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Phil Cardoso and Luciano Caixeta join the OG3 in The Moos Room to discuss nutrition strategies for transition cow health. While we are talking in dairy terms today, the strategies discussed and the metrics such as body condition that are measured are definitely applicable to beef as well. Tons in this episode and plenty to digest (pun intended). Thank you for listening!
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
[music]
[cow moos]
Joe Armstrong: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. Dr. Joe Armstrong here with the OG3 and two guests today. We have a guest from the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, and that's Luciano Caixeta. He is really focused on transition management, some physiology in his research at the university. He's brought a friend today to help us get through some of those similar topics and that's Phil Cardoso.
Phil is from the University of Illinois. He's with the Department of Animal Science and a veterinarian. Got his degree in Brazil, worked in Brazil for five years in private practice, got his masters in South Brazil as well. Worked for a little bit of time in Brazil and then came to the United States to join the University of Illinois. Got his PhD and now he's faculty there at the university. Phil does a lot of work with nutrition strategies and the transition period, and that's our focus today. Thank you for being here, Phil. We really appreciate you giving us your time.
Phil Cardoso: Thank you.
Joe: I've gotten to know Luciano, we worked together on a couple of projects, and he's going to be acting like if you listen to the episodes with Pam Rueick as Aaron Royster, another host today to help us get into the topic today with Phil. Thanks for being here, Luciano.
Luciano Caixeta: Thank you.
Joe Armstrong: Before we get into the topic, as always, we have our two questions. Emily is going to lead us through the two questions.
Emily: I think I know which one to ask first. First question both of you need to answer is, what is your favorite breed of beef cattle? Phil, we'll have you go first. Favorite breed of beef cattle?
Phil: I'll say Angus.
Emily: Brad is disappointed.
Bradley: That's the wrong answer.
Emily: Luciano, what is your favorite breed of beef cattle?
Luciano: I'll say Nelore, that's the one that I worked with in-
Emily: [unintelligible 00:02:03].
Luciano: -Brazil growing up.
Phil: I have an excuse for mine, though.
Emily: Okay, let's hear your excuse.
Phil: There's a storytelling that at least back in Brazil, most likely here in the US, as well, if you get beef cattle books from the '40s, '30s, Angus cows was fairly short. Hereford as well, but Angus specifically. Then, if you get some books from the '60s, in a fairly short amount of time, that cow got super taller. Some people say that there is some hosting that was put into that breed to make that happen. If that's true or not, I don't know, but I would say Angus may have a little bit of hosting in them and maybe that's why I like it. Maybe it's because of the stake, who knows?
?Luciano: Nelore have pretty good stake too, though.
Joe: Well, I'm happy with the Angus answer for sure. That's mine as well. I don't care how you got there. I just love it and that puts us back on top with Herefords. Herefords were at 6 and now, Angus are at 6. Black Baldies at 2, Belted Galloway at 2, Brahman at 1, Stabilizer, 1, Gelbvieh, 1, Scottish Highlander 1, Chianina 1, Charolais 1, Simmental 1, and now Nelore at 1. That's getting to be a long list. There's a lot more breeds out there, too, so it could get even longer. All right, let's go to that second question.
Emily: All right. I just want to say I enjoy the variety. Second question, you may have guessed it, is what is your favorite breed of dairy cattle? Luciano, I'm going to have you go first this time. Favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Luciano: I do like Holstein.
Emily: [laughs] Oh, I wish everybody could see Bradley and Joe's faces. They're not pleased. I'm happy as a peach, so it's all good. All right, Phil, what's your answer?
Phil: I would say Holstein as well.
Emily: [laughs] Boy, that seems commanding for Holstein. Brad and Joe will tell you that the right answer is Jersey, and they're wrong.
Phil: They are fun to work with. They are fun.
Emily: [laughs] Joe, what's our tally at now?
Joe: We're just going to skip this because that was a hard-hitting day for Jerseys. That puts Holstein's at 10, Jersey's at 7, Brown Swiss at 4, Dutch Belted at 2, Montb�liarde at 2, Normande at 1, and then we have one neutral vote. That's disappointing, that's fine, I'll take the comments, the Jerseys are fun to work with because they're easier to work with because they're small. I mean, if you guys want to reconsider your answer, now is the time. [laughs]
Emily: No takebacks, Joe. Sorry.
Luciano: I'll pass.
Joe Armstrong: Okay, fine. Holstein is back out in front. Angus and Herbert is now tied, so very big day. All right, let's get into the topic today. The topic today is really transition management and the nutritional strategies that we use to help our cows get through that period. Before we get too far into this, I want to make sure everyone's on the same page. Let's just define that transition period. I think there's several different definitions out there, but Phil, what is it to you?
Phil: I think that it was established long time ago by Grummer and [unintelligible 00:05:22] that comes three weeks before, three weeks after calving for cows. That's my take on it. Some people may extend to four weeks after calving, but I think the scientific would be three weeks before, three weeks after calving.
Joe: The six weeks surrounding calving, three weeks before, three weeks after, that's what we're talking about today and how we influence cows to be successful during that period and the different nutritional strategies that we're working on. Now, again, before we get into the specific strategies, why is this such a tough period for a cow? Why do they have a tendency--
Emily: Can I give a point of clarification first?
Joe: Yes.
Emily: Since we're talking about what is considered the transition period. Yes, I always use the three weeks before, three weeks after for calving as the standard, but we also hear some other common terms when we're talking about cows, specifically before they calve, and that would be your closeup cows or your far-off cows. Are we really focusing on closeup cows today in that three-week period, or we're going to be looking at both, just trying to get the stage fully set here?
Phil: I think that's a good point and that's something we can discuss as well is what is the best strategy during the dry period? When we talk about transition period, scientifically or on the literature, we are talking about the closeup period or the pre-fresh. Even though because of some management issues or space, some people may make it that pre-fresh, two weeks instead of three weeks. That's why we like to talk about a week instead of that group of cows, because then pre-fresh for some may be 15 days. The post in the fresh period may be a little bit shorter too because of space at the farm or other things, but I think that's how classical cows are fed.
They are dried off 60 days before calving, and they stay in that far-off period, 30 days, 21 days before calving, they go to this pre-fresh or close-up period, and then they go to lactation. There's some information there that, hey, we learn a lot about how to feed cows. Maybe we don't need to give that 60 days of rest, maybe you can give a little bit less, 50 days, 45 days, and maybe we don't need to do this far-off close-up strategy. We can feed one diet throughout that whole period, so it's all up for grabs out there. Most likely, we'll have to feed the management and resources for each specific farm.
Joe: We're really concerned about that through each prior to calving, three weeks after calving, and how to get that animal through that period, knowing that we're going to be dealing with some negative energy balance issues in that area or potentially worse on some farms and better on others depending on strategies and cows and everything else, but we're focusing on how to make that transition go as best as we can, which means that we're going to have to be talking about the dry period and other nutritional factors in all those different areas to make that work. Phil, walk me through why that transition period is so tough on a cow.
Phil: That comes back to this literature from 1995, 1999, where they were saying, "Hey, the most challenged period for dairy cows is this transition period." They realized that most of the metabolic disorders, and we are talking about Ketosis, we may be talking about hypercalcemia or milk fever, DAs, retained placenta, and we could name a few more, they're all happening around this period. To say, "Hey, if we make cows go through that healthy, then it's going to be just a little list or a short list of things that can take a cow out of a dairy." That's what they were referring to, like mastitis as well happening around the calving period of immunosuppression, so their defenses are not good enough.
There's a lot of hormonal things happening at the cow that naturally makes her more susceptible to diseases. That's what they figure out then. They've also associated them with the mobilization of fat during the dry period and the fresh period. They were able to do some liver biopsies, and they saw, "Oh, maybe this cow is overwhelmed with lipids, and we need to take a hold of this." A lot of this understanding in the '90s and early 2000s, were around the liver. You even talk about fatty liver "These cows have fat liver," you don't hear that anymore. I think that got transitioned to ketosis.
Now we have subclinical ketosis, or we have subclinical hypocalcemia that we didn't discuss long time ago you're talking about milk fever and hypocalcemia. Nowadays I think it's pretty rare to find a farm where you have a high prevalence of hypocalcemia or cows falling down. It's just something we don't see anymore.
Joe: I hear stories from some of the older veterinarians that I worked with that it seems like that's all they did was run around in IV milk fevers. That really has become less and less and less as people get on top of some of these management strategies that manage those things but now we've moved like you said, Phil, to worrying about the subclinical forms of these. Luciano, can you tell me why these subclinical forms are so important and why producers should care about them?
Luciano: Yes, so the subclinical forms, it's something that I have been studying quite a bit. It's important because a lot of the problems and a lot of the decreased production and decreased performance of the cow is related to that. Indeed, if they have a clinical case, they also have a decreased production in performance. Subclinical also has an effect to it, and because, for example, if you think about milk fever, now like Phil mentioned, we have about 1% [unintelligible 00:11:30] of milk fever, but you have 50% to 60% of cows showing some subclinical hypocalcemia.
You have a greater population of cows being affected by those subclinical problems that is leading to a sizeable economic loss and production loss for the cows. That's why it's important to understand those subclinical diseases too.
Joe: It's all about money, part of it, and the health of your cows and all the welfare issues that go along with the health of your cows but it really does come down to money when it comes to figuring out these subclinical forms of either hypocalcemia or ketosis, the two big ones. Then, trying to reduce the incidents of all these other diseases that happen on the farm. That's where we're headed today.
I think Phil mentioned this briefly that there's a traditional model that's out there for how we work through the nutritional strategies around the dry and the transition period. We'll start there and then we'll work into some of the work that's been done that shows us that maybe there's some other ways to do it and some different options out there. Phil, let's walk through, okay, my cow goes dry. What am I going to feed that cow in a general sense? We don't have to get into specific rations, but how am I approaching that dry period when that cow is dried off?
Phil: Sure. The way that we've been doing that, not just here in the US through the requirements of cows [unintelligible 00:13:05] in Europe, it's the same way, we try to determine what is the requirement of that cow and then we try to match that, not go beyond, not go below. As you dry a cow, the thing that you are most worried about is that, hey, that cow is not producing milk anymore so the energy requirement reduces drastically. With that, some other requirements as well, you may say protein requirements, everything.
The first thing is to make sure that diet is adequate. You're probably going to be using some more forages in that diet. You're going to be worried about that other evolution to happen as perfect as you can. Usually, we don't have a huge challenge to feed that cow. You're going to be using maybe some forages there past a little bit that you don't want to feed your dairy cows, your lactating cows. You may target that to that dry cow and the amount of corn silage depending on the amount of starch that you have. In Illinois, we do nothing and we get 200 bushels an acre of corn. Some areas in Missouri, I know that's not true and you may not even get 100 bushels per acre.
If you translate that into amount of starch per acre in corn silage, you can see that you have two different worlds within the Midwest. Trying to make sure you understand the requirement and then feed for that. Usually, that means diluting the energy off that high-starch corn silage that we have here in the Midwest if not overall in the US. Usually here, at 30% starch is pretty common to have a corn silage. Maybe in the west coast in California, you may get at 24 on average but it's still pretty high if you consider other places in the world.
To match that requirement that usually are going to be around 16 mega cow per day in a hosting cow, you do need to dilute that energy. You cannot just feed corn silage, that's going to put her beyond. I think that's something we learned from research is that cows, they are not very good at controlling themselves in how much energy to eat. There is a thought process that, hey, once her metabolism reaches a certain amount or a certain energetic level measured by ATP or whatever you want to talk about, they should stop eating.
At least in our diets based in corn silage, we've seen that that's not true. They're going to eat more than what they need. That's where that ends up causing lipid accumulation subcutaneously that we can see through body condition score or early on, on the first steps that happened in the mesentery inside their belly that starts some accumulation of fat that usually is not very well captured.
Actually, we saw that if we feed that high energy or corn silage base without diluting that energy for 21 days or 40 or 30 days, that's already enough to increase that amount of fat around intestine so that internal fat, and maybe that triggers some of the problems with metabolic disorders that we are talking about and overloading the liver of that cow.
Joe: That's something that I've seen completely subjectively in practice. I'm sure you guys have seen it too, the DA cow that you cut open has a body condition that doesn't look all that bad but when you get inside, she's full of fat everywhere. Externally, that body condition looks like she was gorgeous, fine, but internally, she's completely different body condition if that's what you're going to base it on.
That's completely subjective. I don't have any data behind that, but I think I see that and there is some data to show that that is true, especially when it comes to milk yield. That it doesn't necessarily need to be an external body condition change to have some of these effects in the transition period. That's the goal of the drive period. That's pretty well-established that we're trying to meet requirements, but we're not trying to do more, we're not trying to do less and we're trying to keep ourselves from gaining body condition if we can. That's pretty well established across the board, right?
Phil: Yes. I think during that period, you have a memory gland that needs to recover, regenerate, or those alveoli, the cells they need to grow or recuperate, or they need to get rid of the dead cells from that milk secretion from the previous lactation. Also likely, there's going to be a fetus that is going to be inside that cow that also needs to have some of those nutrients as well.
We've seen some impact of whatever you're feeding before calving may affect the calves when they come out of the cow, independently of what happens after calving. Some kind of, I don't know, [unintelligible 00:18:13] facts of some of the things, some nutrients, I think we have learning a lot about that. I think usually, talking about back in the '90s and early 2000s, we have like, "We are going to do the research in metabolic disorders and liver and fatty liver around transition period and that's it."
Now I think we are being able to connect some other things like reproduction, for example. Hopefully, that starts bringing the discussion, "Okay, veterinarians now they are more directly associated with reproduction. Now, we'd like to create a conversation with the nutritionist because it's all on the same boat." I think that's important.
Joe: One of the things I hear when I'm out on farms, a lot of times when we're talking dry cow diets is they hear, "Okay, we need to not feed massive amounts of energy and allow these cows to gorge themselves," and so we're trying to limit some of that but what I hear is, "Okay, well, that means I just need to add a ton of hay to my diet and then everything's fixed." Is that true? Is that not true?
Phil: That's a very good point and that's one of the challenges that we have. You guys work with [unintelligible 00:19:35], you can appreciate that, is that we may go there and talk in a conference for 40 minutes and we talk exactly what we talk about here, and the way people get that information and apply in the field, it's totally different. One farmer is going to do exactly what you said, "Hey, somebody told me I need to throw hay in my diet," and they throw hay in the diet. Another one said, "Hey, we need to have 30% starch corn silage," and then they search for that, or they cut that corn higher to get the corn, whatever.
I don't know, I'm not sure, unfortunately, but let's say if I were to compare a swine or a poultry farm or establishment with a dairy, even though in the US we have a lot of similarities among farms, there's just two different challenges among all farms. The way that the strategy will work for one farm may not be the same as the other one. It's very different than farmers getting their feed already from a company. Say in the swine industry, "Hey, you got your diet in the bin? That's what you fed this stage, this stage."
On dairy farms, that company that buys the milk, they are expecting the farmer to source all that diet for those animals so space may be limiting. What is the tractor or what is the wagon that is mixing that diet? It's going to affect the physical aspects of the diet. Oftentimes, you talk about the nutrients in that diet, in the composition, but if cows are sorting like crazy, they're picking aside that large fiber and everything else, that's going to be worse because now, they're eating even a super high diet, even though you put that.
That's where sometimes, "Oh, but I don't have the chance of doing that because I have just a few cows in that closeup period." That's where maybe, you'll be better off doing one diet during the dry period, so you can mix for more cows. Then you're going to have 30, 40 cows to mix for. Your mix, it's going to have, I don't know, 2,000 pounds that's fed. Now, the whole system works better. That's what is the tricky situation to get from. That's where I think the veterinarian and the nutritionist, they need to work together because it's extra eyes looking into the same thing, to making sure things are happening consistently at the farm.
If the vet goes there and check that TMR and seems like, "Mhmm, this cow seems to be sorting," you see a lot of long particles, or maybe it's part of his program or her program to do some pay state boxes to figure out the distribution of those fibers, that's hugely important as well.
Joe: This is going to sound strange coming from now two veterinarians are saying it, your nutritionist is very important. We joke all the time that veterinarians and nutritionists is just butt heads all the time. They're constantly blaming each other for everything. Really, when it comes down to it, you need to have those two people at your operation really working closely together.
I'm a big proponent of working with a nutritionist, and I think you need to because we've shown it is a delicate balance. You can't just toss a bunch of hay or toss a bunch of straw into the diet and expect things to be balanced like Phil's talking about. You need that nutritionist involved. Then you need, in my opinion, a good nutritionist that's willing to come to the farm and check on the difference between the paper ration and the ration that's in the bunk. That's a huge difference sometimes and that's where the veterinarian can be involved.
I personally, this is my opinion, I tend to focus on the things surrounding nutrition that I can observe while I'm on the farm, and I try to not be in the ration. I'll have that discussion if the nutritionist would like to, but that's the nutritionist's realm is the ration and what's there, and they know more about that than I'll ever know. I try to focus on, "Okay, what's in the bunk? How's it mixing? Are the cows sorting?" Things like that that I'm going to have manure on my hand so I can check manure scores. Those are the things that a veterinarian can do really well.
This is a veterinarian telling you, "I'm plugging nutritionists. I'm telling everybody out there that they're a great thing to have involved on your farm and you need them to get this balance right in a lot of cases."
Emily: You heard it here first, folks.
Phil: Then like you just said, you're behind the cows, you're probating a lot of groups of cows, I think that the body condition score, that's a good thing that he can get from you. While there, he can very fairly quickly assign that. Then I think the challenge, not the challenge, but then the thing for the farmer is any data that they don't use to make action, it becomes useless. We are seeing that a lot of the robots that, "Oh, I have a lot of data," but what are the information? What is the data that is being used to make action or to take action? That, I would say that's information that you can use, you can digest and then you can take action.
I think we need to learn more from the robots on that, and we are going that direction, but I think in the [unintelligible 00:25:02] is where we've used, and I remember learning like, "Your dry cow needs to be at 3.5, needs to be that body condition score. Then a mid-lactation count needs to be like this, a fresh count needs to be this," and I think that two things happen at the farm that maybe the nutritionist or even the veterinarian is not very into it. Maybe the manager for health or something, but how cows get moved into groups, that's something very interesting.
Even from research perspective, it's very hard to capture because that's happening in a commercial farm, so we don't have that. We have our cows [unintelligible 00:25:42] follow up, they don't change because we want to research other things so we need to isolate that factor. If you just think about the person, the human side of things, the manager or that employee, how do they decide to move it from the fresh pen, so that means those cows that just calved, to the high pen? That means the cow that are producing a lot of milk.
Usually, it's going to be a cow that it's going to be healthy and how they define healthy, it's still, if we interview them, a lot of farms, they are going to have different perspectives. Someone said, "No, I do metrichecks so I check for uterine secretions and I know exactly when to move." I think one thing that can collaborate, and usually some of them are based on the vet. I remember when I was in Brazil, that was the case, "Hey, you don't breed any cow before I tell you." I would start palpating cows at 30 days after calving. That was before synchronization protocols were very popular.
I think a shot of [unintelligible 00:26:49] was $25, $30 when I was in practice. It was, "Whoof, that's hard." Nowadays, it's $2, $2.50 or something, prostaglandin and [unintelligible 00:27:00], everybody uses fairly quickly so then the vet can start palpating those cows a little bit later. That's the point also to evaluate, to make sure that cow is ready, that brings that reproductive success for the vet. I think that body condition score change. That's one of the things that the farm should focus at.
If the vet is looking at body condition score at dry off, at close up, and then when they are breeding the cow and see how is that changing at calving, they can do so you can establish some points where that vet is helping to define that body condition score. Don't look into that number, but look into how much is changing, that's important. I think then telling employees to figure out the V and the U on the pins of the cow, so you don't even need to talk about 325 or 35, that can help what cows are going to be moving on or staying a little bit more in that fresh period.
I think maybe that's going to also allow to avoid fat cows coming into late lactation and getting fat at the dry period because that's another big question. What do I do with the dry cows? There's nothing you can do, or with the fat dry cows, sorry. That's something that probably you should have done from the high to the low group or after they peak or something like that, that should be changed. It can start from the fresh period in defining how the cows are moved into other groups.
Joe: I think body condition score might be one of the most underutilized things on the dairy. As more research comes out, whether it's Phil's work or whether it's Fricky's work at Wisconsin showing the change in body condition score post-calving and what that does to reproductive success later. Body condition is something that I personally like to train someone on the farm to do it because there's times that it's really important for them to take a body condition where the vets might not be there.
I really like when the vet is there to assist in teaching that, but it's someone who's there and it's the same person doing it all the time, most of the time to say, "At dry off, it was this, at calving, it was this, at first preg check, it was this." That gives you an idea of, "Is it fluctuating that much? Is it going up post-calving? Is it going down?" I think that's a really underutilized measurement on the farm.
Luciano: Just to add to that. Back before coming to University of Minnesota, I was practicing in different institutions, but I was also practicing one of the strategies that we used. We did train people at the farm to do dry off at calving and body condition score. The peak lactation, it happens to be when you're palpating cows for that first breeding. The vet can definitely help, but that also helps create that connection between the vet and the nutritionist, which it's overall, it just helps the farm in general.
Joe: Yes, absolutely. Any way that you can open the door to talk to that nutritionist more is a good thing. It's my first call if something's going wrong on the farm and it's a relatively big thing, it's the first call when I leave the driveway is seeing a nutritionist, check in with them to make sure we're on the same page. We got a little off-topic. We started talking body condition a lot and we will probably get back to that a little bit, but what we need to do is move on to these transition diets that we talk about.
Phil has really hinted that a lot. There's basically, there's two different ways to look at it. You've got two diets where you feed a close-up diet, and that would be most likely our traditional negative DCAD diet versus one diet throughout. Let's walk through DCAD first. I think a lot of people are pretty familiar with why we do that, why it works, and how it relates to calcium. Phil, give me your 32nd elevator speech on negative DCAD.
Phil: Yes, so I think that's actually one of the things that really impacted metabolic disorders during the transition period was the negative DCAD diet that really reduced the amount of milk fever or hypocalcemia that happen in cows. It�s fairly easy, so it's the difference between your cations and anions and you're making that diet a little bit more acidic so cows can mobilize more calcium more readily after calving. That's the story.
Joe: There's lots of research out there to show that that reduces all sorts of things that leads to reductions in a lot of our diseases that happen around freshening and allows for more productive cows, less cost on the treatment side, all of those things. I think there's cons to the negative DCAD diet as well and Phil has addressed some of those where we're talking about having to move these cows to a new group at close-up. Like you said Phil, we don't really know how much that affects the cows, but it probably affects them in some way, right?
Phil: Yes. I'm not sure I would tie the negative DCAD strategy to close-up. There are points where, for example, we dry cows at 40 days or 45 and they feed a negative DCAD diet throughout that whole dry period. However, that's probably is more expensive than only feeding for those 21 days. We know that feeding for that last 21 days, it's good enough to cause the benefits after calving and avoid the hypoglycemia. However, if you feed more depending on the negative DCAD, that's not detrimental to the cow, but it'll be detrimental to the system where it can be more expensive.
Again, it's a decision maybe more on the management side of things on, "Hey, now I have two diets, or should I have one diet?" Some of the cons, especially when it started is how you're going to do that. Usually, you are going to increase the amount of chloride, amount of sulfur in that diet, and usually especially sulfur, those things are not very palatable. In the beginning, there was a lot of pushback and I'm saying the beginning, 20 years ago, where ammonium sulfate was the main source of that negativity or of those anions and cows just hate it.
Then you have reduce intake and that's a disaster. Anything that is going to cause your cows to eat less before calving, they're already going to drop from 30% to 20% on those three weeks, so then you're reducing the whole nutrients for that cow. That's not a good idea. Usually, an indication that you are doing it right is that if I have cows with a negative DCAD diet or without, their intakes should be very similar. If my intakes are much lower because I'm using this negative DCAD, then we have to rethink what is in that anion configuration.
Some people, they buy a product from a company, some people would just make themselves and mix the minerals themselves. It's all, again, it's going to depend on each farm how much negative they need to go because usually, your forages are going to be different. They're going to have different concentrations of mainly potassium, for example, but also sodium and other things that may need more negative products to cause that diet itself to be negative DCAD. I think that's one of the cons, again, is there is not a formula where I can tell you, "Feed minus 15 DCAD and it's going to work for everyone," that doesn't happen.
Joe: Again, if that is a strategy, that's where you need your nutritionist involved to figure all that out, balance everything to where it's supposed to be, it's a proven strategy. We have a lot of data behind it. Luciano, you've done some work with calcium to show it really does affect reproduction and after calving, really does affect how they do in the future and how they cycle. DCAD is not just about getting that cow up and running to milk, but it also affects their reproduction down the road and that's all related to calcium. Tell me a little bit more about how effective DCAD is for calcium and how that affects reproduction.
Luciano: Well, one thing just to circle back a little bit to what you were talking to Phil before is definitely DCAD, very important and very helpful, but one thing that we have to remember is to measure urine pHs to see if we are where we want it. We see, many times, the diet is planned for a certain level and you are not reaching it or you're below it. Make sure you measure it to make sure the diets is where you want.
Then for what you asked about DCAD and hypocalcemia, a little bit of background on the work that I did before was, before, DCAD was very popular at the region where I was at, like upstate New York. Research-wise, I was lucky to have herds that were not using, we got actually more hypocalcemia and that definitely had an effect on those cows that have hypocalcemia taking longer to return to cyclicity, which leads them to taking longer to get pregnant.
More importantly, what we saw at that point and then has been shown again by other groups is it's more important even than the cow being hypocalcemic at the day of calving, it's like those cows that do not reinstate that normal calcium levels postpartum. Those cows that, at the time, we call chronic, now we call them persistent hypocalcemic so those cows that stay with low calcium for more than two, three days, those are the really problematic cows. That has this association with this hypocalcemia, but it also probably has something to do with those cows overall just not adapting well to the transition.
I think Phil alluded to when he started talking about DCAD, he talked about that was a huge contributor for the better transition of cows. I think hypocalcemia and [unintelligible 00:37:33] hyperkalemia ketosis, they're all together and there's a root cause for all of them that just leave the cow should not be successful to transition. That's my take on how hypocalcemia as well as autometabolize diseases leading to this core repro-performance.
Joe: If a producer doesn't want to go with a negative DCAD diet with controlled energy diets, we're basically feeding a high amount of forage, that we're talking about in the dry period and we're just going to continue, are we just going to then take that same diet and continue it all the way through the transition period, Phil?
Phil: Yes. The idea is that you have a control energy diet, so that's physically regulating how much energy the cow is eating to the right amount, not more, not less. Then to the diet, you can add group of minerals that is going to cause it to be a negative DCAD diet. You can have a control energy diet as a negative DCAD or not. That can depend a little bit on the challenge that, that farm has with the forages like we talk about so when the nutritionist put all that analysis into the software, he or she's going to see that, "Mhmm, you have too much potassium, this is too positive, we need to bring it down."
Like I said, if you bring it down too much or too negative, that's bad for the cow, she's going to eat less. One way to catch it, like Luciano was talking about was, "Hey, you can do a urine pH once a week on those cows and if it goes too low, you have a problem. If it doesn't go low enough is just not working for many reasons." Can be that you have cows there are overcrowded and some of them don't eat and the other ones eat, and then you see a variation on that urine pH, it can be, like I said, the mineral that you're giving is they are just refusing to eat, it's not palatable enough.
Your mixture may be not good so they will be able to sort again or to determine what they're going to eat. It's very hard to find a technology like we are talking about strategy, negative DCAD, that I can just go behind a cow, I measure urine pH and I don't know exactly what's going on. If I feed control energy diet, I don't know if the energy is right or not, 100%, I don't have a strategy. I think that's where farmers could take advantage of, figure out, even if the management or if the feeders, if everything's going well, you should see that urine pH drop.
Joe: I think this is probably some of my own misconception and producers that I've worked with because I see, at least in my experience, a lot of nutritionists advocating for one or the other where we're going to go all in on a controlled energy diet and we're not going to worry about DCAD or we're going to really work on negative DCAD diet and we're not going to really worry about the controlled energy piece. What I'm hearing and make sure I'm right, is that actually blending the two together is probably the best chance of success for a lot of operations, depending on what feed's available.
Phil: Yes. I think additionally, that's what we have been learning is that some of these strategies, they add up, they just work better for the cow. Other things is going to be, "Okay, we dilute that energy." Remember, energy is not a nutrient. It's not something, "Hey, go there and buy me 10 energy." It's not like that. It's made of protein, fat, starch, carbohydrates. When you're diluting that, some other things you get diluted as well like protein. You really need to make sure that's getting to the cow as well.
Joe: Bradley, what are you doing up at Morris? You've got, well, maybe it's the same, maybe it's different for the organic and the conventional herd, what are you doing for your dry cows and how are you handling the transition period?
Bradley: There's a transition period for cows? [laughs]. No, it's probably, it is very different for the organic versus the conventional herd. The organic herd, there's not much you can do, not a lot of different products that you can use. We do work with a nutritionist, there's no doubt about it and balance the ration for the dry cows. Probably a lot more hay diet than we would consider corn silage.
Conventional herd, we, again, work with the nutritionist to make sure things are going well. I did like Phil's point though about there's some calf effects during the dry cows and I've seen that as well whereas some of our cows have, during the dry period, are on TMR ration versus a cow that's totally on pasture during the dry period. We've seen reduced growth and reduced birth weight of calves. We haven't looked at a lot as far as health of those calves, but notice there is some differences in our organic versus our conventional herd in pasture and how that affects cows.
I think one thing that we tend not to think about when we talk about transition period is first lactation heifers so a heifer that becomes a cow. Those are always a challenge. We probably have more challenges with heifers becoming cows during the transition period than we would with cows sometimes because, in my mind, that's a bigger step to go from a heifer to a cow than a cow that's already lactated. The heifer transition is tough because if they go from hay or trying to get them from pasture or whatever into a ration where they're expected to milk, that's tough on a heifer.
Joe: I think that brings up a pretty good point. Grazing herds are difficult in a lot of ways because there's less research out there. There's a lot more sometimes things that actually apply more to the beef side of things than the dairy side of things when we're talking about grazing and pasture management and how to do all that. It does bring a point of diet change in all of this. Phil, how much does that matter? How similar should my dry cow diet or ration be to my fresh pen and then my lactating diet?
Phil: Yes, that's a good point. I don't think we have a lot of in vivo and studies about it. I think we have some in vitro data saying, for example, imagine that, let's say you want to achieve a high starch diet and you want to induce acidosis to those cows. Then the first thing that you think about it, "Okay, I'm just going to dump a lot of starch to that one diet and that's going to cause them to be acidotic," so a lot of starch, but then as you add starch, you have to take out something.
Usually, you're going to add the corn grain and you end up taking out a little bit of some forages. Actually, you have a confounding where you are changing that forage. I can have more corn silage, less corn silage, more corn grain, less corn grain, that would be one strategy. I put corn silage, a lot of corn grain, and then the other diet, I reduce corn silage, have the normal or reduced corn and I increase some other forage like let's say alfalfa hay or something.
Some people what they do is that, "No, I will keep pretty similar, but what I'm going to do in the lowest starch is I'm going to add [unintelligible 00:45:23], for example. Now, you have a low and high-starch diet where you have different ingredients. What some in Vitros study says is that you changing the ingredient, that doesn't mean that that nutrient is going to be the same way when fed to cows into the rumen environment.
That's saying that the starch or the soluble fiber in [unintelligible 00:45:50] is not the same way the soluble fiber is in another forage, for example, in the rumen, or at least in the microbiology and how they ferment, that may be different. With that in mind, I think what we have as a practical rule is that we try to keep as consistent as possible. I don't think you have to have the same, usually farms, they're going to achieve the control energy diet by increasing the amount of forage.
Usually, let's say they would use wheat straw or straw to that diet, that doesn't mean that they have to feed straw after that cow-calf. They are going to figure out how much fiber they need, how much physical effective NDF they need and that can be achieved with hay and it doesn't need to be the straw. Also, we talk about not changing too much, do not distress that rumen. We talk about starch being the same or not being different for more than 10 points, but again, I don't think we have research that proves that. If it is 10 or 15, we say it, then its work it out, that's how it happened in the trials.
It just makes sense not to change too much, but there's some research talking about how fermentable that stock should be especially right after calving. There are some research that discuss what is after calving, is it one week or is it two weeks where they say that maybe high mustard corn is not as good as crack corn, for example, on that first week after calving and you should wait a little bit until you can use that high moisture or fermentable corn. I think, in practicality, to be practical, we try to use as similar as possible, but it's not a mandate that you have to do that.
I think more than ingredients, if we could give a number to how much fermentation is happening in the rumen that you try to keep a little bit more consistent. If we introduce sugar to [unintelligible 00:47:59], I'll try to use it before and after calving. If you use molasses, I'll try to do that before and after calving so you're not damaging the rumen or that fermentation pattern too much. I don't know, I think that that product out that fermentation, that part of it is VFAs, the Volatile Fatty Acids, but also it's going to be the microbial protein, that can get impacted and we should try to get it as much as we can.
I think that's where sometimes like Brad was talking about the heifers where we suffer a little bit, that they don't have as much capacity as a [unintelligible 00:48:36] cow. It is not easy to get the nutrients we need into those animals. We need sometimes to concentrate a little bit more for them. Maybe, it is just something on the management that they're coming from a pen and now they're transitioning to, they need to give milk, they have no idea how the milking power is and they get put up with bigger cows and they have to fight their way in.
We've been talking a lot about the nutrition, but that's one aspect of the transition period. There is a whole thing about management and facilities that maybe is even more important. We just have a harder time figuring it out. Maybe that's where cows and pasture, they're going to have one behavior and they may have a different perspective, nowadays, you have to bring them to the milking powder and all that. I don't think I know enough on those aspects to talk about it, but I do think they're very important.
?Phil: Yes, I agree that there's a lot of aspects when you think about first lactation heifers and just the changes they have to go through housing, milking parlor. The transition period includes nutrition, but there's also a lot of other factors that are included in that, that are important as well.
Bradley: Yes, I don't know how many farms, like we don't do here, but for example, you get your heifers and you walk your heifers through the milking parlor before they calf. Do you guys have an idea on that? I don't think it's very common.
Joe: It's not very common. Some may, but not very often.
?Luciano: Yes, I think I see it on smaller operations, most often. We should shout out Kevin Dietzel here. He had an image on Twitter of him doing exactly that in his milking parlor the other week where he's bringing heifers in prior to calving to get him used to it, but I rarely if ever saw it in practice.
[crosstalk]
?Phil: Yes, and I think we have enough-
Luciano: [unintelligible 00:50:42].
?Phil: -sorry, Luciano, I don't think we have enough even data that will tell, "Hey, you guys should be doing that," but that'll be some cool stuff to do. Sorry, Luciano, go ahead.
Luciano: I was going to circle back to one of your first comments about all the data generated from automatic milking systems and robots. There are some farms that have the robot, a box for heifers to learn because that's also something that's hard for them. Anecdotally, they're saying that they see better production for those animals because they know the environment, they know what to do. It's a different also scenario because it's robots, but I'll think they'll be the same for the occupational department.
Joe: Yes, that's interesting. I think, like you said, Phil, it's harder to get an answer sometimes and it's a little harder research to do sometimes, and it's hard for the farmers to work it into their system, but maybe something to think about because it could matter a lot and I think it does matter a lot. Before we get out of here, we have to talk about amino acids. There's really two, in my understanding, that matter the most, and are the most limited for cows during the transition period. Walk me through why we need to worry about amino acids and why we need to specifically worry about methionine and lysine.
Phil: Again, it's the evolution or as we learn more things, we figure out what's needed or required by the cow, but I think we start by knowing what is the requirement based may be crude protein, pretty much nitrogen we need to feed the cow. Remember crude protein is nitrogen times 6.25, that's it. Then we start learning, "Hey, that crude protein maybe may have more bypass protein or more degradable protein," so we come up with REP and RDP and how much we should be feeding cows.
Then we see, "Okay, but we need to worry as well about this protein that actually the cow is using." That's what we call the metabolizable protein. That's actually getting to the duodenum and the cow is using that, but again, proteins are made of amino acids and that's where the NRC for dairy cattle, our last one was in 2001, determined since then, we know that the cow, especially based on milk yield, the limiting amino acids are methionine and lycine.
Then the idea is if you don't have those two, you can give as much as you want off the other 18 amino acids that the cow is not going to be able to build protein, and that means protein to go into the milk, or that means protein to go to circulate fat as part of the polypro protein, for example, or VLDL like we talk about, or protein as immunoglobulins to defend the cow against something. That's where we are being able more and more to understand and measure how much we should be giving to cows if we need to be giving to cows.
Remember there those amino acids are in soybean, they are in soybean meal, they are in blood meal, they are in canola meal, pretty much all your protein sources, they will have those amino acids. The idea is to figure out, in your diet, if you're giving the right amount. I think we've increased the understanding of, "Hey, even though cows are not giving milk during the close-up period, in the dry period, they also need those amino acids, seems like for better health after calving."
Perhaps some things are related to the cholesterol genesis that is happening, especially those last three weeks that was established in the early 2000s by [unintelligible 00:54:34] was talking about, "Hey, we should be giving more metabolizable protein because we have all this colostrum doing, and all this [unintelligible 00:54:44] or memory gland regeneration and we should be doing that."
Now you're seeing some things that's also helping with the calf development [unintelligible 00:54:56] and after calving as well. I think it's just like I talk about the [unintelligible 00:55:01] being super expensive before, that technology also helped that if needed, rumen-protected source of those amino acids, nowadays, they are available. You have different companies, so that makes usually the prices being lower than if you had just one company or if you are just starting.
I think that's the state now is to formulate for those amino acids. Again, since it's required, it is nothing extra or magical that's going to help the cow in the transition period, but we've seen also it helps with reproduction as well, so kind of the goals with the farmer. It's nothing magical. It's going to be related to the amount of milk the cow is producing. The requirement of that cow, if you need to put it, how much you need to add, but it's important to keep an eye on it that that's taken care of.
Joe: Well, I think we've covered everything we need to today and we're going to wrap it there. A big thank you to Luciano and Phil for being here. We really appreciate your time guys.
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Luciano: Thank you.
Phil: Thanks for having us.
Joe: With that, if you have questions, comments, scathing rebuttals, anything that we said today, you can send them to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: If you want more information on this topic, there's a website to go to, that's dairyfocus.illinois.edu and that'll get you a lot of information, get you to a lot of the extra articles that you need for this topic. If you want to find more from extension, you can go to extension.umn.edu. With that, I think we'll cut the plugs there. Thank you for listening everybody.
Emily: Bye.
Joe: I'll take the comments that Jerseys are fun to work with because they are, and they're easier to work with because they're small. If you guys want to reconsider your answer, now's the time.
[laughter]
Emily: No takebacks, Joe. Sorry.
Joe: Okay.
[00:57:02] [END OF AUDIO]
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