Jefo

RumiNation

A Life Sciences , Science and Technology podcast

#18 in Life Sciences · 🇳🇬 #55 in Life Sciences · 🇳🇿

About the show

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.

Newest episodes

Rethinking Fat Nutrition Through Individual Fatty Acids

Nov 3, 2026 24 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:38)From your research and your knowledge, what's the most important update that you feel should be evaluated and fed into how we evaluate and feed supplemental fat in lactating dairy diets?Dr. Adam LockI think that the simplest way I look at this, and I hope we've moved the needle to some extent, is where people over the last 20 years have gone from just thinking about crude protein to talking about amino acids. We've helped move the conversation from just fat or ether extract or just fat supplement to talking about individual fatty acids or combinations of fatty acids. […] I think in terms of supplemental fat, the first 2 questions I'd tell any nutritionist or producer that's been offered a new fat supplement to buy […] are, one: “What's the total fatty acid content in it?” And two: “What's the fatty acid profile of it?” […] Chris Gwyn (04:38)I know you've done extensive work in the oilseeds area; maybe a quick update on that and what you found. Dr. Adam LockWe've done a number of studies since then. We've looked at re-examining cottonseed, whole cottonseed. And high oleic soybeans. On the cottonseed side, we've done a series of studies now. We kind of reevaluated whole cottonseed in sort of more typical high-producing cows. We did a dose-response study there and would be very comfortable going up 8-12% in the diet. With whole cottonseed. […] Chris Gwyn (08:36)What kind of recommendations would you make today with a nutritionist about fat feeding versus one fat for all? How would you divide that up in a different herd? Dr. Adam LockI think there are a lot of opportunities there. Some of it is going to be herd-specific based on the size of the herd, their grouping strategies, or their potential for grouping strategies. In my opinion right now, in terms of supplemental fats going into the diet, anywhere from 0,75% to maybe 1.5%, 2% in the diet, I would be focusing my discussions and thoughts around palmitic and oleic acid. […...

How Nutrition and Management Make for Stronger Cattle Immunity

Oct 13, 2026 21 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:23)Could you share with the listening audience the journey that has taken you to be researching immunity and the respiratory infections in ruminants?Dr. Jodi McGillI actually started out my training on the human side. I was trained in mouse and human medical immunology for my PhD and my master's degree at the University of Iowa. […][It] led me to a postdoc at the National Animal Disease Center, which is where I started to study bovine respiratory disease. And I really found that much more impactful because you can study the disease in the animal, and you can really see the impact in that species. […] Chris Gwyn (03:05)When you say innate immune system specifically, what are you describing?Dr. Jodi McGillSo the immune system is kind of two arms. It is the way we teach it. […]A lot of times with the vaccine, we're targeting the adaptive immune system. So that's really specific and has memory. So, once you've gotten your vaccine, you're protected for a really long time. When we talk about that, we're talking about the adaptive part of the immune system. […] Whereas the innate immune system is nonspecific and kind of broadly reactive. It's kind of the first line of defense, and it responds in a way that says, “I care that it's a virus, but I don't necessarily care if it's BRSV or parainfluenza” […] It's also much quicker to respond. […] Chris Gwyn (06:17)You've authored, and of course co-authored, many studies focused on nutritional approaches that impact innate immunity […] How are these nutritional approaches linked to that immune readiness? Dr. Jodi McGillI think that whole idea of being ready is important because you're not playing catch-up, right? I think as soon as that calf is kind of under the weather is when we're starting to play catch-up. And a lot of the strategies that I've spent my career studying are all about getting that calf in a much better position when he hits the feedlot […] Chris Gwyn (12:20)What are some of th...

Practical Research for Better Dairy Performance

Sep 22, 2026 22 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:22)So [Sarah], let's start with looking at the information that you presented on B vitamin supplementation in dairy calves. In the study, you presented data on the post-weaning period. My question for you is: why focus on that time? Sarah DeanWe focused on this time because the post-weaning period is one of the most stressful phases of a calf's life. The calf is experiencing nutritional changes, social regrouping, and environmental stressors all at once. […] Chris Gwyn (03:18)Perhaps you could share with us how that study was built and the results from that. Sarah DeanThis trial was conducted on a commercial dairy farm in Hungary, and we enrolled 166 female dairy calves, and we alternated consecutive age groups between control and treatment. So this allowed the trial to be a side-by-side study. And calves were enrolled at around 87 days of age, which was about 10 days after they were weaned. […] And then the calves were followed until 180 days of age. […] Chris Gwyn (04:45)Perhaps then you could share some of the key findings in the study. Sarah DeanThe results were very encouraging, as the calves that received the protected B vitamins gained about 5% more per day than the control calves. And importantly, we observed this advantage consistently across every batch of calves in the study. Chris Gwyn (06:06)On the research that was done and presented, what does this mean from a producer perspective? Sarah DeanI think every gram of growth matters when developing replacement heifers. And better growth after weaning is going to support that producer's breeding targets, reduce variability among heifers, and contribute to a more productive future herd. […] Chris Gwyn (07:00)Dr. Esselstyn, let's talk about the transition cow study. Why examine B vitamins and choline before calving in that typical transition period? What's the importance of that? And why do we invest time in looking at that? Dr. Victoria AsselstineWe know that the...

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All episodes

Rethinking Fat Nutrition Through Individual Fatty Acids

Nov 3, 2026 24 min

How Nutrition and Management Make for Stronger Cattle Immunity

Oct 13, 2026 21 min

Practical Research for Better Dairy Performance

Sep 22, 2026 22 min

Why Mitochondria Matter in the Modern Dairy Cow

Sep 1, 2026 27 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:54) Can you share with the audience a bit of the evolutionary biology of the mitochondrion, how this is crucial for today's dairy cow, and why this is such an interest to you? Dr. Nial O'Boyle I share your fascination with it. So, on the evolutionary side, the main theory is [that] ancient cells like archaea and a type of bacteria fused together, and the bacteria was the mitochondrion, or the pre-runner for the mitochondrion, and they became what we now know as the eukaryotic cell, so the cells that we're made up of. And that gave complex life the ability to happen. So that mitochondrion, like the bacterial cell, they can produce energy through electric potential through the membranes. But once that was brought into a cell, what you were able to do is start to do more complex work. You can produce more proteins because the energy was at the site of action. So, cells could get more complex, organisms could get more complex, and the argument is we wouldn't be here if that kind of merger hadn't happened. […] The reason why I got interested from a dairy cow point of view is that I was fortunate enough to do a master's at Michigan State with the late Professor Lorraine Sordillo. Learned a lot from her, great scientist, um, and was just really interested. She inspired me on, on that connection between immunology nutrition, fat mobilization, and just that whole immunological question. […] To me, that became the epicenter of this connection between nutrition and immunology. Metabolism is the conversion of food into chemical energy by the body to do work. And I don't think there's anything that comes close to the dairy cow as far as being a metabolic athlete. […] Chris Gwyn (08:02) Can you summarize for your audience what you've learned about management, nutrition of the transition cow that maybe relates to this improved or ability to improve mitochondrial function? Dr. Nial O'Boyle One thing I've learned with people like Pro...

The Evolving Role of the Modern Dairy Nutrition Consultant

Jul 21, 2026 35 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:00) What drew you into dairy consulting, and how has that role evolved over the years as both the industry and your customers have changed? Jodi Erickson Back in the early 2000s, when I was hitting the job market, nutrition wasn't a career that I was seeking out, but there was an opportunity to work with an established team, an established feed supplier, and I was qualified for the job. It was shortly after that that I discovered my true passion for this career. […] Over the last 15 to 20 years, my day-to-day role has had to adapt and evolve right along with the industry. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the precision that we can do things now and the data that we have access to. […] Chris Gwyn (07:26) What does a day look like and what does a week look like in Jodi Erickson's dairy consulting business? Jodi Erickson My team is a team of 4 nutritionists. So, we do pretty much work independently. We do overlap on farms, just depending on size and location to a degree. But I'm generally covering dairy farms in east-central Wisconsin into central Minnesota. Generally, I am on farms every day of the week, some fairly closer to home to allow for a little bit more office time. But then obviously there are some very long, high-mileage days that happen as well. […] But my routine farm visits, they're still based around finding what the obstacle is on the farm. Whether that's just visually identifying we're going to have a feed change, how are we going to blend, how are we going to transition this? This is something that we do 4 to 5 times a year on every farm, but it still seems like we need to revisit the procedure every time so it gets done correctly. […] Chris Gwyn (12:12) You have a family, you have farm work, you have your dairy consulting. How do you balance all that? What's your key to success in that area? Jodi Erickson The key to success there might just be failure. I can reflect on my earlier years wi...

Smart Systems Rethinking Lameness Management

Jun 30, 2026 23 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:35) How would you describe the current state of lameness on dairy farms, and how has it evolved over your career? Dr. Gerard Cramer I started working on lameness when I started my graduate work in 2003. Things have progressed, but I think it's still probably one of the major animal welfare issues in the industry. So, I'd say we probably haven't progressed as much as I'd like. […] We're creating too many chronic cows. That's kind of hampering, holding us back. We do all these things to prevent new cases, and I think we're doing a good job in that, but we haven't really focused on what I think is the biggest issue, which is finding lame cows and preventing chronic cows. […] Chris Gwyn (04:01) You said identifying; you've done some work with cameras and identification. Where are we going with that technology? Does it seem to be working? Dr. Gerard Cramer That's my interest in the cameras because, to me the issue is the people. We need people to find lame cows. You need to have a dedicated person looking for lame cows. So, depending on your size of operation, that's a couple of hours where a person is literally standing there watching cows. So, it looks like you're paying them to do nothing. […] When I'm thinking about the camera technology, I want to be strategic and say, “Okay, the camera is going to find the lame cows, the newly lame cows, or the cows that are getting worse”. But if she's a chronic lame cow, she's just going to go on a routine schedule, and she might come up to the chute every 3 months. […] Chris Gwyn (08:29) You talked about inflammation and changes in bone growth. You want to expand a bit on that? Dr. Gerard Cramer Basically, what we're talking about is the last bone; we call that the P3. That's the last bone that's inside the hoof capsule. If we think about when a cow's walking on, she's walking on about 5 millimeters of horn, and then there's about 5 millimeters of something called the corium, an...

Managing Calf Stress from Day One to Weaning

Jun 9, 2026 26 min

Dr. Gail Carpenter explains how early-life stress, nutrition, and management shape calf health, resilience, productivity, and profitability.Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (04:04) Calfhood stress: what does that mean, and why is the timing of these stressors so important, in particular for the long-term health and productivity of the animal? Dr. Gail Carpenter It is a very stressful time in that animal's life. They don't have an immune system. They don't have the tools to really be able to thrive the way an older animal would. If we're doing our colostrum program, they've got that passive immunity, but that's about it. And there are a lot of things that happen in those first couple of months to our calves. […] Chris Gwyn (07:59) What are we seeing from financial or productivity loss in their first lactation or lifetime from the research that's been done more globally? But also, how is that impacting the dairy? Dr. Gail Carpenter I'll talk about the replacement heifers first. There's been quite a bit of research done; there's a study that gets often cited out of Mike VanAmberg's lab at Cornell showing more milk replacer. And this is where the accelerated growth programs really started, I think, taking hold was more milk replacer in early life, more milk production in the first lactation. And so, I think a lot of people have seen that research and thought, “Well, if I give more milk, I get more milk.” But there's a lot more nuance than that. […] Chris Gwyn (18:45) Can you see other aspects of management and nutrition that can help to reduce the negative impact? And where do you see the biggest opportunities for farmers or nutritionists to help better support those calves? Dr. Gail Carpenter You're absolutely right that we need to be thinking ahead. You've probably heard the phrase that genetics is the ceiling and nutrition is the floor. So genetics kind of sets that upper limit, and nutrition sets that lower limit. I don't actually think that's entirely a...

How Wildfire Smoke Impacts Calf Growth

May 19, 2026 27 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:19) Tell us about your Rancher program and your background journey. Dr. Juliana Ranches Rancher is a webinar series that brings most of the day’s information to cattle producers and livestock producers around the globe. […] I wanted it to be something unique that would highlight the work of women in this industry. So female scientists, ranchers, farmers, in the industry, faculty that work in the beef cattle industry or in the cattle industry in general, to showcase their career, to show their trajectory, and also to, you know, inspire the younger generation. […] I actually started my research career as a dairy person, but my heart was always beef. So I got a lot of experience in the dairy industry, working as an intern in one of the largest dairy farms in Brazil. […] Later, I moved to Florida to do my master's and PhD. And there I was trained in nutrition, ruminant nutrition, with a major focus on mineral nutrition. […] Moving to Oregon, to the Western US, brought another set of challenges and questions that need to be addressed for our producers. And then the wildfire smoke exposure studies, that's definitely something that has been a challenge for producers. […] That got me thinking about the smoke because we were in a situation where there were a lot of poor air quality days with very poor outside environmental conditions. […] Chris Gwyn (09:28) How does wildfire smoke impact cattle biology, physiology, and performance? Dr. Juliana Ranches In 2022, when we started doing our smoke exposure studies with natural exposure. So we had a project throughout the state, we had 3 different locations where we were monitoring cattle all over the seasons. So basically, what we tried to do was to create a good, strong baseline of data on the health and other parameters. And then we were hoping that a fire would happen. […] And in one of those locations, we actually got a fire. Once that fire happened, calves were exposed to tha...

Turning Feed Analysis into Real Gains in Milk Production

Apr 28, 2026 28 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:58) How should nutritionists use lab data to confirm that what’s formulated on paper matches what cows are actually eating and performing? Katie Raver A lot of times when we get a feed analysis, we use those feed analysis to formulate our ration. So we'll pull those into a model and build a ration around those. […] But I think there's a lot of value beyond that. […] Even testing things like commodities can help us confirm what we put into that model is what's getting fed to cows. […] And we can even do this from testing our TMR and making sure what is coming out in the feed mixer and getting fed to cows matches what we have formulated. Chris Gwyn (04:54) What are the key recommendations for setting up an effective and practical feed and forage sampling program? Katie Raver It's definitely based on a farm-by-farm situation, and so we have to take into account a lot of factors when we set out a sampling recommendation. […] We have to make sure that we've got someone who's capable of taking those samples, that we trust to take those samples. […] So some of the key points… is the recommendation of sampling feeds more than we're using 4 or more pounds of. […] We really weigh it based off of the usage and what the farm can accomplish along with farm size. […] We've seen success sampling as much as 3 to 5 times a week for our very, very large farms, and as low as 1 every week to every 10 days or 2 weeks. Chris Gwyn (07:53) What tools or innovations are helping producers and nutritionists get more value from feed testing data? Katie Raver In terms of tools to establish a testing routine would just simply be creating a list of the feeds that we're feeding, usage rates. […] And we've got some tools built to help producers do that. […] I think being flexible to dairies is what's enabled us to really capture the most benefit. […] So some new tools would be being able to trend and track this over time. So if we get a ro...

Unlocking the Role of B Vitamins in Receiving Cattle

Oct 21, 2025 15 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:04) Could you share with the audience why B vitamins would be important to receiving cattle in particular? Dr. Stephanie Hansen Absolutely. If we go back and look at the NRC guidelines, we've really ignored two classes of vitamins, vitamin C and vitamin B. Cattle are able to make vitamin C from glucose in their liver. […] Not a lot of work is focused on that because the assumption has been that the animal can make it, it's fine. Similarly, they get most of their B vitamins from rumen microbial synthesis. And so, again, a lot of the requirements were largely ignored, or potential requirements, because the thought has been: Well, his bugs make it for him, so he's fine. […] Chris Gwyn (04:19) What do they do to a feed lot receiving cattle that would be important in their overall performance, health, productivity, profitability in the end? Dr. Stephanie Hansen The way that I teach this to my nutrition students is that if you think about the macros like protein and carbohydrates and lipids, often the things that we formulate rations for initially, those are like the bricks in a wall. If you stacked those bricks on top of each other, they're pretty robust, and they're a big chunk of that wall. But you could push those bricks over with a finger because there's nothing holding them together. If you think about minerals and vitamins in water as collectively making the mortar that you could put between those to hold it together, and you let it dry, now it'd be pretty hard to push that wall over. It's a sturdy structure. I love that analogy. I stole that from one of my friends in the industry. […] Chris Gwyn (06:20) Can you tell us in particular, about some of the health or immune outcomes? You had mentioned immunity that you saw in a study, and what also excited you about to look in the future? Dr. Stephanie Hansen This was an eight-week trial. Basically, what we did was we had a pen-based study, so Delivering to Pens. That's what we call...

Strategies for Healthier and More Resilient Receiving Cattle

Oct 7, 2025 20 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:44) Before we jump right in, I'd enjoy hearing about the journey that brings you to research and teaching. Dr. Stephanie Hansen I did not grow up on a beef operation, but my grandparents had cattle, and so I spent a lot of summers there. So, I had the beef bug, so to speak, by the time I went to undergrad at Iowa State, but I was never pre-vet. I was really focused on what we could do, and eventually I realized that what that was was nutrition to actually keep animals from having to see the vet if we didn't have to. And so I found my passion for nutrition through a senior-level nutrition class, and I call that my light bulb class, and I teach that now. So I've been teaching that for over 14 years, and I think that's really a full circle moment to be at the front of the classroom for the class that gave me the passion for nutrition. […] Chris Gwyn (03:33) I'm wondering, what have you seen as the biggest changes in cattle receiving practices that have driven some of those changes, whether it's science, economics, or consumer expectations? Dr. Stephanie Hansen I think some of the biggest things we've learned in the receiving cattle nutrition is really the importance of what happened to that animal before they came to the feed lot. Now, of course, we're a very segmented industry, so it's really difficult to control that. But we do have a lot of people who will have retained ownership and will have the opportunity to really control more of the nutrition that gets into that animal from birth all the way out through harvest. […] Chris Gwyn (05:39) Are there impacts of consumer expectations that have also altered what we should be doing today from what we've done in the past? Dr. Stephanie Hansen From a consumer perspective, I would say probably the biggest one, […] is that we have pretty aggressively moved away from mass treatment of animals on arrival. That's really a practice now that is restricted to animals who are at really high...

Smarter Farming with Data and Technology

Sep 23, 2025 30 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (00:02:56.23) Dr. Van de Pol, would you share with the listening audience your journey in AG and in data, and how this journey has brought you to establishing CATTLEytics? Dr. Shari van de Pol Similar to a lot of listeners of your show, what really resonates with me is everything tied to agriculture, being outdoors, and the biological systems. I just found it was so interesting and fascinating.[…] I actually did a minor in fine art at the time, and I ended up working for IBM and found myself at a very interesting, challenging job, but something that really didn't connect with any of the things that I really held dear. I had this moment where I decided, after a few years of spending a day a week with a large animal vet, that I was going to go back to school to become a large animal veterinarian. And that is really what kicked off this path. I always knew when I was in vet school that what I wanted to really focus on was the systems. And that's what I ended up doing. While I was at the Summer Dairy Institute down at Cornell. I met with some really interesting professors and some interesting industry experts. […] In 2014, that's when CATTLEytics was formally started. We've been in this for over 10 years, and we have a strong history now in the industry of really pairing technology and veterinary expertise. […] Chris Gwyn (00:06:00.11) Are there areas in livestock production that we're missing out on by not either having accurate data or not being able to make timely decisions based on the analysis or accurate analysis of data? Dr. Shari van de Pol I mean, there obviously are, but we really take a person-first approach to the way that we do our business. We look at dairy farms and dairy cows like athletes. So, if you have a whole bunch of Olympic athletes, it depends on how far you want to go. If you're happy with their performance and you're getting your milk check and you don't want to do anything further than that, then, yeah, there...

New Tools for Understanding Stress in Transition Cows

Sep 9, 2025 14 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:11) At JEFO, we've been looking at stressors across species, in particular in dairy cows. I was wondering if you could give our audience an overview of this study and why it's important. Dr. Laura Hernandez Sure. This was an ongoing collaboration with my colleague Dr. Milo Wiltbank, who's a reproductive physiologist here at the University of Wisconsin. We had a shared scientist who's now a professor at the vet school at the University of Florida, Pedro Monteiro. […] He's traditionally a reproductive physiologist. He developed this question about how this might impact return to cyclicity and timing of parturition. His main complaint was that in our projects, we could never figure out when the cows would calve, so they'd be sampling forever and ever and ever. And then finally the cow would calve earlier or late, of course. And so he was like, there's got to be a way we can figure this out. It also might be really critical to how successfully a cow comes back into cyclicity or what might happen with reproductive diseases, knowing that there are all these losses that occur that are due to a variety of problems in the first 60 days postpartum. […] We know that cortisol is a major stress regulator of all things, and it changes all the time in relation to a variety of stresses. [Dr. Monteiro] had read this paper, and I believe it was beef cattle, and they had shown that you could measure cortisol in the hair. Really, the hair cortisol is reflective that day for about two weeks prior to the actual date you took the hair sample. Because the cortisol deposits in the hair, and the hair doesn't go away. It grows, and then you shave it off, and you can do this measurement via RIA or ELISA of the cortisol. […] Chris Gwyn (10:10) You had demonstrated that if we can just take out some of the key points: low stress, low cortisol versus high. You were able to see a production performance different, wasn't there? Dr. Laura Hernandez That would b...

Understanding Calcium Needs in Dairy Cows

Aug 29, 2025 24 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:50) Dr. Hernández, could you share with the audience your journey that brought you to be a trusted researcher and advisor at the University of Wisconsin? Dr. Laura Hernandez Sure. Working in Dr. Collier's lab, I had the fortunate pleasure of working in mammary biology. I specifically worked on how the mammary gland interacts with the endocrine and metabolic systems of an animal. And naturally, given his research was in dairy cows, that was my first exposure. I really became fascinated with this process. So, it led me to be a postdoc continuing this work, but also in humans and in mice, and looking at things more holistically from how the maternal metabolism and biology coordinate with the mammary gland to make milk and stay healthy at the same time. And so when they were looking for a lactation biologist at the University of Wisconsin, I was more than happy to apply for it and very fortunate to get the position. I've been here now for 14 years. […] Chris Gwyn (03:28) We deal every day with dairy ruminants about producing milk. Can we say sometimes you overlook the other, and the physiology and metabolism that goes on? This is strange, but it's awesome that you're in this role and the University of Wisconsin is continuing this role because it doesn't exist in a lot of universities, right? Dr. Laura Hernandez (03:55) It doesn't. And we're fortunate now we have a second faculty member in the space, Ximena Laporta. And so, they really expanded that. And prior to my getting here, at various periods of time, they had maybe two people focused in that space. Occasionally, we had someone studying mastitis. Pam Ruegg was here before Michigan State. And so they've always put a focus on that. […] Chris Gwyn (04:50) Further on that, we can expand because as I read through your research, it seems that perhaps, the industry in general may have overlooked the key role of the mammary system. As you pointed, it's specific to calcium balance...

How Forage Quality and Cow Comfort Drive Dairy Success

Jul 14, 2025 27 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:26) Going past the economic value, what can component volume and percentage tell us about the farm level management and cow health? Dr. Heather Dann I think one of the important things that we need to look at is the pounds or kilos of fat and protein that our farm is producing. [S]ome of the common metrics that we're currently using here […] is the kilos or pounds of fat and protein shipped. Several years ago, we had these targets of about 2.7 kilos, or about six plus pounds. People were trying to join […] the six-pound club. And because of improvements in nutrition management as well as genetics, many farms have now been easily able to achieve that. And what we're seeing now is that those targets or those benchmarks are shifting. And we have many farms striving for that 3.2 kilos or 7 pounds plus of milk. And we're fortunate here at the Institute that we're at that level and a little above. […] Chris Gwyn (04:10) What else can this high level of component yield tell us about what's going on from a management perspective or cow health perspective? Dr. Heather Dann I think it really gives us a lot of insight into the general feeding practices and quality of the diet that's being had on farm. And one of the tools or metrics that we've been using for the last several years and have found quite useful is the fatty acid analysis piece that's come into play. […] Chris Gwyn (07:13) What do you see from your own experience or research as the most influential nutritional factors affecting component yield on the dairies? Dr. Heather Dann I think one of the most important things that we need to do is make sure we get the diet and that dining experience right to maximize milk components. And to me, that means that we need to focus on diet formulation, but also the management environment in which that diet is delivered to the cows. […] But I think it just drives home the point that we can't just think about the diet formulation. It's beyond...

Breaking Barriers to Mental Health in Farming Communities

Jun 25, 2025 14 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:51) Dr. Slesser, you recently published a study titled Wisconsin Farmers Share Their Stressors and Mental Health Care Needs Through Focus Groups. I was wondering if you could share the reasoning behind conducting the studies. Dr. Heather Schlesser I think we all know that Covid was hard on everybody, whether you were on a farm or not on a farm. And one thing that we saw here in Wisconsin is that with COVID, we had an increased spike in the number of suicides that were happening on farms. The CDC has even shown that between 2000 and 2020, there was an increase in the rate of suicides in rural areas by 46%. […] And our study team wanted to know why were these farmers not seeking help. Why weren't they reaching out to medical providers and getting assistance for the stress that they were feeling? Chris Gwyn (02:55) So you took a focused group approach to the study and it’s be interesting to know what were the key findings in the study. Dr. Heather Schlesser Interestingly, one of the main things they said is that they didn't feel comfortable going to the providers because they didn't have a farming background. They didn't understand that farming isn't just a job for these people, it is a way of life. You know, farmers identify as farmers. That is their whole entire life. It's not just “I'm going to go to an 8 to 5 and come home and be something else”; they are farmers. […] The other thing that they said was a major stressor for them is, “We're already so busy on the farm doing that work that has to get done on a daily basis. We don't have this time to take off, to clean up, to drive into town, and to go see somebody that doesn't even understand what we're going through.” […] Another thing that came out that we saw is that there's still that stigma. “We can't go see a provider because then everybody else in town is going to see our truck in the parking lot, and they're going to know that we need help.” […] Chris Gwyn (04:58) So what...

Impact de la supplémentation en vitamines B sur la nutrition des vaches laitières

Jun 3, 2025 24 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:49) Docteure Duplessis, vous et vos collègues étudiez depuis de nombreuses années le rôle des vitamines B, en particulier celui de la vitamine B12 et de l’acide folique sur l'impact métabolique, productif et reproductif des vaches laitières. Avant de présenter vos dernières recherches, pourriez-vous résumer les découvertes à ce jour ? Dre Mélissa Duplessis J'ai commencé ma carrière en recherche il y a quinze ans. J'étais une étudiante à la maîtrise à cette époque dans le laboratoire de Christiane Girard à Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada. C'est vraiment elle la première qui a mis au défi le vieux dogme que la vache n'avait pas besoin d'apports extérieurs en vitamine B, parce que les microorganismes de son rumen produisent la vitamine B. […] Mon projet de maîtrise se concentrait sur quinze fermes laitières commerciales au Québec. On a donné des suppléments d'acide folique, qui est la vitamine B9 et la vitamine B12, chaque semaine. Puis moi, pendant quatorze mois, j'allais sur ces fermes-là à chaque deux semaines pour prendre des données. Et on s'est intéressé à la productivité de ces animaux-là autour du vêlage. […] Chris Gwyn (08:39) On va parler des études plus récentes. Vous avez partagé avec moi une étude plus récente où vous avez examiné l'impact de l'alimentation des génisses au pâturage ou dans une étable, ainsi que les différences en concentration d'acide folique et de vitamine B12. C'est intéressant. Pouvez-vous partager avec nous vos conclusions ? Dre Mélissa Duplessis Vous faites référence à mon étude en collaboration avec Mary Beth Hall, qui a récemment pris sa retraite de l'USDA. En fait, c'est une étude qui a été réalisée aux États-Unis sur des génisses qui avaient environ cinq mois. Donc il y avait la moitié qui était élevée au pâturage, avec un ajout de suppléments et de minéraux et vitamines, et l'autre partie des animaux était élevée dans l'étable et recevait une ration totale mélangée. C'est vraiment une ét...

Impact of B Vitamin Supplementation on Dairy Nutrition

Jun 3, 2025 24 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (01:50) I was wondering if you could summarize for the audience what has been discovered to date about B vitamin nutrition in dairy cows, in particular B12 and folic acid. Dr. Melissa Duplessis I started my career in research 15 years ago. I was a master's student at that time in Christiane Girard’s lab at Agriculture and Agri Food Canada. And she was the first to challenge the well-established dogma that dairy cows do not need an exogenous supply of B vitamins because their ruminal bugs are producing the B vitamins. But now, as you know, dairy cows are producing more and more milk, especially during the early lactation. We can wonder if it is still true that they don't need supplementation in B vitamins. That's why my master’s project was conducted. […] Chris Gwyn (10:19) I wanted to talk about some of the more recent research that you shared because it helps one to think about what some of the other needs are and future research. And in particular you shared a study about the impact of pasture or housed fed heifers fed at TMR. I'm assuming in the housing and the difference in folate and B12 concentrations and wondering if you could share those findings and how that might impact at the farm level. Dr. Melissa Duplessis I think you are referring to my recent collaboration with Mary Beth Hall, who recently retired from the USDA. This study was conducted in the US with heifers at 5 months of age. And half of the heifers were raised on pasture receiving grains, vitamins, and mineral supplements, and the other half were in the barn receiving TMR (total mixed ration). And this is a preliminary study. We obtained blood samples from those heifers, and we analyzed folic acid and vitamin B12. And we obtained that heifers raised on pasture had a higher plasma folate, and the opposite was observed for vitamin B12. So, heifers raised on pasture had lower vitamin B12 concentration. […] We did not record dry matter intake, but we also observed th...

Managing Consistency to Improve Fresh Cow Health

May 20, 2025 32 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (02:35) Dr. Devries, your lab has been extensively and intensively looking at cow management and nutrition factors and their associations and correlations with early lactation outcomes. Why don’t you give us an overview of this most recent study design. Dr. Trevor DeVries Yes, this is a large study that we recently undertook with a large cohort of dairy farms in southwestern Ontario. […] Not specifically looking at milking system effects, but looking at the management of those cows during the dry period, their nutritional management during that time period, and looking at not only how it impacted the cows during that time period, but also those cows as they transitioned after calving, and looked at the fresh cow success of the cows on those farms and correlating that back to differences in management, differences in environmental conditions, and particularly things like heat stress. Chris Gwyn (05:22) One of the factors that came out is that you and your team demonstrated pretty large variation and differences between formulated diet and the diet that was fed at the farm level. And I was wondering if you could dig down a little deeper into that and share some of the other key findings and information from this study. Dr. Trevor DeVries One of the factors that we were interested in from a stress standpoint was dietary and looking at differences in diets. And then, one of the key things that we were really interested in was how closely those diets matched what was formulated for those farms, as well as how much variation we saw within a farm over time in terms of the diets that were delivered to the cows. […] Chris Gwyn (12:08) In the study, your lab looked at heat stress impacts on the cow and its relation to markers of stress associated with changes in physiology and metabolism. I'm wondering if you could share a bit more details with the audience and what you can conclude from the findings in the study. Dr. Trevor DeVries We knew t...

Maximizing Milk Yield and Cow Health Through Stocking Density Management

Apr 29, 2025 15 min

Timestamps & Summary Chris Gwyn (03:02) What is important for producers and nutritionists to consider when optimizing stock and density in their dairies? Dr. Rick Grant (03:10) Well, that's the big question, isn't it? And there are at least two or three main factors that we can get into today. One would be just, I had an aha moment a few years ago when a grad student and I realized that we need to think about overcrowding as a subclinical stressor. That allows us to think about how the same level of stocking density of stalls or feed bunk doesn't affect every herd the same way because the point at which a subclinical stressor affects a cow within a herd really is a function of the quality of the management on that dairy as well as the quality of the facilities. […] The other thing, I would say is, we know this, but we don't think about it enough. When we say stocking density, we count stalls, we count cows, or we count headlocks, we count cows. But we need to always step back and think within a pen, what is the experienced stocking density from an individual cow's perspective? […] I think that's something we need to think more about in terms of managing a given stocking density on a specific farm, the cow's perspective. […] We did a study where we found that cows tend to prefer the stalls nearest the pen exit, particularly lame cows. And doesn't that make sense? If you're a lame cow and walking is a bit challenging for you, you may have 50 stalls to choose from, but you choose the ones that are closest to the exit or the entrance. That tells me right there that a simple mathematical calculation of stocking density would fail those moderately lame cows because they don't have 50 stalls available to them. They might only have 10 or 12 if you allow them to express their natural desired resting behavior. That's something we need to wrestle with in the industry. Chris Gwyn (07:13) What are some of the key metrics or cow observations that we should follow in order to...

Jean Fontaine, Founder of JEFO, on Livestock Feed and Industry Evolution

Feb 6, 2024 23 min

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 s...

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

Feb 6, 2024 20 min

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....

Impact of Stocking Density on Milk Production and Profitability

Jan 23, 2024 24 min

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 t...

Demystifying De Novo Fatty Acid Synthesis

Jan 9, 2024 21 min

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...

Cow-Calf Separation in Dairy Farming

Dec 12, 2023 32 min

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 justi...

Exploring Opportunities and Challenges in Dairy Beef Feeding Systems

Nov 28, 2023 29 min

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...

Tools for Cow Handling at the Farm Level

Nov 14, 2023 16 min

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...

Metabolism in Cattle for Muscle and Overall Development

Oct 31, 2023 29 min

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...

Understanding and Managing Gastrointestinal Tract Health in Cattle

Oct 17, 2023 24 min

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 acido...

Let’s Talk About Meat!

Oct 3, 2023 10 min

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.

Principles for a Sustainable Dairy Industry

Sep 19, 2023 31 min

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 l...

Solutions to Navigate the Current Economy

Sep 5, 2023 20 min

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...

Importance of Vitamins Stability in Premixes and Minerals

Aug 22, 2023 26 min

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 differen...

Transition Cow Health and Management

Aug 8, 2023 19 min

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 f...

How Mathematical Models Can Help Animal Nutrition

Jul 25, 2023 20 min

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 f...

Economic Situation and Perspective within the Cattle Market

Jul 11, 2023 28 min

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 r...

B-Vitamins and Trace Minerals in Transition Cow Nutrition

Jun 27, 2023 16 min

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...

Safety Tips in Silage Management

Jun 13, 2023 27 min

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 wit...

Youth in Agriculture: The Future of Food

Feb 21, 2023 14 min

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...

Mineral Recommendations in Dairy Cattle

Feb 15, 2023 22 min

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 fo...

Rural Mental Health

Jan 26, 2023 23 min

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. M...

Awareness for Farmer's Mental Health

Jan 12, 2023 14 min

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 appro...

Application of Precision Nutrition on Dairy Systems

Dec 16, 2022 15 min

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. W...

Challenge and Requirements for Successful Pregnancy in Cattle

Dec 1, 2022 32 min

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 do...

Reproductive Health and Management in Postpartum Cow

Nov 17, 2022 24 min

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 ever...

Factors Impacting Feed Efficiency in the Feedlot in Cattle

Nov 3, 2022 22 min

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...

Stress: How Does Gut Health Respond?

Jul 6, 2022 13 min

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 Mi...

Considerations to Meet the Nutrient Needs of Early Lactation Animals

Jun 15, 2022 21 min

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 d...

Sustainability: More than Just the Environment

Jun 1, 2022 10 min

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 th...

Digging Into Early Life Nutrition for Dairy Calves

May 18, 2022 14 min

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 th...

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Rethinking Fat Nutrition Through Individual Fatty Acids

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🇳🇬 Life Sciences Best #18

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🇳🇿 Life Sciences Best #55

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Podcast details

Created by: Jefo
Status: Active
Latest episode: Nov 3, 2026
Episodes: 82
Release period: Monthly
Avg. episode length: 19 min
Explicit: No
Language: English

Links

Official website ↗ Apple Podcasts ↗ RSS feed ↗

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