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Join us as part of AK Podcast, brought to you by Agri-King, an advanced livestock nutrition company, as we journey through the world of agriculture and livestock nutrition. Our podcast will dive into the latest technology and insights, foster curiosity, and help to build connections within the ag industry to help grow the passion for agriculture.
AK Podcast
Energy from Fats in a Ruminant Diet
In this episode of AK Podcasts, Mike Donaldson discuss the critical role of fats in dairy cattle nutrition with Dr. Dave Jones. They explore the significance of fats as a concentrated energy source, the differences between bypass and non-bypass fats, and the innovative use of Plenish soybeans in enhancing milk fat production. The conversation also delves into the impact of enzymes on fat digestion and the practical considerations for managing fats in dairy rations.
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Chris Radke (00:02)
Welcome to AK Podcasts, where we explore science and nutrition behind livestock care and management with the best and the brightest in the business. I'm your host, Chris Radke, part of the Sales Team here at Agri-King. And with me today, as usual, is a member of the Sales Management Team and a Director of Field Services, Mr. Mike Donaldson Mike, how you doing, buddy?
Mike Donaldson (00:21)
Very very well Chris, how's everything on your end?
Chris Radke (00:25)
Pretty good, we're finally getting through all of our sick season hopefully at my house because I had a couple kids who were sick for about two weeks I think and it was a little extravagant to say the least so.
Mike Donaldson (00:33)
You,Yeah, we've kind of been free of that for a number of years, but it's hard not to smile when you hear other people going through it.
Chris Radke (00:42)
that go through it's miserable Hey Mike who if and what we talk about today?
Mike Donaldson (00:49)
Well today, guys, we are joined by Dr. Dave Jones, the head of our nutrition department. This is Dave's second go round with us. If you didn't watch his podcast on water, I encourage you to go back and if he did a great job of summarizing what's brought him to Agri-King and some of his bonafidities What we want to do today is complete our trilogy, I guess you'd call it, on energy.
David Jones (01:01)
.
Mike Donaldson (01:16)
And how, ruminants break that down, the different sources that we feed them. We started with fiber. We moved on to carbohydrates and today we're going to talk about fats. So Dr. Jones, welcome to Agri, welcome to this episode of the podcast. We'll start right out. What role do fats play in feeding today's high producing dairy cattle?
David Jones (01:44)
Yeah, well first. Thank you for having me Fats are fairly significant rule right now and anyone who's tuned into what's going on fats are a hot topic so they
They're a great source of condensed energy, meaning they have more energy per pound than carbohydrates or protein. They do have some limitations because it depends on the type of fat. The oils can impact the rumen negatively, but we have lots of products to get around that. And the one interesting part about fats for energy, when they're digested, they do not generate heat. So in digestion, there's what's called the heat increment.
Carbohydrates, for example, generate heat. Fat does not because they're digested and absorbed differently. So they're a really good source of energy in the summertime when you don't want to extra heat to that cow.
Mike Donaldson (02:36)
So it's not uncommon then to take a ration that might be running perfectly in the cooler time of the year and literally make an adjustment in where the energy comes from just to help handle the heat of summer better.
David Jones (02:52)
That can be done. Sometimes they need more energy just for the increased maintenance costs. But yes, because of that lower heat production, fat can substitute some other energy sources and help out a little bit.
Mike Donaldson (03:07)
Okay. Well, a lot of, and I think you summed it up really well when you talked about being a very popular topic and it seems like you can't pick up one of the dairy publications without at least seeing ads, if not articles for this fat, another fat, almost all of them are termed as bypass. And there isn't a lot of talk or even terminology thrown at the stuff that's not bypass.
So could you define what those two or what those different types of fats are and what their characteristics are going to be?
David Jones (03:46)
Yeah, so if it's considered bypass for definition that means rumen bypass and Honestly like anything else we need to focus on the rumen first So there are oils that hit the rumen from oil seeds cotton seed roasted beans distillers Some people feed vegetable oil in the mix. That's not a protected fat. It will affect the rumen bacteria don't really like fats they don't use it for energy. What they're trying to do is take these oils, which are considered unsaturated fatty acids. They're adding hydrogen to it to make it a saturated fat. That is less of a problem for the rumen microbes. So that's what they're spending their time doing with these oils is changing the fatty acid profile. And then those saturated fats, along with some unsaturated fats, it's not a perfect system.
But those saturated fats pass out of the rumen that can now become an energy source for the cow. If we overdo it, we can affect the rumen, affect that biohydrogenation, and we know that leads to milk fat suppression. So that's where once you've maximized your oils and we use what's called RUFAL, rumen unsaturated fatty acid load, as an indicator to when we are maxing out that oil system, then you can use the bypass fats or rumen inert fats. There's various products, different fatty acid profiles, but those will pass the rumen so they don't impact the microbes and they're a direct source of energy and fatty acid precursors for use by the cow.
Mike Donaldson (05:29)
So, and I realize this is a general question that probably has localized answers in some ways, and you're involved, you're involved, Agri-Kings feeding full program nutrition on herds from the West Coast of the United States to the East Coast of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and there's a lot of different availability of things. It sounds like there's a degree to which as you're putting, as you're helping our people put a ration together that you would embrace using some non bypass fats to a certain point, but what are some of the sources of that non bypass fat that you see people using successfully?
David Jones (06:17)
Yeah, most of it I've already kind of mentioned is coming from oil seeds. So soybeans, a lot of it's roasted soybeans. Some people use raw soybeans. That's a source of oil. Distillers certainly is a source of oil. Cotton seeds, a good source of oil. So those oil seeds would be big contributors to the oil fraction. But you will see in addition vegetable oil, choice white grease, tallow. Those would be the three big ones
Mike Donaldson (06:21)
Mm-hmm.
David Jones (06:44)
still get used, some for dust control in the mix, but even if it's dust control, it's still oil going to the rumen, and we need to watch those. People don't think of things like corn silage, but corn silage has corn oil. Distillers has corn oil. Corn grain has corn oil. Too much corn oil can negatively impact milk fat. So it is possible to feed too much corn silage.
For example, if you're not watching the oils. So they're coming from our feeds for the most part.
Mike Donaldson (07:20)
Okay.
So you could actually, I mean, you know, the first thing people tend to think about feeding too much corn silage or too much corn grain is, my gosh, we're going to be so far over on carbohydrates. These, we're going to cause acidosis. We've way overstarched these cows. And you're saying along with that, we could actually get into a situation where the total unprotected fat could be another issue in an animal.
David Jones (07:53)
Correct. And if that coincides with too much starch, that's a double negative impact on the rumen, so you have a greater effect. It's just important to watch. That's why the Agri-King ration program is watching these oil levels, the RUFALs as we call them. We do watch for those to make decisions. And if they get to a certain point, we need to or back off.
Mike Donaldson (08:08)
Okay.
Well, I will crawl under the bus, but I will not pull you under with me. you're not nearly as old as I am, but I know going all the way back to your college days, fats were something that you've done a lot of work on. What's a little bit of the overview you can give us on the way bypass fats, maybe got us to where we are and what you're looking at in the future. I mean, there was a time.
Mike Donaldson (08:44)
They really weren't being talked about very much, were they?
David Jones (08:48)
True, so the first Ruminant inert fat was probably Megalac, came out in early 90s. It's a great step forward in terms of what we wanted to do with fats, but they come with an extra price tag and a learning curve. Now there's lots of products out there. And what's interesting, we often think of it as we're going to feed these Ruminant inert fats or bypass fats as a source of energy, which they are.
Today, we think of it as a source of fatty acid, for example, palmitic acid, which can contribute to an increase in butterfat. And that's where the technology has really gotten. It's actually some of the functional effects of these fatty acids that we don't think about, which are the very reason I became a nutritionist in the first place. You have fatty acids you can feed that are pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory.
Mike Donaldson (09:35)
Okay.
David Jones (09:43)
Yes, they go into milk fat, but fatty acids also are used to make the lipid structure of membranes. So when we feed these fats, a lot of it goes to energy, a lot can go to milk fat, but the cow is still using them for what she needs to use them for. And today's advancements, which has really put fatty acids on the map, is looking at the fatty acid profiles we feed these cows.
And there's still work to be done, but this started about seven years ago. It's kind of exciting because just like amino acids in protein, it's the amino acids that count. In fats, it's the fatty acids that count. And we're learning more about how we should feed them, which will affect fat digestion, fat that goes in the mammary gland, fat for energy. And at the same time, we take pressure off the rumen because these fatty acid products, they're protected so that fat doesn't hurt the rumen bacteria.
Mike Donaldson (10:45)
So I guess I never even thought of this myself. It's gone past these bypass fats only being a source of energy. There's a whole nother dynamic that they're bringing into nutrition.
David Jones (10:59)
Yes, and so a great example is lipid membranes, whether it's your cells of your body, microbial cells. These membranes have what's called a lipid bilayer, and that's very important to sell life and sell movement of nutrients across cells. Fats have to be there. You know, we think of cholesterol as humans. We think a lot of cholesterol.
Well, cholesterol is important for hormones like testosterone. It's important for vitamin D. So there is a very functional role to fatty acids. But in general, in diets, when we're putting them in there, we are trying to push energy from milk production, a fatty acid for increased milk fat. That's really what we're trying to do. But there's a lot of other things that can be happening. And that's why the research is going down the road of looking at these individual fatty acids, what they can do.
Mike Donaldson (11:56)
Well, if non-protected fats can be overfed and have a negative impact on rumen environment microbes are bypass fats able to be overfed to have a negative effect on an animal or do they just get too expensive first?
David Jones (12:26)
I think anything can have a negative effect if you overfeed it. For the most part, you won't get there because of the cost. So you're correct, they're expensive. But if I was to overfeed a lot of fat, I'm probably gonna make the manure a little bit loose and greasy because the cow's not gonna use all of it. We can get past her ability to actually utilize it. But really it's the cost that will prevent us, I think, from actually doing that. And if we're paying attention to our diets, we know where fat ought to be in a diet. We know, for example, I like four to 5% total fat, or more importantly, we look at total fatty acids, that would be in that four, four and a half range. I can go higher than that with rumen protected fats. But at some point, I'm just pushing more than I should, and my energy's going to exceed what that cow needs. So there's limits that control us.
Mike Donaldson (13:22)
So you're still sort of using the fat bypass, even to a degree, the unprotected, but that source of energy comes after maximizing fiber, after watching carbohydrates. You're not starting to balance the ration by hitting the fat level first. Is that right?
David Jones (13:46)
That's correct. If we don't focus on the rumen first and foremost and get that right, I don't care what you do past the rumen, you're not going to get the performance you want because the rumen is not functioning. And we all know that's the key to the dairy cow is the rumen. So we look at our starch, our fibers, proteins, those sorts of things and oil levels.
before we start putting in the fats that cost money. But the higher producing cows should probably be getting them because they have a high energy demand that the rumen itself isn't gonna meet by doing all its digestion. We have to get some things to a cow. That's no different than bypass protein. We have to feed something to the cow once the rumen is taken care of.
Mike Donaldson (14:32)
Okay. Well, it, it's kind of a cliche. I'm going to paraphrase a cliche here that it, often takes a long time for something to become an overnight phenomenon. But in the last year or two, the topic of plenish soybeans, plenish roasted beans seems to be, well, frankly, it's putting some component numbers on Holsteins that you would have thought were the sole world of a jersey herd and you you've got ninety hundred pound Holsteins starting to mid four percent fat and higher. Could you take us through a little bit of what the magic of plenish soybeans actually is and how best to use them?
David Jones (15:03)
Yes. Yes, I love plentish soybeans because it's part of the technology that's helped us get a Holstein average fat from 3.6 to 4.0, you know, or higher. I've worked with a herd recently, we hit a 5.0 butter fat on Holsteins with over 90 pounds of milk. So I know the cows can do it.
Mike Donaldson (15:39)
Really? Yeah.
David Jones (15:42)
and plenish beans were part of that process. So plenish beans are a high oleic acid soybean. If you think of soybean in general, it's about 20% oil. A regular soy oil or soybean, that 20% oil will be about 80% linoleic acid, which is a fatty acid with two double bonds making it more saturated. Plenish beans
Mike Donaldson (16:01)
All
David Jones (16:10)
about 20% oil, but 80% of that oil is oleic acid, which has one double bond, so it's less saturated. That level of saturation means something. The more saturated it is, like linoleic acid, the more detrimental it can be on the rumen, on the rumen bacteria. Oleic only has the one. So when we think of biohydrogenation, we're trying to get to no double bonds. So linoleic acid has to go from two to one, to zero double bonds. Oleic acid has to go from one to zero. It's a faster process. You're already halfway through the process. So that's part of what helps the ruminate. It allows you to feed more of these plenish beans and your RUFALs can go higher than a conventional bean because the oleic acid is less detrimental. That doesn't mean I would never feed enough to
Mike Donaldson (16:40)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
David Jones (17:11)
I would never feed enough to create a problem, I could, right? It's still an unsaturated fat. So it is part of the RUFAL number. But the higher it goes, you're safer with the plenish beans. Now, some of that oleic acid is probably gonna slip past the rumen. And I'm fairly convinced of that with my use of it from things I've seen. And that's a good thing. Because oleic acid has been shown
Mike Donaldson (17:36)
Okay.
David Jones (17:41)
to improve fatty acid digestibility. That also relates to improved fiber digestibility, so NDF digestibility, partly because of less protein in the rumen, so the rumen microbes can do their thing.
Mike Donaldson (17:50)
Mm-hmm.
David Jones (17:56)
Yeah, so it can it can help with digestibility and I believe I've seen that I still have some questions on how much is going through but I think that's happening. So the high oleic soybean is a positive because research has shown us this increase in oleic acid helps with digestibility and it's the right approach for your high producing early days of milk cows. When you get to the later day cows lower milk production and little less oleic is good and palmitic acid can go off. So the plunish beans have really opened that door. I often tell people, I don't care if I ever use a conventional bean again, I like the plunish. They cost a little more, right? Every technology has a cost to it. So you have to find that part where it fits, it's cost effective. So.
Mike Donaldson (18:49)
Was there it?
Right now, plenish beans are most commonly available as a roasted product, correct?
David Jones (18:57)
Yes, that's how they're most commonly fed.
Mike Donaldson (19:00)
So all this, I mean, and, and like soybean meal is, it's still a manufactured product, but it's fairly standardized. Anytime you roast something, you've got temperature differences. mean, there's, it's, it's, it's kind of like a different cook makes the same recipe slightly differently. Do you see a lot of difference across the world you work in with? well-roasted plenish beans or beans in general and not so well roasted.
David Jones (19:33)
Roasting is critical. If they're over roasted, you'll damage the bean and get no effect out of it. Because one thing we have to remember, I know we're talking oils and plenish bean is about oil, but it is first and foremost a soybean. So it's about protein. That's its number one role is protein. When we roast it, we make bypass protein. The advantage is the oil that goes with that protein source is less of a problem for us. That's why I like it. If you over roast them, you'll ruin the product. So the places out there that we've been working with, we do test the plenish beans, the roasting is being done quite nicely. And a lot of places that know what they're doing, it's a consistent approach to roasting. They do a good job out there, so I haven't had too much issue.
Mike Donaldson (20:24)
I know switching up a little bit. I know in our enzyme products, the Agri-King, RU-Mend, ZY-Mend families, that we definitely have more than just enzymes in those products. And I've seen Dave Spangler, our head of R &D, do some demonstrations showing how what we call an enzyme product also has an impact in how fat is used in a ruminant.
Can you speak to the advantage that our enzymes have as far as the way they affect fat digestion, not just what people think enzymes are going to do?
David Jones (21:03)
Yeah, that's a great question because in the enzyme world to help go after fats there's enzymes called lipases and those are really designed to take the fat the fatty acid off the glycerol backbone Now I'm no enzymologist, but we're not I don't believe we're using lipases in in our enzyme products. We're going after starch and fiber a little bit of protein but
We do have a organism in there that it's a bacteria that I like to call it bug spit for fun, but it's kind of an effluent. And there's a surfactant in there. What that means is it takes surfactants to help absorb fats because they all know fat and water, oil and water don't mix. So you have to package up fat in a specific way. in your digestive tract,
Mike Donaldson (21:52)
Right.
David Jones (22:00)
and through your cells where there is a water layer, the fat can get through. So we have an ingredient that helps do that. So it's more of a assistance with the absorption than the digestion in my opinion.
Mike Donaldson (22:14)
Okay, okay.
David Jones (22:16)
pretty interesting because we've all seen oil and water, if you put a surfactant in, you see it mix in, that's what we're trying to do in our intestines as well, get it to mix in.
Mike Donaldson (22:23)
Yeah.
Okay. Well, like I say, it's a cool demonstration. It's just, it's a little hard to replicate, but you did a good job of explaining it. Any, any either cautionary things about fats or just final observations you want to make on what's been a very fascinating topic.
David Jones (22:45)
Yes, there is actually one really important thing when you're adding fats and I deal with this I dealt with it today actually if we're adding these products in to a mix Make sure we understand the delivery system of that mix So if it's a bin with an auger, these are still fats They can make your mix bridge up and become very difficult to auger out I've we've all I've seen that we've all seen
Mike Donaldson (23:09)
Okay.
David Jones (23:14)
bridging in these bins. Well, fat can do that because it's just a thicker product, I guess is the way to say it.
Mike Donaldson (23:20)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's just gonna stick.
David Jones (23:22)
Yeah, so we have to watch how much we put in there. So that's from a physical side because producers are never happy with that. It's a pain. So with the cow, we pay attention to the diet. We manage the oils. We feed the rumen and inert fats to the cows that need it. And we watch the cost, which we will be told about pretty quickly if it's too high, but it will add cost. There's ways to try to manage that maybe.
Mike Donaldson (23:44)
Hey, yeah.
David Jones (23:52)
For herds that still use what's called a high producer top dress, you can add some of the fats there. So it's distributed to the high producing cows. Robots might give you that same possibility. It depends on whether they use a pellet or a meal. But again, if you do it with a meal, you have to make sure it's gonna flow. You could cause problems with the robot too, but there's things to look at. And if you can do it in an add-on mix, you're just supplying it to the cows that really need it.
Mike Donaldson (23:58)
Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay.
David Jones (24:21)
For the most part, it's going into a TMR type situation and that's fine because different cows eat different amounts based on production as well.
Mike Donaldson (24:32)
Right. Well, Dave, this has been very illuminating. Thank you for joining us. Chris, what'd learn today?
Chris Radke (24:40)
Hey, something I learned, it's kind of a takeaway about just kind of like what Dave kind of does. And I was super fascinated with the idea that he started out with energy fats are not just, they don't produce heat. And then he started talking about how we no longer look as fat as just energy. But then he ended it with like just the distribution of how the said fats or the said feed goes to the cattle. Like just that layer down of what Dr. Jones is always thinking about. just fascinated that he's not just thinking about the cow out there. He's thinking about every little step and that's just a compliment to your knowledge and your brain there Dr. Jones. Alright, if you like what you heard hit us up on any of our socials. You can find us at Agri-King and any of those. Please leave us a review if you liked it and pass the word along. Dr. Jones, thank you so much for your brain and just your analysis of everything and Mike, thank you so much once again.
David Jones (25:16)
Thank
Mike Donaldson (25:35)
Hey, thank you both.
David Jones (25:36)
you.
