and cows need them. And we've known that for a long time so that the fact we have to feed the rumen bugs and the intestinal bugs in cows is well established. And in general, if you feed enough to the cow, the bacteria usually add enough and that's kind of where we left it. But more recently, there's been more and more studies looking at sources, not necessarily the amount of trace minerals but the source of the trace mineral. For example, organic versus sulfates or hydroxy versus sulfates, and so on. And some things we're finding at what I call the gross level is trace mineral affects fiber digestion, and fiber is digested only by bacteria so if you're altering fiber digestion, likely you're changing the room and population of bacteria. […] 13:09 What is a nutritionist should be looking for when looking to add chromium to a ruminant diet and the sources that they're utilizing? Dr. Bill Weiss I don't know other countries’ rules and regulations. But in the US, chromium propionate is the only one that's been approved. This is regulated by FDA because they're worried. I think they're most worried about environmental issues. But certain terms of chromium are also toxic. The form that we feed is not or not highly toxic. Other forms of chromium can actually be quite toxic. So, it's regulated in the US at point five milligrams per kilogram is the supplemental right. […] Chromium is one of these nutrients… We know cows need it. Because we can find proteins or substances within animals, not just cows, people, etc. that require chromium to work. But in the new NRC, which is now called NASEM, we don't give a recommendation for chromium. And people say: Well if it's an essential nutrient, why don't you do that? Well, part of the problem is no one's ever identified a chromium deficiency. A lot of cows are not fed supplemental chromium and they live very productive happy lives. So, it's if you can't produce a clinical deficiency, it's hard to say this is a requirement. Part of the problem is feeds have chromium. […] Measuring chromium in feeds is really hard. So, we have very poor data on actual chromium concentrations. […] 18:50 What are maybe three or four key take-home messages you'd like to leave the audience when they're thinking about mineral nutrition at the farm level that they need to consider? Dr. Bill Weiss One of the first things is, and I see a lot of diets and minerals are needed but too much is too much. And very often they're over-supplemented grossly in both minerals and vitamins. And this adds cost but these metals at some of these absurd levels are detrimental. […] The other thing is source does matter. As we do more and more stuff, the data is I think clearer on zinc than the other trace minerals that organic zinc or zinc from non sulfate sources, does things that zinc sulfate doesn’t. […] So, look at everything: water, mineral composition, your basal diet, and make decisions on sources based on those things. But I guess the biggest thing is: be reasonable. And both feed enough but don't feed too much.…

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Rural Mental Health 23:05

2 years23:05

23:05

Timestamps & Summary 1:49 Maybe share with the audience your personal and professional journey to starting Eyes on Horizon Consulting. Monica McConkey I am a farm girl, I grew up on a farm in northwestern Minnesota. And when I was younger, we had beef and hogs and crops. […] I grew up in the 80s when the farm crisis was really difficult. And I remember my parents really struggling with anxiety and depression. I remember coming home from school and mom being in tears that we didn't get our operating loan. And as a kid, my thought was, what does this mean? We're going to have to move off this farm that my great-grandfather started, and live in town, our way of life is going to change. And so that really set the tone for just being aware of mental health in general. After school, I got degrees in psychology and counseling. And for almost 27 years I've been in the mental health field primarily in rural areas. And three years ago, I was able to become self-employed and focus on mental health in agriculture. […] 4:13 Does mental health in rural farm communities differ from urban communities? Monica McConkey There are definitely some distinct differences. So, we know that suicide rates among farmers, especially our male farmers, are higher than in the general population. Calls I get really speak to the difficulties that stress on the farm plays in relationships and the toll it takes on relationships. How it differs when we look at rural to urban, accessibility rises to the top of the list. We don't have the same workforce in rural areas as in urban areas, we don't have the number of counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists, for sure, providing accessible care in rural areas. […] 8:30 I guess we've focused on the male because traditionally they were running the operations, but there's a ton of role women out there, whether they're producers themselves, spouses, partners, mothers, and how is that impacting them, and maybe also talk a bit about the LGBTQ plus communities. Monica McConkey I work with a number of women, of all ages, some are the primary producers of their operation, and some are in those supportive roles. And, you know, they have a unique set of challenges, especially those that are the primary operators. Agriculture is still very much a man's world. And so they struggle to have their voices heard, to be seen as competent. And when I work with rural women, specifically women on the farm, there's a lot of self-doubt and lack of confidence in their abilities because they just haven't heard feedback from those around them that they're doing well, that they are competent, they're making good decisions. […] Speaking of the LGBTQ community, they are an underserved and under-noticed population in agriculture. And, those folks are dealing with stigma from a number of issues. And their sense of isolation in these rural communities is very pronounced. I met with one young lady who was in the LGBTQ community, and she really was struggling with being the next generation on her farm. Her parents were ready to transfer the farm over to her. But the thought was, Do I want to be in this small community where I don't have a peer group and I'm not accepted? And where the political views are very different from my own. So, it's impacting even on that level of continuing the legacy of farming operations and keeping them in the family. 11:37 The stigma around mental health is still massive and what prevents people from getting the help they need. And perhaps that challenge is being exacerbated in a rural community. Maybe just expand a bit more in the hope of removing the stigmas that people are perhaps inadvertently putting there and not realizing it? Monica McConkey Yes. You know, my dream would be that we are able to walk into the local gas station where the farmers gather for their cup of coffee in the morning and hear them talking about anxiety and depression on the same level as they're talking about their other physical health conditions. It's not unusual for us to be very open about physical maladies we have, whether it's arthritis or kidney issues, or being a diabetic, and that information is often freely shared, put on social media talked about openly, doctors being recommended and referred to, sharing of stories. I would love to have the same type of conversation happen when it comes to our mental health and mental illnesses, which would sound something like: I saw this therapist, and they understood the stress and strain that farmers and their families go through, they would be a great help to you. Because I think that vulnerability, is really how we start attacking that stigma, by telling our own stories. And we're getting there. I mean, exactly what you're doing here, we are making progress in that area. And so, it's very exciting to see a business, a media, being supportive of campaigns and initiatives around stress and mental health and, often even telling their own stories about their struggles. […] 16:50 What can we do to ensure that we’re healthy, and we're aware of the situations with our clients or family? Monica McConkey I love that question. And I'm so glad you brought it up. Because those people that work with farmers and ranchers, with egg producers, it is hard when you're working with chronically stressed people day in and day out. And eventually, it's going to take a toll on you. So self-care is very important prior to you feeling burnout and struggling with your own mental health. So, if you look at it just, baseline: drink lots of water, eat healthy foods, get some exercise, like physically take care of yourself. Sleep. If you're not getting good sleep, figure out why and fix it. So that level, and then from there, it's really about making sure that you are doing things in life that feed your soul. Like something outside of work. Are you able to leave work and spend time with family or friends or do activities that really feed your soul? Are you able to talk to people when you are struggling, whether it's a peer or a mentor or supervisor, clergy, somebody you trust, a therapist, a counselor, or a doctor? Seek out help, you don't have to struggle on your own. So those are all things we can do to take care of ourselves. And I can talk about that all day long! […]…

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Awareness for Farmer's Mental Health 14:09

2 years14:09

14:09

Timestamps & Summary 1:25 Would you share what you see as the current state of mental health in rural communities, farm communities, particularly in Canada, and in Ontario more specifically? Dr. Deborah Vanberkel It's really starting to be the up-and-coming sort of topic once people are starting to know about it. Even five years ago, when we started on our journeys of creating programming for mental health, people still weren't aware of even what mental health means because of the stigma that's attached to it. So, we started working towards destigmatizing that and really helping people understand what mental health is, how it impacts you. And for me, personally, my goal is to really help the agricultural community, the industry experts understand the connection between their mental health and what's going on in the agricultural world, […] 2:39 What are some of the trends that you're seeing in the mental health needs of agricultural producers? And are they changing? And what are the specific needs of those farm families as well? Dr. Deborah Vanberkel As we know, with farming, it's unique, based on everything that goes into working on a farm, the hours that are put into it. We all know that the weather is like the number one component of things. But there's also the little things that people really don't talk about [like] growing up on a farm is very task oriented. When you're working in the agricultural industry, there's always something to be done. […] So, the biggest thing for me is to helping people understand what that means. And then helping them really tailor whatever it is that they need, that works for them. […] 4:13 Could you expand more on the Farmer Wellness Program? Dr. Deborah Vanberkel In 2019, the Lennox and Addington Federation of Agriculture and myself got together. I had an idea that I thought would work and so I left my job in the public system and decided to focus on private psychotherapy, therapist services for the farming community, and I approached LAFA, and they completely agreed, thought it was a great idea and we were able to secure funding right off the cuff in February of 2019 and start the Farmer Wellness Program which was specifically tailored services from a therapist who has agricultural background and eliminate that modality. […] And then fortunately, the Canadian Mental Health Association and the provincial government decided to launch the Farmer Wellness Initiative, which is modeled after the program and now providing unlimited counseling service and crisis service to the farming and agricultural communities. 7:12 Is delivering virtual services work in this program? Dr. Deborah Vanberkel Absolutely. We have clients all over Canada. And being able to provide podcasts like this, being able to have speaking engagements, really being able to connect people. And if I'm not capable of meeting with that person, or providing whatever type of service from here, I can get them connected to people that I know, in all the different areas. And so, making those connections across, it's really been helpful in the virtual world. 7:54 You've also mentioned some of the work that you've done with the Guardian Network and the In the Know mental health literacy programs. I was wondering if you could expand a bit on those two programs as well. Dr. Deborah Vanberkel Canadian Mental Health Association is providing three core components of services that are tailored to the agricultural industry. They have the Farmer Wellness Initiative, for one. They have the In the Know mental health literacy, and the Guardian Network, which is tailored to suicide prevention. Those programs are being offered in Ontario, but also across Canada right now for In the Know. And what we're being able to provide is specific information that is tailored to the agricultural community. The Guardian Network was piloted two months ago, and has been successfully tracking a lot of people that are volunteering to be guardians, which is the suicide prevention. So, right now there's really a lot of traction that's been gained from the CMHA folks and being able to really tailor these services to the farming community. 11:15 What would you like the audience to resonate with and think about, after our discussion here today? Dr. Deborah Vanberkel I really want people to have a basic knowledge of what mental health means because it's different for everybody. Mental means your mind. And so, it's just having that basic understanding of where everything's coming from, and how it really impacts you, and what a person needs in order to be able to manage what's going on. […]…

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Application of Precision Nutrition on Dairy Systems 15:14

2 years15:14

15:14

Timestamps & Summary 4:56 Tell me what you see as some of the key impacts of adopting precision, nutrition approach. Dr. Abdallah Zankar Precision nutrition is a way to make an animal use a diet and the nutrients in a more efficient way. How can we make these animals use the feed efficiently? This is the main target behind every farmer, every nutritionist, that is working today in the feed industry. Understanding this, we will need to be sure that we are feeding the right quality of feed and that ensured the absorption of these nutrients. […] 6:50 When we talk about absorption, there are different innovative ways that we're delivering nutrients today to the lower intestinal tract and I'm wondering if you could expand a bit more on that concept and on how it relates to delivering a more precise diet to ruminants. Dr. Abdallah Zankar If we talk about ourselves her at Jefo. We have a technology that we have been testing for 25-30 years, and we have been successfully using it on the market. A small example: A product contains B vitamins or enzymes. This product is used in lactating cows, three grams per cow per day, 1.5 grams of these enzymes affecting an animal of 600-700 kilograms. And this is converting to around 5% feed efficiency, feed efficiency, to 3.3 to 5% more milk production. 50 grams of protein. 40 grams of fat and 20% less culling rates and expecting 9% to 10% less emissions. This is a huge three grams of products. So, I think the future will be in these technologies. 11:05 What are some of the key points you would like to leave with the audience today, when it comes to the subject of more precisely meeting the nutrient requirements of the ruminant animal? Dr. Abdallah Zankar I think in the coming years to be good is not enough. The challenge that we are having today in the feed industry and in the animal industry is huge. And that future will also be challenging. If we look at profitability, it has to be extraordinary. So good, as I said, is not enough. We have to be extraordinary in the future. Consumers today are not like before; they are much smarter. They look at us, and they look at the animal industry. They look at our cows, they want to know what these cows are eating, they want to know what we are injecting these cows, what we are feeding them. […] So, we have to be smarter. And we also have to look at how we can make these cows deliver and give a safe product. Safe milk. Safe meat. It's important, the safety of the food. This is the number one thing I want to raise and give to our attendees today. […]…

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Challenge and Requirements for Successful Pregnancy in Cattle 32:04

2 years32:04

32:04

Timestamps & Summary 2:48 Let's remind the audience where you see the current status of reproductive efficiency in the North American dairy herd. Dr. Eduardo Ribeiro If we look at every metric, in large datasets from both the US as well as Canada, they tell the same story. And I think the first message that they tell us is that we are making progress. So dairy producers, they are improving reproductive efficiency in their herds, at least for the last 15 to 20 years. Another thing that we can take out of this large data set is that we still have huge variability. So, we still have herds that do very poorly in reproductive management, and herds that are excellent in reproductive management. […] 5:30 So, let's talk about embryonic loss. How best to measure reproductive losses after the establishment of very early conception? What are some of the biological minimums or key performance indicators we should be shooting for? How do we minimize this embryonic loss? Dr. Eduardo Ribeiro Excellent questions. To facilitate our discussion, I like to divide pregnancy losses in two types: One is the early pregnancy losses that happen before early diagnosis of pregnancy. So, we're talking about the losses that occur in the first 30 to 40 days. And then we have late pregnancy losses, occurring after the first pregnancy diagnosis, that can be measured on the farm. It is basically the proportion of cows that were pregnant in the first pregnancy diagnosis that do not deliver a calf at the end. […] People might have an idea of the percentage that they are losing in the interval from the 30 to 40 to the 60 to 90 days but the losses after that are normally called abortion by producers. So, you have to put those out together. And sometimes the information is not entered correctly in the software that the producers use for management. So, if you put out together, it's not uncommon to see farms with 20–25% losses. So, we don't have large statistics on that number, which is a problem. So, we don't actually know what the average in North America will be. But based on our experience, there's a lot of herds on their range of 20–25% losses. And what producers should aim is to reduce that number the most they can. And if you're close to 10%, I would say that that's good. […] On average, when we do studies, fertilization is around 80–85% for cows that have a successful ovulation around the time of breeding. So then, based on that, you could estimate how much you're losing based on the percentage of cows that are pregnant after the first diagnosis. But why you should work on is just to try to improve your pregnancy for AI. Basically, if you're doing that, you're reducing failures with time of insemination, fertilization of the egg, and also early embryonic losses or early pregnancy losses. 11:48 What are some of the things that a producer can do to minimize these losses, enhance the pregnancies through the early term, and in the end, minimize the losses in short and medium long term? Dr. Eduardo Ribeiro There are a few things that can be done. One is related to the genetics of the herd. It's not something that will have a huge impact immediately, but in the long term, it becomes important. So, it's important for producers to include fertility, health and longevity of traits in their genetic selection program. In the long term that will help and as more research is done in this area, more markers are included in those genomic tests. […] 25:08 So, take home messages for our audience today. What would you remind them to emphasize if they really want to try and maximize reproductive performance? Dr. Eduardo Ribeiro I think the first thing is to realize that excellent reproductive efficient is possible. So, we've made a lot of progress in the last 15 years. That improvement that we observe in reproduction was done in parallel with improvements in milk production, as well. […] The second thing is, before you focus on pregnancy losses, make sure you fix everything that is easier to fix. So, then you can focus on pregnancy losses. […]…

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Reproductive Health and Management in Postpartum Cow 24:48

2 years24:48

24:48

Timestamps & Summary 2:10 Postpartum, uterine health, inflammation, immunity, impact on reproduction; what is it about this area that really intrigued you? Dr. Stephen LeBlanc Well, I think it is a really interesting scientific challenge. There are a lot of complexity and interest here. But more to the point, it looks to be something that has got some real practical importance. We know that calving is an inflammatory event. So, the birthing process involves setting off a bunch of inflammatory processes and cascades. And even in the best-case scenario, there is going to be some tissue trauma and some bacterial contamination of the reproductive tract after calving. And so, the cow has to respond to that. Part of that is an immune and inflammatory response to repair tissue damage, to clear up some of these bacterial contaminants and keep the load of potential pathogens in check. […] 5:06 Tell us about how well we are capturing the information and awareness of these reproductive challenges post calving. Dr. Stephen LeBlanc Maybe not well enough. Let us go with Metritis. That is a cow first week postpartum, a sick cow, the cardinal sign is that she smells really bad at discharge from some barnyard microbiology. That tells us that she has got an infection with anaerobic bacteria. That is what makes it smell bad. So, you are not likely to miss those as a producer. But interestingly, even if we say that that's the case definition, if detection is a little bit passive -you notice the cow when she comes in the parlor, or when you're walking the pen, as opposed to, if you're locking the fresh cows up every day or every other day, and really proactively going hunting. On one end, you might say, I have got 5% of my cows that have Metritis. With the same definition, you could easily say I have 20% of my cows that have Metritis. And I do not know which one is actually the better approach; one is probably under diagnosing, and one might be over diagnosing if you're doing that every day […] 9:38 You recently published a review on the relationship between metabolism, immunity, and the neutrophil function. Could you summarize some of the key points of that review and how it relates to fresh cow health and reproduction? Dr. Stephen LeBlanc By far, the number one line of defense are neutrophils. They are like the first responders. They are like little Pac-Man, and they will go around and gobble up bacteria, or even bits of dead tissue that are not normal. And probably the first big thing is that there should be enough of them, and that they get there quickly enough and in sufficient numbers and get the job done. And so that involves, again, generally feeding the immune system, because there's lots of work that shows that those first responders require a lot of nutrient inputs: energy, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, etc. We know from some of the work done at Iowa State and elsewhere now as well, that that is a very energy, intense process, you know, how much glucose is needed, how much calcium is needed, as well, for neutrophils to do its thing. And so again, we can add that robust, yet regulated immune response to the list of other reasons why we really got to try to dial in nutrition and management. Last but not least, the part that we understand a lot less about is sort of the back side of that response curve. We are focused a lot on the response time, are the first responders sufficient? Sufficiently fast? Sufficiently well equipped? And so on. And clearly that has got to come first. But when we get thinking about chronic smoldering, reproductive tract inflammation in the Metritis, that probably has a lot more to do with how effectively that dial is turned back down again, in the days or weeks once that initial response is over. And that is a really hot area of research and we're just scratching the surface of with cows. 13:38 Do you want to expand a bit on that? They have this response, but then they come back to normal quickly. Dr. Stephen LeBlanc Exactly. We think that if you could draw a visual of healthy neutrophil response or immune and inflammatory response, it would happen very quickly, sort of hours to a day or two after calving. So, accelerate very quickly, probably hit its peak, in days or within a few days after calving and get the job done. The uterus is not sterile but reduce the level of pathogens back down to a very low kind of background level, deal with the tissue trauma, help initiate healing, regrowing a new epithelium so that over weeks that the cow is ready and able to be pregnant again. That should all happen in days to a couple of weeks. And then that inflammatory state is dialed back down not to zero but to kind of a low baseline level and we think that is by about three weeks postpartum in a healthy cow. […] 19:27 We did not really talk about the numbers, but the impact of poor uterine health on reproduction is pretty significant. Dr. Stephen LeBlanc Yes, absolutely. So, just to put it in pragmatic terms, for cows that have, or live through, any of Metritis, endometritis, purulent vaginal discharge a month postpartum, we are talking 20 to 30 plus extra days open, and 20% more cows that will fail to get pregnant by 250-300 days in milk by which point, it's too late. This is a meaningful problem. And again, at that prevalence of one in five, one in four cows, that can certainly start to become a meaningful thing, not just for a few exceptions, but actually a meaningful slice of a herd. 20:32 Just to summarize. If we were talking to the dairy producer, nutritionists today and reminded the importance of improving uterine health, you want to just highlight a few of the key things that you feel are really important to remind ourselves on? Dr. Stephen LeBlanc Yes, and again, no marks for originality here. But I do think it really does come back to some of those really fundamentally important things. So, what does that mean? Right up near the top of my list would be sufficient space for feeding and lying for transition cows. So, although the evidence base is not as big as we might like it to be, having no more than 4 cows for five headlocks, or at least 30 inches of bunk space per cow. A little bit more cows than stalls and or 120-130 square feet of lying space on a pack situation for, for transition cows, abundant water, so two sources per pen, ten centimeters of linear trough space per cow, again, no marks for creativity on any of this stuff. Heat abatement for not only for fresh cows, but also for close up cows again. You know, sometimes producers are like “Yeah, I heard all that. But you know, and I am only doing part of it, because life is difficult. And, you know, it is complicated. But, you know, what else can I do?” Well, I get it, the whole art of farming is figuring out how to get as close as possible to doing those things. But really, if you can get those things done and find creative ways to do that, you are really kind of cooking with gas. And conversely, if you cannot, boy, you're fighting with one arm behind your back, or to mix metaphors, you're pushing water uphill a bit. So yes, I think those are the things that tomorrow can really help to support uterine health via good immune response and well-regulated inflammation.…

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Factors Impacting Feed Efficiency in the Feedlot in Cattle 22:34

2 years22:34

22:34

Timestamps & Summary 1:47 You recently participated in JEFO’s annual JEFO beef Academy and presented key management and nutritional approaches to improving feed efficiency in feedlot cattle. Could you summarize what you presented during that symposium? Dr. Katie Wood A lot of my research focuses on feed efficiency and understanding feed efficiency. But in the feedlot, the aspect of gut health influences feed efficiency as well. So, if we have challenges with gut health related to rumen acidosis, and liver abscesses, certainly that is going to impact how those animals are performing and ultimately, feed to gaining in cost production for producers. My research in the feedlot looks at how we can improve gut health and improve production efficiency through those aspects. 8:04 I know you mentioned some other points related to feed efficiency, but I did not want to leave fecal starch in uNDF too quickly, because I am pretty sure you've done some work with some NIRS with fecal starch and that seems practical and exciting. I am wondering if you could expand on that. Dr. Katie Wood Some colleagues at University of Saskatchewan are looking at fecal measurements of using NIRS. We are familiar in the feed industry with using NIRS as a measure for nutrients, but the same can be applied to the feces as well, we just need to build some of those standardization curves. There was a paper put out with University of Lethbridge and University of Saskatchewan, where they were looking at using the NIR to measure fecal starch and it can be done easily. Some of these larger feedlots potentially that may have an NIR on farm could simply measure fecal starch right there rather than sending it out. 9:56 So today you would really be encouraging field gut nutritionists to make sure that they are getting a 240-hour analysis done routinely? Dr. Katie Wood It is certainly something that we are finding, being able to more accurately predict what the growth curve will be and how those animals will perform. So, I would encourage a nutritionist to consider adding that as another analysis. 11:23 What are the other things that you would make sure are being looked after or considered to improve feed efficiency? Dr. Katie Wood The other important thing is reducing stress and improving consistency. And they go hand in hand. We know that variable intake and variation can cause rumen distress and inflammation and stress to the animal. And certainly, as we introduce more stress, that impacts nutrient partitioning, and therefore growth. 16:03 What do you want to focus on, either in your research or in the industry on improving feed efficiency and cattle? Dr. Katie Wood One thing I will mention is we are starting to realize that, particularly related to gut health and liver abscesses, is the longer we keep cattle on feed, and that trend towards increasing carcass weights, we know that's the end period, where we even start to see a little bit of decrease in performance of those animals. It is also a time period where we see increased risk of acidosis as opposed to earlier in the feeding period. And we know these cattle are heavy, we know that they are highly stressed, sometimes because of that weight. Sometimes we have some challenges with some feet issues. And we think that there could be some implications, again, related to insulin insensitivity and Energy Commission as well. 20:12 Is there any other points you'd like to stress when it comes to managing and improving feed efficiency and cattle? Dr. Katie Wood Certainly. Talking about that receiving period, which is kind of one of the higher risk time periods, you have cattle coming from all different sources, they may have been shipped across the country. So, do not forget about treating those receiving cattle well, because we know that it pays off in the long term. We do not have a good handle on how much that impacts the feed conversion over the rest of the feeding period. But certainly, we know, related to illness, it has a huge effect.…

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Stress: How Does Gut Health Respond? 13:24

3 years13:24

13:24

Timestamps & Summary 1:47 What brought you to that area of research? Dr. Lance Baumgard When I was at the University of Arizona, we started working on heat stress. And through a series of experiments over a period of about 10 years, we middle our way down to the gut. And what we are very confident in is that most of the negative consequences of heat stress on all farm animals stem from what we generally refer to as a leaky gut. When an animal becomes heat stress, there is a diversion of blood and, the barrier function of the gut breaks down. Now, unwanted molecules, antigens and pathogens can get in and cause a host of all sorts of negative problems. Then, we started to notice, almost by accident, that many of the negative consequences of heat stress, the metabolic, the endocrine, and the inflammatory responses are very similar to other pathologies or other negative problems that are typical on a farm. So, since then, we have looked at other very common on farm issues that cause leaky gut. And that is what we have been concentrating on lately. 4:02 In a recent presentation at the Animal Nutrition Conference in Saskatoon back in May, “when your gut isn't happy, you're not happy” was a quote that you have used. Can you explain more the biology behind that? Dr. Lance Baumgard It is a very common problem in humans, about 1/3 of the adult population of humans has a gut barrier problem. Crohn's disease, celiac, colitis, these are all different pathologies, but the result is too much in infiltration of immune cells into the gut, leading to hyper permeability, or in other words, more antigens leaking out, and stimulate an immune response, be it bloating or any other uncomfortable or painful situation. 6:25 I was hoping to talk about how stress relates to that. I wonder what the impact of stress or stressors and strain as in the gut health of animals? Dr. Lance Baumgard That is fascinating emerging area led by a good friend of mine named Adam Moser, veterinarian PhD from Michigan State University. He has done a fantastic job characterizing how emotional stress is connected to your gut. How that works is, when you get stressed, you release this hormone called corticotropin releasing hormone. Most of your neurons are in your gut. And they communicate with your immune cells, called mast cells. When you get stressed, this hormone causes these mast cells to release a variety of different compounds, and those compounds then cause the gut barrier, that would normally be tight, to be leaky. The immune system has a very high priority for all animals. It might even have a larger importance than the central nervous system. So, in other words, when an animal becomes sick, it will prioritize the immune system over all other functions: making of milk, making them a fetus making of wool, making a muscle. When the animal becomes sick, infected by the gut or any other infection, now the immune systems is top of the list when it comes to priorities, and nutrients that would otherwise have gone for the synthesis of milk or what other function is now being partitioned towards the immune system. 10:25 And this is the link where some of these subclinical immune challenges on a dairy farm, whether it is health, high somatic cells, mastitis, uterine infections, they are just not as productive as they could be, right? Dr. Lance Baumgard That is exactly right, Chris. It is probably not a problem for most of the cows. But for this small percentage of cows that are not able to eat when they want to eat, or they are not able to lay down when they want to lean down or get bossed around, they are having this emotional response. And that comes at the cost of milk. 12:07 What are take home messages for researchers, nutritionists, veterinarians, and producers in relates to gut health and ruminants? Dr. Lance Baumgard We are starting to realize that gut is very important. And luckily, the industry, including companies like JEFO, is trying to identify compounds and target molecules and strategies to help maintain good health. So, this is at the infancy, but I think it is just a matter of time before we start dialing in on strategies to help maintain good health.…

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Considerations to Meet the Nutrient Needs of Early Lactation Animals 21:16

3 years21:16

21:16

Timestamps & Summary 1:25 So, Dr. Azahal, I was hoping you would expand a bit for our audience about meeting the nutrient needs of early lactation cows, making sure we have high health, high component yield and successful rebreeding. Dr. Ousama AlZahal This is really an important topic that we always find ourselves going back to and discussing it with farmers and producers. And it is that cows have different requirements, and these requirements change throughout the whole lactation. And it is important that we ensure that these nutrients are delivered precisely and accurately. That does not only include the amount of feed that we give, but also the concentration of these nutrients and the bioavailability of those nutrients. So hence, it is important to measure dry matter intake, as much as possible, how much we are feeding and also do a frequent assessment of forage analysis and ration balancing. 7:36 Can you expand a bit more on how negative nutrient balances may play into hampering the performance? Dr. Ousama AlZahal Cows cannot eat enough to produce that amount of milk. And it runs into what we refer to very grossly as negative energy balance. But basically, energy itself is not a nutrient. But basically, that trend encompasses several nutrients. So, cows, during that time, are actually false negative in protein. So that will be a negative protein balance, minerals, vitamins, and some of these important molecules like the methyl group. 10:56 What role does dry matter intake play in negative nutrient balances how does it impact B vitamin synthesis? Dr. Ousama AlZahal That is a great question. Actually, in new research, new modeling coming out from University of Guelph geneticist’s lab, they tried to model the ruminant output of B vitamins, I think they precisely were working on B12, where they've seen that one of the biggest predictors for the output of B vitamins is basically dry matter intake. That goes back to the first point where the cows cannot eat enough during early stages to cover requirements, and they run into negative balances. Now B vitamins are unique and that dietary requirements are insufficient or basically non-existing. And the ruminant animal relies on ruminal synthesis. 16:33 You talked earlier about the role of methionine, contributing to creating methyl groups but also there is a key point where B12 and folic acid play a role as well, right? Dr. Ousama AlZahal Yes, that's true, methionine is an essential amino acid, but there is some misunderstanding that mammals cannot synthesize it. Methionine synthesis basically requires a coupling of two cycles. The first one is the folate cycle which folate is B9, and the second cycle is the methionine cycle. And what really couples the two is B12. Basically, if you have a deficiency in B12 it can lead to a secondary deficiency in folic acid. I think there is quite a significant amount of research from Christiane Girard’s lab, just showing how the status of these two B vitamins are basically linked. So, methionine is really interesting. How it is very well connected, and also plays a role in the transformation pathways, which is the production of antioxidants.…

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Sustainability: More than Just the Environment 10:27

3 years10:27

10:27

Timestamps & Summary 1:50 Could you summarize your findings in evaluating impact of ruminant agriculture versus what is what we often see reported in the media today? Dr. Frank Mitloehner There is a lot of confusion out there. That is largely caused by people not understanding how the contributions of livestock to greenhouse gases are really quite different compared to let's say, other sources such as fossil fuel sources, because of the role that methane plays methane is the most important greenhouse gas from animal agriculture. What is often times left out of the discussion is the fact that methane, while very potent, is also short-lived. That means that once it is in the air, it stays there for about a decade or so. Then, it meets another molecule in the air that destroys it. Contrast that to carbon dioxide, which is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas, which stays in the air for 1000 years. So, that's not to say methane doesn't matter. Methane matters and we try to reduce it. But methane is different in so far that if we reduce it, we can actually reduce warming by reducing methane and that makes animal agriculture part of the climate solution. 3:43 You have also presented on what we would call the five pillars of sustainability. I was wondering if you could review those for our audience today. Dr. Frank Mitloehner When people hear the term sustainability, they think they know what it means. To most people, it means environmental sustainability. Sustainability in the food sector is really broader than that. If you were to ask farmers what sustainability means, they would certainly list environmental sustainability as only one of the five pillars. The second one is animal welfare. The third one is food safety. Keeping the food that we produce as safe as we can. A fourth one is attracting and retaining a qualified workforce. The fifth pillar is financial viability. 5:24 What role can livestock producers, nutritionists, veterinarians and other influencers in the industries play in ensuring that these five pillars of sustainability are in fact respected and prolonged? Dr. Frank Mitloehner What is important is that the different players work together because when we are dealing with such a diverse set of objectives, we need to have experts from different areas working together to uphold sustainability overall. And it doesn’t happen enough. What is also important is that we communicate very clearly with the public, with policymakers and others as to how important sustainability is holistically, in all aspects, and what it takes those players to work together. 7:59 Are there any key other take home messages that you would like to leave with the audience today, in relation to the five pillars of sustainability? Dr. Frank Mitloehner What has really changed over the last few years is the younger generation which is more and more interested in where their food comes from, how it's grown, how it should be prepared, how it should not be wasted, and so on. In the past, farmers were just doing what they did best: grow food. They did not really have to worry about the rest. Now, they do. And they're not really trained to talk to people outside their profession. I think that is about to change, because people want to know, and I think that many farmers have a good story to tell, but they are too shy to tell it. They need to tell their community. Most of them have really good stories to tell and something to be proud of. In fact, our entire society should be proud of those folks, and work with them in those areas where improvements are needed.…

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Digging Into Early Life Nutrition for Dairy Calves 14:33

3 years14:33

14:33

Timestamps & Summary 1:49 I believe the audience would really enjoy hearing about your journey as a young Oxford county dairy producer all the way to a university professor. Dr. Michael Steele I grew up in Oxford County, and Ontario, Canada, and I have loved the dairy cow for my entire life. I went to the University of Guelph thinking I was going to become a geneticist. Then, I took fundamentals of nutrition and physiology, and that was it. I knew that is where I wanted to focus my energy. The drive for research brought me to a PhD at the University of Guelph as well. I also had the opportunity to work for private industry before and after my PhD, which was great for me. I was lucky enough to have a position at the University of Alberta, just over eight years ago. That is when I started my academic career. I used to study transition cows and ruminal acidosis, but I switched to calf research. I was very happy to return to Ontario, here at the University of Guelph, where I have been for over three years now. Being a professor is amazing. I'm always surrounded by ideas and young people. So I'm very happy with where I am career wise. But I do admit I do miss milking cows. 4:06 A paper you coauthored highlighted several key windows of developmental programming opportunity that exists in young and developing ruminants, in which perhaps managing nutrition, whether it's in utero, all the way up to calving can contribute to the development of those calves and those heifers and ultimately, improved milk production efficiency and health. Could you tell us more? Dr. Michael Steele The focus of calf research over the last 50 years has been on colostrum feeding and milk feeding and a little bit on weaning as well. These are important periods of the calf's life. Developmental plasticity or that ability for that calf to change and be programmed is high at that time, and we have been shown on that wide variety of research experiments that if you increase growth and health during this critical window, you can improve overall production for a lifetime. Before that calf is born, there is a lot of programming happening. We want to learn more about how feeding the dam affects the calf and following these animals for their entire life. I think that is a critical piece to understand how this early life interventions or early nutrition can affect lifetime performance. 6:04 What should we be doing differently today to enhance performance and minimize stress during those periods? Dr. Michael Steele I think it all starts on the first day of life with colostrum. A lot of our research has shown that some of the recommendations we have today are still not ideal. Ten years ago, it was 100 grams of IgG and colostrum in that first meal. Now we are at 150, some people are saying 200. I think our lab has produced results, saying that it is actually double that. So, I think we have still a lot to learn with respect to colostrum management and also that transition from colostrum to milk happening in that first week of life. I think that is something that we have really focused on just showing what that does to the calf with respect to health in, in gut function. 8:01 You talked about intestinal development, gut health development in the colostrum period, as well as the weaning transition. Could you expand a bit more on that and the development and physiology of the rumen and lower gut during that transition? Dr. Michael Steele Maintaining proper gut health is critical for this calf. If you look at the morbidity and mortality, it is really stemming from gastrointestinal dysfunction and pathogenic diarrhea. So, anything we can do to improve the gastrointestinal microbial community, as well as the health and barrier function can have a positive impact on this calf. We have been looking at different colostrum feeding strategies like extended colostrum feeding, looking at different milk compositions, really focusing on fatty acid composition within the milk, as well as lactose concentrations to see how that affects gastrointestinal health. It looks like some of the things that we were doing naturally in management, like an abrupt transition from colostrum to a whole milk, or feeding milk replacers that are high in lactose could actually stimulate some gut dysfunction during this pre-weaning period. Some of our recent research has really challenged some of the dogma that we have in our industry of how to feed a calf in the first day of life and even during this entire pre-weaning period. 12:13 Back to some of the things you mentioned about colostrum feeding and transition milk. Those would be some things that could be implemented today, right? Dr. Michael Steele Absolutely. I think just feeding as much colostrum as the calf can consume is the takeaway. But, if you're limited through economics, then I would be shooting for over 200 grams, but even closer to 300 grams of immunoglobulins. Making sure you have a gradual transition from that colostrum to a whole milk or milk replacer. Feeding a lot of milk and milk replacer in the first three to four weeks is what I would recommend because they do not consume starter, at least enough starter to grow. Then having this really gradual and late weaning program on farm, so after eight weeks of life, and trying to have a step-down program of close to two weeks or even longer, I think those would be my big take-home messages for your audience today.…

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