When the immune system is compromised, it may be less able to adequately defend the uterus against pathogenic bacteria. As a result, metritis is often more prevalent in first-lactation heifers than in other lactation groups. Metritis and other transition challenges in the first lactation can increase the risk of retained placenta, stillbirth, and reduced pregnancy per service in subsequent lactations¹. Helping first-lactation heifers successfully resolve inflammation can deliver economic benefits to the dairy today and well into the future.

The Nutritional Challenge After Calving

Uterine involution can be viewed as a process of wound repair and tissue regeneration occurring in the face of bacterial exposure². The combination of uterine involution and metritis places a significant nutritional demand on the animal, potentially reallocating glucose and other nutrients away from milk production, reproduction, and growth.

This challenge occurs at a time when nutrient demands are already high. Research indicates that dry matter intake declines as calving approaches and increases only gradually after calving. For first-lactation heifers, overcrowding, competition with older and larger cows, and adjustment to a new diet can further limit intake. The result can be a significant nutrient deficit even when the ration is correctly formulated. How can this nutrient deficit be addressed when feed intake is limited?

Cow Start™ Complete: Targeted Support at Calving

Agrarian Solutions’ unique Cow Start Complete is formulated to help overcome these transition challenges. At calving, a single bolus provides first-lactation heifers with more than 70 key micronutrients, including the antioxidants selenium yeast and vitamin E. The bolus slowly dissolves in the rumen over approximately 48 hours, providing targeted nutritional support during the critical period immediately following calving and helping supply nutrients needed for efficient immune function.

Research in First-Lactation Heifers

Two farms with persistent first-lactation metritis challenges provided a total of 248 heifers for a research study evaluating the benefits of administering a single Cow Start Complete bolus at calving. Veterinarians evaluated heifers for metritis on day 7 after calving at Farm A and day 9 at Farm B. At Farm A, metritis decreased from 10.3% in control heifers to 0% in heifers receiving a single Cow Start Complete bolus. At Farm B, metritis decreased significantly (P<0.05) from 17% in control heifers to 6% in heifers receiving Cow Start Complete.

Further results point to a reduction in inflammation after calving and a beneficial reallocation of nutrients. First service conception rate was improved by Cow Start Complete supplementation on both farms; Farm A improved (P<0.05) from 41% to 53%, and Farm B improved from 45% to 50%. These findings point to the potential for reduced post-calving inflammation and improved nutrient allocation during a critical period in the first-lactation heifer’s productive life.

First-lactation heifers represent the future of the dairy herd. Supporting their ability to manage metritis and post-calving inflammation is essential for helping them transition successfully into lactation, reproduce efficiently, and remain productive throughout their lifetime. Cow Start Complete provides targeted nutritional support when first-lactation heifers need it most.

References: ¹ Borchardt et al. (2024). Journal of Dairy Science, 107:9706–9718. ² Caldeira et al. (2025). Biology of Reproduction, 113:1132–1154.

Authors: Caroline Knoblock, MSc, – Director of Nutrition, Agrarian Solutions and Larry Roth, Ph.D., PAS – Vice President of Nutrition 

The post Setting Up First-Lactation Heifers for Long-Term Success appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

Originally released on The Dairy Podcast Show, this episode features Dr. Larry Roth of Agrarian Solutions and Dr. Liz Eckelkamp discussing the unique challenges first-lactation cows face at calving, including reduced feed intake, inflammation, and uterine health.

They explore how these early challenges can create a cascade that affects reproductive performance, retention and a cow’s ability to reach her genetic potential.

Listen in as they discuss fresh cow management and what can be done to help first-lactation cows get off to a stronger start, and set them up for a more productive future.

🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: Welcome to the Dairy podcast show, brought to you by Wisenetix. I’m Doctor Liz Eckelkamp, associate professor and dairy extension specialist at the University of Tennessee. Today we’re joined by Doctor Larry Roth, who is the vice president of nutrition for Agrarian Solutions. His career in dairy and beef nutrition give him a unique perspective on solutions for first lactation dairy cattle. Welcome, Larry. Thank you for joining us today.

Dr. Larry Roth: All right. Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: And I’m looking forward to our conversation, especially because we’re going to focus today on first lactation heifers, response to calving related inflammation and how this can impact their lifelong production in the herd. And we were talking a little bit in the green room. And it sounds like y’all have some research that y’all have just done around this topic.

Dr. Larry Roth: That’s correct. Yes.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: So what unique factors were you focusing on specific to first lactation heifers?

Dr. Larry Roth: So I think when we look at first lactation heifers, they’re the group on the dairy that have the highest genetic value. They’re, they’re the latest genetics, improved genetics, compared to their older peers there at the dairy. And so I think we need to remember that they have a reduced dry matter intake during the close up period as they come into their most challenging day of the year.

And their intake is going to be depressed afterwards. Sometimes these heifers are put in with the older boss cows, both pre fresh and post fresh, which can further reduce their intake. And there’s also a social stress that is put on these animals. They’ve never been in these kinds of competitive situations. There’s a lot that they’re trying to figure out.

Let’s also remember that these first lactation heifers have a higher incidence of calving difficulties compared to their older peers, shall we say. This is also the first time that they have made colostrum or milk. So we have changes going on in the mammary gland as well. And this is the first time that they’re going to be going on to a higher energy type diet with their post-fresh diet.

So there’s changes going on in the digestive tract. But I think that one of the things that we want to focus on today that’s relatively unique to these first lactation heifers is they have a higher incidence of metritis as first lactation heifers as compared to the older cows at that dairy. Generally, transition issues increase as lactation number increases. But from metritis, the incidence is highest for the first lactation heifers and declines as we go to the multiple lactation cows.

And this was born out in a study by Lean et all 2023, where they looked at 28,000 cows across Australia, Canada, United States. And we hear the similar findings as we talked to production vets, nutritionists and dairy producers in this country and elsewhere.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: We see that with ketosis too in first lactation animals don’t we? Because of those metabolic shifts, because she’s still growing and then everything else as well?

Dr. Larry Roth: Yes, quite often the ketosis may be a little bit higher in some of the multiple lactation cows. But I think it really comes to how these animals are able to handle inflammation as a first lactation. You know, again, I think we go back to the reduced feed intake. How are these animals housed? Are they going to be housed with multiple lactation cows who are wanting to share space at the feed bunk?

Both, both pre and post fresh? They’ve got to take off on feed intake. Just as you said, they’re still growing. They are all of these energy demands. And one of the unique things from an inflammation standpoint, is the uterus is going to get exposed to bacteria that has never been exposed to before. Matt Lucy, University of Missouri has done a tremendous amount of research on all of these things related to uterine health in relation and had a neat study, Sylvia and Lucy in 2025, where they looked at pathogenic profile, most with a healthy first lactation and multiple lactation animals, as well as those who had metritis first lactation and multiple lactation.

So the immune system has never really been exposed to some of these bacteria. So it’s got to go to school. It’s got to learn how to produce the factors that can limit these pathogens before they take off. But remember, all of this is happening while nutrients are needed to go to all of these other things. Making milk, helping the animal to grow. And oh yeah, the nutrient supply has been reduced due to the reduced feed intake where we started off our conversation.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: So when you’re specifically thinking about inflammation factors focused on first lactation, are you really relating that primarily to the metritis or are there any other fresh cow disorders that you think about in that same area?

Dr. Larry Roth: Well, there could certainly be other transition issues going on. And I think it really comes back to how does that cow feel? Is just like us. We could go to a nice buffet, but if one of us is feeling kind of poorly, we’re probably not going to go up to that buffet multiple times. And so I think that we have to concentrate on what is going on that is requiring the immune system’s attention, if we can think of it that way.

And so I really think inflammation there in the uterus is one of the biggest draws for nutrients at this time. But yeah, remember, again, we started off saying these are the animals, the greatest genetic value, which means they have the greatest drive to produce milk, and they’re going to do all kinds of things to try to fulfill that genetic drive, breakdown their body if they have to. That can lead to the ketosis, which you reference a little bit earlier. But I really think a lot of this starts with inflammation.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: So with that inflammation, are you, when you’re thinking about that playing into uterine infections, are you thinking specifically metritis? Or are you thinking kind of like that whole cascade. Right. So, do, does this start with inflammation and a difficult calving? Right. With increased retained placenta is going into metritis because you know, all of those things are so interrelated. So how do you see that playing a detour in infections? And what are some of those long term implications?

Dr. Larry Roth: Well, I think it’s all very interrelated. And let me give a quote. And I wrote this down, so I get it right from Caldera at all 2025, in which it said future studies and therapeutic treatments related to uterine health should consider uterine involution as a process of wound repair. So think of it right there. We’ve gotta repair this wound.

The uterus is going to be shrinking in size dramatically. That requires the function of the immune system. So we’re having nutrients that we want to go elsewhere to perhaps more profitable functions, such as helping the follicles to develop and, oh, yeah, produce milk. Instead, it’s going to work on wound repair. And then back to our quote, tissue regeneration in the face of bacterial infection.

So not just tissue regeneration, not just shrinking the uterus and size, but the bacteria infection. And so that’s where I come with inflammation is being right there at the root of that. So with that infection we’ve got some short term consequences like elevated acute phase proteins. And oh yeah go back to reduce feed intake. So if you’re starting to think I have a hang up about reduced feed intake, you’re, you’re probably right.

Because how many times do we say if I could just get the cow to eat. Life is good. She takes off. She doesn’t look back. So everything that we’re doing is thinking about what can we do to get her to eat and get the nutrients into her. And then glucose gets reallocated by the immune system from helping with, follicular development and milk production.

And as you stated earlier, growth is going to just try to keep the animal alive. We got to defeat these pathogens in the uterus. And oh, yeah, at the same time, we got pathogens trying to enter the body through the mammary gland. So the cow is really fighting a multiple front war at the same time. And she’s got to determine where do these nutrients go so that I can get the biggest return?

I got to stay alive. And that’s the first thing I got to do. That’s what she’s saying before I start to produce milk. And oh, yeah, I got to produce milk before I’m going to develop my follicles so that I can get pregnant and have a calf next year. So I like how you use the term, I think you said cascade, and I think that’s really what it is.

One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. And so we got to go back to where it all starts. And I think it’s defeating these pathogens, the wound repair in the uterus and regenerating all of these tissues. So that she’s ready to get pregnant on that first service so we can reduce those days open and have that very valuable calf next year and get her primed so that she’s ready to have milk for that second lactation.

And I think that’s really what brings us to some of these long term challenges. Been a lot of work. Ribeiro, Carvalho at home from 2017, looking at long term performance losses, delayed resumption of ovarian cycling, reduced pregnancies per service. And it goes on an increased calling from there. If these animals have a case of metritis. But they were really looking at multiple lactation cows.

I think it was Marshall et all 2024. That really opened our eyes to these long term consequences with first lactation have first having metritis because the dogma used to be first lactation heifers, they don’t have as much of a challenge, compared to the multiple lactation cows. So they’re going to breeze on through. But Marshall et all showed in a survey of 4800 cows at one dairy, 4200 cows and another that there was tremendous increases in the odds of retained placenta, delayed re-breeding and increased calling at the second lactation. If there was some metritis at the first lactation.

So, again, we’ve got to get this animal of greatest genetic value to have a strong immune system defeat the pathogens in the uterus here at first calving at the start of her first lactation so that she stays in the herd, has an opportunity to live up to her genetic potential, not just in the first lactation, but second and on. So it really, again, you use the term cascade. I think we can say that incidence and metritis at the first lactation leads to a cascade of events through subsequent lactation or cabins that reduces her ability to stay in the herd and live up to her genetic potential.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: I would absolutely agree with you on that one. And when we’re thinking about something like metritis or, even things like ketosis and milk fever, they’re also interrelated. So if we start to solve one, we usually have a good handle on trying to address some of the others.

But if you’re enjoying this episode of the Dairy Podcast show presented by Wixenetics, please remember to like, subscribe and share it with your friends and family. You can also turn on notifications from our channel so you never miss an episode. Please feel free to leave us your comments at any time because we definitely want to hear from you.

So when we’re thinking with first lactation heifers and the greater risk associated with first lactation heifers, how can we help mitigate some of those issues so we don’t see that future cascade in second or third lactation, that we can make it to a third and fourth lactation with these high value animals.

Dr. Larry Roth: Well, I think that the place to start is with my hang up feed intake. Let’s do everything we can from a housing standpoint, quality of feed, bunk space to encourage feed consumption, pre and post fresh breast. Look at the right nutrients to support the immune system. Antioxidant support to help resolve stress that’s caused from metabolites produced during normal metabolism as well as with immune system.

And then we’ve got a unique product Cow Start Complete. And so we’re advocating based upon some recently completed research. Give it one. Just one of the Cow Start Complete boluses and freshening. It’s uniquely formulated with what I like to refer to as sea minerals from seaweed. There’s 74 macro and micro minerals, selenium, yeast, and a high level of vitamin E to provide some of the antioxidant support.

And what we saw in a recently completed study at two different farms, one farm had 48 cows that were randomly assigned to a control where there was no bolus giving at calving to the other treatment with one of the Cow Start complete. And then a second farm, where it was 200 cows. So 100 cows in each treatment.

And these were pretty productive herds. One was 27.5f for rolling herd average and the other was 28.5 five. First herd was 1500 cows. The second one was just over 5000. And so the dairies were doing a good job from a production standpoint, but their challenge was a high level of incident of metritis with these first lactation heifers, so what they saw in the course of this study was that, metritis was 10% for the control cows at farm A, but also got just one Cow Start Complete bolus there wasn’t any metrics. So from 10% to zero.

At the second farm went from 17% metritis for the control to only 6% for those who got one Cow Start Complete. So if we go back to our initial promise, highest genetic value animals at the dairy, less incidence of metritis, less cows starting down that negative cascade for problems in the first lactation and problem second, and so forth after that.

But as much as the dairy producer thinks they’re in the business of producing milk, I think they’re really in the business of getting cows pregnant and staying pregnant. And those cows who got the one Cow Start Complete bolus at calving, these first lactation animals, 53% of them were pregnant on the first service, as contrasted to 41% or 25% fewer for the controls.

And at the second farm, it was only 45% that were pregnant off the first service for control, as compared to those who got one Cow Start Complete bolus who were at 50%. And if my math is right, that’s about a ten percentage unit improvement. So again, these animals are subject to inflammation. They’ve never been exposed to these pathogenic bacteria in the uterus.

They got all of these other metabolic challenges going on. They’re under attack. And the mammary gland, all of the social stressors, it really comes down to what can we do to help resolve that inflammation. And I think here we’ve got a unique combination of the same minerals, 74 different macro and micro minerals, a high level of selenium, yeast and vitamin E to help that immune system resolve the inflammation so the cow can reallocate nutrients for profitable purposes: getting pregnant, staying pregnant, making milk and in the case of these first lactation heifers, continuing to grow.

But it all begins right there with that inflammation story right there in the uterus. So let’s help that wound repair itself, regenerate the tissue so the cow stays in the herd for a long time, lives up to her genetic potential, and makes the owner some money.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: I know you mentioned that with Cow Start Complete it was a single bolus. I was doing some googling earlier. It looks like it’s a two bolus dosage. So was it a single dosage or a single bolus? Just so I’m clear, cause I’m nosy.

Dr. Larry Roth: Right question. So if you go back to the website, the information you were looking at those two boluses work for multiple lactation cows. And I think if you look at it, that’s a very key point. Mult second and grader two, first lactation one. And so I may have been a little bit dramatic like that kindergartner in the school place and one Cow Start Complete bolus. But I think we want to drive that point home. Yeah we’re talking second and greater two. If it’s just that first lactation heifer one.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: I’m glad I asked for clarification because I would have left confused.

Dr. Larry Roth: I appreciate you saying that. Appreciate you saying that because we do want to bear it out, that it’s just one that is needed.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: Well, Larry, thank you so much for sharing your experience. Related to first lactation fresh cow management. I think we hit on some important points around feed access. Some of the supportive roles that things like Cow Start Complete could absolutely play, and trying to manage those animals and get them off to a better start. I do have a few questions for you. Unrelated, before we in the episode, are you ready?

Dr. Larry Roth: I’m ready. Fire away.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: Okay. What is your favorite dairy related book or resource?

Dr. Larry Roth: All right. You know, with this thing called the internet. I don’t know if we open up books so much anymore as we go online. And I think you look at some of the proceedings from, like the Cornell Nutrition conference. Being in Minnesota, I go to the four states. There’s also a tri-state that these proceedings are a tremendous resource.

So going back and looking up data, and again, how can you beat the Journal of Dairy Science? So let us go, Journal of Dairy Science, top of the list and then go to conference proceedings in second place.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: So the JDS and then S pack. So all those things you can get with our subscriptions. I love that.

Dr. Larry Roth: There you go.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: Outside of dairy. What’s your favorite book?

Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. Well, you know, when we start thinking about a manual for life, it’s hard to beat the Bible. Another book that I like to go to is, the book itself is called Gods and Generals. It was made into the movie Gettysburg. And, one time I gave a speech on 12 lessons from Gettysburg for the livestock industry.

And so there’s a lot of neat things. I think probably the primary lesson that comes from Gods and Generals is always take the high ground. And if we go through life that way, we’re always taking the high ground. We’re not taking the low road. We present ourselves from a high ethical standpoint. Life is going to be a whole lot easier.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: All right, final question. In your opinion, what sets successful dairy professionals apart from those that are less successful?

Dr. Larry Roth: What, what helps somebody to be successful? Not only the dairy industry, but in life in general, being willing to take advice from somebody else. If we start to think that we’ve got all of the answers, we probably don’t. So being willing to have that trusted cabinet of advisors, if you will, people around us who are smarter than us, let me tell you, it’s easy to be successful in life. Surround yourself with people who are wiser and smarter than you are, and it’s a breeze from there.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: It’s really, really good advice. Well, that’s going to conclude another episode of the Dairy Podcast Show presented by Wise Genetics. Doctor Roth, thank you again for sharing your time and experiences on the podcast. Really enjoyed talking to you and hearing your perspective.

Dr. Larry Roth: Thank you.

Dr. Liz Eckelkamp: And thank you to everyone, listening and tuning in today. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast to stay updated on future episodes.

And if you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave us a review. Your feedback is invaluable to us. Until next time, this is Dr. Liz Eckelkamp from the Dairy Podcast Show signing Off. Have a dairy great day.

The post 80: Dairy Podcast Show | First-Lactation Cows: Inflammation, Transition, and Future Performance appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

In this Letters from the Field episode, Scott Zehr and Dr. Larry Roth explore the science behind clay-based mycotoxin binders, manure consistency, gut health, and nutrient bioavailability. They explain why firmer manure doesn’t always mean the underlying mycotoxin challenge has been addressed, review the research on how clay binders perform against common mycotoxins like DON (vomitoxin), aflatoxin, fumonisin, and zearalenone, and discuss an alternative strategy focused on protecting intestinal integrity rather than simply binding toxins.

If you’re looking to better understand what manure consistency is really telling you, this episode delivers practical, research-backed information for managing mycotoxin challenges.

🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!

Scott Zehr: Hey, welcome everybody back to another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I am your host Scott Zehr. And today Dr. Roth is joining me and Larry, we’re gonna talk about something that is near and dear to your heart. Welcome back to Ruminate This.
Dr. Larry Roth: All right.
Scott Zehr: All right. Well, you say that now. Uh, so Larry, you know, you and I have talked about mycotoxin mitigation a couple of different times on this platform. We have talked about binders at least once on this platform. One of the cool things about working in the field is that we come across different situations, different conversations that, that make us ask ourselves a question.
And, one of those such conversations you recently had at a dairy. And so I thought it was, it was a good idea to bring that in as kind of a Letters from the Field episode. Essentially the question is, Larry, why when we put in a, say a clay-type binder for mycotoxin mitigation, do we see changes like the manure stiffening up?
Which, you know, if we have high DON, we could have rumen disruption, rumen inefficiencies, all the things we’ve talked about before. And one of the symptoms of DON is that sporadic loose manure. So Larry, I’m a dairy farmer. I throw in some binder. The manure stiffens up. Problem solved, right?
Dr. Larry Roth: Not exactly. So let’s work with the i- idea that we’re putting in some hydrated sodium calcium aluminosilicate. That’s a l- long series of words, but it, it, it’s kind of a refined bentonite. Let’s, let- let’s go with that, okay? So why would we see things getting better? I’m gonna term things getting better from two standpoints.
One, what you were just referring to, the manure is a little bit stiffer. Well, these aluminosilicates, will bind water. Sometimes we use them in different situations to soak up water, s- soak up oil on the shop floor. That may be a little bit of what’s happening. So we’re absorbing some of the moisture that’s in the large intestine.
Manure is a little bit drier. It seems like it is firming up. We could also go with the example of, um, seems to be working that maybe milk production comes up a little bit, maybe repro improves a little bit. Probably not a whole lot. But let’s just say for the sake of discussion, the mycotoxins that we were concerned about were zearalenone and fumonisin.
Well, one of my favorite research studies is Cajal et al from 2022, the meta analysis of over 60 different peer-reviewed articles looking at the ability of different feed ingredients to bind or tie up different, uh, mycotoxins. And that would suggest that the aluminosilicates would bind 52% of the fumonisin and 52% of zearalenone.
So if we have low to medium mycotoxin levels, we’re, we’re gonna tie up some mycotoxin, yeah, we are. But if we have high levels of mycotoxins, I would contend that the aluminosilicates and some of these other, quote-unquote, “binders” are gonna be overwhelmed by the amount of mycotoxin that is in the diet. But at the same time, Scott, you’ve gotta come back and realize that these, quote-unquote, “binders” are also tying up some of our nutrients.
So principally minerals, amino acids, and some of the vitamins that, that support the immune system. So when we say, “Oh, I put in a, quote-unquote, binder, and cows seem to be doing better,” what do we mean? Do we mean that the manure is firmer? Are we seeing improvements from a repro or production standpoint?
I could see at low mycotoxin levels, you might see some benefits. But very easily the binder could be overwhelmed, and you have to think long-term, are we, uh, costing ourselves because we’ve reduced nutrient bioavailability? So a lot there to unpack
Scott Zehr: There is. I think first, when I, I think through what you just said, I, I wanna capture something you said because we can go to the, the Cajal et al research on the binding efficiency of the mycotoxins.
But I wanna come back to, and I’ll do a callback for one of our previous episodes called “Where Did the Protein Go?” And I believe that was episode 76. And we talked about why has, why haven’t we consistently been able to get protein up higher than what it is? And some of that comes back to this question I have from you.
So when, when you look at the, the research they’ve done with binders on, on amino acids, and I think this is not talked about nearly enough. Larry, I’m gonna s- I’m gonna say that you and I talk about it a lot. We talk about it a lot internally, but you don’t hear it talked about in the popular, mainstream dairy press.
Scott Zehr: I’m just gonna run through the list of results here. So take bentonite…
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay.
Scott Zehr: Tying up, 28.3% of lysine. Montmorillonite tying up 47% of lysine. Yeast cell wall fractions, 38% of lysine. And there’s other amino acids that’s mentioned here as well, and the range is from 28% to as much as 58% on certain amino acids. What is that, what is the net result of that happening?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. Right. So we are tying up amino acids. We don’t have amino acids to go into making, uh, milk protein, which is where you started your question at. We don’t have amino acids to support immune function, rebuild tissues. And you really need all of these amino acids in the right ratios to make full use, be it, um… or to get the most efficiency. Be it for milk protein, rebuilding the body, repro, immune function, what have you.
So if we are reducing lysine availability, we’re not able to make the complete proteins. We lose the protein or amino acid efficiency. Yeah, we’ve got plenty of the other amino acids, but now we’re short on lysine, so, um, that’s our limiting factor. And, milk protein isn’t gonna be what it could be, nor are we going to have the health and repro that we would want to see.
So feeding a feed ingredient that ties up lysine is going to negatively impact protein efficiency.
Scott Zehr: Okay
Dr. Larry Roth: As well as efficiency of other nutrients
Scott Zehr: Okay, so talk about methionine in that same way.
Dr. Larry Roth: Sa- same…
Scott Zehr: Cause we’re talking 50%, 51% depending on the clay, 40% for mont- mornite, 47% for yeast cell wall.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep, same thing. Now we’re tying up some of our methionine that we need in certain ratios to make the complete proteins, and all of a sudden we’re missing some of our building blocks. So poorer protein efficiency, poorer amino acid efficiency because we don’t have all of the nutrients that we need in the right ratios.
Scott Zehr: Maybe I should apologize to the listener just a little bit, Larry, because I kinda took us down a rabbit hole. Um, you know, the, the original question was why the, why does that manure stiffen up, right? And here we are talking about amino acids, but I, I think it’s relevant. Because I think we…
Dr. Larry Roth: Absolutely.
Scott Zehr: And I’m gonna go back to a comment I’ve made before, is, i- i- I think a lot of these products were developed for combating a specific issue a number of years ago called aflatoxin.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr: Um, and now we’re still broadly using them for other mycotoxin related mitigation. So we talked about this, these binders getting into the rumen. You know, they’re absorbing moisture. Do you think just the moisture absorbency is what gives the appearance of the drier manure? Is that what you’re kinda getting at?
Dr. Larry Roth: I think so. I think so. Now we may be tying up some of the other mycotoxins, and in my earlier example, Scott, I used fumonisin and zearalenone because the alumino silicates, um, tie up more fumonisin and zearalenone than they do DON or ochrat or T2. But the aluminosilicates are very effective at binding aflatoxin.
Aflatoxin is a carcinogen, negatively impacts the liver. So yeah, if we… But, but again, when do we see aflatoxin? Generally during a drought. And we just don’t see as much aflatoxin anymore as compared to, say, 25 or more years ago. We’ve made tremendous strides in agronomic practices, also in corn genetics, which is more resistant to drought or drought tolerant. And so we just don’t see aflatoxin like what we used to.
Scott Zehr: So, going back to this, this whole firm manure thing. You know, Larry, we, we have a product called DTX that we have research on. And,
Dr. Larry Roth: Mm-hmm.
Scott Zehr: You know, we have… I, I’m just gonna speak from my own personal experience in the field over the last five years. So many times I see farms, they’ll put their, their herd on DTX, manure changes within three to five days… Stiffens up.
Dr. Larry Roth: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep
Scott Zehr: hear the same thing about the clays. So if our objective is to stiffen up the manure, we can do that, but walk us through the differences between one product is doing, which you just explained, right? We’re absorbing some moisture where, where you have drier manure. Well, we’re not relying on binders with DTX. We have- we’re a probiotic. So what’s causing the manure to stiffen up there?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. We’re protecting the animal against the negative impacts of DON for destroying gut integrity, so you don’t have the leaky gut where we have nutrients coming back into the digestive tract and being consumed by undesirable bacteria in the small and large intestine. So let’s absorb nutrients where they’re supposed to be absorbed, the small intestine, and don’t have them coming back into the body through leaky gut.
So protect gut integrity, help nutrients to be absorbed, stay absorbed, and not end up flowing back into the digestive tract. That’s how we’re improving manure consistency with DTX.
Scott Zehr: Okay. So w- w- we’ll talk about that manure just a little bit more. You know, we’ve, we’ve all looked behind the cow. Um, granted, you’ve probably looked at, at more manure in your life than I have. Uh, but, um, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one of the quickest indicators we have. But…
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr: the biggest misconception producers have about what, about manure when evaluating, say, the addition of feed additives?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about, shall we say, manure consistency when it comes to some of these mycotoxin protection-type products? Well, we could still have challenges induced by DON changing the balance of bacteria in the rumen. We could still have leaky gut. But now we’ve got the bentonite or aluminosilicate in the hindgut to bind some of the moisture and firm it up.
So I think the biggest misconception we would have with aluminosilicates is they’re putting a Band-Aid on the problem, but not solving the problem back in the rumen and the small intestine. It’s all about gut integrity and having the right balance of bacteria in both the rumen and the small and large intestine.
If we lose control of microbial balance in the small intestine, and especially in the large intestine, we can get all kinds of fecal abnormalities.
Scott Zehr: So, Larry, let’s pretend I’m a producer for a minute. We have, uh, some cows that are a little off feed. We have some loose manure going around. The nutritionist puts in a product.
Um, you know, I’d say I, I, I put a binder and we’re good. You know? Take care of that. How, how can I as a producer know if the ingredients we’re talking about here today, bentonite, hydrosodium sodium aluminosilicate, Montmorillonite, yeast cell wall fractures, how do we know if those are the ingredients in the product or not? How can we find that out?
Dr. Larry Roth: How do we know if… Okay. We should be able to look at our feed.
Scott Zehr: Yeah
Dr. Larry Roth: We should be able to ask our nutritionist, “What are you putting into the diet for mycotoxin protection?”
Scott Zehr: Mm-hmm. Okay. ‘Cause it, you know, and I, I bring that up because, sometimes I think probably most producers are familiar with bentonite. That’s a very common, we throw in bentonite. But, all my years of, of being on the dairy, we fed binders back then. And, if people have been listening long enough, they’ve probably heard my, my binder story and, and how I swore I’d never work in the mycotoxin mitigation space because it’s all a joke.
Um, but, you know, then all of a sudden I find Agrarian. So that being said, though, uh, I just never remember hearing, you know, well, I, I threw in some hydrosodium alumos- aluminosilicate, right? We hear terms like bentonite. But there’s product names out there, and I think for the most part…
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah
Scott Zehr: uh, Larry, and I’m, I don’t wanna step on anybody’s toes too hard, but for the most part, anything that’s out there is, generally speaking, a combination of a clay or a yeast cell wall or some of both. Maybe some enzymes.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yes. Perhaps.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. I think I’d really challenge the producer that you visited with is, is to, you know, okay, the manure stiffened up. Great. Larry, was that his only objective with mitigating mycotoxins?
Dr. Larry Roth: I think that his objective is to create healthier, more productive cows. Protecting against mycotoxins sounds well, but at the end of the day, the objective is to make money on the dairy. And the way that we make money is cows making milk and get pregnant and stay pregnant. So okay, fantastic. We saw a very quick result, manure firmed up. What are we seeing for production and repro?
Scott Zehr: Just out of curiosity, Larry, this one might get me in trouble. Are there many research studies out there on mycotoxin mitigation products that show an ROI?
Dr. Larry Roth: Very limited in terms of research studies where feed ingredients used for mycotoxin protection, note how I said all that, have shown a return on investment. They may show some returns at low levels of mycotoxins, ’cause again, Cajal et al says we’re going to tie up some of the mycotoxin. But it’s very easy for the mycotoxin contamination to overwhelm the supposed mycotoxin mitigation products. So, very limited, and the studies that are out there are with very limited numbers of cows.
Scott Zehr: Yeah I’m gonna come back to this again, right? So it’s a term that I think we sometimes hear overused a little bit, but let’s look at the data, right? And I think of DTX, and I’m getting a little promotional here, but this, this question about binders comes up a lot. And Larry, it… You know my take on this and how I think that, I think there’s, there’s a place for these binders, but I don’t think mitigating DON is the right place or even zearalenone or T2.
Dr. Larry Roth: Mm-hmm
Scott Zehr: 926 cows, Larry.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. Absolutely.
Scott Zehr: Ta- T- talk, talk about, talk about that. What, what am I, what do I mean when I say that, Larry?
Dr. Larry Roth: So we’re, we’re talking about a research study in which we had over 920 cows randomly assigned to either a negative controlled diet, no mycotoxin protection, or DTX supplemented to provide that protection. These cows were exposed to a diet that had 1.5 part per million DON, and approximately 150 parts per billion of zearalenone.
So we would consider that to be a high risk for DON, medium risk for zearalenone, two mycotoxins stacked on top of each other, so definitely some mycotoxin issues. And we saw a very nice improvement in milk production and a tremendous improvement in cows getting pregnant and staying pregnant.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: So there, there you go. There you’ve got a large study conducted on a commercial dairy, a dairy that is used to doing feed trials, let me make that comment, so they know how to do things right. The study was blind in that at the dairy, they had no idea which supplement was the negative control and which one had DTX.
They only knew supplement A and supplement B. And we ended up showing a very nice ROI based upon milk production. And dependent upon how you view, uh, the value of a pregnancy, a tremendous improvement in ROI factor when you factor repro in.
Scott Zehr: Yeah, and tell you, the value of pregnancy, that’s, that’s pretty high. Always has been, but I think it’s even higher nowadays. Larry, I appreciate you visiting with us about this today because it’s, I think part of it is almost like a personal mission of mine, but, what we’re trying to accomplish at Agrarian isn’t to replace binders in all situations. Again, there’s a reason those products exist.
We’re just trying to help, uh, bring awareness to the fact that, “Hey, maybe this isn’t the right tool for this job,” right? If I was gonna paint this wall behind me, I wouldn’t start with a hammer. You know? It’s… There’s, there’s a correct tool and there’s an incorrect tool. So I-
Dr. Larry Roth: Scott, if your challenge is aflatoxin, there’s a whole bunch of feed ingredients out there that can tie up aflatoxin. Just be cautious, though, that those ingredients are also reducing the bioavailability of different nutrients.
But if your concern is DON, there really isn’t anything out there that’s gonna tie up DON, which brings us over to the DTX. Zearalenone, there’s a few that can provide some moderate protection. T2, really not anything out there. Ochra, a few, moderate protection. Fumonisin, eh, there’s a few that can provide moderate protection. So Scott, do you want excellent protection or moderate?
Scott Zehr: Larry, I’m wired to want kind of the best when I, when I go out and make these kinds of decisions.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr: So I wanna wrap up here with, just a, a little back and forth. Again, think maybe rapid fire, but, feel free to, to complete it.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay
Scott Zehr: So, top of the episode I asked you the question, the manure stiffened up after we fed a binder. Why?
Dr. Larry Roth: Absorbing moisture.
Scott Zehr: So we have research with Cajal et al that shows that binders will bind some mycotoxins, but they’ll also bind B vitamins. They’ll bind vitamin E and amino acids. What about…
Dr. Larry Roth: And minerals.
Scott Zehr: What about DTX?
Dr. Larry Roth: DTX is not a binder. It will not reduce the bioavailability of vitamins, amino acids, or minerals. In fact, we’re gonna improve gut integrity so that we can improve the absorption of those costly nutrients.
Scott Zehr: And Larry, talk to us about inflammation. You know, because at the end of the day,
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah
Scott Zehr: uh, I, I think the real story here isn’t loose manure or stiff manure. I think it’s we’re dealing with mycotoxins and the negative effects of mycotoxins. And when I think of what the negative effects are, I used to think less milk, less repro. And now I think the negative effects really are more inflammation, more nutrient reallocation towards non-productive purposes.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep, there you go. I th- I think you nailed it. Inflammation is simply the body’s trying to repair itself due to some insult. It could be pathogens affecting the small intestine, could be mycotoxins being absorbed, could be heat stress. Inflammation is also involved in normal processes such as the cow giving birth and repairing the reproductive tract, as well as gearing up the udder, the mammary gland, to produce milk.
So inflammation is normal. It can be also induced by outside stressors. But basically, inflammation reallocates nutrients away from profitable purposes: growth, milk production, reproduction. Reallocates nutrients to just trying to stay alive. Repair the body and stay alive.
Scott Zehr: Okay. Now I’m gonna ask you one more question, Larry, and it’s probably got a few different answers or a few different parts to an answer, but here we go. So if you could give dairy producers kind of one framework, if you would, for evaluating any mycotoxin product, what questions should they ask before they put it in their cows?
Dr. Larry Roth: What challenges are you seeing in your cows today? Have you been testing for mycotoxins? Do we know that there’s a mycotoxin issue there? And then we would want to ask, are you prepared to use a product that’s gonna reduce nutrient bioavailability, so you gotta feed greater levels of nutrients? Or would you rather feed a natural product that is going to help the body work the way that it should and promote gut integrity and help defend the liver?
Scott Zehr: There we go. Good questions for you to ask the next time you’re thinking about doing something with mycotoxin mitigation. Larry, I appreciate you joining us for this episode. We’re gonna be talking to you again soon about calf, calf raising. So in particular, what we’re putting into that calf on day one, and that kind of excites me because, Larry, it brings me back to one of your favorite sayings, and what is that, Larry?
Dr. Larry Roth: Whatever happens day one, week one, month one of life affects that animal the entire rest of its life.
Scott Zehr: I love it. I… Folks, I did not tell him I was gonna do that, so all I had to do is mention the word day one and Larry, like, he, he knows that. He believes it, he preaches it, and, uh, it’s the truth. So just look it up. But Larry, again, thank you for joining us on this episode of Ruminate This. We’ll be talking again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth: All right. Thank you, Scott.

The post 79: Why Does a Clay Binder Firm Up Manure? The Science Behind Mycotoxin Binders appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

But what if the biggest opportunity starts much earlier?

We’re excited to share this episode of The Dairy Podcast Show, where host Dr. Barry Bradford sits down with John Lawlor, dairy industry consultant, to discuss why forage quality, feed management, and system-wide thinking have a greater impact on profitability than many producers realize.

From harvest decisions to feed efficiency and long-term herd performance, this conversation explores how seemingly small management choices can influence milk production, feed costs, and overall business success.

In this episode:

•  Why profitability begins before feed reaches the ration
•  How forage quality drives feed efficiency
•  The hidden costs of poor feed management
•  Why system thinking improves dairy performance
•  The importance of measuring what matters
•  Common management decisions that quietly reduce profitability
•  Building a more resilient dairy operation
•  Practical ways to improve long-term return

💬 Have thoughts or a story to share? Email podcast@agrsol.com.

🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!

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Barry Bradford: Hello. Welcome back to the Dairy podcast show, brought to you by Wisenetix. My name is Barry Bradford from Michigan State University. Today I’m happy to welcome to the show John Lawlor. John is the managing director of Anchor Life Sciences Limited. John, thanks a lot for being on the show today.

John Lawlor: Thanks, Barry. It’s an absolute pleasure to be chatting to you today. And we’ve done a lot of research in the past, and one of the big areas that kick started all was a lot of your research back in the day, looking at the the role of information and what it does and certainly think a little bit differently about transition cows and performance and to see, well, you know, is it all about calcium or something else at play.

And that really started the kind of ball rolling. And I think we’ve learned an awful lot more in terms of tradition, cows, maybe in the last 5 or 10 years that we have for a long, long time before. And there’s a lot more data research being done in this whole area. So another five years, ten years. We know a huge Whittemore.

Barry Bradford: Yeah. That’s exciting. Thank you. Let’s start a little bit with where you’re from, how you got to where you’re at. It doesn’t sound like you’re from Pennsylvania necessarily. No, no. Tell us about this space.

John Lawlor: This is a very strong Irish accent. So I, I grew up on a dairy farm just north of Dublin in Ireland. My local hometown is actually the hometown of Pierce Brosnan, who used to be James Bond back in the day. So we have a bit of a link. And so at home we milked about 350 cows on what we call a liquid build system.

So autumn calving and spring calving and trying to produce much grass as possible from far, and particularly grass if we can. And I suppose I went from the farming into business, so I started, I spent five years with Altec, the nutritional supplement company, and then started with a company called Celtic Sea Minerals. And they harvest a special type of seaweed called Lithuanian calcareoun up in Iceland.

And that business has a human health prior to the business. It has an animal health practice which is Calyx Minerals. And now we have Anchor Life Science, which is an animal veterinary product division. And between all of those, we have about 130 peer reviewed published papers on the role of that seaweed. So it’s very well studied, understood. I could do an awful, really fantastic things.

And when I saw some of the data of the beneficial role in terms of animal and human health, that’s where I suppose anchor kind of sprung from. How can we apply this type of seaweed into a range of health products? And that’s really where this was the product we have today: Cow Start Complete. It’s really kind of come from.

Barry Bradford: Very cool. Maybe we could take a minute and help us understand, like at least to people in the US, I think if you’re like, oh, I’m going to feed seaweed. Maybe people think of methane reduction or something, but like help us understand is, is it like dried and ground and what’s, what’s the logic of using a seaweed for cows?

John Lawlor: Yeah. So there’s three species of seaweed. There’s brown seaweed and green seaweed. Most people think of seaweed, they think of the stuff that washes up on the beach. And that generally is the brown seaweed. And the green seaweed. Very much a kind of a kind of a plant. And if we think about this bit like compared to making silage, you know, you let the grass grow, you cut it, you take it away and then it grows again.

You cut it. That’s the brown seaweed on the ground. So you’d have that kind of a life cycle. Okay. Our seaweed was a raid species and it has a very different life cycle. So it grows down to a depth of 15m because it needs sunlight for photosynthesis. And it grows really, really slowly. And what it does is over a long time, it absorbs 74 different minerals from the seawater, and it embeds them in a very unique plant matrix.

And then over time, as it matures, it gets carried away in the current to a an area of dead material. So we only harvest for the dead materials. We never got here, the live plants, we need them to keep producing and growing. We just have us over the dead material. So as a comparison, I would say that the red seaweed is more like an apple orchard.

You have the trees, they grow a crop of apples, they fall down. We take those apples away, but we leave the trees to keep growing apples every year.

Barry Bradford: Yeah, I like that. Okay. That’s cool.

John Lawlor: Yeah. So as a product is very it’s purely a mineral product except a 74 different minerals. But what makes it unique is that because our plant structure they’re very bioavailable in the human and in the cow very different. So say if you say main captive source might be limestone a rock source, it’s not nearly as bio available. Whereas the calcium and our product is completely bio available.

Barry Bradford: Kind of like what we talk about with like milk complex calcium versus a supplement like for humans. Same idea. Yeah. That’s cool.

John Lawlor: Exactly.

Barry Bradford: Okay. Well, I know your anchor is focused on transition cows, so maybe we could start off with you work across different systems, you know, kind of work with people around the world. What do you see kind of as big trends in terms of managing transition cows? Are we making progress on reducing disease incidents and that sort of thing?

John Lawlor: Yeah, I think it’s fascinating. In the last month I’ve been to South Africa. I’ve been to Holland, Ireland as well. We do a lot in New Zealand as well, and I think it really depends on the region you’re in. Some countries are at the cutting edge, like America, in terms of using native decade diets as much as possible and then supplementing cows at the point of calving to try and improve performance.

And other countries are really far behind where really what they’re trying to tackle is clinical milk fever. Okay? They’re just the cow that’s gone down. They get up, they get a going, and they think that that’s what they can do to solve it. But the one trend that really is growing everywhere is the use of oral calcium supplements, the ability to pick and choose higher risk cows and target a kind of a treatment program on them to try and reduce the risk of those issues.

And that is growing very strongly, the US being probably a more mature market, but certainly in Ireland we’re probably 5 or 6 years behind the US. Other markets could be 5 or 6 years behind us. But the one thing that’s really clicking into gear comprehensively everywhere is the picking a choosing of cows and supplementing to try and reduce the risk, because there’s no bigger problem or pain in the backside than a cow It goes down and then trying to trade or lifter and get it going, and there’s a good chance you’ll end up never really coming to anything anyway. So it’s just something to be avoided at all costs.

Barry Bradford: Yeah, yeah. Good point. And maybe a lot of our listeners, I mean, we have listeners from all different systems, but maybe you could help us understand a little bit better. What what are the biggest pain points for pasture based systems versus TMR based systems? Do they differ very much or not really?

John Lawlor: Yeah, I suppose very, very different and very the same at the at the same time. So pasture based systems were typically if cows are out on grass during the dry period, it’s a complete recipe for milk fever.

Barry Bradford: Yeah it is. Yeah.

John Lawlor: Absolutely. Absolutely. We see that in South Africa. We see it in New Zealand or we see it in Ireland. And our biggest challenge, I would say on the European side is we have a strict ban on the spreading of slurry during the winter. Yeah. So generally what happens is you make your first cut silage a really good stuff that goes to your milking cows, your higher ceiling, and then you put as much story out as you can on the second, third quarter.

And it’s low and you can, you know, you’re just restricted. And on every grazing system it just plays havoc. So certainly in Ireland, UK, lots of countries, the main cause of fever is not calcium, it’s potassium. Absolutely too much potassium locks up your magnesium. You can’t get the calcium going. Well you need to. So that’s the biggest challenge I think in other systems like in North America, you know, the forest, the diet you have can be quite high in calcium.

So you could be dealing in a, you know, a .8.8 5% calcium in the background in Ireland is probably 0.6, 0.55. So you have to tackle calcium and also potassium levels in the diet source. It’s very much the potassium managing grazing after that for the for the factors are different. The challenges are still the same. When cows are calving in the amount of time it takes to try and avoid the issue, and the cost of that issue are the same number of what part of the world you’re in. It costs exactly the same on that goes down. And obviously the sub tentacle cow is the biggest cost of all. It’s 80% of all of the costs of the subclinical cow. 

Barry Bradford: Yeah okay. Help us then. You made a point that I’m not sure I would have seen from my vantage point that you said, you know, we see increasing adoption of oral calcium bolus is at or shortly post calving. What’s your read on I guess the research literature on that lately. What’s the takeaway points?

John Lawlor: Really interesting. There was a paper you’re from my alias. It was published a couple of years ago, and they did a meta analysis of 22 peer reviewed published papers on the use of oral calcium products and essentially what they were doing and what they weren’t doing. And I think traditional thinking is if we can keep that cow on our feet on the day after calving we’ve done everything we can do what you love a great lactation going forward, it’d be very productive and reproductive.

And this paper really said actually the data doesn’t support that viewpoint. So what it did find is in the day after calving in terms of clinical milk fever cases and retained the use of oral calcium products, did reduce the risk of those two diseases. But when you go to four days in milk fever, no effect, where you go to three weeks looking at urine infections displays amazing and ketosis no effect.

When you go to 100 days, you look at energy status in terms of body condition scoring. You look at milk production, you look at fertility, no effect. So I think it does a certain amount, but it may not just do everything we think it’s going to do.

Barry Bradford: Interesting. And how do you think that intersects with the concepts of the transient, hypocalcemia and persistent? Are you familiar with those ideas?

John Lawlor: Yes. Yes. We use that research from Jesse McCartney and Cornell in the development of of our product. And it’s interesting. Some of our data would support it, and some of our data would say, well, we get the calcium levels quite high in those calcium first four days. They produce more milk than any other group of cows, the ones that go down and back up, but the ones that go down completely.

So I think we need more data, more data points to see exactly. And I think if you look at the latest research from Cornell, you know, where they looked. The initial paper was looking at the transient cows and the delayed cows and the four different groups, and then they looked at the calcium level as being the kind of driver of cattle was low on day one, but okay.

Or day four or then that was perfectly fine. And I know they reviewed and actually looked in terms of inflammation markers of all of those cows to see what’s happening. And they’ve also seen a link certainly in one of those groups, it was inflammation. That was also a key factor in that. So I think this whole area, like I said, where you started all those years ago, looking information has a much bigger role to play, and our data would support that.

In terms of what we’ve seen, we certainly see that there’s more than calcium at play here. If we want to get the best performance out of transition cows, we need to look beyond just putting it to those cows because like that, that review of 22 papers, the effect is actually reasonably limited. And up to day one, there’s an effect what we want to get a successful transition cow period.

We’re not just thinking about day one. We’re thinking about the following days. We’re taking about production of fertility, fewer issues, fewer vet calls, that successful transition management. And if we want to achieve that uncertainty our data would support, we need to think a bit more than just calcium in these cows.

Barry Bradford: Okay, that makes sense. So yeah, like you said, that’s like one of the biggest headaches for a farm is down cows with milk fever. No. Yeah. Nobody likes that. It’s a headache that you feel horrible for the cow. But let’s say, you know, we we have strategies are hard to implement in some systems, but we have strategies that are pretty good at reducing that. Right? But we still don’t have great performance from all of our cows. So you said we got to look beyond calcium. So what do you what do you think about then? What’s the next things you’re looking at?

John Lawlor: Yeah. So I suppose when we were looking to develop the product first we kind of had the philosophy, you know, cows of three problems at calving. Calcium is only one of them. But immune function and energy status of two of them massively challenges those cows face. So I suppose our logical as well, if we can tackle those three issues together, if we can reduce the level of issues in those first two weeks after calving, can we then go and see a better performance of good production of fertility?

So in our product we have our seaweed in there. So it is very, very high levels of completely bioavailable calcium and easement as well as 72 other minerals in there. We have and again like I said, potassium is a huge challenge in a lot of areas. Having that extra magnesium in there is a huge benefit, but not usually available in most oral calcium products.

We also have some vitamin D3 in there. But we have to remember that our seaweed is proven in humans and in cattle to have a very strong, natural and potent anti-inflammatory effect. So we have the ideal ingredient in terms of we have something of a lot of calcium, magnesium, but it also acts as a very potent anti-inflammatory. And if you look at the latest work from Lance Baumgart where he’s saying, well, actually information is the first thing that happens, and then the drop in blood calcium levels is a consequence of the inflammation.

We used to think of this slide of this gateway disease idea, this gateway calcium drops and then all the problems happen afterwards. Whereas Lance is kind of saying, well, actually information happens for us. One of the side effects of that is the calcium dropping. But you have all the other issues in terms of energy, data production and other.

But the calcium dropping is side-effectively. It’s not the main event that starts. Everything that we used to think was and I think again, our data would, would show that when we have our, our product in there with that anti-inflammatory effect, when we compared to products that just put calcium in there, we get a very different range of performance across the lactation.

Barry Bradford: That’s interesting. Maybe you don’t know, but I’m curious, like the way you’re talking about this, it’s like a plant complex set of many minerals. So I’m sitting here thinking, okay, you see anti-inflammatory effects in multiple species. Do you have any idea what might drive that response with this product?

John Lawlor: Yeah, we’ve done a nice bit of research. So in cows we’ve seen in terms of induced acidosis, induced heat stress and in transition cows lowering of those markers of inflammation. We’re also just seeing a more detailed research. You know when there is an inflammation response, when that cow has an infection as an inflammatory response, we do want the cow to have some level of information because that is that response is a natural thing.

So we generally have a kind of a 12 hour quick response. And then you have a chronic response, which is for 12 hours afterwards. So what we’ve seen with our seaweed is it does not affect the natural first response of the body, but after that the chronic response, it has a very potent role to reduce the level that ongoing inflammation, which is the thing when we start rolling into one week, into two weeks, into three weeks, if if you’re that inflammation going, it’s holding back the performance of those cows.

So it’s good because if we had something that knocked inflammation right off the bat, that would be not an optimal scenario for the cow, because you’re just switching off our natural ability to tackle an infection. So we know that we can have, lead the code to do our natural thing to get that thing under control. And then we help from that 12 hour point afterwards to try and reduce the challenge on those cows.

And we look at body temperatures. Interestingly, we could see that we see an increase in the first 12, 18 hours after calving as that natural response kicked in. But from that point all the way to two weeks after calving, that the cows getting our product have lower body temperatures compared to the control groups. So there is, there’s definitely an effect there that is happening.

And we know that if you get a high, a rise in body temperature, it a is a huge challenge for the cow, but also takes a lot of energy for the immune system to fight that high level of inflammation, the high level of temperature. And at the time when every ounce of dry matter is really critical to really t this cow up, we don’t really want to be shipping 1 or 2 kilos of that to fight at the temperature effect.

Barry Bradford: Yeah. That’s fair. So yeah, you’ve referred to some important insights from your research. Maybe you could talk us through 1 or 2 of the studies you’ve conducted with, with this product.

John Lawlor: Yeah. I suppose the most interesting one is it’s a very large herd. And in the year 2024 on the main farm, they camped in 2035 second lactation and all the cows and all that, they had five cases of milk fever. So using an egg had died, but absolutely exemplary in terms of managing cows and calcium status. And no matter where you go in the world, you know, a quarter of a percent of cows having attended a case is as good as you will get.

So we knew when we started the work there that, you know, we’re going to get it was going to be a tough challenge to match what those cows are doing, but it was absolutely exemplary. So in the trial, we had group getting the standard treatment and then getting our two Cow Star Complete bonuses are calving. And when we looked at blood clotting status, it was exactly the same. 

Numerically, we were a little bit ahead, but from a statistical point of view, there was no difference. And that’s interesting because that shows that those cows were ISO calcium. So if we saw any difference in performance after that, it was nothing to do with calcium because they were all exactly the same in terms of calcium. We also saw in terms of rumination levels, and we know rumination and calcium status are completely correlated.

But the rumination levels in those two groups was exactly the same as well. But we look at the levels of metabolic issues. So we look at in terms of, So there were no clinical cases in either book, which we expected. You look at your cases of retained the center, you look at the center. Traders displays are made some ketosis.

The cows and our group had lower results of metabolic issues in those first three weeks after calving. Really where we see the big difference when we look at body condition scoring, we can see and this is 147 cows per group. We can see that we have a statistically significant higher body conditions for every two weeks to 12 weeks into the lactation.

So despite the calcium being exactly the same and the rumination being exactly same, the energy status was notably different. We then saw in terms of those cows 2.6 kilo. So it’s going to be 5.3, 5.5 pounds of milk increase in milk production per day across the first 12 weeks. Imitation. That control group were at about 100 pounds of milk, so there were no slouches.

They were really, really top performers, but we still managed to increase the milk production on those cows across that time period. And again, when we look at fertility in that group, the conception rate for service was 49%, which for that level of performance and production, these are 29,000 pound cows is really good. Again, no slouches, whereas we started the group at 63%.

So a massive improvement of performance. So we’ve seen reduced levels of retained placenta and uterine infections and better body condition scores. And we know that those are two key drivers of better fertility in cows. And that data is very consistent. We do that on grazing cows and very high yielding cows. We get a very, very similar profile of terms of that increase in milk production and the increase in fertility and better body condition scores.

And if we go back to that research paper from the 22 studies they showed when we put oral calcium just straight oral calcium into those cows, no effect of body condition scores, no effect on milk production and no effect of fertility. Whereas we take Cow Star Complete, we’ve taken a wider range approach to tackling a wider range of issues. We do see a benefit across the board that you don’t get with other oral calcium products. 

Barry Bradford: That’s fascinating. 

John Lawlor: And there was another, there’s another research group who are doing a lot around this whole idea of getting the calcium consistently up to 48 and 96 hours after calving, but very much focused on the calcium side of the equation and getting the calcium perfect.

And in that way they have got the calcium perfect. But certainly from the the available public, publicly available data on that research group, they’re not having an impact in terms of energy status, in terms of glucose, in terms of BSB, in terms of body condition score, and not seeing an effect in terms of production either. So I think, again, when we look purely at the calcium side, we don’t shift the needle in terms of stuff that’s actually going to pay the farmer return on investment in terms of more milk production and better fertility as well.

Barry Bradford: Very interesting. So I think you talked about a little bit, but this is a bolus that you give one time. Like what’s your target window. Is that right?

John Lawlor: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So one of the big things we tried took us seven years to perfect the technology, what it is to be able to give one dose to the calcium, one doses, two boluses at the point of calving, and it will elevate the blood calcium all the way to 48 hours and all the way to 96 hours in those cows.

And that’s really important because, statistically speaking, the highest risk period for milk fever is between 12 and 24 hours after calving. So it’s not the first 12 hours, it’s the second 12 hours. Most traditional oral calcium products masked for what they claim 12 hours, but it may only be 8 to 10 hours. So when you put the first one in all those manufacturers, if you look at the label, recommend that the farmers give a second dose 12 hours after calving so that when the first one is out, is out of the system, you give an extra hit of calcium for these girls has of just entering into a higher risk period, whereas the concept we have is much more simple. It’s just one handling of the cow. 

The two boluses is going to go on at the same time, but once she’s done, she’s okay for 48 hours and at that point they can start increasing their own supply of calcium. So it’s very much in terms of convenience, in terms of farms that may not have a lot of labor available, but they may not a very good handling and drafting facilities. So catching that the second time can be too much of an effort in a job and it just doesn’t get done. This just simplifies that.

Barry Bradford: Yeah. Well, and I was going to say too. I think I’ve seen a lot of farms thinking more about the stress implications of locking up the fresh pen every day. And that’s really declined in the US, I think. So having a strategy that you could take care of this in the fresh pen and then in theory, if she’s healthy, you’re not locking her up again.

John Lawlor: Exactly.

Barry Bradford: As has some real advantages. Interesting.

John Lawlor: And I think one of the real advantages in reality is, you know, the first time you go and you get the gun and you bolus that cow, you know, that’s okay. When she sees you coming for the second time with the gun in hand, she knows what you’re about. And they generally tend to be very uncooperative. So it can be a really tough job to do.

Barry Bradford: Yeah I agree with that. Okay. Well we’ve got our famous questions we’ve got to throw at you. So first of all, what’s what’s your favorite dairy related book or resource?

John Lawlor: As you might have guessed, I like people who think outside the box and who just won’t accept, you know, the standard protocol and say, well, can we not do things better? And I think as dairy farmers spend a lot of money asking and talking to people like the accountant, like the vet, like the nutritionist, but there’s one team out there that can tell those farmers an awful lot out there, and it’s the cows themselves.

If you can only learn how to read what that cow wants to tell you, because if every cow is at all times telling you something about the environment she’s in. So there are two guys in Holland who developed this system called cow signals. So I’m not sure if it’s very popular in the US or some people know or not.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a fantastic way of thinking about things. And if you could just learn to read what that cow is telling you, it can tell you so many things and you can make some small, what you might think are small changes, but could be big changes for the cow. And you can make a lot of improvements quite quickly.

If you could just learn how to read what that cow is telling you. It’s very simple, but it can be very, very powerful and effective. And I think in terms of a dairy related resource, that to me is one of the best ones out there.

Barry Bradford: Yeah, I don’t think any major brought that up on this show that I’ve heard. That’s great. That’s a good point. I’m familiar with that program. Very good. All right. What about your favorite book or resource outside of agriculture?

John Lawlor: Okay. This one is a special one to be. So this is a book called Race Without End. So this was published in 1994 and I actually had a signed copy. So back in the 80s and the early to mid 90s in Ireland, Ireland was a very poor country. We were bottom of the league in terms of economic development and everything, and this guy called Eddie Jordan set up a Formula One team and he became massively successful with that former team.

He was a really great entrepreneur. He won the Irish Entrepreneur of the year competition, but he had an Irish team fighting at the pinnacle of the biggest sport in the world. And just in terms of inspiration, when you’re looking and nothing is going right in your country and you can say, well, actually people from Ireland can do the best of the best and fight up with Ferrari and with Williams and McLaren and all these big guys.

And he was a hell of a story. That team now is the Aston Martin formula one team. That team is worth billions today. But it started one Irish guy who was plucky enough to just give it a go and see how far he could take it.

Barry Bradford: Wow. I hadn’t heard of that story. That sounds awesome. And then that was kind of right when the what? The Irish tiger economy took off.

John Lawlor: The mid 90s. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Really started to take off. And we grew up a lot and everything developed. So we’re very much at the top end of the scale running the bottom. But but you’re in a place where you look around and everything is dreary and unemployment is 30% and there’s no real kind of hope and you can see something like this happen.

I know he’s inspired a lot of Irish people to kind of go, you know, we can do these things. We can fight on the global stage and a really interesting, unfortunately, we lost Eddie Jordan last year. He died. But he left a big legacy in sport and in business in Ireland.

Barry Bradford: Okay. Last question. In your opinion, what sets successful dairy professionals apart from those who are less successful?

John Lawlor: If I could distill down to one thing? Honesty. Being brutally honest, I find and I would go to a lot of dairy farms and I have a discussion with them and the guys that are really open and say, look, these are the problems I have. You can make a lot of progress with those guys, and sometimes a lot of times, what we might find as being a solution has nothing to do with us as not to do.

Bolus isn’t like that. There could be something else, but if you could just find a guy that’s really honest, you can make real progress. And I think sometimes you go to farm and the farmers telling you I’m here, or you walk around the cows and you see the farm and maybe they’re here, but they might be down there, you know.

So but you get out and you see, you get a really good appreciation for where they’re at. But the guys that are completely honest, if the farm is here, they’re, they’re they’re not up here, they’re here are sometimes a little bit down here. They’ll be humble. But the guys that can be really honest and say, look, these are the challenges.

This is what it’s been we’ve been struggling with for the last few years. And we really want to focus on improving this part of the business. They can make real progress. The guys who just don’t think it’s a problem or don’t address it, or just a bit embarrassed or they don’t want to admit it, you know, they just keep muddling on and not making progress.

Barry Bradford: I like that a lot. It brings back to mind to me a very short list of key traits of a good leader. And one of them was deal in reality. Like, you know, you can, you can pump people up, you can try to support them. But we have to face the real issues we have with honesty, like you said. That’s good. Yeah. Well, John, I very much enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for being on the show today.

John Lawlor: It’s been an absolute pleasure. Barry. Thank you very much for having me.

Barry Bradford: So again, our guest today has been John Lawlor from Anchor Life Sciences. And this has been another episode of the Dairy podcast show, brought to you by Wisenetix. If you’re not already following the show or you haven’t liked it, make sure you do that so you don’t miss the next episode, and we’ll see you then.

The post 78: Rethinking Transition Cow Health appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

The small and large intestine linings are singular cell layers separating the digesta contents and the bloodstream. The epithelial cell layer is responsible for absorbing nutrients and keeping pathogens in the digestive tract and out of the body. The intestinal mucous layer is a chemical barrier protecting against pathogens. The physical barrier at the intestinal lining consists primarily of two parts: the digestive tract lining cells themselves and the tight junction proteins tightly holding the cells together.

Unfortunately, destruction of the individual digestive tract lining cells creates holes in the castle wall. Tight junctions may fail to renew themselves, thereby creating a gap between digestive tract lining cells. Either failure of the physical barrier leaves a way for mycotoxins, pathogens, and digesta to enter the bloodstream for distribution throughout the body.

During heat stress, high-producing dairy cows naturally reduce feed intake which reduces the heat load of digestion. Increasing the blood flow to the skin dissipates heat, which decreases blood flow to the digestive tract and reproductive system. Reducing water intake and decreasing blood flow to the digestive tract results in the shrinking of the cells lining the gut, thereby stretching the tight junctions attempting to connect the gut lining cells. Consequently, the physical barrier created by the linked tight junctions fails. The shrunken cells are also weaker and more susceptible to damage and cell death.

Mycotoxins, especially DON and T2/HT2, are specialists at disrupting the castle wall of the digestive tract. They are potent digestive tract cell killers and tight junction disruptors. Their main action is to turn off protein synthesis, stopping the renewal of tight junction proteins and leading to broken junctions between cells. Within the cell, shutting down protein synthesis quickly leads to cell death and a loss of the digestive tract cell, thus creating a hole in the castle wall.

The simultaneous occurrence of heat stress and mycotoxins creates a cascade of havoc for animals by decreasing feed intake, leaving fewer nutrients available for normal functions, and resolving the inflammation associated with digestive tract damage, which eventually results in fewer nutrients available for milk production and reproduction. During hot weather, this challenge may intensify because poorly and improperly stored feeds are at risk of mold growth, increasing the risk of mycotoxin production in storage.

DTX™ Concentrate is specifically designed to protect the digestive tract during stressful situations such as summer heat stress and mycotoxin contamination. Agrarian’s proprietary bacteria technology upregulates the natural defenses of the digestive tract cells, enabling the protection from damage. The plant phytogenics curcumin and naringin work together to support tight junction protein renewal for protecting the tight junctions from damage. The combination of microbial and phytogenic technologies protects cows from digestive tract disruption, thus reducing inflammation and the associated nutrient costs. Consequently, nutrients can be allocated to productive purposes making milk, getting, and staying pregnant.

Authors: Caroline Knoblock, MSc, – Director of Nutrition, Agrarian Solutions and Larry Roth, Ph.D., PAS – Vice President of Nutrition

The post Defending and Protecting Against Leaky Gut and Mycotoxins appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

In this episode of Ruminate This, Dr. Larry Roth, Vice President of Nutrition at Agrarian Solutions, explains why corn silage should be managed like one of the farm’s most valuable assets. He discusses how harvest timing, kernel processing, packing density, dry matter testing, storage management, and feedout strategy all influence forage quality, shrink, mycotoxin risk, feed efficiency, milk production, and components.

Whether you’re managing the dairy or helping producers build feeding programs, you’ll gain practical insights to improve forage management, protect the value of every ton harvested, and support healthier cows, stronger performance, and better returns.

🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!

Scott Zehr: All right. Hey, welcome back to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. Joining myself today, I have Dr. Larry Roth, our Vice President of Nutrition. I’m Scott Zehr, back in the seat, glad to be with you guys. And Larry, man, what’s more fun in agriculture to talk than to, to talk about than talking about money?
Yeah we have so much money in agriculture, I just… Back on the dairy, I just thought we always had so much money to pass around and… Oh, wait, then reality hit me. Yeah, Larry, we work in tight margins in the dairy world, in, in the beef world, in any world where we’re harvesting crops, where we’re taking a risk in the spring, we’re putting out crops, we’re hoping we have a good growing season, we’re harvesting them, we’re feeding them to try to get an ROI, whether it’s milk or beef or what have you.
And so today’s episode really is I’d like to talk to you about asset management. And, when I think of that term asset management, my brain always goes to some venture capitalist company that has teams of people that help guide the decision-making process on managing their portfolio of assets.
That’s where my brain goes. But when I think about asset management on a dairy really in any farming operation Larry I come to corn silage. I come to the corn that we raise, whether it’s corn silage or even grain corn or high moisture, whatever, could be soybeans, could be haylage, the crops that we’re putting out in the field in the spring and hoping for an ROI later, there’s so many variables that go into getting a good crop.
We’re very weather dependent, time dependent, all of it. And I’m not saying anything new. But there’s a reason the term corn silage season exists, because that’s how it is treated. It’s treated like an event. And there’s a lot of time and energy spent to make sure this harvest season goes off well.
Larry, in, in previous episodes, which is episode 52 back on August 4th of 2025, we talked about the fundamentals of things we need to pay attention to put up good corn silage. And I’d like to talk to you today on how do we manage that asset to make sure we get an ROI.
You’ve told us num- number of times that we need to think of our forage piles as a pile of money. And then I think there’s a term that we’ve talked about on this platform as well of think of shrink as the interest you pay on that money. Larry, I’m gonna throw it to you for your take here starting the episode, but I hate paying interest on money. So I’ll let you kinda take it from here as far as your thoughts on that.
Dr. Larry Roth: Wow. Fantastic, Scott. Yep. So we think of shrink could be the interest that we’re paying. Could be just lost feed, lost opportunity. Asset is gone. We could look at a 20,000 bunker, 20,000-ton bunker that would be worth, what? $1.2 million? And if we had $1.2 million out there i- in dollar bills we would at least put a rock on it so it doesn’t blow away in the wind. We’d at least put some metal over it so it doesn’t get wet when it rains. Scott, what are we doing to protect that asset so that we don’t lose it? And there’s so many places to go there. As you were doing the prelude here, I was thinking our corn silage asset really begins with the soil.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: What’s the fertility? What’s the conditions when we plant and right afterwards? Do we get a lot of rain on it? Do we not get rain? All of these things that come into affecting corn silage quality. And then we have to think about our plant genetics. Our plant genetics for making corn silage are so vastly improved compared to even 20 years ago.
So temptation becomes I’ll save some money on that seed corn because it’s just for silage. Again, if we’re thinking about our $1.2 million bunker, do we really wanna skimp on seed corn to make…
Scott Zehr: Yeah
Dr. Larry Roth: So a- again, there, there’s so many different things that come into play, and I know that diesel is higher priced right now, and so we might be tempted we’ll just kinda open up the rollers a little bit.
Then we don’t process our corn. And then that corn is gonna show up when we wash out the parlor. It’s gonna show up in lower milk production, or having to do things differently with the diet. We think of the price of diesel, and we think of packing. You only get one chance to pack that pile. And that may be one of the biggest factors. Note I said one of, one of the biggest factors for determining what our shrink is gonna be.
How good a job did we do at packing so that we exclude the oxygen so the yeast don’t grow and the plant doesn’t continue through metabolism? We could think about our plastic that we’re gonna put over. Oh, man, if we could just use a little bit qu- lower quality plastic, that shouldn’t hurt us too bad, should it?
All of these different things that come into play, but it has to begin with the mindset that corn silage is an asset. And that asset is going to affect the cows. It’s going to affect the cows potentially from a longevity standpoint, production standpoint, repro standpoint. All of these things come into play.
So it’s hard to say here’s one thing that we should be doing to protect our asset, when there are so many different factors.
Scott Zehr: Yeah, i- it’s
Dr. Larry Roth: But Scott let’s just start by thinking about corn silage as an asset.
Scott Zehr: I think so. And, I would almost use the example, right? So throughout the last 20 years in dairy, I spent a lot of time on the cow side of stuff, whether it was actually actively on the dairy or in genetics. And boy, the heifer calves were the most sought after asset, rightly right?
And for a number of years, Larry, bull calves were… They were the money that helped put groceries on the table or gas in the truck for the week or maybe pay a few small bills.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr: And then black hidden calves ca- came around and for a while they were treated like a, a little bit more, maybe opportunity than a Holstein bull calf, but now all of a sudden markets have shifted.
Things have happened on the beef side. These calves are now an extremely valuable asset. and so we’ve had to… There’s been a shift in viewing how we view these day-old calves, especially if they’re black hided, into a really an asset that we can capitalize on.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: Larry, I drive down the road time and time again, and I know farms that view those black calves as this premium two-day-old asset. And I see a bunker that’s not covered from 2025 corn silage.
So I think it is fair to really challenge the listener today to be thinking about this as an asset. And inherently, Larry, I think every dairyman out there or anybody that grows corn to then feed the cattle knows they’re working with an asset. But why do we still see such mismanagement?
Dr. Larry Roth: You bet. I think it is a matter of understanding how this asset affects other assets. So you talked about black-hided calves. If we don’t do a good job with our corn silage, we may not have as many black-hided calves. We don’t do a good job with our corn silage, I would contend that it could affect the health and wellbeing of those black-hided calves.
Scott Zehr: We certainly can.
Dr. Larry Roth: So, corn silage is at the center of so much that we’ve got going on. If we’ve got a dairy that is also maybe raising some soybeans from a cash crop standpoint, if we can reduce the shrink, improve the quality of our corn silage, do we need to put up as much corn silage? Can some of those acres, a land asset, can that go into raising a cash crop such as soybeans?
So, let change our mindset to where corn silage is an asset that we have to manage because it affects so many other assets on the dairy.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. I think my hope today, Larry, through our conversation is that somebody listening to this, maybe a nutritionist listening can say, “Oh I think I have a farm in mind that I’d like to go have a visit with,” or a veterinarian listening in the same manner. And if you’re a dairyman today, I want this conversation to feel like, “Hey, thanks for talking about this, guys, ’cause it makes me feel good, ’cause we’re really checking the box.”
But also if you’re somebody putting up corn silage, I don’t want you to take it like you’re doing a poor job, but look at the opportunity. Just if there’s… Larry there’s just not a lot of opportunity anymore for us to ignore the interest we’re paying from the time we plant the corn to the time we ask the cow to convert it into milk.
Dr. Larry Roth: Absolutely. With margins being thin, we need to get a return from everything that we do with that crop. Again, going back to the land, be it owned land that we paid cash for at some point or still have a mortgage on or rent. It took money to put that crop in the ground, put a fungicide on it, to chop it. So again, it’s that mindset. And Scott, you talked about two different types of individuals, somebody who’s… They’re doing a fantastic job, they’re checking all the boxes, but again, there’s so many moving parts on the dairy. Do we really need to do all of this with our corn silage? Yeah, you do, because if you’re not checking those boxes, it’s going to affect other parts of the operation.
Or the other producer who says, “corn silage it’s just a feed. There’s other things that we need to pay attention to.” Yes, it is a feed, but it is probably the largest fed feed on the dairy. And so we gotta put so much emphasis on corn silage quality, corn silage hygiene, and reducing that corn silage shrink.
So, congratulations if somebody’s checking all of the boxes, keep doing that. If somebody’s not checking all those boxes, let’s think of the implications of not going to the nth degree with our corn silage.
Scott Zehr: Yeah, I have a friend of mine, Larry, he ran a custom harvest business for a long time. And, you’d get a kick out of this guy. But if you asked him his favorite time of year, he would tell you resoundingly, “Oh, chopping corn. Oh, I love chopping. I love everything that goes into chopping corn.”
And this crazy nut, he would sit in a chopper for 26 hours a day if he could. If he could get other people to drive truck and back tractor, he’d do it. He preps for corn silage season, you’d think he… and he’ll tell you that’s his Super Bowl. That’s his Daytona 500. That’s his US Open tennis championship.
That’s his Masters Tournament. Whatever sports analogy you wanna throw out there, the Rose Bowl.
How he approaches it. And when you talk about maybe the individual that, that is, is asking are all these steps necessary? I would ask you this, Larry is getting ready for one of the most important 10, 12-day stretches on your farm that important?
Dr. Larry Roth: Absolutely, you bet. Because it’s gonna impact the entire rest of the year, and it may have impacts even past the rest of the year.
Scott Zehr: I…
Dr. Larry Roth: If we have corn silage hygiene issues, maybe it delays re-breeding on the cows, maybe it has an effect upon calf health from reducing colostrum quantity and quality. We’re starting to understand so much about epigenetics and what affects the calf before it is born.
We think of different types of inflammation, heat stress. Heat stress is really just another inflammation. What’s the impact of these mycotoxins on the developing calf inside the cow? Be it gonna be one of the black-hided calves that you talked about earlier, or be it the high genetic value heifer that’s gonna hopefully stay in the herd for a long time as a lactating cow.
So yeah, corn silage, that is probably the most critical stretch of time on the dairy because of its long-term implications.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. Measuring the success of corn silage season, and there’s a lot of downstream stuff. There’s milk production, there’s cow health, there’s reproduction, all the stuff you just mentioned with the calves, that all plays into it. But I, having spent time as a Dairy Comp 305 geek and mining data and looking at data for a number of years. There’s stuff that I would run into and questions that I would have and I’d ask the producer, “where’s the records on this?”
“We actually don’t keep track of that.” “Okay. If you don’t track it, how can I look at it and give advice on it to know what to improve on, right?”
Dr. Larry Roth: If y- if you’re not tracking it, how can you manage it and improve that particular aspect?
Scott Zehr: Exactly. So when I think of the corn silage, you know, we, we have, I’m just thinking in terms of some of these, the clients that, that we visit. The nutritionist is there once or twice a week, or once a week or maybe every two weeks to do a nutrient analysis, to do some dry matter testing. Are we doing kernel processing scores once throughout the season or twice, not at all, five times, right?
But what is it that- one, like what are the things that we should be tracking? How do we… What are the metrics we should look at in a corn silage pile to help us determine if we’re doing a good job or not?
Dr. Larry Roth: Fan- fantastic question. I think one of the items is if we can weigh corn silage coming in, it’s gonna tell us something about how good a job we did raising the crop through all of the different agronomic and weather challenges. Then I would look at my good old bucket of water trick. You mentioned kernel processing scores.
Those are good. It’s a good quantitative measurement. But by the time we get that kernel processing score, the chopper is probably already onto the next farm, or it’s put back in the shed.
So my little five-gallon bucket of water trick is put a couple handfuls of corn silage, fresh chopped corn silage into a five-gallon bucket, maybe two-thirds, three-quarter full, stir it up with a stick, let it sit for a couple of minutes, pour off the water and the forage, and then look and see what you have for kernels in the bottom, because that’s what’s gonna end up on the parlor floor when you wash it next February or March.
That’s gonna be the starch that doesn’t get utilized by the cow. And then I think I would be sending in corn silage samples, maybe taking a composite by day of chopping, send that in so that we’re able to determine what is the quality, nutritive quality of this crop that we’re producing. I could have tremendous dry matter yields, but if the quality isn’t there, so what?
And then measuring nutritive quality of the crop going into the pile gives me an idea of what nutritive value corn silage we’re gonna have coming out of the pile whenever we start feeding it out. And then that enables the nutritionist or the dairy producer to put together a game plan. Man, we got all the starch in the world, we got excellent fiber digestibility.
We don’t need to do anything to complement or make up for deficiencies in our corn silage. But let’s say, for whatever reason, our corn silage is low in starch, maybe we need to get some more starch from off of the farm. Maybe our fiber digestibility is low, maybe we need some kind of higher fiber digestibility byproduct. So I think that nutritive value of the crop going into the pile is so very critical.
Scott Zehr: I’m gonna, I’m gonna jump in there, Larry, because you brought up something really important that is, what’s the old saying? Time is money, right? So if I harvest corn silage in August, and I’m taking composite samples as we’re chopping, the one thing I- you didn’t bring up is when we’re doing these nutrition analysis, we can also do mycotoxin analysis. W- we’ve talked about that in the past. I’m not dwell on that today.
Dr. Larry Roth: Thank you.
Scott Zehr: But in a lot of cases, certain customers that I work with, clients that I work with in the Northeast here, they’re gonna say “I don’t have any leftover corn silage.” But in, in a lot of cases, Larry, we’re gonna not feed this corn silage till December, January? Some cases February or March, right?
If we’re doing some of this measurement now, and you alluded to it, it’s not even so much about coming up with a game plan, but I think of budgeting. So I think of it like a CEO of a business. What nutrition plan do I have in my pile, and how much money do I need to think about budgeting towards off-farm starch and off-farm protein, throughout the rest of the year? I would rather have that conversation in September than the day I open that bunk in April.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Or after you’ve been into that bunker for a month and we discover we have mycotoxin issues, so thank you for bringing that up. We wanna measure mycotoxins on our fresh corn forage so we know what we’re putting into the pile or the bunker from a mycotoxin standpoint.
But yeah let’s know what we’ve got going into the game. And so I think that’s one of the most critical steps is knowing what our corn silage asset is quality-wise, hygiene-wise, before we have to start feeding it.
Scott Zehr: I, I know you like football analogies, Larry, and there’s probably a number of people on our podcast that do. But going back to that Super Bowl mindset of my friend that preps for corn silage like it’s the Super Bowl. Everything that you just described with looking at this corn silage during harvest, that’s pract- that’s practically like watching game film on the opponent. You know what expect when finally get to the day.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. Or watching game film on yourself…
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: to know what you need to change for next year. We’re into corn silage season, we’re in the middle of it. We may not be able to make some changes this year, but we’re able to start making plans for next year. So I just really think that those fresh corn forage samples are so critical.
I know there’s a lot going on during corn silage season, and we always wanna be safe. But we need to be pulling some samples as we’re building the pile, filling the bunker or filling the silo. How- however we store it, we need to know what our quality and hygiene is going into the feeding period. Feed- feeding for a month and then figuring out what we got is not a winning game plan.
Scott Zehr: No.
Dr. Larry Roth: We need to know in advance.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. Rob Hamacher our VP of market here in at Agrarian Solutions across the US, there, there’s something that he says an awful lot, whether it’s at our staff meetings, I think at one point, or maybe it still is, this little saying was in his email signature, and he truly believes it. Maybe you know where I’m going with this, maybe you don’t. But what he likes to say is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Now, okay, maybe it sounds a little cliché, but it’s true. We don’t do these things on our own. And so I wanna talk about communication for a minute, and ownership of the outcome of this O- ROI, because we’re… this isn’t just the dairyman and his son on a small farm or the dairy and a herdsman and a crop crew and…
We’re talking owners and feeders and crop managers, nutritionists, agronomists, custom harvester, the employees executing the strategy, the vets, the consultants that are watching the data like I used to. That is the team of people that are involved one way or another with this asset. And so talk about the importance of the communication between everybody.
Dr. Larry Roth: It’s funny how different things come to mind, but as you started talking about teamwork, I was thinking of a 2,500 cow dairy that I showed up to buy some calves on the day that one of the brothers was heading out to plant corn. And they were running just a little bit behind because of weather, and his comment was, “I’m gonna go faster today than what we normally do.” Okay. What could go wrong, Scott, with something like that?
We start getting skips. We start not getting corn planted at a good, consistent depth. Yeah, he may get all of those acres planted, but he’s not gonna really know the consequence of that speed up decision until they start chopping and filling the bunker. Then we don’t have as much coming in. Our plants are stressed, so maybe we don’t have the nutritive quality. The plants are stressed early on, so we have more mycotoxin issues.
So comm- communication, teamwork, everybody who has anything to do with that crop understands the importance of their action or responsibility, from the person who orders the corn to the person who puts it in the ground, the person who sprays it for weeds, sprays fungicide, setting the chopper hauling it in, dumping it, not going through the mud and the manure to track it up onto the pile.
All of these things come into play, that we have to understand that each person who has something to do with that crop, that asset, excuse me, determines the success of that asset and how it affects all the other assets on the dairy.
Scott Zehr: That is so widespread. I’m not trying to nauseate the audience with football preferences, but oftentimes American football is talked about as the ul- ultimate team sport with 53 men on each roster. But when you go down through that list of individuals that I just talked about and the scenario you just played out for a 2,500 cow dairy, we’re talking there could be close to 50, 75 different people involved.
And everybody has to understand their role, and it’s discipline. Discipline comes into mind, not in a negative way, but being disciplined in the fundamentals. And it’s always interesting how so many of our conversations, Larry, come back to the fundamentals. And for the people that have been following us along for a while, I used to have a picture that is just rotated on a different wall right now of Vince Lombardi. And, just talking about mastering the fundamentals, and communication is one of those fundamentals, but understanding. Understanding
Dr. Larry Roth: I, I think the biggest fundamental is understanding what our objective is with this asset. Is it as many tons of dry matter? Is it as many tons of starch? Is it as many tons of digestible fiber? Is it as clean of mycotoxins as possible? And it’s not gonna be probably one single objective, but understanding the overall objectives. How is what I do today with this crop influencing the ability of this dairy to accomplish their objectives with this asset?
Scott Zehr: So Larry, as we wrap up today’s show I got a few questions I wanna ask of you, and not necessarily in rapid fire form, but, we’ll go down through a little bit of a list here to leave people something to think about. So question number one, Larry, what are the biggest harvest day decisions that determine whether this asset starts strong or starts compromised?
Dr. Larry Roth: I think, first one is how do we set, number one, the height of the chopper? We’re seeing more in- interest in high chop corn silage. Gonna be higher digestible fiber, higher starch content. I think setting the chopper for destroying kernels so that every kernel is processed. I think also of moisture of the crop, moisture or dry matter, however you wanna look at it, of the crop.
Those are probably the… And then the packing decision. How many pack tractors based upon how much corn silage we have coming in per hour. So are we bringing it in from a long distance away, or is it close-up fields? And then finally, do we have the crew around to cover it and pack it at the end of the day? So how’s that? That’s a whole bunch of decisions.
Scott Zehr: love it and it reminds me of one of your one, one of the, your sayings that I enjoyed the most or have enjoyed the most is letting, reminding people to let the packing tractor determine the speed of the chopper.
Dr. Larry Roth: There you go. Yeah, exactly. That person should have the opportunity to say, “Hey, Mr. Chopper, take a break. You’re getting ahead of me.”
Scott Zehr: Yep. I shared that, Larry, with a dairy farm the one day and we talk about time is money. He goes, “But the guy’s getting paid by the hour to run the chopper.” Ah, as the custom harvester, you’re paying on the cutter bar hour, buddy. Oh yeah, good point. But think about that.
Dr. Larry Roth: So are you paying by the hour or are you paying… I understand what you’re saying, but I bring that back to the quality of crop that we’re creating.
Scott Zehr: Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay.
Scott Zehr: Okay, next question. I like this one. So what storage mistakes are easy to overlook but expensive later?
Dr. Larry Roth: Oh, I think it’s easy to overlook the packing. What you were just talking about. Man, we are really making progress today. We’re bringing in a tremendous number of corn silage tons, but we’re getting ahead of the packer. I think another decision that is easy to overlook is the slopes on the pile, or even with the bunker. Because we gotta get everything packed, and if we get too steep we’re not gonna be able to pack like what we should, ’cause we don’t wanna roll the pack tractor.
So I think, again, it’s easy to overlook what is the rate of corn silage coming in and in relation to the pack tractor or tractors, and then the slope of our pile or bunker.
Scott Zehr: I’m gonna add in a bonus one that I observe too many times, and that is they’re predicting rain for the next two days and we decide to not cover the pile in between the stoppage. It’s a pain in the butt. It takes people, it takes energy, it takes time. But Larry, that pile is money, and that rain is washing pennies right drain.
Dr. Larry Roth: And you know what, Scott? Every day that you’re feeding out of that bunker, you’re going to see that spot where you didn’t cover. And it’s gonna remind you that decision was made back on August 28th not to cover. ‘Cause that line is gonna be there all through that pile or that bunker.
Scott Zehr: Yep. I was on a dairy in another state, I think it was up in Maine, looking at this bunker, and this was six months after they started feeding the pile, Larry. And I… “Oh, right there is where you guys took a break for a week during the rain that you talked about. It’s there.”
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. Absolutely.
Scott Zehr: the dairyman just kinda hung his head. The weather’s the weather, but control you can control. You can control whether we make the decision to go out and cover it.
Dr. Larry Roth: Absolutely.
Scott Zehr: When corn silage starts feeding poorly, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind?
Dr. Larry Roth: When you say it starts feeding poorly, I’m gonna take that as meaning production goes down. We could also say repro goes down. So, first thing that is gonna go through my mind is, how did we do with those kernels, destroying them? And then secondly, near and dear to my heart, mycotoxin contamination. So is the energy th- there? Is the energy available? And then do we have a hygiene issue?
Scott Zehr: Yep I would agree. And like you did initially with milk and repro, just the way my pegboard works in my head, I like to chase that all the way down through because there’s such a long list of cascading events that happen. It’s not just the three, four pounds of milk today. It’s not just the five points of conception rate over the next 60 days.
It’s elongated days in milk. It’s higher body condition score at calving. It’s compromised calvings. It’s transition health. It’s another lactation. I could go on, but we all know the kind of the downstream there. We talked about this a little bit, but I, about what we’re measuring with that pile, the dry matter, the starch, the fiber digestibility, the mycotoxins that, that, you know when we’re harvesting. But how do we connect that forage analysis to actual cow response instead of treating the lab report like the finish line?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. I will add one more to what you just said, ash content.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: If our ash content is high, it may be telling us something about tracking dirt onto the pile. So your question is, are we just trying to make a good lab report? The lab report is on the corn forage. It doesn’t tell us how the fermentation process went. It doesn’t tell us how good a job of packing we did. Oh, we did a horrible job of packing, so now our, we got some heating, prolonged fermentation, so our sugar content is gonna be lower. Our pH aren’t gonna be low, and our heat damage protein is gonna be higher. So it isn’t just the lab report on the corn forage. The final check is gonna be those assays as we feed out the asset.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. And then, ironically as you were talking, you say the final check, but really then there’s the cow and the story she’s gonna tell. There’s another final check. And, you know, it makes me realize corn silage season when you drive around during corn silage season, and it’s, it feels like a rat race if you’re in a concentrated dairy community like I am.
There’s choppers flying through the fields. There’s trucks going down the road both ways. There’s corn silage flying off the trucks in the air. Litter on the side of the road, right? And it’s, it feels like a rat race. But really what it is the most intense relay race- Yeah … out there because…
and I think that’s how we have to think of it as a relay race, because there’s so many different start-finish lines in the same journey.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: There’s so many points where the baton has to be handed off cleanly to make this thing all come together.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yes.
Scott Zehr: And, I think one other question I wanna touch on is back to communication. Now I’m reminded of a friend of ours named Joel, Larry, and Joel used to like to say, “You cannot over-communicate.” And so just wrap us up with, again, there’s a lot of people involved in this relay race.
In your mind, the perfect scenario, maybe going back to that 2,500 cow dairy you referenced, what’s the value in sitting everybody down for an afternoon with coffee and donuts or pizza and wings and just hammering out the game plan? “We- we’ve been putting up corn Larry, on this farm with the same people for 10 years. Everybody knows what they’re doing,” could be the worst thing you’ve ever said.
Dr. Larry Roth: So let’s say we ran into a situation like that. I don’t need to go in to listen to any meeting about how to do corn silage. I’ve been doing this for 50 years. Okay? Let’s bring in some of our corn silage nutrient assay reports from this year. Let’s review those, what’s good about them, what’s not good about them.
Let’s go over what our current crop is this year, what our chopping plan is. We’re gonna start on August 28th with those fields far away, and then finish with those close up. What changes do we need to make during that time? What changes do we need to make as the crop matures and gets drier? What do we need to do if it’s gonna start to rain?
So go through all of these different situations to remind us of our, how we’ve done in the past, what our challenges are, and again, come back to what our objective, what our grand objectives are with this asset
Scott Zehr: I like that. ‘Cause that’s really I like it when you bring it back to what’s the objective? What are we trying to accomplish? Larry, I’m gonna leave the listeners with one final thought on my end, and I’ll leave the door open for you to do the same. This is a crazy time of year that we’re coming into for people that are harvesting corn.
Whether it’s silage, whether it’s grain corn, high moisture, it’s crazy. We tend to not get enough sleep. Be safe. Be mindful when you’re around the bunks. If you’re out there taking samples, there’s tractors, they can’t see everywhere. To the truck drivers, remember those stop signs are there for a reason.
Other cars in the public, they may not feel the need to come to a full stop, but just be safe ’cause it’s… every year, Larry, it seems like in, in the area that I live within a 60, 70-mile radius there’s some horror stories that just don’t need to happen. But I understand it’s a stressful time of year, but safety first, guys. Safety first.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that’s a great one. So what, we put up a tremendous crop, we did a tremendous job of packing, but we lost a guy. We lost a guy for any of the different reasons that you just talked about, be it traffic related, be it rolling a tractor, be it getting run over there while we’re out sampling. We gotta be safe. That- that’s number one. The other thing is communicate to the team the objective with this asset and why it is so important to this business enterprise.
Scott Zehr: There is a lot of meat on that bone, Larry, that we could take a lot of different ways from cow health right down to the paychecks of the people that are scraping manure, and that really great thing to leave people with. I thank you for that, yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah
Scott Zehr: So well, folks, if you found value in today’s podcast, share it with a friend. Hit that share button, send it to them. If you have any questions or you’d like to talk about anything with Larry or I about what we discussed today, that is podcast@agrsol.com. And Larry, we do get back to our listeners when they email us. So with that, Larry, thank you for taking time out of your day today to visit with us again. Great conversation, appreciated that, and we’ll be talking to everybody again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth: All right. Thank you, Scott.

The post 77: Corn Silage Season Is Asset Management Season appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

If DON mycotoxins interfere with protein synthesis, how much milk protein could dairy cows be losing before clinical signs ever appear?

In this Letters from the Field episode, Dr. Larry Roth explores the hidden cost of nutrient chaos. How mycotoxins can redirect nutrients away from production and toward defense, affecting rumen function, liver health, reproduction, immune function, and overall performance.

If nutrients are being diverted from production to defense, what could that be costing your herd?

🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!

Scott Zehr: Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I am your host, Scott Zehr. And today, Larry, we are doing something that we’ve never done before.
I don’t know why it took me 70-plus episodes to think of this type of segment, but we routinely get questions from nutritionists or veterinaries, dairy farmers across the country, and a lot of times, Larry, we discuss them internally as a team and develop, okay, how, how can we best serve this person regarding this question.
But man, there’s some of these questions that we get from, say, the field that, I think people, people should hear the conversation that we have around this stuff. So-
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah
Scott Zehr: … think of today as like a letters from the field episode. And so Larry, I’m gonna kick it right off with a text message that I received from a nutritionist. Just to frame it up for the listener, this message, the first message I’m gonna read to you guys was forwarded to me from the nutritionist. It looks like it’s a, an exchange between him and probably his tech person. And, then Larry, I’m gonna have some questions for you around this conversation.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay.
Scott Zehr: so- hey, thanks for the question. DON inhibits the synthesis of protein, therefore likely negatively impacts microbes, which trials have shown lower microbial protein production and lower fiber digestibility. Post-ruminally, DON is tough on the gut health. I don’t know if that’s a function of protein synthesis or by other means. I would have to go back to my notes regarding site impact for Agrarian’s DTX product.
If it does have some activity within the rumen, that could improve rumination. A cumulative effect post-rumen makes sense as well. And then the specific question I received from this nutritionist, “As we try to make more milk protein, I’m wondering how negatively DON is working against us.” That’s what started this whole conversation.
Dr. Larry Roth: Right.
Scott Zehr: The farm I’m referring to has a 13 PPM DON. So at least they’re, not starting with 500 parts per billion or .5 PPM, Larry. Wow, there’s a lot of meat on that bone from a, from a few different places, and I, I think, Larry, where I’d wanna start with, with our conversation today is more on the protein synthesis side.
My question being, if DON is inhibiting protein synthesis, what’s actually happening inside the cow to cause that? And then I’ll… I have some follow-up questions for you as well.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. Excellent. So in a previous session, we had called DON the disruptor mycotoxin.
Scott Zehr: Yes.
Dr. Larry Roth: And I think that’s a good lead in here.
So DON alters the rumen microbial population. So if you don’t have bacteria who are fermenting the diet, creating energy, making nitrogen available to be converted into microbial protein, which is the am- ideal amino acid balance for the cow, you don’t have the ideal amino acid balance being absorbed. I think that’s one place.
The other, there’s some thought that the DON molecule may inhibit some of the actual protein synthesis within some of the cells. So if you’re not absorbing the ideal amino acid balance and then you’re inhibiting actual protein synthesis itself in the cells, you’re not gonna have the milk protein created, you’re probably gonna have l- less lean tissue, you’re probably gonna have less of the important organs such as the liver and the kidneys.
And so it’s just kind of a cascading effect, if you will. And it, to me, I think with ruminants, we always have to start with the rumen. They’ve been blessed-
Scott Zehr: Yeah
Dr. Larry Roth: With this 55-gallon fermentation vat between their ribs, and we want that fermentation to be as, both energy efficient and nitrogen efficient as, as it can be, because that sets the stage for the whole rest of the animal.
Then we have to go to the small intestine, and DON can reduce gut integrity at the small intestine, but now we gotta rebuild that small intestine. And by the way, we’re, we need some amino acids, some protein to rebuild that gut tissue. So again, it’s kind of a, if we wanna call it a cascading effect.
This happens, it inhibits this from happening, that makes it harder for another thing to happen. But it all-
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: starts with what’s going on in the rumen, and then what happens to gut integrity in the small intestine.
Scott Zehr: And I, I appreciate your call back to that episode as well, where we previously, nicknamed the different mycotoxins DON being the disruptor. And, and really we, we used that analogy then of all of these things flow downstream.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: So, you know, one of the questions I had thought of is just, what happens first? Does the rumen get compromised or the gut gets compromised, right? The small intestine. And obviously, based on what you said, we’re first gonna see efficiency drop in the, in the rumen, and that’s where-
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: That’s where the fermentation vat lives.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: But again, so the gut health side of that plays into it as well.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yes. Yeah, so I’m gonna say we lose efficiency, both energy and nitrogen efficiency in the rumen first, and then we have issues with small intestine integrity. I, I think that would be the, the proper order.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: maybe I don’t wanna say proper order, but the, the sequence for these challenges occurring.
Scott Zehr: So Larry, right now, people are trying to feed for more milk protein, so-
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep …
Scott Zehr: I I, don’t know if we can really put a number on it, but if we’re trying to maximize milk protein production-
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep
Scott Zehr: Like, how much could DON be maybe quietly working against us before we ever see clinical signs like loose manure or erratic intakes?
Dr. Larry Roth: Wow, that’s a good question. Again, I’m gonna take you back to our past podcast. Are there other mycotoxins challenging the cow at the same time?
Scott Zehr: Mmm.
Dr. Larry Roth: What is the level of DON? What other challenges might the cow be, be facing? So your, your question was what is the… you were trying to put a number on the- I, yeah, I mean- … reduction in efficiency in…
Scott Zehr: Yeah, it’s, it’s probably a hard thing to do i- in a way, right? But-
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah …
Scott Zehr: I guess the spirit of the question is we inherently know based on research, based on things that we’ve talked about on this platform, DON inhibits protein synthesis, right? And there’s a- downstream effect. I’m just imagining, we’re out there in the real world trying to feed the cows to, to increase milk protein.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yes.
Scott Zehr: And we keep throwing ingredients at it, and we keep changing strategies to try to maximize it. We have genetics that have, gosh, have elevated the cow’s ability genetically speaking to make milk protein.
But Larry, if I told you that there was a farm that was making, their percent protein was 3.6% protein, that’s pretty good. And that was a number that was good years ago too. It just, what is holding that back?
Dr. Larry Roth: From a higher level of, of protein in the milk, perhaps amino acids in the diet and perhaps the ratio of those amino acids. That could be holding them back. And also where else is that protein having to go?
If that protein is being diverted to rebuilding digestive tract tissue, if that protein is being reallocated to repairing liver damage because the liver’s doing a lot of detoxification and other issues are, are going on.
So what all challenges is the cow facing? So there’s a, s- slide that I’ve used at different times that looks at the interaction of maintenance, reproduction, milk production, and then defense, which could be the immune system, it could be reestablishing gut integrity. And when we have metabolic challenges, and I’m gonna go ahead and say social challenges, environmental challenges, the nutrients reallocated to defense grows. Okay? And so if more protein in this situation, this example, is diverted over to defense, we’re not gonna have the milk protein that we could potentially have. If defense wasn’t-
Scott Zehr: Yeah, I’ve-
Dr. Larry Roth: soaking up all that protein.
Scott Zehr: Yeah, I, I feel like we’re maybe starting to sound like a broken record, ’cause I, I think you and I have been talking about nutrient reallocation it seems like for, for the better part of two years.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah, yeah.
Scott Zehr: or, or longer, but on this platform. But it, it’s-
Dr. Larry Roth: I, I really think, Scott, that is what limits nutrient efficiency, milk production efficiency. Where are those nutrients going? Because at, at the end of the day, the cow has a limited amount of nutrients to work with. Okay? She’s eating, for the sake of discussion, 56 pounds of dry matter, 60 pounds of dry matter, I don’t know. and there’s a certain n- nutrients that comes with that.
Well, what percentage of those nutrients get absorbed as energy, BFAs? What percentage of the nitrogen or amino acids she consumes end up as microbial protein or feed protein for her to absorb? Okay? There’s some number for both of those. I think the question is where do those nutrients go in her body?
And different things are gonna cause reallocation of the nutrients, and ultimately it’s that reallocation that affects efficiency. So Scott, if we were to go to a dairy that’s got, oh, man, they’ve got absolutely fantastic, feed efficiency, turning, turning feed into milk, I’m gonna submit to you that that is a dairy that does not have a lot of inflammation going on, that probably does not have major mycotoxin issues.
There’s fires that show up, okay? But that dairy is able to put those fires out rather quickly. So that now nutrients go to more profitable purposes than just maintenance and defense. And so you see what we’ve also done here, Scott, is we’ve broken maintenance away from defense.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: And I think many times people will put defense under that umbrella of maintenance.
Scott Zehr: Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth: I think we need to separate defense from maintenance.
Scott Zehr: I think that’s fair and, you know I’m, I’m just imagining, I’m trying to, just imagining myself being a nutritionist for a minute and laying down in bed trying to connect all these dots and, and that’s, maybe that’s just giving the listener a little, too much of how my brain works.
I, I tell people my brain’s like a pegboard and it’s covered with pegs and I, I have to make sure all the strings that can connect do connect if they can. And just walking through the cause and effect of this type of conversation, Larry, it would wake me up with night sweats to think that there’s stuff going on that, that is influencing the effectiveness of the ration that I’m putting on paper. And now one, it’s one thing to recognize that. It’s another thing to figure out then what those things are.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr: But we know, bringing this back, we know that some of those things are mycotoxins.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep
Scott Zehr: What are we doing about it? So there was another part of that, that letter that I had read that asked, or that, that the comment was in the message, I would have to go back and look through my notes, and I’m quote, quoting here, “I would have to go back and look in my notes to see what impact DTX has on the site.”
It’s speaking of the small intestine or- or even potentially in the rumen. Maybe let’s walk into that a little bit, because I, I think, you know, at the end of the day, we’re trying to make more mo- more milk protein. DON’s potentially inhibiting us from doing that. We have something that works on DON. So walk us through a little bit of how that actually happens.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. I think when I look at how, how DTX works, it’s defending gut integrity, so you don’t have as much destruction of digestive tract lining cells. So you’re gonna have more nutrients, both the amino acids and the energy that would be required to rebuild the gut tissues that are now gonna be available for more productive purposes.
You don’t have, not only DON, with your question. But you don’t have other pathogens entering into the body to cause issues with not only the liver, but the kidney as well. So you don’t have the nutrients going to rebuild those tissues. You don’t have, DON or other, pathogens going through the body for the immune system to attack against, or to attack, rather.
And so those nutrients are gonna be… Those nutrients that would’ve gone to defending and protecting are now available for more profitable purposes. So again, it’s a cascading effect, this time in a positive direction. We’re able to protect against DON at the gut level, so all of these other good things happen.
And because this happens, then this good thing happens, then this good thing happens. So now we have a positive cascade or chain of events.
Scott Zehr: I’m, I’m gonna… I like where you, you went with that from a positive cascade, so I’m gonna kind of circle back a little bit and talk about the, the cascading effect of DON-
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: from a negative light, right? But I, Larry, you have a, a farm enterprise with beef, with chickens, with pork as well, I believe.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep, yep.
Scott Zehr: And maple syrup.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: So- if there’s a little bit of chaos happening around the farm things don’t necessarily go smoothly.
Dr. Larry Roth: Correct, yep.
Scott Zehr: What maybe should have taken you two hours to do chores now took three.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr: We didn’t have something happen that just blew up the whole farm, but just little things all of a sudden don’t work quite as good.
Things don’t flow quite as good. And, you know, I think so many times when we get into conversations about mycotoxins, and DON specifically, we say, “Oh, are the cows showing signs of, you know, loose manure?” What’s the intakes like? What’s the…” wait a minute. If DON is a disruptor toxin, as we’ve called it-
Dr. Larry Roth: Mm-hmm
Scott Zehr: Maybe we’re thinking about this in the wrong way. Instead of DON causing a specific issue like digestive upsets, going back to, the, the analogy there of, of a little bit of chaos-
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep …
Scott Zehr: can just disrupt the whole program, maybe we need to be thinking about DON as, more of a just biological efficiency reduction agent. That’s a really mouthful way of saying that. But e- expand on that, if you could, a little bit.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. So as, as you were talking, what was going through my mind, the word of the day is either cascade, ’cause I keep using that, this happens or this happens or this happens, or it’s chaos. Okay?
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: So as I have in my career, both professionally and otherwise, traveled around the world and been to a lot of farms, ranches, dairy operations, beef operations, pork, poultry operations, those who are successful get things done on a timely basis.
That’s time allocation. When chaos happens, time allocation is messed up and things don’t get done on a timely basis. Rather simplistic. But I think that we can look at, here’s a term for you, Scott, how about nutrient chaos?
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: When chaos happens in the cow’s body, mycotoxins, we could say leaky gut, we could say heat stress. We could continue on, but when that chaos happens, nutrients are now reallocated from where we wanted them to go.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: So, nutritionists can say, “All right, how much lysine does a cow need?” it depends what she has to do with it. If she’s having to divert some lysine to gut rebuilding, her requirement just went up.
So, maybe a term that we could start using is nutrient chaos, which comes from metabolic and environmental and social challenges. And the cow has to resolve that chaos if she wants to live. And if she doesn’t-
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: resolve it, that’s unresolved inflammation, that’s unresolved other things. She doesn’t make milk. She doesn’t get bred back. Maybe she doesn’t live and she’s not on the farm. So our word for the day could either be cascade or chaos. How’s that?
Scott Zehr: Yeah. And they, there’s some symmetry between those two words in this-
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr: …context as well.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. Exactly.
Scott Zehr: All right, Larry, I’m, I’m gonna do something a little bit different here as we wrap up this conversation.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: we’ll call it a lightning round, if you would. Okay. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna ask you to finish this sentence in a fun, rapid-fire way. Here we go. The biggest misconception nutritionists have about DON is…
Dr. Larry Roth: that it happens in a vacuum by itself. So often DON is gonna be traveling hand-in-hand with other mycotoxins. And again, it starts this cascade of events.
Scott Zehr: Okay. question two: The first number I look at when evaluating a DON challenge is…
Dr. Larry Roth: Hmm. Total parts per million of DON.
Scott Zehr: Okay.
Dr. Larry Roth: Second would be what other mycotoxins are there.
Scott Zehr: Question number three, a farm can have a DON problem even when blank.
Dr. Larry Roth: Even when the DON level is low, because there are other challenges are taking place that reduces the cow’s, or increases the cow’s susceptibility to DON.
Scott Zehr: And lastly, the most overlooked consequence of DON exposure is:
Dr. Larry Roth: Liver function.
Scott Zehr: Hmm.
Dr. Larry Roth: We think of DON as messing up, there’s a scientific term for you. Messing up ruminal fermentation, destroying gut integrity. But we don’t necessarily think of DON as impairing liver function. But if these other things, altering ruminal fermentation and increasing or decreasing gut integrity take place, there’s gonna be greater loads on the liver, and liver function is gonna suffer.
Scott Zehr: So if the chaos cascades.
Dr. Larry Roth: There you go.
Scott Zehr: I only did the lightning round so I could work that in.
Dr. Larry Roth: All right.
Scott Zehr: I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. I think there’s a, a lot of meat on this bone that we could probably dive into. And folks, if you have questions regarding this topic or any, any topic involving, the dairy industry really, but specifically, Ruminant Nutrition podcast@agrsol.com. Ask us your questions. We will get back to you personally, and you never know, it may turn into a Letters from the Field episode with Dr. Roth.
Larry, I wanna thank you for taking time out of your day today to have this conversation. I think there’s some, some good nuggets here for people to think about and, and maybe thinking about old topics in a new light, and I’ll give you the last word.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah. The last word would be just think of the chain of events, the cascading effect that comes from not just mycotoxins, but other challenges as well.
Scott Zehr: Love it. Have a great week everybody, and we’ll be talking to you again soon, from the podcast room here at Agrarian Solutions and Ruminate This.

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Although inflammation is a normal part of the calving and healing process, it can be exacerbated by many different environmental factors. The mammary gland starts producing milk, opening the teat ends to potential pathogen exposure several times a day. The diet changes from a high-forage diet to a low-forage ration altering gut bacteria and pH. Heat stress or feed hygiene issues like mycotoxins can add additional stress to the gut. And importantly, but often overlooked, the uterus must heal itself from calving and defend against pathogen infiltration to prevent infection.

The immune system oversees all these events. The good news is the immune system is effective at protecting itself and resolving inflammation quickly, but it also has a high nutrient requirement. Research indicates that a cow’s dry matter intake can decrease 30% in the week before calving, consequently, the immune system may not have the needed nutrient resources to resolve inflammation quickly and prevent infection.

There are a few things we can do to support cows during this time: 1) support feed intake and 2) provide key micronutrients that she may not be eating. A combination of management and key product usage will help dairy cows calve successfully, resolve inflammation quickly, and become productive cows that increase intake quickly, make milk, and get and stay pregnant.

There is no such thing as a silver bullet product to provide the different types of support needed by transition cows, making a program approach necessary. This allows farms to adapt products to their situations and support their cows’ specific needs. Agrarian Solutions has two key transition cow products that support the cow during this period. BioFresh® Microbial Bolus and Cow Start™ Complete can work in tandem to support dairy cows to defend themselves from inflammation and help protect the farm’s profitability.

BIOFRESH Microbial Bolus can be utilized any time the dairy cow is experiencing low feed intake, which can be detected by cow activity and health monitoring systems. Producers have also had excellent results when using the Microbial Bolus at calving when cows need support to increase feed intake quickly. The bolus utilizes Agrarian’s proprietary bacteria technology to support the rumen and gut microbiome, as well as other important bacteria. This microbial combination encourages feed intake and improves rumen function.

Cow Start Complete is a transition cow supplement used at calving to support the newly calved cow’s essential micronutrients and antioxidants needs, including selenium, calcium, magnesium and vitamin E to support the immune system during this critical period when the cow is not eating enough of these nutrients. An important feature of Cow Start Complete is the slow release of nutrients during the first 48 hours after receiving the bolus at calving, enabling farms to only give the boluses once, hence the slogan: Done once, done right.

Utilizing a program approach can help farms improve cow health with a direct impact to improve milk production and fertility. Cows that calve in well and do not experience a health event are much more likely to become and stay pregnant on the first service.

Authors: Caroline Knoblock, MSc, – Director of Nutrition, Agrarian Solutions and Larry Roth, Ph.D., PAS – Vice President of Nutrition

The post Transition Cow Management: A Program Approach to Health, Milk Production, and Fertility appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

In this presentation, Dr. Larry Roth, Vice President of Nutrition at Agrarian Solutions, explores the biological and economic consequences of mycotoxin exposure in dairy cattle. Originally presented at the Wisenetix Dairy Feed Additive Summit, this discussion examines how mycotoxins influence nutrient allocation, reproductive performance, and herd efficiency, and what producers can do to mitigate their impact.

Key topics covered include:

• What mycotoxins are and how they develop in feedstuffs
• The most common mycotoxins affecting North American dairies, including DON, zearalenone, T-2 toxin, fumonisin, and aflatoxin
• Why multiple mycotoxins are increasingly common in modern dairy production
• How mycotoxins damage gut integrity and increase nutrient demands on the immune system
• The relationship between nutrient allocation, reproductive success, and herd profitability
• Research evaluating traditional mycotoxin binders and their limitations
• Independent field trial results demonstrating improved pregnancy rates with DTX™ technology
• Practical recommendations for mycotoxin testing and mitigation strategies

Dr. Roth also reviews results from a commercial dairy trial involving more than 900 cows, highlighting improvements in pregnancies per service for both artificial insemination and embryo transfer programs.

Watch on YouTube

Listen on your favorite podcast platform

The post Dairy Feed Additive Summit: How Much Are Mycotoxins Costing Your Dairy Operation? appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

Our own Dr. Larry Roth, Vice President of Nutrition at Agrarian Solutions and frequent guest of the Ruminate This podcast recently presented at the Wisenetix Dairy Feed Additive Summit. In the webinar, Dr. Larry Roth and host Dr. Todd Callaway discuss how the impact of mycotoxins extends far beyond feed quality concerns. From gut integrity and immune function to nutrient allocation, follicle development, and conception rates, they examine the biological and economic consequences mycotoxins can have on dairy operations.

Key topics covered include:
• What mycotoxins are and how they develop in feedstuffs
• The most common mycotoxins affecting North American dairies, including DON, Zearalenone, T-2, Fumonisin, and Aflatoxin
• Why multiple mycotoxins are increasingly common in modern dairy production
• How mycotoxins damage gut integrity and increase nutrient demands on the immune system
• The relationship between nutrient allocation, follicular development, and reproductive success
• Research evaluating traditional mycotoxin binders and their limitations
• Independent field trial results demonstrating improved pregnancy rates when using DTX™ technology from Agrarian Solutions
• Practical recommendations for mycotoxin testing and mitigation strategies

Dr. Roth also reviews data from a large commercial dairy trial involving more than 900 cows, highlighting significant improvements in pregnancies per service for both artificial insemination and embryo transfer programs.

Whether you’re a dairy producer, nutritionist, veterinarian, or consultant, this presentation provides valuable insights into protecting herd performance and maximizing reproductive efficiency in the face of mycotoxin challenges.

💬 Have thoughts or a story to share? Email podcast@agrsol.com.

🔗 Stay informed: Get expert livestock nutrition insights, cutting-edge research, and updates on future episodes by subscribing here: agrariansolutions.com/podcast

The post 75: Dairy Reproduction & Mycotoxins: Hidden Threats to Pregnancy Success appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.