High Forage Rations – Byrons 2006
High quality, high forage diets provide good solutions for many of today’s farmers. Feeding highly digestible forages to cows willl result in more consistent dry matter intakes, particulary in times of stress and hot weather. Efficiency of feed utilization, reduced incidence of acidosis, ketosis, and displaced abomasums are important to a successful operation. Rapid fermented starch from the soft-textured kernels of MC hybrids starts digestion quickly, while the digestible fiber in the fodder breaks down more slowly to maintain the “rumen mat” and increase passage rates. Cow longevity, reproductive performance, and persistence of lactation have long been credited to quality high forage diets, and quality forage blends are commonly achieved with crop rotations of cool season grasses, legumes and corn silage. You will never grow a better corn crop, thean the one you grow after an alfalfa/grass field is rotated out. Feeding quality forages can replace some of the grain mix and/or concentrates in cows diets, while decreasing off-farm inputs and costs. Increasing forage adds effective fiber to diets that help maintain proper cud chewing and rumen ph that lead to quality premiums for components and low somatic cell counts.
More Efficient Rations – Byrons 2007
Dairy nutritionists have accepted the fact that a combination of proteins in a dairy rations allows for the balancing of the first-limiting amino acids,while lessening total ration protein. Likewise, dairy nutritionists can now start looking at combinations of farage to better balance 5 and 6-carbon sugars. Already cited research is showing that the addition of not only more sugars to dairy rations, but also specifically, combinationsof 5-carbon sugars which are prominent in both Master’s Choice corn silages and the improved grasses from Byron Seeds along with the 6-carbon sugars in alfalfa makes a ration that produces more milk. With the high sugar levels from these forages, nutritionists will also be able toreduce heavy grain feeding and starch levels.
Data provided by Mary Beth Ball (USDA Forage Research Center) would suggest that the hight microbial yield for lactating dairy cows comesfrom starch. However, with that comes an increased risk of lower rumen pH and acidosis.
“Substituting for some of the starch in the diet with sugar; up to a concentration of 6-10% appears to be very helpful to fermentation” say Dr.Charles Sniffen. “Sugar has been suggested to, among other thing, stimulate the rumen fungi which opens up the fiber aiding the rumen bacteriawith fiber digestion.”
Maintain constant rumen pH and have healthier cows by decreasing starch and increasing sugars.
High Forage Diets – Byrons 2007
High forage diets are the most economical way to achieve ultimated feed efficienty in dairy diets today. A goal of a high forage diet should consist of 60% of ration DM from forage. Many nutritionist today believe combinations or variation of the following diets should work well for most producers when forages are high quality-vegetative forages.
Warm Season-Cool Season Balance – Byrons 2007
In an effort to create a quality balanced rations an individual should try to achieve 50% of the forages from the classification of warm season and 50% of forages from cool season. The warm season forages would be from Masters Choice Corn Silages selection, Forage Sorghum, or Sorghum Sudan. The cool season forage would be from King Fisher Alfalfa, high quality late heading orchard grass, tall fescue, or perennial ryegrass, and triticale.
Benefits Of A High Forage Ration – From Larry Hawkins, Northwest Territory Manager – 2008
There are many benefits of a high forage/concentrate diet, but with the crzy volatility of input prices, the cost benefit realy jumps to the top. The main savings accomplished with a high F/C diet are with crude protein and phosphorus. Phosphorus after being relatively stable for 20 years has almost tripled in price. Protein, likewise, is at historic highs.
Dr. Jerry Cherney at Cornelll University recently calculated that for every pound increase in forage in a diet, you would purchase 13 pounds less nitrogen and 1.5 pounds less phosphorus in a year. What does this mean to you? I had a grass haylage/corn silage ration shown to me last year that was at 49% forage and 51% concentrates. The local nutritionist was not testing for NDFd and had no idea how much energy was in the grass haylage. Therefore, by using book value NEL’s (wrongly derived from alfalfa) the aforementioned ration with high grain and several unneeded pounds of low-protein, space-wasting byproducts was being fed. Just by updating the forage test and correcting the NEL’s of the haylage (the NDFd value is needed) and removing the byproducts, we quickly added 6 pounds of forage which took the ratio to 60% forage. The cows loved it! We continued to take the ration higher in forage. By using Cherney’s calculations, you can take today’s prices and derive the savings.
The purchased nitrogen (N) in a ration comes mainly from sources like soybean meal. Converting protein to N and using a price of $500.00/ ton for 48% SBM, gives us a yearly savings of $108.33 (or $.297/day) for each pound of farage added to your ration. In the above case, with 6 pounds of added forage the total comes to $1.78/cow/day. The purchased phosphorus (P) comes from sources like di- or mono-calcium phosphate and monosodium phosphate which also are at record high. The week, 21% P mono-calcium phosphate was over $1100.00/ton or $0.393 for each 1.5 pounds of phosphorus. The reduces the purchased phosphorus by $23.57 per cow per year in our above example for a total feed bill reduction of nearly $675.00 per cow! These numbers are more than $0.40 more per cow per day than they were just last January.
The Importance Of Highly Digestible Fiber – Tim Brunswick 2010
When Byron Seeds is mentioned the first thing that comes to peoples mind is grass. Grass is where they got their start, but the business has since escalated into a lot of other product lines and services. Even though Byron Seeds has a large product line, I want to focus on the importance of digestible fiber coming from grass and other high energy forages. I think we can all agree that 2009 was a very trying year with the low milk prices. With the lack of cash flow most people were asking what can we do to cut the cost of production? The easiest way to cut the cost of production is to start eliminating certain feed inputs to our cows. In the short term this can help, but what are the long term effects of this going to be? Now let’s look at the other side of these cost cutting measures, and look at what we can add to the ration to lower the cost of production. The first thing I would suggest adding to the ration would be highly digestible fiber, and this can be in the form of a grass or other high energy forages. Digestible fiber added to the dairy ration will definitely result in healthier cows by eliminating metabolic problems and lameness. In order to eliminate these problems your dairy ration should be balanced for the rumen needs and for the cows needs. You are probably thinking our nutritionist has always balance for the protein, energy, and minerals in the diet, but what is this talk about balancing for rumen health. Until I started working with Byrons that was the same way I thought, but when you start talking volatile fatty acids, driving milk production and fiber digestibility creating a healthier rumen environment, you start looking at nutrition in a different way.
The first step to this is learning about rumen microbiology. Simply put, what keeps the rumen functioning properly? Inside a cow’s rumen there are bacteria, protozoa, and fungi that support proper rumen function. The bacteria make up half of the organisms in the rumen, but do over half of the digestive work. The bacteria are then subdivided into fiber digesters, starch and sugar digesters, lactate using bacteria, and hydrogen using bacteria.
We will start with the fiber digesting bacteria. Their name speaks for itself, they like digestible fiber. These bacteria digest the fiber and in turn create acetate which is a volatile fatty acid. This volatile fatty acid is important because it buffers the other important volatile fatty acid, propionic acid. Propionic acid is created by starch and drives milk production. A cow needs a good balance of acetate to propionic to reduce the risk of acidosis. Cows with rumen acidosis typically have fresh cow metabolic problems (ketosis and displaced abomasums), low butterfat, and abscessed feet. The easiest way to ensure these bacteria will survive in the rumen is to make sure we feed high quality highly digestible fiber forages. These forages can be in the form of cool season grasses (fescue and orchard grass) mixed with alfalfa when it is planted or BMR-6 sorghum sudan. Corn silages with high NDFd can also help this, but it never hurts the rumen to have some long stem forage inside of it. Even though there seems to be plenty of digestible fiber in the diet these bacteria in the rumen may not be functioning like they should. If this is the case the starch and fat levels need to be checked as they can inhibit the growth of the fiber digesting bacteria.
The next bacteria to discuss are the sugar and starch digesting bacteria. These bacteria are needed because of the fact that we all feed plenty of starch in the diet to drive milk production. The starch digesting bacteria also feed off of the by products of the fiber digesting bacteria. Now stop and think about that, if these starch bacteria feed off the by products of the fiber digesting bacteria and the fiber digesting bacteria are not properly taken care, how are the starch bacteria going to work at their full potential. At this point you should be seeing how everything is starting to tie together. Another thing you need to know about the starch bacteria is there is a species of these bacteria call Streptococcus Bovis. This bacteria is also considered the “Weed” of the rumen because of the lactic acid they produce in the rumen. These bacteria become a problem when large amounts of starch are fed and they are not counter balanced thus creating a low pH in the rumen. These are the bacteria that when present cause rumen acidosis in the cow, and they can double in population every 13 minutes. Fortunately, through the use of items like Rumensin these bacteria can be controlled and the cow’s rumen performance increased. When lactic acid is present in the rumen, the cow will produce a lactate acid using bacteria called Megasphaera Elsdenii. These bacteria will attempt the raise the rumen pH when there is too much lactate acid available.
The big question now should be how can I improve my forage program to help the health of my cows’ rumen? The best answer for this is feeding high quality and highly digestible forages, but this can be achieved in different ways for the way you operate your farm and I will try to detail some helpful practices for a variety of situations.