The Moos Room™

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Emily: Welcome, everybody to The Moos Room. No Dr. Joe today. It's just me and Bradley, the dynamic duo. What's up, Bradley?
Bradley: Oh, just trying to prepare for calving. We start calving in a couple of weeks. We're in mid-March and just trying to pull our hair out because I asked Kirsten, my scientist technician, today if we were ready and she said no, we're not ready to calve.
Emily: Oh, well, luckily, you maybe still have a few days. Just quickly, how long is your calving period because I know you do seasonal calving?
Bradley: Mid-march to the end of May. We have 137 cows and heifers due-
Emily: Wow, okay.
Bradley: -in two months.
Emily: Anybody in the Morris area that wants to go help Bradley with all of his calvings, be sure to do that.
Bradley: We have a lot of snow here yet and other portions of the upper Midwest do not, even Southern Minnesota doesn't have much snow. We still have snow on the ground and everything is frozen so it has not been fun. We just need warm weather and things will warm up so we can actually clean all the mess up from last calving season.
Emily: We'll be thinking of you. Today, I want to talk a little more about another area or specialty that you've been diving into the past few years here. Something that we've heard about both in scientific journals and the popular press and that is A2 milk. I feel like, Bradley, you've become the de facto A2 milk expert at the university. Let's start just very, very simple. What is A2 milk? Give me just the short quick answer.
Bradley: A2 is a protein in milk that is easily selected for and it claims to improve health, maybe lower the risk for disease. Studies maybe, maybe not have proven that, but there's a lot of interest in A2 milk because it has to deal with digestibility and digesting milk protein is the big one. We shouldn't get it confused with lactose. This isn't lactose deficiency. This is a different milk protein that people can select for.
Emily: We can maybe dive into this a little bit more in a little bit here, but if I'm correct, that yes there are people, consumers, that are lactose intolerant, but there can also be people who have an intolerance to the specific milk protein, to beta-casein, specifically the A1 form. What's the difference between A1 and A2 and what is the genetics behind that for cows?
Bradley: Well, it's pretty simple. In the protein in milk, it's either A1 or A2. It's pretty easy to distinguish that. You can do testing of milk. You can test animals, determine if they're A1 or A2. Like I said, it's really easy to determine in milk. You can figure out to select for that if you're a farmer or if you're a consumer of dairy products. People have been starting to put A2 labels on milk so you know that the milk only contains the A2 protein instead of the A1.
A long time ago, Emily, we went to this dairy in South Dakota that was marketing A2. Actually, it was not South Dakota. They had South Dakota and Iowa, I guess, that were marketing A2 milk in their herd in ice cream and other products. It's been around for a long time. There are some bigger companies in the US that are marketing A2 milk from specific farms in the US, but there's also been a lot of local interest in local farms.
There's some farms here in Minnesota that are marketing their milk as A2 and are selling a lot of product to people because people if they maybe have developed some digestive issues with just A1 protein and they can digest the A2 protein a little bit better. There's a lot of things that we probably don't even know about A2 milk yet and how it affects humans.
Emily: Well and I would say just from the consumer side and I'm a former dairy princess and that's a title that you never really move on from. I'm always encouraging the people in my life to drink cow's milk. Of course, everybody has their reasons or excuses and digestive upset is very much a common one. I think that this is just a nice technology, a nice thing to use to make cow's milk available to more people. I think that a lot of people actually have the sensitivity to A1 milk but think it's lactose intolerance and that's just anecdotal. I'm not a dietician, so don't take that for gospel.
I think that that's a really important piece of it. On the consumer side is that it just provides another option for consumers who are looking for milk and a good inexpensive source of protein and that has always been milk. Food dollar per grams of protein calculates out really, really nice on milk. I do imagine though that A2 milk is it sold at some sort of a premium like grass fed or organic milk would be?
Bradley: It is. There is a little bit of a premium on A2 milk. It's not as high as maybe organic or grass-fed or others, but it is a little more expensive than conventional milk in the stores. It does make it actually quite attractive for people if they aren't interested in paying a lot for grass-fed or organic or whatever it might be to actually try A2 milk. I don't think you or I are going to argue if people want to drink more milk, and if we give them different options, then that's better. It's better to have somebody drinking milk than not drinking milk.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. I'm somebody that I'm like, "We can make milk in every variety under the sun. As long as people are drinking cow's milk, that's what's important." Enough about the consumer side. I'm sure that our many faithful listeners are wondering more about, okay, but what does it take to have an A2 herd or to get A2 cows? Because like you mentioned, there are some genes expressed for A1 milk. Just briefly, do you want to run us through on the genetics side? If you want to move towards being all A2 milk, how do you do that? What breeding decisions are you needing to make? What does culling look like in that? Give us the brief genetics lesson.
Bradley: Well, it's genetics, man, I could talk about that all day.
Emily: That's why I said brief.
Bradley: We'll make it brief. There's a couple different things. One is breeds. If you think about most dairy breeds in the US obviously are Holstein. Holstein cattle have a higher percentage of A1 milk than A2. Holsteins might not be as good as other breeds and we'll think about that in a minute. There are other breeds that have a higher percentage of A2 genetics and that's, of course, the correct answer as usual. Jersey, Guernsey, Normandy, so the French dairy breed and Brown Swiss.
A lot of the colored breeds I guess have a higher percentage of A2 milk and they share the same ancestry. We said Jersey, Guernsey, Normandy, those are more channel island breeds close together. They probably share ancestry. Breeds number one. The other one is looking at bulls to use. People are breeding animals in their herd. You can get a test. You can get the bull tested. If you have say a herd bull, you can get them tested or if you're using AI, those A2 genetics will show up on the bulletproof, whether they're A1A1, whether they're A1A2, or whether they're A2A2. You'll be able to select for that. If you want to have more A2 genetics in your herd, you should be using the bulls that are A2A2.
Emily: I feel like we're back just with our basic Punnett square that-
Bradley: Exactly.
Emily: -if you want A2 calves, you need to breed an A2A2 animal to an A2A2 animal.
Bradley: Yes, you are.
Emily: In theory, you could get some A2 offspring or if there's A1 present, will they always be A1?
Bradley: If you have some A1A2 animals in your herd and you breed them to A2A2, not every time will you have A2A2. Sometimes you will have an A1 pop up. It's just the way it is unless you're going to start culling and testing to get rid of all A1 genetics in your herd.
Dr. Joe Armstrong: What's up, everybody? This is Dr. Joe Armstrong. I couldn't stay out of this episode. Just want to make a clarifying point here. If you have an animal that's A2A2, they'll produce all A2 milk. If you have an animal that's A1A1, they produce all A1 milk. If you have an animal that's A1A2, there is no dominance in this case so you'll have a cow that produces both A1 and A2 milk. That's why Brad and Emily are talking about the importance of A2A2 genetics rather than talking about this as a dominant or recessive trait because it's neither. Hopefully, that's helpful. Let's get back to it.
Emily: You mentioned bulls and I'm curious, is there a good availability of bulls from studs that are A2A2?
Bradley: Yes. If you look at most bulls that are available from AI nowadays, most of them are A2A2. There's a few that are A1A2, and not very many A1 bulls left anymore. I think, well, I looked up one time 10% of the Holstein breed as A1A1. There's a few in the top bulls that are still A1A1, but I think 60% are A2A2. It's growing and a lot of that has to do with consumer pressure and farmer pressure that they're just not going to use bulls that are not A2A2 anymore. It's growing. There's a lot of other breeds that are, Jersey, Guernsey. I think all Guernsey bulls in AI are A2A2. You can't find any other A1 genetics. Some of the breeds that are a little bit smaller are easy to push to A2A2, but like I said, it's increasing even in the Holstein breed.
Emily: It sounds like regardless of what breed you have, even if you do have Holsteins, sounds like it's likely that you have some A2 genetics on your farm no matter what.
Bradley: Right. We tested our cows and we can talk about testing too, and we tested our cows and we've never really selected for A2 genetics here over time and we have 60% of the cows in our herd are A2A2, and I haven't really put much emphasis on it until about lately
Emily: I have a table here that I'm looking at that you shared with me looking at the breakdown of your genetics at the dairy there in Morris, and I know the stat is a couple years old, so it's maybe a little bit different, but are you purposely breeding now for A2A2 or you were just testing everybody to see what they were?
Bradley: A few years ago, we tested everybody to see whether they were A1 or A2, and we still continued to test even all of our calves and everything now to see what their A2 status is. I do use bulls probably that are more A2A2, but it's not the only criteria. If there's a good bull that has top genetics and they're A1A2, I will still use them. I'm not 100% A2, but it will change over time. I think back to the last falls calf crop, and I didn't have any animals that were A1A1. Everything was either A2A2 or A1A2. It's starting to weed out the A1 genetics in our herd.
Emily: Again, I'm looking at this table and the thing that's jumping out with me, and you said how A2A2 has really risen to prominence, what would you say, in the past decade or so?
Bradley: Yes.
Emily: Couple of decades?
Bradley: Yes.
Emily: Yes. We've discussed before that they're in Morris, you do have a herd of Holsteins that are 1964 genetic. I'm just curious and of course, again, I have this table in front of me so I can see how many of those cows you have and how many are A2A2 and it's a smaller percentage than some of your other groups, like your other Holsteins and your cross spreads and that. Have you noticed much with that doing the 1964 herd? Can you find any sires for that herd that are A2A2?
Bradley: There are some, but with the old Holstein genetics, there's about 25% of them are still A1A1. It's an interesting across time how A2 has increased in the breed. These animals are, I don't even know, 60 years old. Their genetics are 60 years old or more.
Emily: Right. The animals themselves are not 60, the genetics.
Bradley: The animals are not 60 years old, but their genetics are. Right.
Emily: That would be amazing.
Bradley: It would be, I would keep those around any day. A lot of genetics back then were A1A1 and as we've increased for milk production and increased actually for fat and protein, we've taken out that A1 genetics in the herd and there's just a high-- Those animals from long ago have a higher percentage than Holstein's today, and most of that is through genetic selection, how we've selected for A2 in the breed. It's coming along and I think at some point the whole herd will be A2A2 if I actually selected for it and got rid of the A1 genetics.
Emily: Now I know that A2 is specifically tied to this specific protein that's in the milk, the beta-casein. I'm curious, have you seen or do you know of any research that shows, are there any productivity differences between cows that are A2A2 and A1A2, and just A1, or that is all based on other management decisions or do any of these A2 genetics have any impact on production or productive life?
Bradley: Ooh, funny that you should ask. Actually, we did a study with Penn State University actually looking at oh, I don't even know. We collected data on 3,000 Holstein cows. We just did with Holsteins, we didn't do it with other breeds, but we found that the A1A1 animals have less protein production, they have lower productive life and left's lifetime profitability than if they're A2A2. There is maybe something there as far as productivity if you select for A2A2.
We didn't find any difference in health of those animals, but interesting we found that the animals that were A1A1 did not stay around in the herd very long. Most of that we feel is due to animals being culled when the farmer figured out that they were A1A1 genetics. We think there's a little bias in there, a little farmer bias in there that farmers are culling cows when they figure out what to test. [crosstalk]
Emily: Farmers don't have biases. What are you talking about?
Bradley: I know. I even have my bias sometimes too, so.
Emily: Oh, you don't say. There is some data that could suggest that there may be some better productivity there, it sounds like, especially, excuse me, in terms of protein. Yes, I wonder too, how many of these cows are culled just because they're only A1 genetics?
Bradley: It might have been easier to cull these cows like, oh, well, she's high somatic cell, oh, she's A1A1 too, time to go.
Emily: Right. When you're looking for that one more reason to cull them and you're like, �Ah, she's A1, on the truck.� I get that. All right.
Bradley: There's something there, but that was just whether they were A1A1. If they were A1A2, we didn't find any difference between animals, whether A1A2 or A2A2, there was no big difference. There had to be totally A1A1 to see that lower productivity. Maybe there is something there. I need a lot more animals to do that with to actually see if it's true across all sort of animals. Yes, it's interesting.
Emily: I feel like we're wrapping up this conversation here, but I'm just curious, what would you like to see next or do next as far as A2 milk is concerned? Is it more research on the differences between A1 and A2 cows and their productivity? Is it more on the health and the human nutrition side with A2 milk? What do you feel like is the next step?
Bradley: Well, I think it's interesting to look more into the certain aspects of the milk. Fat and protein are obviously important, but maybe fatty acids. Is there differences in fatty acids and cheese-making ability of A1A2? Then that gets into obviously human consumption. It'd be interesting to do a test with milk that's A1A1 or A2A2 with humans to see if there's any improvement in gut health. Maybe the microbiome of the human gut might be interesting to look at. Obviously, those are way out of my realm of studies. I am not a human researcher. Those would be interesting. At least carrying on to human aspects to see if there is something there on A1A2 and we want it to improve the image of the dairy industry. Anything that we can find that gets people to drink more milk or consume more dairy products if they can, that's a positive. I think there's a lot of stuff out there that we'll see and coming in the future related to A1 or A2.
Emily: I think that's about a wrap there. Bradley, do you have any closing thoughts on A2 milk before we wrap things up?
Bradley: If you're a farmer and you want to know more about A2 genetics in your herd, you have to test your animals. That's the only way you'll be able to tell, is to test your animals. You can't assume that just because you're using an A2 bull that you have A2 cows, Testing is number 1 and that's what I tell all the farmers that I work with is you have to test your animals to know for sure. It's inexpensive, it's pretty cheap. That's what we should do.
Emily: Yes. You heard it straight from Bradley J. Hines, everyone. If you have any questions, comments, scathing rebuttals, or regaling tales of your own journey with A2 milk, you can always send those to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Bradley: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: Nice work, Bradley.
Bradley: [chuckles]
Emily: Also, don't forget we do have a voicemail now so you can call in with any questions or comments you have about the show. That number is 612-624-3610. You can also find us on Twitter @UMNnewsroom and @UMNFarmSafety and you can find Bradley on Instagram @UMNWCROCDairy, or did I put the letters in the wrong order?
Bradley: Correct.
Emily: Okay, I got it. [chuckles] Wonderful. As always, you can find more information on our website extension.umn.edu. You can find an article about A2 milk that Brad wrote on there. We can also probably talk Joe into getting the link to that in the show notes for this episode. Thank you again all for joining us. I believe next time we will have Dr. Joe back. I'm sure you've all been pining after him, as have we. We will see you all next time. Bye.
Bradley: Bye.
Emily: Wow, that was the most chipper bye you've had in a long time. I'm so proud of you.
Bradley: Feeling good today. Say a herd bull. Say a, say a, say a herd bull, say a herd bull. Say a, say a, say a herd bull.
[cow mooing]
[00:22:32] [END OF AUDIO]

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