In this episode we explore the cornerstone of thriving dairies … heifers. While heifer nutrition often takes a back seat to the milking herd, it deserves our full attention as it drives growth, reproductive performance, mammary development, immune function, production and ultimately profitability. Dr. Larry Roth, Vice President of Nutrition at Agrarian Solutions will share essential strategies for successful heifer-raising programs, giving you control of the nutritional journey.
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Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host Scott Zehr. And today we are going to be discussing, the virgin heifer population on our dairy farms, with Dr. Larry Roth. And Larry is going to kind of give us some insights as to maybe what are some of the keys to, looking at that group from a nutritional standpoint and what impact, mycotoxins might be playing in that virgin heifer population.
So with that, Larry, our Vice President of Nutrition here at Agrarian Solutions. Larry, hanks for jumping back in the podcast with us. And, you know, you and I have worked together now for a few years and, I would always ask you a lot of questions about our virgin heifer population.
A little bit of that is predicated on, I still think there’s a lot of opportunity on U.S. dairies to improve, virgin heifer reproduction, on that first breeding. So, and I think there’s a lot of that, a lot goes into that beyond, I’m going to say reproductive programs. Obviously that heifer has to be ready to breed.
She’s got to have the right nutrition plane. And today what I’m hoping we can kind of decipher is, what does that heifer need? And then I want to get into some of those transition groups with you. You know, I think we talk about the transition program a lot, but we always talk about it in terms of, you know, dry cow to calving.
But one of the biggest transitions that I think these animals have in their life is going from weaned, or that weaning transition period, going from milk to a forage diet. Larry, I guess my opening question would be, what is a successful transition period milk to forage look like on a dairy today in the U.S.?
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. A successful transition from pre-weaning to post-weaning would be no health problems. Heifers just take off. They don’t look backwards. They take off eating and they make life easy for the calf raiser.
Scott Zehr
That sounds like, it’s just that easy, right? Any, any challenges that sometimes pop up, that might hinder that? And what are some of those challenges?
Dr. Larry Roth
It’s all predicated on having a healthy heifer ready to be weaned. That means she hasn’t had any digestive issues. No scours, no respiratory issues, eating at least two to three pounds of starter feed a day.
And if she’s eating that amount of starter feed, no health issues, she’s likely to stay alone. However, if she’s had any of these health issues before, if she goes through the transition at weaning, there’s a likelihood that these problems will come back. The heifer who causes problems at weaning is probably a heifer that was causing problems beforehand.
And I think one of the biggest issues that come up is the eating enough feed. Enough dry feed. And when, you know, a good way to get an argument going with any calf raiser is how much whole milk or milk replacer should you be feeding pre winning. Many are going to advocate a high level of milk solids, and I’ll simplify it so we don’t have to say both whole milk and milk replacer, but milk solids.
Quite often, the more milk solids we feed, the less starter feed is being consumed pre weaning, which means less is going to be consumed post weaning. And, if our calf is not consuming much for starter feed, then we don’t have the nutrients needed to maintain a good digestive tract pH, to support the immune system post weaning, and that’s where things start to fall apart.
Scott Zehr
So the rumen development, too, right?
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. To me, it all comes back to day one, week one, month one. If we have challenges then, we’re going to have challenges at weaning, and we’re going to have challenges later on throughout that animal’s productive life. Hopeful, productive life.
Scott Zehr
Larry, you’ve been in this nutrition space a number of years. And I’ve seen over my lifetime, say over the last 20 years, it seems like we fed pellets to calves, we fed textured feed to calves, and now we’re seeing more pellets again. Do you have an opinion on which is better or does it really matter?
Dr. Larry Roth
That’s the second best way to get an argument going. Pellets versus textured feed. So my simple way to answer that is going to be feed a high quality starter feed. What does that mean? I don’t know. But it’s a feed that a calf is consuming a high amount of. We advocate feeding a high level of starch, not too much of starch.
But a fair amount of starch, because it’s the fermentation products of that starch, principally butyrate, that’s going to help with rumen lining, as well as small intestine lining, as well as internal organs. They’re number one, going to, produce the enzymes that we need to help break the diet down, as well as help the liver to grow, which, again, I always call it a biochemical factory of the body.
So, you get into the argument, fiber, well, sometimes with higher fiber, pellets. They may be a little bit less expensive than a good textured feed. But then again, there you go. That’s a great way to start an argument. Start versus fiber, texture versus pellet.
Scott Zehr
So, Larry, to go a little further on the calf feed, you know, pellets versus textured fiber versus high fiber versus starch, what’s better?
Dr. Larry Roth
All right, Scott, that’s the second best way to get an argument going with calf raisers. Textured versus pellet, starch versus fiber. I’m going to come down and say that it is starch and it’s fermentation products from the rumen, principally butyrate that’s going to help with digestive tract lining, be it rumen, be it small intestine, plus the internal organs, pancreas to make bile to help with digestion, help with development of the liver, the body’s biochemical factory.
So I tend to lean toward the starch side. Doesn’t have to be crazy high starch. And if we can get starch into the pellet, fantastic. My challenge is that some of these high fiber pellets are actually high byproducts. And when we talk high byproducts, we’re oftentimes concentrating mycotoxins. We got some distillers. Maybe we got some wheat meds coming in.
Maybe we have some corn gluten feed there. Things that are concentrating mycotoxins. Certainly with a whole corn, textured feed, we can be bringing some mycotoxins in as well. Quite often there’s some molasses there. That may favor some yeast to mold growth. But my vote is going to come down for a high quality textured feed that’s going to be emphasizing starch.
Scott Zehr
Yep. So, post weaning, she’s consuming the right amount of starter. We successfully transitioned her off milk. There’s a couple of schools of thought on what happens next. I’ve seen farms that, you know, maybe we go to straight grain and, and, uh, water for a bit, when do we introduce dry hay? When do we introduce TMR? What are some good practices there?
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet.
Scott Zehr
We, we do see a different, a little bit on different farms, different approaches and so on.
Dr. Larry Roth
So here’s the third best way to get the argument going. When do we introduce hay or when do we introduce formatted feeds?
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
So let’s start with the hay aspect. Again, I’m going to come back to advocating that we have the calves consuming a high amount of starter/grower feed, because really your question comes to grower feed. When do we transition from a starter to a grower feed? And what does it look like? This is a baby animal. The rumen may not be as fully developed as we want, depending upon how much starter feed we were consuming before.
And then once we start bringing in some hay, hay typically is going to be lower in energy content than either a high fiber pellet or the textured feed. So let’s kind of minimize that hay, maybe we’re five to 10 percent of what the intake is going to be, for maybe that first month or so. So we say, well, shoot, if we’re putting a small amount of hay into the, this heifer, are we going to be getting some acidosis?
Well, if it’s a high fiber pellet and we’re still getting 10 percent hay into the diet, we’re probably not going to have acidosis. If it’s a whole corn-based textured feed and we’re still supplying 10 percent hay, we’re probably not going to have acidosis. The emphasis has to be on getting nutrients into the heifer to get her through this challenge period.
If she backs off on intake, we don’t have the nutrients needed for digestive tract lining and to support the immune system. So I’m going to advocate bringing dry hay in at five to 10% of the diet for the first month, and then we can start looking at transitioning over to, more of a traditional TMR.
And when I say traditional TMR, I’m thinking about bringing in some fermented feeds, typically going to be corn silage. And my concern in bringing in the corn silage is what do we have for mycotoxins because this young animal just isn’t going to be set up to handle some of those mycotoxin issues, losing control of the digestive tract lining, the castle wall, the challenges on the liver.
But again, if we have a healthy animal consuming a good amount of feed, we’re going to be able to go to a more complex TMR that much sooner.
Scott Zehr
Okay, so, I think you just said, I might have touched on a way to start the next argument of should we be feeding corn silage to heifers or should we focus a haylage based diet on heifers to avoid getting fat heifers?
Dr. Larry Roth
Mm hmm. Okay. Yeah. Fantastic question. So let’s go back to what is our objective? So, when do we want to freshen this heifer? I’m going to say 23 months. Again, we can discuss what’s best. Yep. And I picked 23 months because if we take nine months off of that, we’re at 14 months. So we’re trying to breed at 14 months.
And let’s say our goal is to be roughly 850 pounds. Let’s say that we weaned this heifer. We really did a good job. We’re 190 to 200 pounds. And I made my math easy. So we got to put on what about 650 pounds in the course of a year, we need to be about 1.75 to 1.8 pounds. So we can do that on a lower energy diet.
I’m not talking about a high corn silage diet. I’m talking about enough to come in there to support that kind of growth.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth
We got a place for some haylage, some hay in there, some lower energy feeds to come in. So I think a high quality corn silage, not in an excessive level, bringing in some decent haylage or some decent hay, maybe some straw, I’d go 1.75 to 1.8.
Scott, you mentioned we don’t want to have fat heifers. Certainly we don’t want to have fat heifers. However, I’m going to go ahead and say I think so often the challenge that we get with these heifers is going to be that they’re not growing fast enough. We’re not putting enough energy into them.
We’re trying to cheapen up the diet. Wow. I’ve seen a lot of heifers raised on moldy corn stalks and moldy wet distillers grains and guess what? It may be a cheap diet but we don’t meet our objective. And Scott, you and I worked enough. But you already know what I’m going to say next cheap and inexpensive do not mean the same thing.
So I can put together a cheap diet and I can raise your heifers inexpensively, but am I going to have them ready for you to freshen at 23 months.
You know, I think that comes to the challenge back to having some high quality ingredients. There’s a place for some corn stocks, high quality corn stocks, a place for some high quality straw, a place for some byproducts. But let’s keep in mind what’s our objective: 1.75 to 1.8 pounds of, of gain over the course of about a year from weaning to breeding.
Scott Zehr
So I’m going to, I’ll try to ask this question and not offend anybody. But I have a chance to be on a lot of, a lot of farms with a lot of different types of folks. And you know, we spend a lot of time talking about the lactating cow nutrition, the transition program, and rightly so that’s what’s paying the bills, right?
I hear very little discussion in any of these meetings about the heifer nutrition. I think my opinion is fair in that there’s this feeling that feeding heifers is easy. You know, one of the things that you just mentioned was providing them with decent feed, I’m going to say, what’s the definition of decent feed?
Because I think it’s rather subjective. You know, I, I think there’s farms out there that, uh, we have a, I have a neighbor up here that likes to, they milk about 3000 cows. They like to cut their heifer haylage. They, all of their first cotton is cut somewhere around the 15th of June and it’s all heifer haylage.
They feed no first cotton haylage to the milk cows. Is that the right thing to do? It works for them. They’ve been farming for a long time. But, I guess my question is, should we be spending more time than we do, thinking about the heifer TMR? And what we’re delivering, you know?
Dr. Larry Roth
The easy answer is yes, we should be spending more time thinking about it.
I think there’s so often on the dairy, the emphasis is on the lactating cows. They’re the ones making the money. And that’s the exciting sexy thing to do is formulate that lactating diet. And there’s less emphasis put on the rations that cost the money. That’s the heifers that cost the money.
It’s hard to show a return on that unless we don’t have heifers coming in to freshen when we want them to be. So again, what’s our objective? 1.75 to 1.8 pounds a game. Then we need to determine what we have for feeds. So you mentioned a haylage cut June 15th. Forgive me. I don’t know what that means. Other than that’s probably more mature than what it would be if we were cutting it to give that to first slack to give that to lactating cows.
So yeah, we’re getting a little bit more yield. Our quality is going to be down, we’re not going to be as weather conscious because we’ll wait, you know, it’s going to be a lower quality haylage and so forth. Well, what if we were to put up a really high quality haylage and then we can always blend it down. You can always find some straw.
We can always find some high quality corn stalks or something like that. We can always do some limit feeding. Not everybody’s set up to do that, but you know, we can do some things like that. So we don’t have to have rocket fuel to give the heifer. But we need to have some decent, high quality feeds. And when I say decent high quality, we don’t have Clostridia, talking about your haylage, uh, we don’t have mycotoxins, talking about the corn silage, but we got decent quality feeds.
We’re not dealing with wild yeast. We’re not dealing with molds. Again, it comes back to heifers, give them whatever. You know, that, that black rind that we take off of the corn silage bunker, Scott, let’s give that to the heifers.
Scott Zehr
They’ll pick through it. Larry.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. I mean, what, what, what can go wrong there?
We don’t want to give it to our lactating cows, so we’ll give it to the heifers. You know, we don’t want to waste anything. What can go wrong there? So, I think that so often heifers are at the low end of the decision making process and we’ll give them the wild yeast laden TMR refusals. We’ll give them the junk off of the corn silage pile and wonder why they don’t get bred like we want them to.
Scott Zehr
And we’ll also grow them and in the barn that grandfather built in the fifties. So, yeah. You know, I have a little saying that I’ve thrown around here for the last couple of months, these virgin heifers, if you look at the inventory numbers across the U.S., they’re no longer a commodity, Larry. So why are we in some cases still treating them like a commodity?
So you, you mentioned that black rind of the corn silage and mentioned mycotoxins. So, mycotoxins in the lactating cows. We’re thinking decreased milk production. We’re thinking decreased pregnancy conception rates. That sort of thing. What are the downsides in the virgin heifer population when we’re dealing with toxins? I guess, what impact are they having at, at what level?
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay. So, the first thing I’m going to say is we keep saying virgin heifers. But our objective is for them not to be virgins.
Scott Zehr
Well, true. Yes.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. You know, and so I always think what’s our objective? So, what’s mycotoxins going to do? Well, it can mess up that digestive tract.
We’re not absorbing the nutrients. We talk about how are we going to formulate this diet? What difference does it make if we’re messing up the digestive tract so we can’t absorb it? And then the mycotoxins can interfere with the liver. Again, the body’s biochemical factory. What difference does it make how we formulate the diet if the biochemical factory isn’t set up to make use of those nutrients?
And then we get a bunch of zearalenone into the heifer that’s going to interfere with the estrogen receptors and we don’t turn them from a virgin, well, we can turn them from a virgin into a heifer that has been serviced. But really we’re wanting to turn the virgin into a bred heifer. And hopefully we keep this as something that kids can listen to here.
Heifers are becoming a valuable commodity. There’s fewer of them out there. It’s where you have your best genetics. It’s that the heifer is nothing but overhead until the day she starts making milk, and then she’s trying to pay off her bill, up until this point. Just here in the last month, there’s been a number of extension people, university researchers who’ve been coming out, talking about these, these heifers, and how important they are.
But Scott, what you just said a moment ago is so true. They’re at the low end of the emphasis spectrum. So I’m going to say, hey, they’re an important commodity, so maybe we should be paying more attention to them.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. I’m going to take a little responsibility on this, Larry, because I’m trying to encourage people to spend more time thinking about heifer nutrition. But you know, in return, in regards of mycotoxins, we don’t sample a lot of heifer TMRs, do we?
Um, and, you know, maybe that’s a good challenge, a good talking, a thing for us to think about talking with folks about is, just keeping an eye on that heifer TMR, I guess. You know, I can think of a couple of dairies off the top of my head that are doing a good job of, you know, looking at toxins in the TMR and the heifer population.
They’re feeding DTX to those heifers to make sure they have mycotoxin mitigation, make sure that’s covered, take it off the table. But yeah, I think we probably don’t see nearly enough samples come in from that population. So something else I wanted to ask you is, what are two or three things, and you can’t steal my testing thing. But what are two or three things that you would encourage a nutritionist or dairyman to consider relating to heifer nutrition?
Dr. Larry Roth
Excellent. Know what your objectives are. That’s the first thing. When do you want these heifers to freshen? When do you want them bred? What are your benchmarks in terms of conception rate? Are you there or not? We can talk about weight.
People are talking 55 to 60 percent of mature weight. And, it seems like some of these cows keep getting bigger. And so we need a little bit heavier weight. Benchmark your heifers, weigh them periodically.
Are you on line with how they need to be growing so that they’re at the size that they’re ready to breed? I was reading an article this week that, research article that indicated that it’s not so much the age of the heifer is what she weighs. Okay?
So I think, establish some benchmarks for how your heifers need to be growing and are you meeting those weights so that they’re ready to be bred and get pregnant and stay that way so that you meet your freshening objective.
Scott Zehr
I like it.
