The first week after calving is a critical window that impacts reproductive performance and overall lactation success in dairy cows. In this episode, we discuss how supporting transition cows’ immune systems and addressing common nutritional deficiencies can reduce inflammation, prevent uterine diseases, and minimize early pregnancy loss after first service.
Caroline Knoblock, Director of Nutrition, shares practical ideas to optimize cow health during the transition period, improving fertility, reducing health challenges, and enhancing milk production throughout lactation.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And today I am joined by my partner in crime at Agrarian Solutions. The one, the only Caroline Knoblock. She is the director of Nutrition here at Agrarian. YDLI class alumni. Same as me. Go YDLI 12. Caroline, I’m glad you took time outta your day to join us again.
Caroline Knoblock
I’m happy to be here and talk with you.
Scott Zehr
All right. You know, I feel like you get the short end of the stick working with me a little bit. ‘Cause I’ll, I’ll get a chance to go out on farm with a nutritionist. We’ll talk shop, we’ll talk repro, we’ll talk mycotoxins, and then I’ll say, “Hey, how about I pull a back up and we’ll look at the records and try to come up with some ideas for you?” Which is something that I had done for years in my previous role with the previous company. But you’re the one that has dairy comp 3 0 5. So then I send you the backups and say, Caroline, do this for me. Do this for me. Am I being fair enough to you? Is that okay?
Caroline Knoblock
Well, I mean, sometimes you don’t gimme much info. You’re like, lemme know what you find, which…
Scott Zehr
Well, I want you to look at it with unbiased. Yeah, yeah, fair. All right, fine.
Caroline Knoblock
No, I’m just teasing. No, I understand. It’s good to come in and try to look, ’cause yeah, you were told what everyone on the farm thinks, and that’s not necessarily what the issue actually is.
Scott Zehr
Isn’t that the truth? You know, I mean we….
Caroline Knoblock
I’ve seen that happened a few times recently, so.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. We talk a lot about repro in Agrarian and, and rightly so. Right? It’s, I love asking the question to dairy farmers. And it’s amazing how, how often they get it wrong. But like, why do you put up crops? Well, you know, to feed the cows. Yeah, but why do you feed the cows? Well, to make milk. But why do you make milk? To make a living. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We put up crops to make pregnancies.
We feed cows to make pregnancies. We can’t milk a cow until she becomes pregnant and has a calf, right? So it all starts with a pregnancy. And I, I think that’s why it’s such a big topic of conversation with us. And reproductive efficiency, at least in my opinion, Caroline, it drives farm profitability as much as anything, right?
I mean, if we have open cows, we have low producing cows. You know, high days in milk, it’s like the old saying, like, it’s trying to get milk out of a stone. And, and so there’s, that’s why we’ve, you know, put a lot of emphasis on that. Caroline, is it fair to say though, that like farms have gotten better at getting cows pregnant?
Caroline Knoblock
For sure. And a lot of it is linked to just the off sync programs and resync and all of that is getting the cows cycling normally and yeah, getting them pregnant. And I mean I come at it from a nutritionist perspective ’cause I’m a trained nutritionist, I’m not, never been involved with repro. And so I always kind of like, don’t talk to me about repro. It’s not my ballpark. I don’t have anything to do with it.
But now as I’ve been at Agrarian and we do put an emphasis on it just because of our products and what we help with. And I’m learning more how we influence it with feed and what’s in the feed and how we can manage that. And so I’ve been doing a lot of reading on repro and just learning about it from being from someone who said absolutely not for years. It’s so, it’s, yeah, it’s been very eye-opening to understand how we’ve shifted as an industry to get better with our preg rates over the last 15, 20 years.
Scott Zehr
A hundred percent. And I, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it. You know, I, I think the herds that are running 50, 55, 60 per service conception rate. I don’t think that’s the peak of the mountain, Caroline. And, and I say that because you look at how we’ve gotten here, right? We’ve gotten here with a focus, as you said, on transition health for sure.
And then sound protocols, sound heat detection methods like activity monitoring, that sort of thing, and quality people, quality semen going in the cow, all these things. But you know, we talked recently internally how well, it was at four states Nutrition conference, they were talking about there was cows that were given awards or herds that were given awards for being part of the eight pound component club. It was just a few years ago we were given out awards for six pounds not that long ago.
Right? And so just like, I think there’s, you know, eight pounds is gonna be the new standard soon, and nine pounds beyond the horizon. Can we achieve 70, 75, dare I say, 80% for service conception rate in these cows? I mean, what if we could, what would it look like?
Caroline Knoblock
Mm-hmm. Oh, it’s interesting ’cause part of what I’m reading is just trying to understand, I mean, just the reproductive cycle of a cow, but also are they not getting pregnant? What are the reasons they’re not getting pregnant? ‘Cause they’re not cycling or are they getting pregnant and there’s early loss. Is there later loss? Where is that pregnancy loss happening?
And so that’s been quite eye-opening especially in the last few years. Just some really good work coming out about that early pregnancy establishment period and you know, what’s going on for that cow and how do you understand which cows successfully maintain their pregnancy and which don’t.
And that’s probably where it’s coming from. ‘Cause to jump the gun a little, I mean, it looks like a lot of cows get pregnant. It’s just they don’t stay pregnant.
Scott Zehr
Exactly.
Caroline Knoblock
Fertilization rates are super high. Like if you can, it’s hard to tell if a cow is pregnant that first 10 days after AI. But the ways, when they do that, most are a lot are, I’d say in the over 70%. It depends on the paper you read and I don’t have the perfect numbers, but a lot are. It’s just then once you check it 35 days, they’re not anymore.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Caroline Knoblock
So it’s a period of time.
Scott Zehr
I’ve heard those numbers be as high as 75- 80% in the past. And right. It’s that, and we all know this, so far, we haven’t taught anybody something they don’t know yet. Right? But it’s that window from 30 to 38 days, 40 days. That’s the problem window.
And you know, we’ve talked in the past to Dr. Jack Britt, the Britt hypothesis, right. Nutrients, the, you know, not enough glucose to maintain pregnancy, like that whole thing. But you’ve also been looking at some papers outta South Dakota State and outta Guelph that’s shedding some light around nutrients around that time. Nutrient I guess availability, is that right?
Caroline Knoblock
Well, it’s more the impact of the uterine environment, I’d say. And it’s actually going earlier. It’s from day 19. So maternal recognition of pregnancy is in that, like a repro person is gonna say the exact day, it’s 17 to nine, day 17 to 19, it’s super late in cattle compared to other mammals.
And that’s where you get a lot of losses. It’s the, that embryo is just not able to make enough whatever of the hormones so that the damn knows that she’s, there’s even a pregnancy to be maintained there. And so they’re just not sending whatever hormones and nutrients they need into the uterus.
And part of it’s just ’cause the uterus doesn’t have the nutrients needed to support that embryo. And some of it is due to hormonal profile because of reproductive issues.
Scott Zehr
So, you know, what are you seeing in the papers as cause and effect of this? How do we address it?
Caroline Knoblock
So the work that I’m referencing here some was done at Guelph, then some was done by a professor that’s now at Guelph. He did it when he is at University of Florida around the new states in the US. Then the guy who did it well at Guelph is now on staff at South Dakota State and continuing on with this work.
So, they’re just doing retrospective analysis where they were able to be at commercial farms, take a bunch of ultrasound measurements in one, they did a bunch of blood testing and they’re just looking at those cows. And then afterwards they’re also looking at all their health records. And they found really interesting things with health records, with healthy cows versus unhealthy cows and with different diseases, different health status, and how that affected her ability to get pregnant, which’s not that much.
Most had gotten pregnant. But her ability to be pregnant at that first ultrasound and still be pregnant at that second ultrasound. I mean, the main thing, it’s uterine diseases. And, for these studies, they’re very specific, how they define that. So it’s gonna be slightly different on a lot of farms, metritis, rps are 24 hours. Do they have placenta or not? Yes or no? There’s an rp.
Metritis, they’re gonna do the discharge. They’re not palpating cows typically. For these studies they do palpate the cows and they take uterine samples and then look at that to see if it has certain types of immune cells and then they’re also very defined measurements. ‘Cause it’s a study, you have to have parameters. So the work is very consistent.
They did a good job with what is a metritis case on these commercial farms. But yeah, it’s uterine diseases is gonna be number one. And it’s just cows that even at day 13, they still had signs of metritis and so. It’s cows that something was going on, they just could not cure their metritis and then later on they could not maintain that pregnancy.
They either had early embryonic death or death in that, like you said, 30 to 38 day range. There’s also other diseases too. So ketosis, there’s some ketosis indicators for certain time periods. Additional issues on top of the metritis, but it’s coming down to just health. Is she having to mount a big immune response, have a lot of inflammation? And is she able to resolve her issues as well?
Scott Zehr
Right.
Caroline Knoblock
Because there’s other things you read, there’s some cows that might get mildly matritic, but they were, they cure their metritis and they are fine. But the ones who have that carried on who just can’t cure it for weeks, those are the cows who just struggle.
And so it’s, what always comes to my mind is what can we do early on just so they don’t struggle as much so they can kind of take care of this inflammatory load, yeah, take care of this inflammation and solve their issues.
Scott Zehr
Well, I think everything you just described there, right? It sounds like we’re coming back to inflammation, right? You mentioned ketosis, you mentioned metritis. Metritis causes inflammation. Ketosis, you know, we, we kind of think now is more along the lines of a secondary kind of thing from inflammation.
And so really, you know, it sounds like a continuation of that story we’ve been talking about here at Agrarian is how do we alleviate all these sources or mitigate all these sources of inflammation, whether it’s heat, stress, mycotoxins, metritis, lameness you know, what, what can we do? And I think what’s cool to me, Caroline, is we know internally we have one of these inflammation sources checked off the box. Like we can take mycotoxins off the table, right? But, how do we help folks figure out how to deal with those other things?
Caroline Knoblock
Well, you gotta start from just the beginning when she’s calving in. Cows are going to experience inflammation issues. I mean, she’s starting to make milk. That’s just a huge draw of nutrients to the mammary gland. It’s also a potential source of infection when she’s starting to get milked out, that tit end is now open and exposed. They have to mount a huge immune response to clean up everything out of their uterus after calving.
That needs to happen. That’s important. She’s had diet changes. She’s eating new feeds, she’s in different pens, different concentrate and forage ratios. It’s probably totally different forages than before. That’s where we come in with helping stop some of the mycotoxin issues, helping stop the inflammation from there.
But there’s a lot she has to take care of. And, a lot of cows do it pretty well, but you know, we still have those 30% that have some sort of struggle. Sometimes it’s more. And it’s how do we either reduce the amount of issues that she has to deal with? So, we recommend feeding DTX when you have mycotoxins.
So that helps her manage those mycotoxins much more efficiently. It’s not that nutrient draw, it’s preventing the leaky gut issues, the immune issues in the gut. But we still need to support her so that she can clean up her uterus after calving so that she can protect her udder. And it’s part of, it’s just getting cows to eat after calving.
It’s not overcrowding your fresh cows. It’s a better diet transition where they still aren’t going too crazy with the concentrate immediately, but, depending on how you manage your cows, they can manage that just fine. It’s just what can we do to prevent more things for her to have to manage and take care of?
So it’s a lot of management, reducing overcrowding, clean water. I mean, if she’s drinking dirty water, it’s just another thing she has to deal with.
Scott Zehr
Exactly.
Caroline Knoblock
Having pens clean, and it’s just having clean hands when you process cows after calving, just so you’re not introducing unneeded bacteria.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, these cows are going through an awful lot. So.
Caroline Knoblock
I mean, the plus side is cows are really cool animals. They’re awesome animals. They can do this just fine. They’re made to do this. They’re made to have a calf and make milk.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
Caroline Knoblock
So it’s just, if we do our best from a husbandry and management standpoint, they’re gonna take care of the rest. So yeah, clean feed, clean hands, I guess. Clean water.
Scott Zehr
You know, we don’t wanna oversimplify it ’cause there’s a lot of nuances to it. But at the end of the day, I mean, if people have been listening to ruminate this long enough they’ve heard me reference Vince Lombardi and the fundamentals. Right? it’s a lot of the fundamentals. You know, from a nutrition standpoint, do you think there’s opportunities for us to look at like what we’re feeding these cows? Whether it’s pre fresh, post fresh, first 30 days to improve pregnancy success there.
Caroline Knoblock
I think nutrition it’s playing the role in just helping more, I would think of it on the side of what problems does it either help prevent or solve. So from, again, the DTX perspective, controlling mycotoxins, helping her combat those much more efficiently and effectively. It’s feeding high quality forages that are very highly digestible so that her rumen can do its thing.
There’s a lot around supplementing the proper amount of amino acids and different fatty acids and fats. And there’s a lot of opportunities just to get good nutrition into her. And, but I mean, it comes down to also just having feed in front of the cows, encouraging intake in general.
On the nutrition side, you can create the perfect diet, but it’s really working with the farms and helping them feed that effectively, feed the diet you create. I mean, there’s no one diet that you must feed, but it’s, a lot of diets can work if the farms are feeding consistent TMR, it’s in front of the cows all day, every day and they can reach it.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Execution, right?
Caroline Knoblock
Yep.
Scott Zehr
That’s a big part of it. We started out today, Caroline talking about like, reproduction, how we spend a lot of time on reproduction here at Agrarian, which I think is kind of interesting in itself because we’re a feed additive company, I guess you could say. But I, I have always said that I look at our job at Agrarian as being ones to help bridge the language gap or the understanding gap between genetics and nutrition.
So with that in mind and one, I’m gonna thank you for geeking out on reading papers and then explaining it to me so I don’t actually have to read them. But from that mindset, what are a handful of takeaways or three takeaways you’d wanna leave the audience today?
Again, I’ll preface this by saying like, repro has come a long way in the last, even just the last 10 years, right? I mean, 10 years ago, 30 preg rate was like, oh, and now it’s, yeah, we’re running 30, I mean, we’d normally run, you know, we see 40 preg rates. Right?
But the other side of that is I’ve had, I’ve run into too many farms recently that say, we got repro. We don’t need to think about repro. What happens the first minute you take your eye off something? It disappears. Right? So I guess from, from all of that, what are maybe a few takeaways you’d wanna leave the audience with today?
Caroline Knoblock
I think a big one is what happens that first 14 days after calving will affect her reproduction in a few months time. It’s first service and just that early pregnancy loss is very much connected to how she transitioned. So if there’s anything that to focus on, on a lot of farms, even farms that are doing really well from a repro perspective, it’s how can we reduce issues after calving?
‘Cause those cows that have metritis issues, those cows that have rumen upset issues and just aren’t doing well those first few weeks, they don’t maintain that first pregnancy. It just, their body just hasn’t been able to repair their uterus enough yet ’cause their immune system needed to fight other things and it needed to protect itself. So it comes back to how she transitions and her ability to transition well really just comes to supplying the nutrients she needs to make milk and the nutrients her immune system desperately needs to protect itself.
The cow’s immune system knows what to do. It’s just, it needs a lot of nutrients. And, cow also needs a lot of nutrients to make milk, and it’s supplying what she needs so that she can take care of herself. That’s the biggest takeaway to me and when I was just reading all of this, it’s like, oh, here’s our connection right here. Those first two weeks, whatever happened, you’re still gonna see it two, three months later.
Scott Zehr
You know, I, I keep asking myself the question, you know, I spent a lot of a couple years of my career talking about shop protocols and reproductive management strategies around getting cows inseminated. You know, I was in the genetic space with a semen company, right?
And I think about how many technicians lost their job or semen companies lost their sale, if you would, because cows weren’t getting pregnant. And so two parts of that, right? I’d like your input on this. If there’s really no way to answer it, but like, I just wonder now, like how many, how many people got kicked out of an account because cows were open because of bad semen, right.
Or this guy forgot how to breed cows or, you know, but just the more we learn about this, it just, like you said, it comes back to let the cow be a cow, take good care of her. And you know, Caroline, I, I’ve said for a number of years now, like if, if you gave me a pool of money to invest in a repro program, like it would all be on first service, you know, a big chunk of it.
And it would start with the dry cow program. Like that’s where I would start spending money is with the dry cows. And you know, it sounds like what you’re saying is like that’s probably not a bad approach and just transition care. Transition care. Transition care.
Caroline Knoblock
Mm-hmm.
Scott Zehr
Cool.
Caroline Knoblock
No, exactly. I mean, if you’re giving your shots on time and then yeah, they’re getting her bread at the right time, she’s probably conceiving.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Caroline Knoblock
Likely. It’s just, yeah.
Scott Zehr
And when you…
Caroline Knoblock
Is she gonna get over that hump of that maternal recognition and maintain her pregnancy.
Scott Zehr
And when you run ’em through the first service sync protocol and come up with 40%, you can start by looking at your transition program.
Caroline Knoblock
Yeah. Yep. If your shots are done on time, it’s probably… Yeah. Their health, after calving.
Scott Zehr
I love it. I love it. I think you’ve given everybody something to think about and, you know, stay tuned here to folks for continued conversation around getting cows pregnant and keeping them pregnant. I mean, that is, that is how our dairy farmers in today’s world remain in business and remain profitable.
So, Caroline, again, thank you for taking time out of your day today to visit with us on Ruminate This. And we will be talking to everybody again soon.
