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

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

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. Before we jump in, I’m just gonna mention something at the top. If you’ve listened to Ruminate This for really any length of time, you probably get the feeling that most of these episodes are pretty free-flowing. To be honest, I usually have just a few notes.
By a few, I mean one to five. And usually if I have a guest, I’ll maybe send a loose outline. I really believe that the gold is always in the dialogue, and so I usually let the conversation go wherever it wants to go. Today is going to feel different. I actually wrote down much of this episode. Not because I have answers.
Quite honestly I don’t, and that’s why I’m doing this episode. But this is a lot… This is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. And I found that every time I tried to record this episode off the cuff, I ended up with more questions than conclusions. So if I sound a little more scripted than normal today, it’s intentional.
This isn’t me teaching. This is me trying to better understand something that I think affects a lot of people in our industry. Normally on this podcast, we’re talking about mycotoxins, amino acids, starch digestion, transition cows, feed ingredients, bunk management strategies, all helpful stuff for producers to become more successful. And we’re gonna continue to talk about those things in the future.
Today we’re talking about people. So a few months back, I came across yet another tragic story involving a young person in our industry who left this world far too soon. He was 22 years old.
I’m not gonna spend much time discussing the particular story because this episode is not about one individual, it’s about a question I found myself asking over and over throughout my career, why is burnout so prevalent in dairy?
Before we go any further, let me be clear about what I mean. Burnout and suicide are not the same thing. Most people who experience burnout recover. They grow and they move forward. But when tragic stories continue appearing in our industry, I think it’s worth asking difficult questions. Agrarian’s creed says that we exist to help others succeed.
Not cows, not just dairy businesses, people. And since they let me have a microphone, and I have a voice, and people out there are willing to listen, I think this is a conversation worth having. So today, instead of discussing what makes cows healthier, I wanna spend a little time talking about the people who care for them.
If I asked a room full of dairy producers why burnout exists, I’d probably hear some familiar answers. We all would. I was a dairy farmer at one time. I would give these same answers: long hours, labor shortages, milk prices, the weather, regulations, financial pressure, market volatility. And every one of those answers is technically true. But what if they’re incomplete?
Because there are plenty of professions that work long hours. There are plenty of professions that deal with stress. There are plenty of professions that face uncertainty, yet agriculture continues to struggle with burnout at rates that are undeniably disproportionate to the size of our industry. Maybe there’s something deeper going on that we need to talk about.
One thing that I’ve observed over the years is that for many producers, the dairy isn’t where they work. The dairy is who they are. The cows aren’t just livestock, they’re family. The farm isn’t just a business. The land isn’t just an asset, it’s legacy. It’s their identity. They feel it’s their internal responsibility. It’s their purpose. And when things go well, that’s incredibly rewarding. But when things go poorly, it becomes incredibly personal.
Because on a dairy, a milk check isn’t just a milk check. It’s my family’s income. A crop failure isn’t just a crop failure. It’s my family’s future for the next year. And a sick calf isn’t just a sick calf. It’s the hope of what she could be over the next five years. Every challenge feels connected to something much bigger. Carrying that kind of emotional weight day after day is exhausting.
And I think there’s a bit of a responsibility trap that’s part of this. And this is what I’ve been thinking about the most. Because maybe burnout isn’t always caused by carrying too much work. Maybe it’s caused by carrying too much responsibility. Let’s think about the average dairy owner. They care about breeding, they care about nutrition, they care about calf health, they care about employees, they care about finances, they care about the equipment, they care about their family, they care about their community.
And because they care, they start carrying. Eventually, they’re carrying every problem. Every decision, every mistake, every crisis, every outcome. Not because someone assigned it to them, but because they genuinely care. The very trait that makes them successful, I think becomes the thing that slows them down or wears them down.
The other thing about agriculture is that it is a culture of toughness. If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re nodding your head right now. I’ve been in it my whole life. We’re tough people. Agriculture has always been built on resilience. It’s one of the things I admire most about our industry. Farmers are among the toughest people I’ve ever met.
The thing about strength though is that there’s a shadow side. Sometimes resilience turns into isolation and toughness becomes silence. Sometimes self-resilience becomes believing you have to handle everything alone. Those aren’t the same things.
I have met a lot of producers who would do anything to help a neighbor, yet many of those same people would never ask for help themselves. Why is that? Why is it easier to carry someone else’s burden than to admit you’re struggling with your own? I’ve seen it firsthand.
We had neighbors. I can remember a specific story. The neighbor’s wife passed away, the fall time of the year. A bunch of neighbors got together to help put the guy’s corn up. Wasn’t a large dairy. There was probably 120, 130 acres of corn to chop. My dad and I, we took our pull-type chopper over. Everybody had pull-type choppers. If I recall, there was three or four pull-type choppers chopping corn for that guy.
But when other farms are struggling and there’s not some external public thing that happens, for the community to see and respond to, why is it so scary for that person to reach out and ask for a hand? Let me think, let me say it like this. What if we’re asking the wrong questions about this problem?
What if instead of asking why are dairy producers burning out, maybe the question is, how much weight can one person carry before something starts to give? Most people don’t wake up one morning burned out. It happens slowly, one responsibility at a time. One season at a time, one challenge at a time. And before you know it, a few pounds added to the backpack every year until one day they realize they’re exhausted. Not because they’re weak, because they’re human.
I don’t have the answers today. I think you can see that I have more questions than anything. But I think conversations like this matter because we need to do more talking about it. Agrarian’s creed says that we exist to help others succeed. And I would implore you to keep in mind that success is n- not only measured in milk shipped, calves raised, or profitability. Success also includes healthy people, healthy families, healthy relationships, healthy leaders.
Maybe burnout isn’t caused by caring too much. Maybe it’s caused by believing you’re responsible for everything you care about. Again, those aren’t the same thing. Learning the difference may be one of the most important lessons any of us ever learn. Until next time, keep asking questions and keep ruminating.

The post 74: Why is burnout so prevalent in dairy? appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

The episode also explores how DTX™ with Livox uses probiotic technology and plant actives like curcumin, naringen, and carnosic acid to support dairy cows during periods of heat stress. Learn how internal biological support may help cows better withstand the stacked environmental insults of summer while supporting health, performance, and resilience.

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

🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform

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

Scott Zehr: All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And today I’m gonna be joined by Dr. Larry Roth, the Vice President of Nutrition here at Agrarian Solutions. And Larry I’m hoping to have a really good discussion today with you on the topic of heat stress.
However, I’m gonna challenge you a little bit because this topic has been covered a lot in our industry, obviously. This is a north of a billion dollar economic impact in as far as loss is concerned in the US dairy industry. But I think we’ve heard enough in the past about sprinklers and fans and so on, that I have a different take that I’d like you to explore with me today.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay.
Scott Zehr: And so with that, I guess, welcome, Larry.
Dr. Larry Roth: Good to be here.
Scott Zehr: All right. Dr. Roth we’ve been taught about this a lot over the years, as I mentioned. And I think we’ve almost been taught to think about heat stress as the problem. But based on what we’re seeing now, is it more accurate to say that heat stress is actually exposing everything else we don’t control?
Dr. Larry Roth: I think that would be fair to say. It is another stressor. Sometimes we use the term, Scott, stacked stressors. And so it, shall we say, exacerbates other challenges going on. If our diet, for an example, is kinda marginal in terms of readily formidable carbohydrates, and we’re at risk of subacute acidosis, and now we got heat stress, and it changes eating patterns. It may cause the cows to experience some periodic subacute acidosis, which if the temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit and the cows were eating more consistently, would not be an issue. Yeah, so we could go on with other examples, but I think it would be fair to say, Scott, that heat stress is another stressor that we stack on top of everything else with which the cow is dealing.
Scott Zehr: Yeah, and I, I don’t want the audience to be confused. I’m not saying that heat stress is not a problem in and of itself. But I think that the deeper layer is that all by itself it’s maybe not as problematic as when we have all these other stacked things going on that the heat stress then exacerbates, like you said.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. So when you look at things like heat stress, mycotoxins, intake disruptions, are these additive problems or are we actually dealing with more of a multiplicative effect inside the cow?
Dr. Larry Roth: Oh. I think that we may be dealing with more of a multiplying effect. Especially dependent upon how many stressors there are. And when we use that term stressor, I think it’s important, Scott, to say we’re not implying mismanagement.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: We’re just saying that we’re asking this cow to do a lot. She’s gotta live in a real world situation, eat real world rations, live in a real world freestall barn. So we’re not implying mismanagement. But I would say that…
Scott Zehr: No, and I think the better term is probably environmental insult, right?
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah, there you go. Yep.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. No, and I don’t think, you look at the management practices across the US dairies, we’re- we’ve figured out how to manage groups of cows extremely well and- Yes … and, what we’re looking at here today is the relationship between those environmental insults and mycotoxins. And really again just trying to reframe this conversation in a way that, essentially how do we take this to a step where we can’t control the weather, but here are the environmental insults that we can control, right?
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: So I guess going– you mentioned mycotoxins, so specifically speaking to that, to the mycotoxin challenges, what changes inside the cow during a heat stress event that would potentially make a manageable mycotoxin load all of a sudden a much bigger problem?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay, fantastic question. What’s that interaction between heat stress and mycotoxins? When cows are heat stressed, they go through a couple of changes. One, increased respiration. They’re getting rid of more moisture, and they also cause greater blood flow to the extremities to radiate heat away, much like the radiator on your truck tends to send engine heat off to the environment.
So all of that is reducing blood flow to the digestive tract. And then the digestive tract needs a tremendous amount of blood flow to provide nutrients for the turnover in cells to also keep those cells alive. And to pull nutrients that are absorbed into the bloodstream to go to different parts of the body.
So if we’re losing moisture through the lungs, and we’re shunting blood flow more to the extremities to radiate heat, what ends up happening is our intestinal lining cells can become dehydrated. They tend to shrink. And we talk a lot about the tight junctions between the cells. It’s like the mortar that holds the castle blocks together so that the barbarians are kept in the digestive tract and out of the body.
So if our intestinal cells start to shrink, we lose our tight junctions. Now we’ve got interstate highways for pathogens, mycotoxins, all of this bad stuff to get through the castle wall, the intestinal lining, and into the body. Flows through the bloodstream, ends up in the liver, the body’s biochemical factory not just processing nutrients, but also getting rid of toxins.
So now we got an extra load on the liver which, depending upon the stage of production, is maybe processing a lot of fats that have been broken down in that early lactation cow. And at any stage of lactation, just doing a tremendous amount of work to make glucose so that we have glucose to make lactose for milk sugar serve as a carbon source for rapidly developing cells like the follicle and the embryo. So it’s, it is a cascading effect.
Scott Zehr: As I’ve heard you say many times.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. Yeah. Intestinal cells are short on water, they shrink, and now everything starts to go downhill from there.
Scott Zehr: Larry, the cascading effect, we’ve talked about the downstream effect of a lot of these things over the last number of episodes here. But also you mentioned the liver making glucose, and I think there’s always room for one of the famous Larry quotes that I’ve heard a number of times which is, “No glucose, no lactose. No lactose, no milk.”
Dr. Larry Roth: There you go.
Scott Zehr: And uh, so, you know, as right at the downstream side of that is we see a lot of decreased milk production during heat stress events and essentially we’re just not keeping up with that process, right? ‘Cause we’re diverting stuff to other purposes. So you’ve had the chance over the last shall we say- couple of decades at least to…
Dr. Larry Roth: Nice way to put it.
Scott Zehr: To spend a lot of time not just talking with dairymen and talking with nutritionists, but actually being on farm and seeing the operations and understanding the management.
But when you walk into really high-performing dairies, what are they doing before summer hits that average operations wait too long to address?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. That’s a fantastic question. What are the high-producing dairies doing to get ready for heat stress? They know it’s gonna happen. And Scott, it can be as simple as fan maintenance.
Blades are clean, motors are ready to go. Sprinklers, all of the plumbing is right. But we don’t have leaks so that we don’t have too much water flowing where it shouldn’t be, filling up the lagoon. Comfort, the freestalls are bedded right. Curtains are up. We don’t let the sun shine in, but we also want to have air movement taking place.
With cross-ventilated barns, all of the fans are working right. We know that summer is coming. We’re just making sure that everything’s ready to go. Also looking at different feed additives that people are looking at. Things such as betaine and osmolyte to keep water in cells. People are also looking at capsaicin coming from peppers, which excuse me, hot peppers, which can increase blood flow to the extremities.
And I think, Scott, we should be looking at DTX, our cell-wall-deficient bacteria technology that helps to protect digestive tract integrity and what we’ve done with plant extracts that help to protect the intestinal lining cells and also to protect liver health. So it’s a combination of factors.
And I would say over the last number of decades, number one, we’ve recognized that heat stress is an issue. We’ve said that we gotta do something about it and become proactive. Even just consider, Scott, how we design freestall barns now.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: Consider the cross-ventilated barns, the number that we see. So the industry does stand to have a significant financial loss to heat stress, as you mentioned. But the industry is also making a tremendous investment each year to reduce that loss to heat stress.
Scott Zehr: Absolutely. I love the fact that you brought up the fans first. I’ve probably told you before my dirty fan theory, which is you walk into a barn in the middle of February, and if the fans are dirty, maybe they’re letting other things slide, too. And…
Dr. Larry Roth: There you go.
Scott Zehr: I’ve walked into a number of barns in February where the fans are spotless. There’s not a drop of dust on those blades. Those farms tend to not miss a beat. They have mastered the fundamentals.
And continue to keep up with them. Everything you just described there, Larry is all things that the dairy has for the most part within their control, right? Taking care of water situations, sprinklers, fans…
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: maintenance, stall care. How often do we see, it’s springtime, I get it. We have planting, we have, we’re ramping up to get ready for first cutting. And the beds didn’t get sanded this week because we just couldn’t spare a person.
Dr. Larry Roth: Right.
Scott Zehr: And it’s just, it’s a recipe for disaster. and so many times these conversations come down to fundamentals and doing things the right way every day, every time. But I think, a- again, it’s like heat stress is a problem. Don’t let it be a bigger problem than what it is, right?
And you mentioned the DTX which is our mycotoxin mitigation product here at Agrarian, and I’m gonna ask you more questions on that in a subsequent episode. But I think the big takeaway that I’d give to producers right now, Larry, is for the first time in my lifetime, there is a research-backed mitigation tool, mycotoxin mitigation tool that is appropriate for the mycotoxins we see in today’s herds.
And we manage so many other things on dairies, some of them extremely well. Here’s a tool for us to look at and say, “Can we just take mycotoxins out of the conversation for now?”
I guess just to reiterate what you said recently, your last comments here, if a producer’s talking to you and you’re a nutritionist and they’re just saying “I can’t control the weather,” maybe just give us three things that you would push back and say, “No, but here are the top three things you can control and are responsible for.”
Dr. Larry Roth: Wow, top three things. I would have to start with ventilation, air movement. Number two would be sprinklers to help wet the cows. Number three, the feed additives so that we can work from the inside out with cows. And you said three, so I gotta stop at that point.
Scott Zehr: Okay. But,
Dr. Larry Roth: but-
Scott Zehr: if you have a couple bonus ones, that’s okay, too
Dr. Larry Roth: I think how we take care of the freestall beds-
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: comfort. Because-
Scott Zehr: Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth: When it’s hot, cows tend to stand a little bit more, so that’s extra stress on the feet and legs. And cows tend to make more milk when they’re laying down, and there’s a variety of reasons for that. So general cow comfort, and you mentioned water availability. I didn’t mention that before, but I think that is absolutely key.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. Larry I think as we wrap up here, we started the episode talking about stacked, we’ll call it, we’ll say insults, right? And we have-
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay.
Scott Zehr: We’ve talked mycotoxins, we’ve talked heat stress. But also I think there’s maybe some other things that sometimes come into play that we don’t always think about because they’re routine things we have to do, like pen moves, hoof trimming routines, all these kinda normal processes that happen that just add an additional layer to these cows.
And I’m not saying don’t hoof trim during the summertime, but be aware of maybe there’s a way we could look at the weather and say, “Hey, it’s gonna be 15 degrees cooler at the end of the week. Can we move some things around sometimes?”
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah, that’s right. Can we postpone certain animal movements and so forth until the weather cools down, like you said, this weekend? When the temperature’s gonna go down 15 degrees as opposed to today. So it, again it’s thinking how is this particular item going to affect the cow today? Is this something that I should delay a little bit? Is this something that I should do a little bit differently to minimize the challenge that’s put on the cow?
Scott Zehr: Yep. Yep. One of the saddest things I’d ever seen on a dairy, it was a move from one farm to the other, and it was summertime. And Larry, what could go wrong with 10 cows on a trailer that have to go 30 miles?
Dr. Larry Roth: We get a flat tire, and it’s 100 degrees, and they’re not getting the ventilation and so forth. Yeah.
Scott Zehr: Yep. Final takeaways, Larry?
Dr. Larry Roth: Heat stress is gonna come. What are we doing to get ready? Make our checklist, have our strategy in place, and be prepared to enact that strategy.
Scott Zehr: That’s right. Control what we can control. I like it. Yep. All right. Larry, I’m gonna bring you back for a little more in-depth discussion on what all DTX is actually doing to help the cow from the inside out, on another episode. So with that, I wanna thank you for taking time out of your day to visit with us, Larry, and we’ll be talking again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth: All right. Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Scott.
Scott Zehr: Thanks, Larry.

The post 73: Heat Stress and Inflammation in Dairy Cows appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

What you’ll learn:
– Mycotoxin risk factors
– Gut integrity impact
– Testing strategies importance
– Multiple toxins interaction
– Nutrient reallocation effects

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

💬 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

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The post [Bonus Interview] The Dairy Podcast Show – Dr. Larry Roth: Mycotoxins and Dairy Gut Health appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

In the episode, Dr. Roth explains how mycotoxins can impact dairy cow health, nutrient utilization, gut integrity, liver function, and overall herd performance. He also shares practical information on identifying risk factors, testing strategies, and emerging technologies such as IgY and probiotics that may help improve herd resilience when dealing with contaminated feeds.

The podcast offers valuable information for producers, nutritionists, and industry professionals looking to better understand the hidden performance costs associated with mycotoxin exposure.

Available on all major podcast platforms.

The post Mycotoxins and Dairy Cow Health on The Dairy Podcast Show appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

The mycotoxin assay summaries presented in Table 1 and 2 and Figures 1 and 2 for the 517 corn silage and 558 TMR samples collected between October 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026 indicate a high number of samples contaminated by two to four mycotoxins. The frequency of multiple mycotoxin-contaminated samples and the compounding effects supports  the regular sampling of feed ingredients and diets, as well as the adaption of time-proven and research-verified mycotoxin mitigation protection. 

Corn silage samples continue exhibiting the familiar pattern of high-risk DON contamination and medium-risk zearalenone (ZEA) levels observed in recent years. However, elevated fumonisin (FUM) levels are being detected. Samples from Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia exhibited high-risk levels of FUM, while an additional five Midwestern states reported medium-risk FUM contamination. 

The TMR contamination levels of DON were in the high-risk category for eight states and 11 states were at a high- or medium-risk level of ZEA. As expected from the corn silage FUM results, 14 states assayed low- and medium-risk levels of FUM in the TMR. More importantly than evaluating individual mycotoxin levels is to note that 11 states submitted TMR samples testing at medium- or high-risk levels for two or three mycotoxins, and Pennsylvania and Virginia assayed medium- or high-risk contamination levels for four mycotoxins. 

The presence of multiple mycotoxins exacerbates the digestive, immune, and reproductive insults of the individual mycotoxins and necessitates a proven mycotoxin mitigation program. For example, DON disrupts digestive function, ZEA reduces reproductive success by imitating estrogen, FUM accelerates leaky gut and reduces liver function, and finally T-2 earns the “assassin” nickname by killing high-turnover gut and immune cells.

The production response observed in high-producing dairy cows supplemented with DTX™ in Roth et al. (2024^a,b) occurred when diets tested at high-risk DON levels and medium-risk ZEA levels. Dairy nutritionists and producers are observing very good milk production and reproductive success outcomes when feeding DTX consuming diets with multiple mycotoxins at medium- and high-risk levels. Contact your Agrarian Solutions representative for advice on developing a mycotoxin testing program and utilizing DTX in your clients’ herds.

^aRoth, L.D., et al. 2024. J. Dairy Sci. 107(Suppl 1):426. (Abstr.)
^bRoth, L.D., et al. 2024. J. Dairy Sci. 107(Suppl 1):426. (Abstr.)

The post Mycotoxin Report: October 1, 2025 – April 30, 2026 appeared first on Agrarian Solutions.

In episode 72 of Ruminate This, Scott and Dr. Larry Roth explore a different way to think about dairy heat stress. Not as an isolated challenge, but as something that amplifies underlying issues like mycotoxins, reduced dry matter intake, and marginal nutrition.

They walk through how stacked stress impacts gut health, liver function, and milk production, often long before you see changes in the tank.

If you are a dairy producer, nutritionist, or consultant, this episode will help you better understand how to manage heat stress and protect cow performance during high-risk periods.

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

Scott Zehr: All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And today I’m gonna be joined by Dr. Larry Roth, the Vice President of Nutrition here at Agrarian Solutions. And Larry I’m hoping to have a really good discussion today with you on the topic of heat stress.
However, I’m gonna challenge you a little bit because this topic has been covered a lot in our industry, obviously. This is a north of a billion dollar economic impact in as far as loss is concerned in the US dairy industry. But I think we’ve heard enough in the past about sprinklers and fans and so on, that I have a different take that I’d like you to explore with me today.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay.
Scott Zehr: And so with that, I guess, welcome, Larry.
Dr. Larry Roth: Good to be here.
Scott Zehr: All right. Dr. Roth we’ve been taught about this a lot over the years, as I mentioned. And I think we’ve almost been taught to think about heat stress as the problem. But based on what we’re seeing now, is it more accurate to say that heat stress is actually exposing everything else we don’t control?
Dr. Larry Roth: I think that would be fair to say. It is another stressor. Sometimes we use the term, Scott, stacked stressors. And so it, shall we say, exacerbates other challenges going on. If our diet, for an example, is kinda marginal in terms of readily formidable carbohydrates, and we’re at risk of subacute acidosis, and now we got heat stress, and it changes eating patterns. It may cause the cows to experience some periodic subacute acidosis, which if the temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit and the cows were eating more consistently, would not be an issue. Yeah, so we could go on with other examples, but I think it would be fair to say, Scott, that heat stress is another stressor that we stack on top of everything else with which the cow is dealing.
Scott Zehr: Yeah, and I, I don’t want the audience to be confused. I’m not saying that heat stress is not a problem in and of itself. But I think that the deeper layer is that all by itself it’s maybe not as problematic as when we have all these other stacked things going on that the heat stress then exacerbates, like you said.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. So when you look at things like heat stress, mycotoxins, intake disruptions, are these additive problems or are we actually dealing with more of a multiplicative effect inside the cow?
Dr. Larry Roth: Oh. I think that we may be dealing with more of a multiplying effect. Especially dependent upon how many stressors there are. And when we use that term stressor, I think it’s important, Scott, to say we’re not implying mismanagement.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: We’re just saying that we’re asking this cow to do a lot. She’s gotta live in a real world situation, eat real world rations, live in a real world freestall barn. So we’re not implying mismanagement. But I would say that…
Scott Zehr: No, and I think the better term is probably environmental insult, right?
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah, there you go. Yep.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. No, and I don’t think, you look at the management practices across the US dairies, we’re- we’ve figured out how to manage groups of cows extremely well and- Yes … and, what we’re looking at here today is the relationship between those environmental insults and mycotoxins. And really again just trying to reframe this conversation in a way that, essentially how do we take this to a step where we can’t control the weather, but here are the environmental insults that we can control, right?
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: So I guess going– you mentioned mycotoxins, so specifically speaking to that, to the mycotoxin challenges, what changes inside the cow during a heat stress event that would potentially make a manageable mycotoxin load all of a sudden a much bigger problem?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay, fantastic question. What’s that interaction between heat stress and mycotoxins? When cows are heat stressed, they go through a couple of changes. One, increased respiration. They’re getting rid of more moisture, and they also cause greater blood flow to the extremities to radiate heat away, much like the radiator on your truck tends to send engine heat off to the environment.
So all of that is reducing blood flow to the digestive tract. And then the digestive tract needs a tremendous amount of blood flow to provide nutrients for the turnover in cells to also keep those cells alive. And to pull nutrients that are absorbed into the bloodstream to go to different parts of the body.
So if we’re losing moisture through the lungs, and we’re shunting blood flow more to the extremities to radiate heat, what ends up happening is our intestinal lining cells can become dehydrated. They tend to shrink. And we talk a lot about the tight junctions between the cells. It’s like the mortar that holds the castle blocks together so that the barbarians are kept in the digestive tract and out of the body.
So if our intestinal cells start to shrink, we lose our tight junctions. Now we’ve got interstate highways for pathogens, mycotoxins, all of this bad stuff to get through the castle wall, the intestinal lining, and into the body. Flows through the bloodstream, ends up in the liver, the body’s biochemical factory not just processing nutrients, but also getting rid of toxins.
So now we got an extra load on the liver which, depending upon the stage of production, is maybe processing a lot of fats that have been broken down in that early lactation cow. And at any stage of lactation, just doing a tremendous amount of work to make glucose so that we have glucose to make lactose for milk sugar serve as a carbon source for rapidly developing cells like the follicle and the embryo. So it’s, it is a cascading effect.
Scott Zehr: As I’ve heard you say many times.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. Yeah. Intestinal cells are short on water, they shrink, and now everything starts to go downhill from there.
Scott Zehr: Larry, the cascading effect, we’ve talked about the downstream effect of a lot of these things over the last number of episodes here. But also you mentioned the liver making glucose, and I think there’s always room for one of the famous Larry quotes that I’ve heard a number of times which is, “No glucose, no lactose. No lactose, no milk.”
Dr. Larry Roth: There you go.
Scott Zehr: And uh, so, you know, as right at the downstream side of that is we see a lot of decreased milk production during heat stress events and essentially we’re just not keeping up with that process, right? ‘Cause we’re diverting stuff to other purposes. So you’ve had the chance over the last shall we say- couple of decades at least to…
Dr. Larry Roth: Nice way to put it.
Scott Zehr: To spend a lot of time not just talking with dairymen and talking with nutritionists, but actually being on farm and seeing the operations and understanding the management.
But when you walk into really high-performing dairies, what are they doing before summer hits that average operations wait too long to address?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. That’s a fantastic question. What are the high-producing dairies doing to get ready for heat stress? They know it’s gonna happen. And Scott, it can be as simple as fan maintenance.
Blades are clean, motors are ready to go. Sprinklers, all of the plumbing is right. But we don’t have leaks so that we don’t have too much water flowing where it shouldn’t be, filling up the lagoon. Comfort, the freestalls are bedded right. Curtains are up. We don’t let the sun shine in, but we also want to have air movement taking place.
With cross-ventilated barns, all of the fans are working right. We know that summer is coming. We’re just making sure that everything’s ready to go. Also looking at different feed additives that people are looking at. Things such as betaine and osmolyte to keep water in cells. People are also looking at capsaicin coming from peppers, which excuse me, hot peppers, which can increase blood flow to the extremities.
And I think, Scott, we should be looking at DTX, our cell-wall-deficient bacteria technology that helps to protect digestive tract integrity and what we’ve done with plant extracts that help to protect the intestinal lining cells and also to protect liver health. So it’s a combination of factors.
And I would say over the last number of decades, number one, we’ve recognized that heat stress is an issue. We’ve said that we gotta do something about it and become proactive. Even just consider, Scott, how we design freestall barns now.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: Consider the cross-ventilated barns, the number that we see. So the industry does stand to have a significant financial loss to heat stress, as you mentioned. But the industry is also making a tremendous investment each year to reduce that loss to heat stress.
Scott Zehr: Absolutely. I love the fact that you brought up the fans first. I’ve probably told you before my dirty fan theory, which is you walk into a barn in the middle of February, and if the fans are dirty, maybe they’re letting other things slide, too. And…
Dr. Larry Roth: There you go.
Scott Zehr: I’ve walked into a number of barns in February where the fans are spotless. There’s not a drop of dust on those blades. Those farms tend to not miss a beat. They have mastered the fundamentals.
And continue to keep up with them. Everything you just described there, Larry is all things that the dairy has for the most part within their control, right? Taking care of water situations, sprinklers, fans…
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: maintenance, stall care. How often do we see, it’s springtime, I get it. We have planting, we have, we’re ramping up to get ready for first cutting. And the beds didn’t get sanded this week because we just couldn’t spare a person.
Dr. Larry Roth: Right.
Scott Zehr: And it’s just, it’s a recipe for disaster. and so many times these conversations come down to fundamentals and doing things the right way every day, every time. But I think, a- again, it’s like heat stress is a problem. Don’t let it be a bigger problem than what it is, right?
And you mentioned the DTX which is our mycotoxin mitigation product here at Agrarian, and I’m gonna ask you more questions on that in a subsequent episode. But I think the big takeaway that I’d give to producers right now, Larry, is for the first time in my lifetime, there is a research-backed mitigation tool, mycotoxin mitigation tool that is appropriate for the mycotoxins we see in today’s herds.
And we manage so many other things on dairies, some of them extremely well. Here’s a tool for us to look at and say, “Can we just take mycotoxins out of the conversation for now?”
I guess just to reiterate what you said recently, your last comments here, if a producer’s talking to you and you’re a nutritionist and they’re just saying “I can’t control the weather,” maybe just give us three things that you would push back and say, “No, but here are the top three things you can control and are responsible for.”
Dr. Larry Roth: Wow, top three things. I would have to start with ventilation, air movement. Number two would be sprinklers to help wet the cows. Number three, the feed additives so that we can work from the inside out with cows. And you said three, so I gotta stop at that point.
Scott Zehr: Okay. But,
Dr. Larry Roth: but-
Scott Zehr: if you have a couple bonus ones, that’s okay, too
Dr. Larry Roth: I think how we take care of the freestall beds-
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: comfort. Because-
Scott Zehr: Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth: When it’s hot, cows tend to stand a little bit more, so that’s extra stress on the feet and legs. And cows tend to make more milk when they’re laying down, and there’s a variety of reasons for that. So general cow comfort, and you mentioned water availability. I didn’t mention that before, but I think that is absolutely key.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. Larry I think as we wrap up here, we started the episode talking about stacked, we’ll call it, we’ll say insults, right? And we have-
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay.
Scott Zehr: We’ve talked mycotoxins, we’ve talked heat stress. But also I think there’s maybe some other things that sometimes come into play that we don’t always think about because they’re routine things we have to do, like pen moves, hoof trimming routines, all these kinda normal processes that happen that just add an additional layer to these cows.
And I’m not saying don’t hoof trim during the summertime, but be aware of maybe there’s a way we could look at the weather and say, “Hey, it’s gonna be 15 degrees cooler at the end of the week. Can we move some things around sometimes?”
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah, that’s right. Can we postpone certain animal movements and so forth until the weather cools down, like you said, this weekend? When the temperature’s gonna go down 15 degrees as opposed to today. So it, again it’s thinking how is this particular item going to affect the cow today? Is this something that I should delay a little bit? Is this something that I should do a little bit differently to minimize the challenge that’s put on the cow?
Scott Zehr: Yep. Yep. One of the saddest things I’d ever seen on a dairy, it was a move from one farm to the other, and it was summertime. And Larry, what could go wrong with 10 cows on a trailer that have to go 30 miles?
Dr. Larry Roth: We get a flat tire, and it’s 100 degrees, and they’re not getting the ventilation and so forth. Yeah.
Scott Zehr: Yep. Final takeaways, Larry?
Dr. Larry Roth: Heat stress is gonna come. What are we doing to get ready? Make our checklist, have our strategy in place, and be prepared to enact that strategy.
Scott Zehr: That’s right. Control what we can control. I like it. Yep. All right. Larry, I’m gonna bring you back for a little more in-depth discussion on what all DTX is actually doing to help the cow from the inside out, on another episode. So with that, I wanna thank you for taking time out of your day to visit with us, Larry, and we’ll be talking again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth: All right. Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Scott.
Scott Zehr: Thanks, Larry.

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