Explore the science behind early care and its lasting impact on dairy cattle in this must-listen episode of Ruminate This. Dr. Billy Brown, dairy cattle nutrition expert from Kansas State University, discusses the science of developmental programming, covering in utero influences, colostrum management, and dry cow care, to reveal proven strategies for boosting calf performance and herd profitability. He also discusses how Artificial Intelligence 🤖 is transforming feeding, grouping, and culling practices on dairy and beef farms.
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Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And excited today to be joined by Dr. Billy Brown from Kansas State University. Billy Welcome to Ruminate This number one.
Dr. Billy Brown
Thank you.
Scott Zehr
You know, we’ve talked a lot about on this platform the value of relationships, the value of just getting to know people and that’s how Dr. Brown ended up here. We found ourselves at the same table sitting across from each other at a conference, maybe back in the spring of 24. Started talking about maple syrup.
And Dr. Brown just being inquisitive by nature, maybe asked me what, you know, what I do outside of work or somehow we ended up on the topic and that’s led to an ongoing conversation over the last almost year.
And I’m excited to have Dr. Brown here today to discuss starting out at least with developmental programming in calves. So Dr. Brown, I’d like to ask you to just kind of introduce yourself, give a little bit of a bio, and then we’ll get rolling.
Dr. Billy Brown
Thanks, scott. And I will say that we we’ve had maple syrup this week at home. So we are maple syrup enthusiasts here at home. And I was just sharing with Scott as well that my dad has bought some maple taps, which is not something that we have a lot of here in Kansas.
So we’re getting interested in that. And part of what our interest was, was it’s something that’s not really common here in Kansas. And so I got to learn a lot from Scott earlier about that. But again, my name is Billy Brown. I’m an assistant professor of Animal Science here at Kansas State University.
This is my third stint at Kansas State University. I did my undergrad here as a Kansas native. Came back for my PhD and finished that in 2020. And then did a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin all in dairy, cattle, nutrition, and metabolism, things along those lines. And then found myself back here at Kansas state for a faculty position.
So, something about Kansas keeps drawing me back. It’s a great place, small community where Manhattan is. We love that. And get to do some great things in dairy science, mentor a lot of students, teach a lot of classes and do some dairy nutrition work as well to keep another iron in the fire. So glad to be here and excited to visit with you today about developmental programming.
Scott Zehr
Well, I mean, you know, being drawn back to kansas, it’s hard to ignore the beautiful beaches. I mean, really…
Dr. Billy Brown
They’re everywhere, everywhere.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. I love it. So developmental programming in calves just kind of give us a little bit of a brief backstory on what got you interested in it. And then taking that a step further, the research that you guys have done what does it mean? And then what are the impacts?
Dr. Billy Brown
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it’s important, you know, for our audience to, as we start off, to at least point out what is developmental programming and then we can kind of go through a couple of those other things. You might have to prompt me about what some of those original questions were too, but, you know, developmental programming is the concept that something early on in life can have long term impacts on, you know, in livestock, we’ll say performance for example.
So it could be growth. It could be future milk production when we think about dairy cows and things along those lines. And so things that happen while an animal is gestating in utero. Could be an early life. So, you know, whether they get colostrum or not and how the long term impacts those things have or other impacts.
And typically we think about those as insults to the animal. Something didn’t go right. And so therefore that animal isn’t going to perform to the level that we would hope that they would perform. But I think there’s also some opportunity to think about that as a standpoint. What can we do better? What can we supplement more of to get even better performance from our animals and help them live a healthier, more productive life at the same time. So. Go ahead.
Scott Zehr
When I think of, you know, developmental programming, the talk of, whether it’s developmental programming, epigenetics, we’re talking about switching genes on, or turning genes off, essentially. And I’ll just share this with you.
I spent seven years in the genetics world, with one of the largest genetics companies in the world. And, you know, we’re always talking about maximizing genetics. Okay, and, there can be an anomaly anywhere, but I remember growing up, we had this red cow. She was, I was reminded by your backdrop right now.
She was a very minus came from a sire that was extremely minus in milk, extremely minus in protein and fat. Everything you would expect out of a late nineties, red and white Holstein sire. That cow, she ended up dying when she was eight, but in her six and a half lactations on a farm that, we only had about a 22,000 pound herd average, she always produced at least 45,000 pounds of milk.
Dr. Billy Brown
Wow.
Scott Zehr
So, you know, looking through our handwritten records one day, I was trying to figure out, where did this come from? How is this possible? Because the genetic side, the maternal side, it wasn’t there. She never had pneumonia. I never treated her for pneumonia. I never treated her for scours. I never treated her for mastitis. Is that kind of what we’re talking about here?
Dr. Billy Brown
And, yeah, I mean, it could potentially be. And, you know, even with elite animals, some of them, you know, have the right combination of genetics. Just happened to have that. That’s a lot of the chance of breeding animals and livestock, right?
And it’s kind of a Russian roulette thing. And that’s genetics that, you know, that’s not my wheelhouse. So I need not to say too much about that and get myself into trouble. But yeah, it makes you wonder, are there other things in life that could have I helped to potentiate that animal’s response. You know, did you get her damn vaccinated at just the right time?
Did her damn not experience really big negative energy balance while she was gestating? Did the calf get the colostrum at just the right time? Was she fed just precisely for what her nutrient requirements were because she was a certain size and we didn’t over underfeed this animal. You know, there’s so many variables that could come into play there. But no doubt she had some good things occur in early life that allowed her to to achieve those things.
So I think you know, it’s hard to pick out from from one specific example like that. But I think that’s kind of the concept for sure is could we, what did you need to repeat in that situation with that animal to do that for all the other animals in the herd? And, and if we had a, magic bullet for that, for all animals, then, you know, that’d be really beneficial.
And, you know, we could talk in another session someday and, and with some other folks about, you know, precision agriculture and how we actually figure those things out to help those animals along at the same time.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. So backing off my tangent, when we talk about the things that are going on in utero, developmental programming expand on that for us a little bit.
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah. So when we think about things developmental programming from a in utero standpoint, I think from a dairy cattle perspective, you know, one of the big things that comes into play is what’s the dam’s energy status during gestation? So, of course, we’re we’re trying to get these cows bred at 70-80 days.
When are they in peak milk production? 70 to 80 days, right? So they’re not in their extreme negative energy balance like they are postpartum. But they still have a big demand for energy during that time period. So, you know, if they don’t eat well for a couple days and, and go into a little bit of negative energy balance, you know, that could, could affect other things that are going on as well.
And so there is quite a bit of data when we think about our folks in the beef industry and the sheep industry and the swine industry even. They’ve done a lot of work kind of looking at what gestational nutrition of the dam is and how that affects the offspring. And there was a recent review that’s actually I think it’s just impress in the Journal of Dairy Science from some groups at North Dakota State that are kind of addressing this from the standpoint of those meat animal industries.
And there’s big changes that can occur from that. So we restrict protein during gestation for beef cows, for example, that are on range. Negative implications for carcass production. We’re marbling things along those lines. And that certainly become a factor. And so there’s a great body of literature that occurs that exists for those industries. Okay?
And so, you know, you have to feed your animals right to be able to get maximum growth, and yield, and things like that from those animals. The tricky part with the dairy industry is that I think all those things, same things are true, right? But we haven’t followed through with actually seeing what the impact is on the calves in that scenario.
So we’ve done tons and tons of transition cow studies, right? We work so hard on the transition world because that’s a challenging time for cows. They don’t transition well, they cost us a lot of money. We really focus on that prepartum diet. There’s been only a handful of studies where we’ve looked at what happened to the calves in those situations.
And so I think there’s an opportunity there for us to, to really dive down into that a little bit more to say, okay, that’s great, but what is actually the effect of that from the standpoint of how we manage our cows? And what other implications might that be having on our calves that could be good, could be bad for the long term of the dairy? And how do we become more precise in how we raise those calves?
Scott Zehr
You know, that it is interesting on the research side that you talk about the lack of maybe follow through to look at the calves, right? Because some of the studies that have come out of a reference pardon if I don’t have the authors, but the one that really sticks out that I think has a lot of traction behind it is, is the heat stress.
I mean, we’ve been talking about it for how many years? But it goes further than that. I asked Dr. Roth our vice president of nutrition here at Agrarian Solutions, you know, what’s, if heat stress is doing that, what’s the impact of mycotoxins in utero on those offspring? What’s the impact of, you know, just so many other things. And he likes to tell me that the perfect research study has never been done. So.
Dr. Billy Brown
Well, yeah, there’s, so many variables that happen over a nine month period during gestation. Right? And you’re, you’re right. I love the work that Jimena Laporta and Jeff Dahl have done at Ford in Wisconsin.
And what’s cool about that is that they’re showing multi generational impacts from that, right? So he’d stress a cow and then her granddaughters are also experiencing negative milk production and negative longevity in the herd. And that’s because those germline cells that develop in the ovary of the offspring in utero, those are developing while the, the F1 animal is developing.
So there’s big long term effects and we’ve seen those same things like I was saying before in the beef industry and the swine industry, the sheep industry. We mess up something during the first gestation. The F2 animal, also has the negative outcomes of that as well.
So it’s multi-generational. and I don’t think it’s just the heat stress that is really evident on that. There’s a lot of other things could be, you know, whatever health event, you know, if the cow has mastitis or again, negative energy balance negative protein supply things along those lines.
I mean, the world is our oyster there. We really don’t know a whole lot from the dairy side yet at this point. We’d have to extrapolate from the beef side, which is a little bit complicated. But yeah, there’s many things that we really need to dig into to see what’s going on.
Scott Zehr
So you’ve mentioned a couple times about our counterparts in the meat side with how they’re feeding those animals to have better offspring, meat production, so to speak.
So a question that comes to mind is, are we so focused on prepping that cow during the dry period, during the closeup period for a successful transition in terms of milk production and reproduction, that maybe we haven’t figured out that balance between taking care of the cow and taking care of the in utero calf at the same time?
Dr. Billy Brown
Actually, Scott, I think, you know, a lot of the things that we’re doing for the cow are actually pretty beneficial for the calf too. And a couple of examples of that would be if you look at the literature and I’ve been involved in some of it would be room protected cooling.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
Dr. Billy Brown
So that was some of the work that I helped with at the university of Wisconsin during my postdoc. And kind of led to some of the engagements where I wound up meeting you as well. So I’ll kind of highlight what that was and hit on a couple of them too, and we can dig into those a little bit more if we want to. But feeding rumen protected choline to transition dairy cows or pre partum dairy cows that helped to increase growth and marbling characteristics of the beef on dairy calves that resulted from that.
And there’s some other work from florida that showed increasing growth of those offspring, just Holstein heifers. And so that’s really exciting that we can increase growth and for something that costs so little in the pre pardon period. So that’s that’s really exciting. There’s some good work from Illinois showing they’ve done a lot of work with rumen protected amino acids in the prepartum period and how that impacts cow performance postpartum.
They’ve looked at the calf milk feeding phase. So those 6 to 8 weeks after the calf is born, they had positive growth experiences outcomes from those in many cases. There’s been some work looking at fatty acids and types of fatty acids. That data is a little bit mixed, but could indicate some promise there.
Feeding D.C.A.D., obviously a big one that’s occurring right now. Not really a lot of big differences there, and that’s fine. We don’t want to hinder the growth. So a lot of those things I think that we’re doing in the pre part of period that set up the cow well are also appearing to do a lot of good for the calf at the same time.
So you know, we have to be careful that, you know, if we really feed that cow a lot of energy, those energy dense diet, then we know that that might not be great for the cow postpartum. But she has a bigger calf if we feed her more. It’s not a good thing or bad thing? I don’t know. That needs to be investigated a little bit more.
So a lot of different avenues there. But I think in general, if we do something for the cow, it appears to be better for the calf, at least hopefully. And I’m not sure it necessarily has detrimental effects in the long term. But again, something that we don’t know, something that we can evaluate a little bit more.
Scott Zehr
So we’ve talked about utero side of things. Talk to us once that calf is born. We’ve talked to Dr. Britt on this platform previously about epigenetics and we always seem to have this conversation when that calf hits the ground of all the different challenges it faces. You know, pathogens, you name it.
What are things from like what you’ve researched on developmental programming, like day one rr minute one, obviously we know colostrum and that kind of stuff, but what are the impacts it has moving forward for that calf to, to actually get it right in the moment?
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah, absolutely. And so when we get into this realm you know, the post birth era, that’s where we’ve done so much research on calves. If you look in the literature, there’s tons, we slice and dice at different ways. Protein that we feed their calves, what source of protein, how much do we feed our calves, you know, this and that. And actually the combinations of those things are really, it’s almost dizzying in a way. But really hard to sort through some of that research, because when you have research, sometimes it conflicts, right?
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Billy Brown
And so really large bodies of data out there that you have to have somebody that’s really dug through those quite a bit to get the real and true story for what that looks like. But, couple of things that I can kind of point to that I think are really indicative of the big areas that I think we have a good handle on are would be accelerated calf feeding programs.
So, you know, for a long time, our whole goal there was feed that calf as little milk as possible because it’s expensive and force them to eat grain. 20 years ago, we started to find out “well, maybe that’s a little bit counterintuitive.” Right? So we might be saving ourselves some dollars now and costing us dollars in the long run.
So, you know, the Cornell group was pretty involved with this and, feeding those accelerated calf feeding programs. And so those heifers that we feed adequate amounts of milk, too in the first six weeks of life, they grow better they have greater milk production. And the limited data we have out there and a good body of data kind of indicates that as well.
There’s a lot of other variables that go into that, and the data shows that, too, that there’s between study variants that occurs there. And so there’s other things going on that will impact milk production, whether it’s genetics or other heifer raising characteristics in the long run. That would be a developmental programming aspect is probably not necessarily what we typically think of as being developmental program. We say, well, that’s a nutrition effect. But right. But it has a long term effect…
Scott Zehr
Yeah
Dr. Billy Brown
And you can’t reverse that after we’ve restricted a calf from having enough to eat in those first few weeks of life, right? And so essentially that’s developmental program as well.
So I think that’s probably one of the biggest key areas that we’ve seen some results. We think about a heifer there and there’s a good body literature too. Don’t get your heifers too fat, right? We want to hit about 1.75 pounds of gain per day. Above that or below that, we might be sacrificing some first lactation milk yield.
And so that’s where weighing heifers is a really important strategy as well. And so that’s one of those things, again, a long term effect. It’s how development is, impacting that long term. Do we necessarily know the exact mechanisms doing that? No, we know that it affects memory development.
The memory parenchyma in that fat pad as well. And that’s the key there. But, you know, is it histone modifications is a DNA methylation that occurs with that? Maybe yes, maybe no. There’s been some work on that as well. But the bottom line is that that we know it does have long term impacts and farmers are adjusting to be able to avoid that. So they set those heifers up up well in the future.
Scott Zehr
So Dr. Brown, I had this conversation with a colleague here recently. And really probably within the last year, I shouldn’t say recently. But Virgin heifer population in the U.S., there’s not a lot of heifers out there. We’re seeing high prices, supply and demands kicking in. You know, so I’ve kind of asked people the question of if virgin heifers are no longer commodity, why are we still raising them like such?
And I want to give credit where credit’s due. I mean, I’ve, I get a chance to see some amazing dairies that do a great job raising heifers. But in general, think there’s still a lot of opportunity and, you know, you talk about the research done in the, especially that first six to eight weeks of life. Talk to us about the opportunities post weaning, to where we can really start to dial in to.
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah, absolutely. You’re so right. The heifers are so expensive right now. You know, I’m hearing reports of 3,000, $3,600 per heifer. And you just hope that if somebody makes that investment that they can return that in the future. If the, industry goes the other way with milk prices and things like that, time will tell. And, what the ag economists deal with that a little bit too, but you know, it is a unique time right now.
And so, one of the big things where we struggle with that side is how do we collect data? You know, with the cows and why we like to focus on the cows there where we’re making our income,
Scott Zehr
Right
Dr. Billy Brown
But if we make a tweak on a diet, we can see that sometimes within a couple of days or so, you know, and, and so my, my role with our case state dairy farm and, and working with our nutrition program, we see that on a regular basis. And the changes that we make and how quickly that impacts it.
So it’s hard with the heifer and I think this is where the beef world and maybe the pig world you know, struggle with that a little bit too, is how do you measure it, right? How do you measure what your effect is going to be?
Because we can make a change, but it might be months. You know? And what change are we looking for? Are we looking for heifer breeding weights? Are we looking for heifer calving weights? You know, when they’re calving in, is it the first lactation milk production? It, you know, those are your metrics. You could be waiting a month, three months, nine months. And to understand how you made that change. Okay.
And so there’s different ways that we can become more intensive than that. And artificial intelligence could be helpful there. Maybe it’s something where we can get body weights or body condition scores through imaging characteristics some way to help us understand how those diets might be changing our heifers or the composition of those heifers in the long run.
So you’re right. I think there’s opportunity for improvement there. You know, and that’s still probably a black box area. And if you look at the the literature that’s out there, there’s a lot of opportunity to continue researching those heifers, but, you know, for the very reasons that we discussed of why farmers don’t do it on a daily basis, why it’s not a precision operation, and we’re focusing more on cows.
From the research standpoint, it’s hard to. They’re longer studies, and from an academic standpoint, if we’re going to put a project together you know, it’s going to take nine months to execute. So you have a master’s student, that’s almost half of their program, right? And so they still have to write a literature review and do the analysis and do classes and, and poof, that time’s gone. And so to do long studies like that is kind of difficult. And so we maybe don’t have as much focus on that area because that type of research is difficult.
So from that standpoint, I think, you know, how do we set these heifers up well and maybe what could be, quote unquote developmental programming. We can again, this is an area where we say it’s a nutrition thing or it’s a management thing, but it is related to developmental programming. And again, I think the big thing for that one is dial in your nutrition there as best you can with making sure your heifers are growing adequately, we’re hitting those growth marks that we need to breeding weights, calving weights.
But also monitoring body condition. So you have to do that too and make those adjustments. And it’s not fun to adjust diets. A lot of times we don’t need to be messing with diets all the time, but we have big corn silage changes. You know, let’s try to dial that in too make sure that they’re getting the diet in front of them that we formulated as well.
So in reality, it shouldn’t be difficult to raise those heifers, but we want to try to, to give them some precision at the same time and put in front of them what they need from a nutritional basis to get there.
So I’m not sure I have a great answer to that for what’s the best way to do that or what some of the opportunities are, because I think there’s a black hole there. And we probably don’t know what we don’t know in those scenarios too.
But we can also be pulling in information from our friends in the beef industry and, you know, things like that, where that has been a big emphasis and interpreting what they’ve done. Obviously we’re not going to feed those animals the same, but what have they done? And how do we maybe think about that through a different prism or elevate them to a higher status because of what they’ve learned in those industries.
Scott Zehr
I think you mentioned, you know, Somebody is probably working on this. I hope they are, but from an artificial intelligence standpoint, right. So, you know, there’s already the cameras out there with the facial recognition for cattle. You know, can we adapt that to body conditions, like real time body condition score. To where, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen, like, these wonderful looking, just amazing looking weaned calves. And you go look at those same animals six weeks later. Well, six weeks later, anybody can see that they’ve gone backwards for the last month and a half, two months.
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. I mean, AI, who knows if, you could get, you know, real time body condition scores on those animals, the algorithm can track it by the day.
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah. And there are folks that are working on this. And I think, you know, in some of our robotic situations, I think there are cameras that can be applied to those situations, those units that can get us some real time data for that.
But just like everything else, we have to make sure that we use the data, you know? On the dairy farm, we have so much data coming at us on a daily basis. How do we dig through it? And how do we use it? And so that’s where I think, you know, finding a good consultant that’s going to challenge you to use that data is important, not just a consultant hat’s going to do your nutrition for you and pat you on the back and, and go about their business. How are they going to challenge you to dig through that? How are they going to teach you to do that as well? That’s part of what you’re paying them to do is to help you. Get that data and navigate through that.
So I think those are part of it, but things like that are coming. And there’s some researchers working on that at Wisconsin and other places that have specifically looked at body condition scores. There’s some units that do that already, you know, and maybe it’s not necessarily body condition scores, but, can it be body weights.
Okay. So once we run the pin across the body weight and we can at least get a pin level data and things like that. So dairy farms aren’t necessarily always set up for that. But if we could, then there could be useful data for us to have. And of course, as a scientist, I’m always saying, give me more data, right?
That that’s what we want. There is a cost to that. So I recognize that as well. But you know, that’s all great opportunity. I think those farms that continue to try to implement more technology, you know, we’ve seen this with the robots, the more technology that we have, the more data that we can generate, we can become more cutting edge and more aggressive in how we do things. But we have to have a way to process that data too.
So you’re right, you know, talking about those calves that wean great, but six weeks later don’t look great. I think partly an internal thing too. So are you measuring that enough, you know? And, being open to, like I said, the consultant on the farm, or if you have somebody that’s trying to get your business.
Just have them walk through and give you some ideas too. And, and you know, even if you don’t go with them, you’re developing a relationship and gathering some insight. So all those things are beneficial, I think. And doesn’t always have to necessarily be big data, you know, complicated ways or really techie, to be able to be useful. We can just use other people who can be a second eye to us. And things along those lines are really important too. So, one last analogy with that, I think is important. I used to work in economic development for the state of Kansas before I went back for my PhD. And so there were actually communities where the, like their convention and visitors bureau or their economics development corporation, they would have other communities come in and give them a first look impression of what their community looked like. So we don’t always necessarily think about what our community looks like after we’ve lived there for a long time, right? It’s just home. It’s natural. It’s normal.
And so people will give them that impression and feedback so they knew maybe what they could work on to help make their community more attractive. And so I think the same thing is true with the dairy farm. Get input, get data, get ideas from others that are not from your farm might change your thought process a little bit.
Scott Zehr
It does. It does. I have my maple farm and, you know, I asked another sugar maker to come in and give me some advice. And he walked through the operation and some of it rubbed me the wrong way. One of the best things I’ve ever done.
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah. And I think it’s important to, and maybe you did this, you know, take that information. Don’t get too worked up about it, right? Put it down for a couple of days, a week, whatever. Let that initial emotion kind of roll off your back and then come back to it and think of it from an open mind.
And that’s why I tell my students when we get a review for a paper, you know, that we’re trying to submit to journal of dairy science or wherever, get the review, read them, better in a different folder until next week. Right. And just take the heat level down. They’re not getting after you. They’re just trying to help you be better and, and give you an honest assessment. And then we can come back and look at it later when we have a better frame of mind. So there is something to that.
Scott Zehr
So, when does developmental programming of an animal end?
Dr. Billy Brown
Mm. Good question. I never actually thought of it from that standpoint, and I guess we could, yeah, you kind of stumped me on that one. I’m not sure that we actually know, right. But I mean, surely there’s something that would say that, you know, if we have a health impact or something that might change something related to how the body functions that could go on for a longer period of time. You know, and I guess you could have a debate too.
Is that developmental programming or is that just programming at that point in time? And I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen a lot of debate on that in the past. I think we’ve always just focused so much on the in-utero stage or in that early life stage and called that developmental programming that that’s kind of what we focused on a little bit.
But, you know, you bring up a good point. I think that’s really interesting is that, you know, maybe these things have long term effects for a longer period of time. And it could be considered programming in some form or format rather than just a health insult or rather just a nutritional insult. Is it a programming insult along the line too? Something I never thought of. You stumped me today.
Scott Zehr
Well, I didn’t mean to. Just, just from, you know, just from the idea that, these animals they experience insults. It doesn’t matter if they’re a day older, five year old milking cow, right?
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
So obviously if that animal experiences mastitis the day she calves as a two year old, there’s significant long term impact of that. That goes way beyond that five year old cow having a case of mastitis. But are there things that happened to that five year old cow with that case of mastitis that, you would maybe continue to look at.
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah. Well, I think, and from that standpoint too, as I think about it a little bit more, maybe, you know, that’s not so much developmental programming as we think about developmental programming, maybe we’re making changes to something that we can’t see. Right? We’re making changes to a DNA histone modification, a DNA methylation, somewhere along those lines. Everything else looks physically the same, but something’s functioning differently. Okay?
And at least with mastitis, you could probably dissect that memory lane and say, okay, there’s damage there. So we’re not really affecting the programming of that as much as there’s just the cells are not there to work on or be able to perform their task of secreting milk in some form or fashion.
And so I think that’s probably a little bit of the delineation there. So with that in mind, as I think about it a little bit more, you know, I’d say developmental programming, maybe we’ve kind of tapped that out by the time an animal reaches mature weight. And as they’re approaching that mature weight, there’s less opportunity for us to really influence that performance as much as we could in early life.
Scott Zehr
Previously.
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Any words you want to share with the audience before we wrap it up today?
Dr. Billy Brown
Yeah. Well, one, thanks for having me on. And two, I think, you know, I would say, be thinking about this topic and be talking to your nutritionist about it. I mentioned there’s things like choline, methionine, fatty acids, heat stress, obviously. All those play a big role in developmental programming of our calves.
I think there’s an opportunity in the future that we could be putting some dollar values to these things and how we can be growing our calves better and knowing that it’s going to have a good return on investment.
So have your nutritionist talk to you about some of those three items that I talked about that that do have effect, have them dig into the literature. Talk to some experts in those areas. And sit down and do an R. O. I. on it. So if we feed room and protected calling to our pre part of cows, how much is that going to cost? If you’re not doing that already.
What expected growth impacts we could have from our calves as a result of that. And does that pay off for our farm? Is that beneficial for our farm? So all those things are good. And we’re going to be learning more about that in the long run. And so, you know, just be aware of it so that when you’re reading something in a dairy publication, if it pops up, you kind of know what they’re talking about a little bit.
And so you’re prepared for it from that same point forward. So I just think there’s going to be more discussion about this long run. It’s starting to become a bigger and bigger topic. And hopefully we can jump into this next frontier really, really successfully for the benefit of our animals.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you as well, Dr. Brown for joining us today on Ruminate This with Agrarian solutions. And I have a couple other ideas for us to talk about. So hopefully you are willing to come back on and join us in the future.
Dr. Billy Brown
Always, it works great today. We have a snow day here and so, it’s a good day to be inside and on a podcast, but there’s a lot of other good days to do podcasts too. So happy to look into it.
Scott Zehr
All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and we’ll be talking to you again next week. Thank you.
