Preventing milk fever is important, but it’s not the whole story. The real wins in transition care happen when you go beyond calcium.
In this episode of Ruminate This, John Lawlor, Managing Director of Anchor Life Science and Agrarian Solutions Vice President of Nutrition Dr. Larry Roth, explore research that challenges long-held assumptions about calcium supplementation at calving. While traditional boluses are effective at preventing milk fever, studies show they don’t necessarily boost performance. That’s where new thinking and new data come in.
Tune in to hear how a more comprehensive approach to transition nutrition can help reduce multiple post-calving metabolic challenges, improve body condition, increase milk yield, and support fertility, all while driving a stronger return.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome everybody to another edition of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions.
Once again, I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And today I’m gonna be joined by Dr. Larry Roth, vice President of Nutrition here at Agrarian Solutions. And John Lawler from Anchor Life Sciences out in Ireland. And he is the Managing Director at Anchor Life. So first, before we dive into those two, to give you an idea, folks, of what we’re gonna be diving into today we’re gonna be talking transition cows.
That’s the main crux of the conversation. But in particular one of my favorite things to discuss when it comes to transition cows is calcium. You know, we’ve, talked about calcium on this platform in the past. We think of that transition cow. We’ve seen, the practices on the farms of we’re gonna give a calcium bolus at calving to stave off subclinical milk fever.
Larry, you and I have discussed that topic a number. And we’ve seen the data that shows up to 50% of the cows in the US suffer from subclinical hypocalcemia. That’s out there. But I, I wanna I guess, start to preface this, our conversation today by, there’s more to the story, you know.
You and I sat there and listened to Dr. Baumgard at his presentations at different nutrition conferences, talk about inflammation, excess inflammation around calving. And I’m gonna rep the company a little bit here and say kudos to Agrarian for trying to lead the way in innovation and working with Anchor Life Sciences.
So I think that’s probably enough of where I’m gonna start to kick it over to Larry and John. But John, I’ll tee you up first. Just give us a little bit of history of Anchor Life science and your role there. And I guess your feelings on “is calcium all she needs.”
John Lawler
Well, thanks Scott. And thank you very much and for inviting me on to the podcast. I’m delighted to be able to talk about one of my favorite topics with a couple of very knowledgeable people. And this is my role as Managing Director of Anchor Life Science is really to drive the development of all of the range of products we have.
And our products are mainly anchored on a seaweed that it grows up in Iceland. It’s called Lithothamnium calcareum. We developed a range of different products around that type of seaweed. And I suppose one of the really interesting findings we found was that with that seaweed, if you put it into, into a ruminant, you get a very quick source of calcium and a sustained release source of calcium there.
And we were looking at developing products. We said, well, that’s, you know, essentially what a calcium bolus is trying to do. So seven years ago we launched Cow Start™ calcium, our first calcium bolus product. And in our second year we did a research study where we had compared a group of cows that got nothing.
So an unsupplemented control group, a group of cows that got two calcium only boluses given 12 hours apart as per the manufacturing recommendation. And a group of cows have got two Cow Start™ boluses. And I think the perceived wisdom out there is that if we can get the calcium sorted in that cow within the first 12 hours after calving, well then she’s gonna get off to a great start in lactation, she’s gonna have fewer issues, produce more milk, and be more fertile.
And actually that isn’t the case, or certainly we haven’t found that to be the case at all. In that study, we found that when it came to levels of clinical milk fever, that the calcium only supplement and the Cow Start™ group were much better than the control group.
But when we looked at cases of retained placenta, metritis, endometritis, ketosis, displaced abomasum, the Cow Start™ group were well ahead of the other two groups even so far as to say that there was nearly no difference between the cows that got the calcium only supplement and the cows that got no calcium at all. In those different metabolic issues.
When we looked at energy status, the Cow Start™ group was well ahead of the other two. When we looked at milk production and we looked at fertility again, we saw a very similar trend where the cows that got the calcium only supplement or got nothing, had very, very similar levels of performance.
Whereas the cows that got Cow Start™ had a much bigger improvement in performance. And I’m talking significant reductions in terms of those metabolic issues after calving, significant increases in body condition score, significant increases in milk production and significant improvements in fertility.
So that really was a kind of a light bulb moment where he said, well, okay. Just putting calcium into cows isn’t actually doing an awful lot for these cows, apart from reducing the risk of clinical milk fever. And I suppose…
Scott Zehr
Well, I wanna jump in there quickly if I can, John. So you, you make that point and you know, Larry, I wanna bring you in here. I mean, we went to war in the US on milk fever, you know, how many years ago? And, I think John made a good point. Like you did see in those, in the other calcium group, a reduction in clinical milk fever, which is what we, you know, we were trying to accomplish that, right? With a calcium source. We’re terrified to death of milk fever. But what you’re noticing is that that’s all you’re getting with a calcium bolus. Right?
John Lawler
Exactly. And actually…
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
John Lawler
I’ve just finished a review looking at 24 peer reviewed, published papers on calcium bolus supplementation, and this is going back over a number of years. It’s pretty much all the data that I can find out there that is peer reviewed and published.
And in that you look at over 10,000 cows, six different commercial products. None of these are involving Cow Start™ Complete. There are other commercial products available. But in that, when you look at those 24 studies we looked, there were 10 of those that looked at metabolic issues and not a single study of any calcium bolus supplement Out there showed any difference compared to unsupplemented controlled cows in terms of metabolic issues.
In terms of energy issues, eight of those studies looked at energy status or markers of energy status in those cows, none of them found any effect on energy status in terms of milk production.
Eight of those studies looked at milk production and one of those studies found a difference within the first month after calving. Beyond that, there was no difference. And the other seven found no difference at all. And in terms of fertility, six of those studies looked at fertility performance and there was no difference in terms of cows that got the calcium supplements or cows that didn’t.
So I think it just debunks this idea that we put calcium in and the cow gets off to a better start lactation. Certainly the data and quite a, a large body, but would say that actually that’s not the case. And that kind of leads to the question, well, okay, if calcium isn’t having an effect, well what is having an effect in these cows?
And I think a lot of more recent research, you mentioned Lance Baumgard, this whole area of inflammation is one that’s really gotten a lot of attention in the last couple of years in terms of the effect of inflammation, what it’s doing, not only in terms of calcium status, but actually in terms of all of these other challenges and issues the cows are facing.
Scott Zehr
So Larry we’ve been in the calcium space before with a calcium bolus that we’ve marketed here in the US. If you could maybe share with the audience why we’re excited to partner with Anchor Life science.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. You know, we think of the day that the calf freshens up as being her most challenging day of the year. And so if we know she’s getting ready for a challenge, what are we doing to get her ready for that challenge and then to take off coming out of it?
And so, when Anchor came to me and talked about this bolus, my initial reaction was another calcium bolus. But then once they started talking about inflammation, then I got interested because that, I think that’s where we’re at today.
The issue is inflammation with these cows. We think of everything that’s happened in the repro tract, dropping from 25 pounds down to five pounds in about three weeks. We think about changes in the mammary gland, digestive tract changes, social changes, all of these things that are going on. John just cited all of this research, I think it was 24 different calcium bolus trials that you mentioned, John.
John Lawler
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
And then it seemed to improve the calfs launching into lactation. We gotta address inflammation. To me, that’s what the basic challenge is with these cows. So Anchor has done some research that showed the ability to help cows resolve inflammation. Scott, how many times have we talked about resolving inflammation?
Resolve inflammation, help the cow reallocate her nutrients to more profitable purposes. Be it growth, be it lactation, be it repro. So that’s what we’ve gotta do, resolve inflammation. And that’s what got my attention.
Scott Zehr
I could say that I, I almost feel bad, in a way because, you know, how many times have we heard this discussion in the marketplace? I’m thinking from a dairyman’s perspective. The fight between calcium chloride versus calcium sulfate versus calcium carbonate versus, and all these different calcium sources that go into some of these commercial boluses and it’s like, oh, you have to use this one to get the best bang for your buck.
But then, you know, where were these 24 studies showing that you’re really not getting anything, right? And so I really wanna just applaud agrarian for their willingness to reach out and work with animal life on this, because I think this is truly a game changer.
And so, for those of you listening, the product is called Cow Start™ Complete. You can find it on our website at agrariansolutions.com. And we’re gonna continue this discussion here with John and with Larry.
So John, you mentioned done some research on Cow Start™ Complete. Just give us a little background of what that research looked like, the type of dairy that it was done on, where it was, and then we can go on from there.
John Lawler
Yeah, so our latest study just been completed was carry out on a, a very large 5,000 cow herd in the UK. At certainly 5,000 cow Hertz. Might be 10 to penny in, in, in North America, but certainly in Europe, that’s a very, very large herd. Within this herd the production level was up at about 29,000 pounds.
So very much a very high healing herd again for Europe. We are really at the top end. And this herd is really well run. It has its own full-time veterinarian on staff. And one of the things they do really well is transition cows. Last year in 2024, across the full year, they had less than a quarter of 1% of cows having a clinical case of milk fever, which to me is absolutely exemplary. Yes, you go anywhere in the world, you would not get better than that.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
John Lawler
So when we sat down with the vet on the farm to discuss doing the trial, he was like, “okay, you could probably do it, but you know, you’re not gonna see anything because we have such low levels of different issues. You’d be better off go somewhere where there’s loads of problems and you get really good results.”
And I said to him, well, actually, every time we’ve tested and we’ve done a lot of trial work, this isn’t the only one with, with Cow Start™ Complete. We’ve always gone to really well run farms with high levels of performance in transition cows to see if we can do better than the best. He’s like, “okay, let’s do the trial. Let’s see what happens. But I wouldn’t hold my breath” was kind of the response we got.
Scott Zehr
Larry and I know that feeling actually with the, with our DTX research. Sorry.
John Lawler
Yeah, no. So, and the vet was right. They certainly didn’t have a calcium issue on the farm. ’cause you can imagine with such low levels of clinical cases, the subclinical level is gonna be very low as well.
And in terms of your key metabolic issues in terms of your attained placenta, your metritis, endometritis, your ketosis levels were very, very low. And well within and below the accepted standards are well run farms. So it was really a real tough place to test the product, but I was certain we had to do the best thing.
So, on that farm then the standard protocol at calving was to give basically a calcium drink. So it’s a, a one kilo mix which has calcium in it has a bit of magnesium. There’s a bit of niacin, vitamin E, vitamin D. One kilo of that is mixed into 20 kilos of water and it’s left for the cow to drink.
That would be very popular and common practice on farms in Europe. And those cows also got a calcium bolus as well at the point of calving. So that was a standard practice on the farm. And then, so that was our, we call control group or positive control group. And then the treatment group got two of the Cow Start™ Complete boluses given together at the point of calving.
So only one handling of the cow. And within that then we looked at everything in terms of all of the calving performance, all of the metabolic issues. In terms of energy status the farm has an automated body condition scoring system, so every cow’s body condition scored once a day.
All of the milk records obviously came off the ID system on the milking parlor. All of the fertility records and everything were the ones that were recorded by the farm. So we looked at the whole gamut of different areas in terms of the performance of the cow at calving and issues in the first week or two after calving, we looked at energy status, we looked at milk production, and we’ve looked at fertility as well.
Scott Zehr
So I guess just diving into results, right? So let’s start with the metabolics. Obviously you’re already starting at a very low level. Did we see any improvement there?
John Lawler
I think we did. In terms of clinical milk fever cases, there were absolutely none in neither group, which is not a surprise considering how well run the farm is.
In terms of retained percentage, the control group was running about 7%. There were no cases for the Cow Start™ group in terms of, so each of, on that farm, the protocol is every cow was handled on day nine by the vet in terms of uterine recovery and a general health check on the cow to see how she’s doing.
So if there are any issues there in terms of uterine recovery, it’s picked up quite early. And in that we could see that the control group had a higher level of issues compared to the Cow Start™ group. The Cow Start™ group was less than half the level of the control group. In terms of the displaced abomasum, there were none.
And in terms of ketosis, the levels were reasonably similar between the two groups. When you combine all of those, if you look at those five key issues, if you lump in the clinical milk fever, so were none of, but if you those five issues and the main issues, cows really kind of struggle within those first two weeks after calving, you had an instance rate of 21% in the control group and only 10% in the Cow Start™ group.
And that’s very consistent. What we’ve seen in all the other research across the years that we do see a much lower level of those kind of key metabolic issues in Cow Start™ supplemented cows compared to either cows controlled, cows given nothing, or cows given calcium sources. And again, it kinda reinforces the idea that just putting calcium in there isn’t really the, I suppose, the answer to everything that we, we might think that it is.
Scott Zehr
Right.
Dr. Larry Roth
John to that point, what was the difference in blood calcium levels between the cows that got two calcium products versus those that got the two Cow Start™ Complete boluses?
John Lawler
Actually a good point. So in the trial, every cow had a, or so a subset of each of these groups, and I must say we had 70 cows in each group. So certainly again for Europe, very large numbers.
In this, we took a blood sample at the point of calving, but before any calcium supplement of any kind was given, again at 24 hours and again at 48 hours. And ideally we want to keep these cows in the normal calcium range above 2 million moles at 24 hours and at 48 hours.
And that’s exactly what happened in the trial. So we knew starting that the control group were gonna have very good results. And we are, we are just thinking, well, look, even we can match that, that’s a fantastic result. And the Cow Start™ group did match that and actually increased calcium at 24 and 48 hours at a slightly quicker rate than the other group.
Having said that, when we do a statistical analysis on it, there’s no difference between the two groups, and that is a very important finding. That means that both groups are what you call isocalcimic. So, the exact same calcium status at those time points after calving, which also means that if there’s any difference in performance after that, it’s not related to calcium status ’cause it was exactly identical between the two groups.
So as we go forward through the results, we’ll see then if there are differences, it’s something that’s in Cow Start™ that’s not in the other two products that are given to support the calcium status of these cows after calving.
Scott Zehr
Oh, I think that’s exactly, exactly the conclusion. And so going back to this incidence rate, you mentioned 21% incidence rate of those other five metabolic issues and the control group, 10% Cow Start™ Complete.
I mean, you could probably wash your hands right there and say, Hey, success. Right? That’s what we’re, we’re wanting to see. We’re wanting to see healthier cows. So John just expanding further into the research, you mentioned they have automated body scoring. So, talk to us about the body scores.
John Lawler
Yes. So one of the findings we found in, in previous research studies was when we have looked at energy markers of the different trials we’ve seen that the Cow Start™ group have always had better energy status be that better, BHBA in terms of milk and blood results, in terms of body weight change, and body condition scoring.
So on this farm they have an automated body condition scoring system. Which is really helpful because a, it means that every cow is scored every day, but also it means that it’s completely independent of human influence or biases. Every cow is, condition scored exactly the same way every time.
And we found that in the trial that the Cow Start™ group, even from week two. So we, we took results from the week of calving as soon as she was there, and went through the parlor after calving. And then week two, week four, week six, week eight, week 10, and week 12. Now, ideally a week 12, she’s gonna go in back in calf for you to have a 365 day calve interval.
So body condition score at week 12 is very important for fertility. In the results we can see even from week two that the Cow Start™ group are losing less body condition compared to the control group. And all the way across week 12, the Cow Start™ group maintains a much higher plane of body condition all the way across.
And if you look at the point from when they calve to the lowest point they have, along that 12 week period, the Cow Start™ group are losing 0.18 of a body condition score, whereas the control group are losing 0.3 of a body condition score. So there is quite a difference in that.
So ideally any good husbandry practice would state that cows should calve in at about a, a condition score of about 3.25 and not lose more than about a quarter of a condition score in the first eight to 12 weeks after calving.
And we could see the results of this, even with the control group, are absolutely within those parameters. They are calving it about 3.25 and they’re losing 0.3, which is perfectly acceptable and very good performance.
And even though that group of cows had very, very good performance, the Cow Start™ group just had even better performance and lost nearly less than half the body condition across those 12 weeks into lactation. And that result is very consistent with previous trials where we’ve looked at body condition scoring as well.
Scott Zehr
So Larry, you know, I just wanna bring you into this for a second. If we’re maintaining more body condition, not losing as much, doesn’t that come back to that conversation that you and I have had numerous times about nutrient allocation? She’s able to allocate more nutrients to more productive purposes instead of battling with the immune system.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. Another interesting item from this study was cow activity and rumination minutes. There, there was a statistical difference favoring the Cow Start™ Complete cows. But John, it wasn’t very many minutes.
And I’m gonna say that dry matter intake probably did not differ a whole lot between these two groups. So we could say that cows were consuming maybe about the same nutrients, maybe about. But the difference was that the Cow Start™ Complete cows were resolving the inflammation. And I know I keep repeating myself, Scott, but we can resolve inflammation, nutrients go to more productive purposes.
And I think that’s what we’re seeing with the body condition score that John was just telling us about. Resolve the inflammation. The Cow Start™ Complete cows did not fall off as far in body condition and they’re sitting there with these nutrients ready to go to work, making money for the owner.
John Lawler
You know, and I’ve an interesting point there, Larry, we know that blood calcium levels and rumination levels are very, very closely correlated. When blood calcium starts to dip in the cow, the first organ that starts to slow up is the rumen. So they very, very closely correlated. So the fact that the rumination levels was, there was a significant difference between them were actually quite similar.
Kind of reinforces the fact because the blood calcium level was isocalcimic between two groups, the rumination levels should have been quite similar. So that kind of again, reinforces this question, well, if the calcium level was the same and rumination level was quite similar, but the body condition was quite different. You know, there’s something else at play going on here because the calcium level was exactly the same between these cows.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. I guess the next question I wanna dive into, you know, if we’re seeing less metabolics, we’re seeing better body condition, did we see more milk?
John Lawler
Yes, we did. We did. A quite a nice bit more milk. And again, that result is very consistent with the previous research we’ve done across 10 different trials we have. At this point, we are seeing an average of an increase of about four and a half percent milk across the full lactation. In this trial, I think the level was about 5% or a little bit over 5% of an increase.
So when we looked at the, the milk production across the first a hundred days, the Cow Start™ Complete group were producing just a little bit over five pounds more milk per day compared to the control group.
Dr. Larry Roth
And John, the control cows were producing pretty good levels of milk to begin with.
John Lawler
Oh, absolutely. They were 110 pounds. So very high yielding cows, like I said, a very high yielding herd for the system. No slouches, absolutely no slouches, and it’s definitely a farm where there’s no hangers on. They’re not allowed. They either perform or they’re out.
So to get that level of an increase above a really high production and high performance herd again, this was probably something that surprised the best a little bit, but didn’t surprise me because we had seen it so many times and we’ve, we’ve tested in very highing herds and other places and seen very, very similar increases in milk production.
But if you think about, again, if you think about the review of those 24 calcium bolus studies where eight of them looked in milk production, there was no difference. And if you look at our previous studies where we’ve given cows nothing or we’ve given them calcium, it has had no effect on in terms of milk production.
So putting calcium boluses into cows by and large doesn’t do anything for milk production and therefore doesn’t give you a return on investment. Cow Start™ Complete gives a very, very strong on return on investment for the farmer every time.
And it doesn’t matter what kind of production system, if they’re on, if it’s like a, a 6,000 kilo grazing system like you would’ve here in Ireland or a 29,000 pound cow indoor intensively fed system like you have in the US, that increase in production will come true and give you a very strong return on investment that you won’t get from other calcium supplement products.
Scott Zehr
I’m just still, I guess, stuck in my own mind of how long we’ve been giving boluses to cows and Larry, I just come to the, the man hours that have been spent on putting calcium boluses in cows. And again, you know, yeah, we’ve pretty well gotten rid of milk fever. But it’s just fascinating to me that it hasn’t translated, because theoretically it should, right?
If we have less milk fever, we should have better repro, we should have better milk. It’s just disappointing to think about it in terms of that. But again, one more reason I think this is such an exciting podcast call for people to be diving into, because there’s hope, there’s a better solution.
The one thing I wanna mention, I guess John, to you is, I love the concept and folks have heard me say this before in this platform. I love the concept of just asking that “what if” question. Oh, you’re making 110 pounds of milk, what if we tried this.
Because so often, we get, especially in dairy, like Larry, how many times have you been on a farm, everything’s going fine. I don’t want to touch anything. I don’t wanna do anything. I’m not gonna try anything because we don’t wanna upset the apple cart. Sometimes the apple cart needs to be upset and we just don’t even realize it.
Okay, milk production, you saw about four and a half, 5% increase. That’s impressive. Reproduction. Where did we end up with reproduction? You said you looked at ’em through 12 weeks of body condition. And, and they were, definitely better in the Cow Start™ complete group at 12 weeks body condition. So where, where we at reproduction wise?
John Lawler
Yeah, a very good question Scott, and I think we’re in a good place. And I suppose if you think about two of the key drivers and long recognized and well-studied drivers of fertility, one is going to be uterine recovery.
Scott Zehr
Yes.
John Lawler
If we can get the uterus, if we can get the placenta quickly and we’ll get the uterus closed up and involuting quickly, we’re reducing the level of infection and if we can reduce the level of infection, we have a healthier uterus.
And the second driver is body condition score. Everybody knows it’s well proven. Cows and better body condition scores are more fertile.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
John Lawler
So we, cows are completing, like I said, we’ve proven in numerous studies very consistently that we have a big advantage in those two factors. So what we’re seeing then, and again, consistent with other studies we’ve done is the Cow Start™ group of cows are going in calf faster.
So when we’ve looked at the fertility figures of these, we’re seeing two fewer days to, for service, six fewer days to conception. The hundred day pregnancy rate of the Cow Start™ Complete group is 75%. It was 55.8% for the control group. And in terms of the empty rate, at 200 days, it was 7.5% for the Cow Start™ Complete group and 11.8% for the control group.
And we have a really nice chart. I assume if you get a chance to look at it some of the marketing materials, whatever, it just shows in terms the percentage cows pregnant by days in milk. It’s clear as day. You can see that the Cow Start™ group, that line just rises much, much faster at a much steeper rate because we’re getting more cows in calf more quickly compared to the, the control group.
And that is a huge extra return on investment for farmers getting more cows fertile more often. In terms of the pregnancy rate for service, for the control group was 49%, and for the Cow Start™ Complete group was 63%. So again, making a big step forward in terms of performance of these cows. And again, these cows were no slouches. It’s not like they weren’t producing a lot of milk at the same time as going in calf better. But it is giving…
Scott Zehr
One question I have on the, on the first service, if I could 49%, 63% I know this is gonna pop into some people’s heads. Those were AI services. And…
John Lawler
All their own services. Yeah.
Scott Zehr
That was with conventional semen, not gender sorted semen?
John Lawler
All conventional semen. Yes.
Scott Zehr
Okay. So just wanted to lay that out there for people to understand. That was with conventional. You know, Larry, I’ve been asking this question to people in the reproduction world for a lot of years. We start seeing regularly now herds that are achieving 50% first service conception rate in the US even with gender sorted semen.
The question I keep asking and, and asking people is, how high can we actually get? You know, can we get 60% of our cows, 70% of our cows pregnant with one straw of semen? If it’s, you know, time and timed right and she’s in the right body condition. And you know, for me, Larry, and I’d like your take on the reproduction side of this. For me, this is an encouraging step forward to achieving some of those benchmarks.
Dr. Larry Roth
Oh, you bet. We can talk about benchmarks, Scott, and how are we going to achieve them, and that’s all fine and well. But at the end of the day, we gotta make money. And John, we can talk about a better than five to one return on investment just based off of milk, based upon retail price for the two boluses.
But really at the end of the day, it’s all about getting cows pregnant. As much as the dairy producer thinks they’re in the business of making milk, they’re in the business of getting cows pregnant and staying pregnant. So you talk about the 55% pregnant for the cows that got two oral calcium treatments at a hundred days. 75% for the Cow Start™ complete cows.
And I always ask people, what’s a pregnancy worth? And I had a veterinarian tell me yesterday, you know what, we always talk about the negative costs associated with infertility. We don’t talk about the positive returns that come from improving fertility. So John, we can talk a five to one return on investment on the milk side.
Wow. What’s the return on investment? Getting more cows pregnant and staying pregnant. And then let’s talk about what’s the cost of these transition health issues, which we saw less incidence of that with the Cow Start™ Complete cows. So to me, Scott, benchmarks are good. Dollar bills are even better. And I think here with this study, we can put more dollar bills into somebody’s back pocket.
Scott Zehr
I think that’s exactly right. And then when you, you come back to that first service success I mean, you want more dollar bills in your pocket reproduction wise, get more cows pregnant faster.
We’ve talked about, you know in the past one of the metrics we like to look at is in the US is percent pregnant by 150 days of milk, and we always shoot for 85%. We, you know, we want 85%. And if we’re at 85%, great. What would the, you know, going back to your, your vet’s comment yesterday, Larry, what’s the economic impact of getting 85% of your herd pregnant by a hundred days in milk?
Dr. Larry Roth
Oh, that’d be absolutely tremendous. Yeah. You know, and what that is, dollar wise, we don’t know, because again, we look at the cost associated with infertility.
Scott Zehr
Yes.
Dr. Larry Roth
But if we’re going to take operations to the next level, number one, get the milk, number two, get cows pregnant and get them staying pregnant.
John Lawler
Yeah. And I think, just to add to this as well, in that, I suppose scenario of a UK dairy farm in that kind of a production system, what they would target would be, you know, if they’re getting 40% pregnancy to first service is a good result. 45% is a really, really good result at the moment in the UK. So again, that control group was at 49%.
They were no slouches either, but the Cow Start™ group just had, and if you look at the, the results fewer uterine infection issues, had better body condition score. So they were teed up for better fertility. And we saw that feeding through and I said that’s consistent with results we’ve seen on, on other trials.
But if you are a dairy farmer and you are looking at investing in genetics for your herd, and if you are at that 63% level, it could be quite easy to justify spending extra money on sex semen straws and bringing in, you know, more heifers in the herd if there’s a good trade for, for replacement heifers, there’s nice extra revenue there.
Or even just targeting the better herd cows in the herd to get the, the heifers out of that and everything else that have to beef. And then you’ve better revenue as well. So I think it just, when you have better fertility on, on any farm with any product, you have more avenues available to you to develop your business in a more profitable way.
Scott Zehr
A hundred percent. Pregnant cows give you options. Open cows, you have no options. No hope, you know. That’s reality.
John Lawler
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
So, you know, Larry, you mentioned a five to one ROI. What does a producer what, what’s the price point that we’re looking at with when they go to our website for the cost of a bolus?
Dr. Larry Roth
Well let’s talk about the Cow Start™ Complete program, which would be actually two boluses.
Scott Zehr
Yes.
Dr. Larry Roth
And that’s gonna be $17. And what’s the price of milk besides too low? I’m gonna say 20 bucks to make my math easy. John, if we could go to the, the study 5.3 pounds of milk increase over that first a hundred days, check out my math Scott.
I think that’s gonna be like $106. You give me 17 bucks, I’ll give you 106 back. Take out the expense for the $17 for the two boluses. That’s where we get that better than five to one return on investment. And again, that’s not given any economic credit to improving reproductive success.
Scott Zehr
Reproduction.
Dr. Larry Roth
It’s not saying anything at all about improved metabolic health. And John, one of the things that we haven’t talked about much is we’re given both boluses at the same time. The same.
Scott Zehr
Yes. Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
Not one after the other, the same time. So less labor. And I, I don’t know how it is on many dairies, but most dairies have a shortage of high quality help. So if we could help that labor simplify things, both boluses given at the very same time, get the cow healthy, she doesn’t look back, she launches into lactation, and we don’t have to worry about touching her again. Now, that’s where the dairy producer can make some money.
Scott Zehr
I think so. And again, just to reiterate, I know you’ve said it three times just now. Both boluses fit in one gun. And it’s not just that you’re touching the cow one time, it’s one trip down the cow’s throat with the balling gun. It’s also one less time you’re gonna sort that cow if you, you know, whether, if you’re in a sorting, sorting gate system in the US you’re not gonna sort her twice.
You’re gonna sort her once. If you’re gonna go out to the pen and give it in a headlock, you’re gonna lock her up one time, not two times. You don’t have to worry about shift changes. You know, if you give that first bullet in the morning and your protocol says eight to 12 hours later, a lot of times somebody else is gonna be in there.
And so now you have two people that are involved in that process. More room for error. Another thing that I haven’t brought up that I think is worth touching on is, it’s pretty much a given, right? That first lactation animals don’t really need this extra calcium. So, you know, our calcium bolus is on the marketplace right now.
In the US it’s, we’re looking at second lactation greater. There’s nobody really giving calcium boluses to first lactation animals. Is there any benefit, have you guys researched this, John, is there any benefit to including Cow Start™ complete into a first lactation animal?
John Lawler
Yes. We’ve done a bit of research on this and I think the first thing to highlight, as you just said, is there’s no benefit to giving calcium boluses to first calf heifers ’cause they don’t have a calcium problem.
Scott Zehr
Right.
John Lawler
There are plenty of other problems, but it’s not really anything to do with calcium. We’ve done a couple of studies, again, in very high heeling herds. One was about 27,000 pounds. The other was nearly 30,000 pound herds. In these herds there were obviously no issues with clinical milk fever. There weren’t really any issues with subclinical or, or obvious signs as you might expect.
But where they did have challenges was uterine recovery and fertility. Getting heifers going, getting them clean and getting them in calf. And on these two studies, what we did was for the first lactation heifers, we only gave them one bolus. We didn’t give two, we just gave one bolus to these heifers.
Scott Zehr
Oh, they don’t, they don’t need the calcium. Right? Like they don’t need that much calcium to, right. Okay.
John Lawler
Exactly. So in that, we saw very significant reductions in terms of the number of heifers going on the offsync program. To get them cycling. Big reductions in terms of the numbers of heifers with a uterine infection.
And then that, again, was leading forward in those studies. Now, we didn’t look at body condition scoring, which in retrospect we should have, but we didn’t. But I would expect there were probably a little bit better in terms of condition scoring compared to the heifers that didn’t get anything. But in terms of days for service days, the conception of pregnancy rates were much higher in the ones that got the, the single Cow Start™ bolus compared to ones that got nothing.
So I think it, it reinforces again that there is an issue there. It’s just not a calcium issue. And maybe this comes back to inflammation, because heifers will have a lot of the same problems as older cows will have in terms of…
Scott Zehr
Sure.
John Lawler
Or even to a worse degree because they’ve gone onto a diet, they’ve grown up on a, a very forage diet for two years, and all of a sudden they’re onto a very concentrated diet, which is, you know, very high levels of fermentable energy.
It’s going to leave them exposed to acidosis and, and rates of, of acid in the rumen and they’ve never been used to before. The udder has never produced milk before. And it’s going from a state of just doing nothing to producing a lot of colostrum, a lot of milk very quickly. And then the uterus, obviously this is their first time having a calf.
They’ve gotten the calf out. We know that rates of hard calving dystocia in, in first calf heifers are well above twice the level of older cows. And that makes sense. Trying to get the calf out can be a challenge with heifers. So uterine recovery is also gonna be a bigger challenge for heifers. You put into that and into the mix on top of that, a bit like a cocktail.
They’re gonna go into a big group of cows that they’ve never been into. So they obviously have to establish a social order. So there’s a lot of stress involved in that as well. So there’s a lot going on, and then we’re trying to, or expecting these heifers to increase the overall mature body weight by about seven to 8% across that lactation.
So they have a lot of growing to do. So there’s a lot of different issues going on with heifers here that cows don’t face. Calcium isn’t one of them, but there are a lot of other issues there. And certainly the results we have seen with the one Cow Start™ bolus, first lactation heifers shows it is showing a big improvement in overall performance and particularly around the fertility side.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, Larry, I think that just comes back to that inflammation story. I mean, tell me if you see this differently.
Dr. Larry Roth
Oh, that, that’s exactly right. John, let’s put another challenge on these cows from an American standpoint, the heat, humidity of summer. So we got another stack of inflammation on top of all this. I’m not saying this is a heat stress product, but we’re trying to resolve inflammation. And John, talk to us a little bit about the seaweed. What really makes that seaweed unique?
John Lawler
Yeah, so I suppose our sister company harvest seaweed up in Iceland and it’s a red type of seaweed. So like I said, Lithothamnium calcareum would be the species and a very unique seaweed.
It grows really, really slowly. Over about four to seven years, the plant grows and as it does, it absorbs 74 different minerals from the sea water. And builds it into the plant structure. So it makes it a really unique form of minerals. ‘Cause most minerals we would use from limestone to everything else are, are mainly rock based and they’re a very different physical structure.
And their absorbability is very low compared to plant forms of nutrients. So it makes it a very unique form. It has very high levels of calcium and magnesium in there, but like I said, there are 72 other minerals in there, all different rates. And you end up getting this very unique matrix structure of all of these different minerals and they can have a wide range of effects.
So it is a fantastic source of calcium magnesium for freshly calved cows. It’s fully rumen available, which means it crosses the rumen wall very quickly and becomes available to the cow very quickly, which is very important. But also we have another sister company that do a human range of products.
The brand is Acumen between the animal side and the human side. We have over a hundred peer-reviewed published papers on that seaweed, and quite a number of those are actually in the area of inflammation. So we’ve done work on inflammation in humans, humans with osteoarthritis. We’ve done work in horses, we’ve done work in transition cows.
Actually, we have a study just been published in Australia looking at heat stress and showing big reductions in inflammation markers in animals that have been exposed to high levels of THI and heat stress. So we know the seaweed has a very potent natural, completely natural anti-inflammatory effect.
And as we go forward, we’ll see like work from Lance Baumgard, we will see over the next two or three years, a huge amount of research being done in this whole area of the effect of inflammation on transition cows and, you know, what is it doing to calcium status? What’s it doing for immune function?
What’s it doing for the performance levels of these animals as they calve in? And I think a big part of what we have that’s unique to Cow Start™ Complete is we have that seaweed in there that has a very wide range of effects from a unique matrix of 74 different minerals to a very bioavailable calcium magnesium source to a natural anti-inflammatory effect.
Also has, and its main use in the world is as a slow release rumen buffer. And we know cows can face high levels of acidosis or drop in rumen pH in those first few days after calving as they’re adopting to a different diet, and also might be going for some period of time without eating a lot, and then gorging on food and, and that can put challenge on cows.
So I would very strongly suspect that the bolus is having a benefit to those cows feeling better in those few hours after calving and actually possibly getting them up and eating that little bit quicker compared to cows not getting it.
Scott Zehr
So, you know, a lot of the calcium boluses we see on the marketplace, they’re either in a, a capsule in some cases, or a poor bolus. I understand this is a press bolus. So talk to us a little bit about the difference of this being a press bolus and why that matters to producers.
John Lawler
Yeah, I suppose one of the key aims in the development of Cow Start™ Complete was really to improve the usability of the product. And like you had said before, there’s a lot of instances on farms where, you know, the standard protocol is you give one bolus at calving and then a second one 12 hours later.
The reason for that is that when the cow calves in she will have a certain level of calcium available to her and she’ll use that for the first 12 hours in terms of milk production. But in that second 12 hour period, she’s gonna produce twice as much in terms of milk colostrum, but she’s doing so with no reserve left and her blood calcium level will drop.
So statistically speaking, the highest risk period for cows is between 12 and 24 hours after calving. So it’s not the first 12 hours, it’s the second 12 hours. But the standard protocol is we put one bolus in a calving, but by 12 hours that’s completely used up. And in a lot of cases the cow doesn’t get a second bolus because labor issues or maybe handling facilities.
And that leaves a cow exposed to actually not having enough calcium when she’s coming into the highest risk period. So in terms of the functionality of Cow Start™ Complete, that was something we really wanted to address and we spent years trying to develop that functionality.
That’s very much unique to Cow Start™ Complete is that you give one dose of two boluses at calving and it will increase blood calcium and elevate it and sustain it at an elevated level for the full first 48 hours after calving from a single dose at calving. And that gets the cow through that high risk period of 48 hours. After 48 hours, 88% of cows have the ability to supply enough calcium to keep ’em going.
So it takes 24 hours for the calcium from the intestine to get going, and 48 hours from the calcium, from the, the skeleton to get going. So most cows after 48 hours are able to supply enough calcium. It’s that first 48 hours that is a real trick and that’s what makes the product very different. It is elevating the blood calcium for that first 48 hours from a single dose at calving.
So I think that’s very important. And I know you’d mentioned before about different calcium sources and the idea of sustained and slow release. If I go back to where we started when I did that review of the 24 calcium bolus studies, ’cause a lot of people think, well, we put one in, it’s lasting 12 hours.
In fact it doesn’t even last that long. In a lot of cases it can be quite transient. So if we look at that review of the studies when we looked at 22 of those studies looked at the effect of blood calcium at 12 hours after getting the bolus. And only five of those 22 studies actually showed that calcium status was elevated at 12 hours.
And in three of those five studies, the cows had gotten two boluses. So got double the dose at the point of calving. All 24 studies looked at the effective calcium at 24 hours after calving. And only five of those studies showed that there was an elevated level at 24 hours after calving. And in two of those five studies, the cows were getting double the rate or double the dose compared to what was suggested or recommended by the manufacturer.
And 13 of those studies then looked at the effect at 48 hours after calving. And none of those studies found any effect of the bolus at 48 hours after calving. So this, for me, is a huge step forward in terms of the convenience and the functionality and the usability of the product for farmers, because it means that they can just handle a cow once, like we said, the two boluses go in the gun at the same time, so you only handle a cow once.
But it also brings unique functionality in terms of the window of operation. So if you go out at, you know, nine o’clock at night and you’re checking the cows before going to bed, and you think, oh, she’s gonna calve in a few hours. You can give her the bolus then because it’s gonna last for 48 hours. So well past the point that cow was calved.
Whereas if you were to give one at nine o’clock at night of a, a standard bolus and she doesn’t calve till eight or nine o’clock the next morning, it’s completely used up before the cow is calved and then you end up giving a second and then, and then a third bolus after that. So it does open up that kinda window of, of functionality that other products don’t provide.
Scott Zehr
That’s a great point. Yeah. Well Larry, I’d like to ask you I guess a question before we jump off and that is, for people that have been following Agrarian for any amount of time over the last few years, we’ve talked about calcium.
We put together really a, a pretty well researched, pretty well rounded calcium bolus that we’ve been marketing for the last few years. Just kind of walk us through from your perspective one more time why we’re so confident and comfortable walking away from what was really Ca3, a very nice calcium bolus that showed we’re able to elevate blood calcium levels when that cow needs it, as John just described. But what gives us such confidence to look towards the future?
Dr. Larry Roth
That’s a good question, Scott. First of all, we have to as, as you know, I always come back to what’s the objective. The objective is to get the cow through her most challenging day. So let’s not talk about calcium boluses. Let’s talk about a transition bolus.
So we’d like to talk about the Cow Start™ Complete as the next generation transition bolus. John, who cares about blood calcium? I want a cow who’s gonna freshen in. We’re not gonna have problems with her. She’s gonna take off making milk. She’s gonna get pregnant and stay pregnant.
So Scott, let’s talk about transition health. Let’s talk about the inflammation that comes at transition. Let’s design a product that helps the cow make that transition. Wait, we’ve already done that. That’s the Cow Start™ Complete. Selenium.
Scott Zehr
Exactly.
Dr. Larry Roth
Powerful antioxidant, vitamin E. Great antioxidant. John, you were talking about the 74 minerals. We gotta support the immune system, the body’s military, to defend and repair. That’s what we’re trying to do. Oh, yeah. And if you’re concerned about calcium, we’re gonna take care of that part as well.
But Scott, to me, the underlying problem is resolving inflammation. And that’s what Cow Start™ Complete is designed to do. It’s the transition bolus. So let’s move to the next generation. Let’s move to the next level of thought. Get the cow through transition. And that’s what Cow Start™ Complete is designed to do.
Scott Zehr
I applaud you both for coming together on this and I know us at Agrarian, we’re excited to be offering this product in the US. Again, agrariansolutions.com. Check out Cow Start™ Complete. And if you look in the show notes of this episode, you’ll see our full research tech report that Dr. Roth has put together.
With that, everybody, I thank you for joining in today. I want to thank Dr. Roth once again for joining us and Mr. John Lawler coming to us from Ireland. Appreciate that John, and thank you for the insights. And we’ll be talking to everybody again in two weeks. Thank you.
