The Moos Room™

00;00;58;25 - 00;01;34;14
Brad
And welcome to The Moos Room. Brad here today again by myself. But we'll forge on with some interesting topics, that I wanted to discuss today and in the nutrition and feeding world. So the research project that I'm going to talk about, that we did here at our research center, actually won an award about two weeks ago at the Natural Products Expo West show in Anaheim, California, which is attended by over 600 people.

00;01;34;16 - 00;02;09;25
Brad
It's kind of dubbed as the Organic Oscars, so they present many different awards. And we were actually the most impactful research finding. And so this award recognizes the research result that excites and motivates consumers the most, as well as retailers, food service and restaurant people to choose maybe a little bit better climate smart type products. So what are we going to talk about today?

00;02;09;26 - 00;02;36;02
Brad
Well, we're going to talk about a project that we did here within the last year. I've maybe hinted at a little bit on it, but we do have all of the results. And it's a product that we use to help reduce methane emissions. And it was asparagus this tax performance. So it's better known as red seaweed. And I wanted to go through all of the stuff that we found from emissions data to production.

00;02;36;04 - 00;03;02;05
Brad
We took a lot of other samples. We actually did it based panel on the milk from the cows at our research center. So we've got a full, extensive study happening here. And then maybe touch on another study that a colleague that I work with at the University of New Hampshire does with feeding Eglin and what they found in their herd by feeding that product.

00;03;02;09 - 00;03;30;19
Brad
Like I said, we started feeding red seaweed to our cows as a way to really reduce methane emissions. And I think that was the goal. Obviously, there was a lot of interest in carbon credits and reducing methane emissions. And we tried to see if that would happen. So we worked with a company called CIM brochure. It's a clean tech startup from Hawaii that is producing seaweed there.

00;03;30;19 - 00;04;04;25
Brad
And this product is called Sea Graze. It's a freeze dried asparagus. This tech's a pharmacy. And really, it's like any other seaweeds that you might see off the coast of the Atlantic. A lot of people have felt a lot of people have said kelp before. And if you look at the nutrient analysis, it's about 28% protein, 20% crude fiber, got some calcium in it, iodine, phosphorus, potassium, a lot of minerals.

00;04;04;25 - 00;04;40;24
Brad
There's a lot of nutrients in the seaweed. So we fed it at about two ounces per cow per day in our herd. So we had two groups of cows. One group was fed no seaweed and the other group was fed seaweed. And we wanted to look at many different aspects to this. So we first started out in early July and started feeding it as just including it in the diet as a low level to make sure that they ate the seaweed in the ration.

00;04;40;27 - 00;05;02;15
Brad
We fed it at a low level to make sure that they would eat the seaweed, because obviously seaweed has been known to reduce dry matter intake in cows. So we wanted to adjust these cows quite slowly before we got up to the full dose of about two ounces per head per day. Now we actually fed it on a bromo form level.

00;05;02;15 - 00;05;29;29
Brad
So this red seaweed and other seaweeds have bromo form. That is the compound that helps reduce methane emissions. We fed it at 200mg of bromo form per head per day on a dry matter basis. So that's what we were trying to do, was to make sure that we consistently had 200mg of bromo form in these cows, and we collected milk production.

00;05;29;29 - 00;05;53;28
Brad
We collected sensor data, fatty acid profiles. We took a lot of blood samples. We took rumen samples, milk samples. And we'll talk all about this as we go forward. So the main goal obviously was to collect methane emissions. And we did that with a green feed system. So what is a green feed. Well a cow walks in to this machine.

00;05;54;01 - 00;06;22;08
Brad
It has a little bait there. So feed pellets that drop. And as the cow is eating these pellets it can exhale. And you want the cow to be in there for about two minutes to get at least some good methane emissions data. Our green feed also collects CO2, oxygen and hydrogen emissions from these cows, so we get pretty extensive emissions data out of this green feed.

00;06;22;11 - 00;06;49;25
Brad
One early thing that we found was there's a lot of variation in methane for cows. Not every cow is the same. They are low in the morning, high in the evening. We found differences between first lactation cows and the older cows. The first lactation cows have less variation in methane than the older cows do. Not every cow, like I said, is the same.

00;06;49;25 - 00;07;12;18
Brad
Not every cow has the same methane emissions. Some are low, some are a little bit higher than others. So going into that, we knew that we were going to have some variation in methane. Well, so what did we find as we collected all of this information on this stuff? If you think about it from a methane perspective. So we kind of broke our study up.

00;07;12;18 - 00;07;42;07
Brad
This was a six month study. So we went from July through the end of January basically to determine methane emissions. Not very many studies that are collecting methane data go six months. Many are very short 6090 days. And they they stop. But for us, we wanted to do six months to see what would happen. Well, during the first, maybe month of the study, we didn't see much difference in reduction of methane.

00;07;42;10 - 00;08;04;29
Brad
Obviously, the cows had to adjust to eating the seaweed the first couple of weeks, they maybe had quite a bit of reduction in dry matter intake. They just didn't like the feed that had the seaweed in it. But once they got used to it, they ate it a little bit better. We mixed it in with their grain mix so they would be a little more palatable for the cows.

00;08;05;05 - 00;08;33;06
Brad
Towards the middle of the study, maybe about three months in now we see a big reduction in methane, about 40% reduction in methane emissions from these cows that control cows that did not get any seaweed were about 325g per day. The cows that had the seaweed about 175g per cow per day. So a drastic reduction in methane emissions.

00;08;33;06 - 00;09;04;08
Brad
And we see this lowering of methane throughout probably the last part of the study. But maybe right at the very end, methane emissions aren't much lower than the control cows. So did they. Are the cows adjusting back again? The control cows had a little bit less methane as well as we went through the season. So maybe as we change feeds in the winter time, it can affect methane emissions on those cows.

00;09;04;11 - 00;09;34;25
Brad
But at six months we didn't find methane to be any different. Overall across the study, about a 30% reduction in methane emissions. Well, what about carbon dioxide? No difference in carbon dioxide emissions between the cows that were on seaweed or not. Seaweed. Our cows are emitting about 10,000g of carbon dioxide per day on average across this study. Now, towards the end of the study, we see a drastic increase.

00;09;34;25 - 00;09;58;27
Brad
The last couple of weeks of the study, huge increases in carbon dioxide for the cows that were on sea grazing oxygen. Not much difference. Again, towards the end of the study. Big increases in oxygen for those cows, but not much of a difference. Throughout the whole study for oxygen, I wouldn't expect there to be much. Cows are averaging about 8000g of oxygen emissions per day.

00;09;58;27 - 00;10;28;22
Brad
Now. Hydrogen. That was very interesting during the early part of the study. No difference. We didn't see any difference. We're pretty low levels of hydrogen grams per day, less than one gram per cow. Towards the middle of the study. Now where we see this big reduction in methane, now we see hydrogen go up quite significantly. And towards the end of the study, probably seven times higher hydrogen in the cows with seaweed compared to the cows that didn't have any seaweed.

00;10;28;24 - 00;10;56;06
Brad
So as methane went down, hydrogen production went up in these cows. And we would expect to see that. That's kind of what happens as as the methane or as the seaweed is inhibiting the methane, the cows are producing a little more hydrogen in their gut. Okay. So what about some of the other parameters. So we see that cows have lower methane higher hydrogen concentrations.

00;10;56;06 - 00;11;22;10
Brad
So it's good about 30% less methane reduction. Well what about other things. Body weight. No difference in body weight. We didn't see much difference. Our cows weighed about the same from the beginning till the end on the study. But an interesting fact that the body condition score was slightly higher in the cows that were fed seaweed 2.97 versus 2.82.

00;11;22;12 - 00;11;50;15
Brad
So a little bit higher. Maybe they were mobilizing their nutrients a little bit differently and putting that on its fat compared to the cows that didn't have seaweed. We also measured rumination and eating time. So rumination time, although not different, it was numerically lower by about 20 minutes per day. The eating time was much lower about 50 minutes.

00;11;50;15 - 00;12;19;07
Brad
So almost an hour less per day. Those cows were eating for milk production. Fat, protein, no difference. Cows were. These are late lactation cows. So they were about 30 pounds of milk for both of the groups. We're running for three fats, three for protein. So no difference in production at all. Somatic cell count no difference. Muns no difference.

00;12;19;09 - 00;12;46;19
Brad
So really no difference in production which was kind of surprising actually considering you have possibly less intake that we'll talk about in a second. We looked at fatty acid profiles of these cows. No difference in fatty acid profiles for any of the de novo fatty acids. Mixed preform. We also looked at cow 18. So the CLS no difference in fatty acid profiles for these cows at all.

00;12;46;19 - 00;13;20;14
Brad
So that's good. We found no difference in milk production or fat or anything. Well what about dry matter intake. That is probably the biggest thing that we see. So we measure dry matter intake. Cows are consuming about 22 to 25 kilos per day in dry matter. So 40, maybe 37, 38 pounds of dry matter. The cows that were fed seaweed had about five kilos less in dry matter intake, so 10 pounds less dry matter intake across the six month time period.

00;13;20;16 - 00;13;41;23
Brad
Now that's pretty significant. If you have lower intake and the same amount of milk production, that means those cows were probably more efficient when they were fed the seaweed. So that was an interesting find. That intake would lower, but we would expect that the seaweed probably has some effect where it lowers intake in the cows, but it didn't really thin.

00;13;41;25 - 00;14;13;18
Brad
It really didn't affect their milk production for these late lactation cows. Now, if you slice and dice methane and in a few other parameters, you'll find that the cows that were fed seaweed had obviously less methane per cow per day, less dry matter intake. So that means they had less methane per pound of dry matter intake. They had less methane per pound of combined fat and protein, less methane per pound of milk.

00;14;13;20 - 00;14;41;17
Brad
So these cows were all producing less methane per pound of milk production and per pound of dry matter intake. So they were just more efficient when they were on the seaweed. So we found lots of good things about the production parameters lower diameter intake, same production. What about some of the parameters in the milk. So we measured milk bromide bromo form and iodine in the milk to see.

00;14;41;19 - 00;15;09;00
Brad
Obviously the bromo form translates into bromide in the milk and the sea graze cows or the cows that were fed seaweed had a much higher level of bromide in their milk, 17 versus one and a half nanograms per liter. That's quite significant. So a lot more bromide in the milk and a lot more iodine 473 versus 394. So higher iodine levels.

00;15;09;07 - 00;15;32;24
Brad
And we'll talk about what all that means here in a little bit. We also found higher bromide levels in the urine of a cow. So the bromide was being transformed in the cow and was being emitted as urine and in the milk. We also found more bromide in the liver of these cows in some of meat samples that we took.

00;15;32;24 - 00;16;04;23
Brad
So it is a little bit higher in those cows that were fed seaweed. Now, we looked at a lot of blood parameters and some other liver, liver parameters, and we didn't find much difference in all of them. We looked at Nephros and BHB and Blood Urea Nitrogens. We didn't find hardly any difference in any of the metabolites, especially liver metabolites, where we were measuring mineral content that we just didn't find any difference, which I guess you could say what's good.

00;16;04;25 - 00;16;41;12
Brad
We also looked at the microbiome of these cows. So we took some rumen samples out. So we took some rumen samples about once a month on some of these cows, to see how their rumen environment and the room and microbiome would change across time. And it did. There was quite a bit of difference if you look at diversity in the room, and there was less diverse sort of bacteria or microbiome in the cows that were fed c graze compared to the cows that were fed control.

00;16;41;14 - 00;17;05;18
Brad
And we see some of the different bacteria species. A methanol bacteria was one that was higher in cows that were not fed seaweed, which indicates that the C graze was actually doing what it was supposed to do, and it was lowering the the methane in the rumen, and it was changing these methane or bacteria in the rumen to really reduce that methane level.

00;17;05;18 - 00;17;34;20
Brad
And we're just finishing up some of the microbiome stuff. Granted, I am not a microbiologist, so trying to understand some of these things can be challenging. But I do understand that it was lower and it was changing the room and microbiome as the cows went through this study. So what about the sensory panel at the end? So we wanted to find out, does the consumption of seaweed by dairy cows affect the sensory quality of milk they produce.

00;17;34;22 - 00;18;03;21
Brad
And is this meaningful. Doesn't mean anything. Well it's kind of difficult to say that was there really any difference in the milk? There was maybe an indication that the seaweed cows had more balanced and more fullness and a stronger mouthfeel than the cows that were fed control milk. The cows that were fed, control milk maybe had a little bit more aftertaste, more mouthfeel.

00;18;03;24 - 00;18;31;09
Brad
Well, that's because they were being fed. You know, this was not this was pasteurized, but it was not homogenized. So these people that did this taste panel were drinking 4.5% fat milk and 3%, 3.6% protein. So maybe they weren't used to that, but we didn't necessarily find it wasn't a detriment by feeding seaweed to these cows. And it didn't have an effect on milk taste.

00;18;31;12 - 00;19;11;00
Brad
But did it help? Probably not. So what does this mean on a milk production basis? Well, if you look at it from a bromide consumption, the idea is can you drink this meal from cows that are fed seaweed? And does it affect humans? Because at high bromide levels you probably shouldn't drink that. However, we found for adults you would have to consume about 317oz per cow per day to have any real effect on bromide, and that's about a couple gallons per day of milk.

00;19;11;00 - 00;19;42;14
Brad
So this is per day as well. Newborns maybe would be a lot less 35oz per day. So and newborns definitely. You probably shouldn't feed milk to cows that were fed seaweed. Obviously milk is pooled at the processor, so it kind of gets diluted throughout. But if you were just feeding milk a newborn with milk from cows that were fed seaweed, I probably wouldn't do it because the bromide levels might be too high for a newborn.

00;19;42;14 - 00;20;07;14
Brad
But adults? No problem, no problem. You'd have to consume a lot of milk per day to do that. So in the end, we really found that we can reduce methane emissions without the loss of milk production in these cows, which makes them more efficient. So that was an interesting study that we we found and, and will be maybe exploring some of more products like this.

00;20;07;16 - 00;20;34;29
Brad
And let's talk about agile in. So that's one of the other products, one of the other products that are out there, that people are exploring. And Eglin. So what is it? It's it's from all tech. It's a proprietary blend of essential oils that you can add to animal feed to help improve, maybe their, their efficiency and there's maybe some anecdotal evidence about increasing milk production.

00;20;34;29 - 00;21;03;04
Brad
So this study was done at the University of New Hampshire by Andre Brito. And he wanted to look at does supplementing Egg Line help improve production performance. And what does it do to methane emissions. So they did this in Jersey. Cows over a ten week time period. Some of the period was in confinement. So at about five weeks in confinement, about five weeks in grazing and looked at all of these parameters.

00;21;03;04 - 00;21;43;15
Brad
So during the confinement period they fed grass balayage to these cows with some concentrates, maybe a little bit less grass bale age as they moved to pasture because they were getting more of their intake from pasture, but kept the concentrate, blend and Eglinton at the same level. So what did they find? Well, if you look at the TMR intake, didn't find any difference in dry matter intake for these cows whether they were fed a control diet or AG pasture intake was the same as well, right around 13 pounds of dry matter from pasture, 33 pounds from the TMR.

00;21;43;16 - 00;22;12;01
Brad
So no difference in dry matter intake. When you look at across these time periods, there was maybe a little bit more intake when they went to pasture, but that's expected. But really no difference in dry matter intake for these cows. What about milk production? Now here we see some differences in milk production. We see about a 3 pound increase in milk production for the cows that were fed again compared to cows that were not.

00;22;12;01 - 00;22;37;23
Brad
If you look at it on a fat corrected milk basis, these cows fed AG line were about 78 pounds of milk. Cows fed the control diet, 72. So six more pounds of fat corrected milk for cows that were fed again compared to no eagle if you milk pounds per dry matter intake, obviously you're going to get more milk per pound of dry matter intake that these cows consumed.

00;22;37;26 - 00;23;11;18
Brad
And that is quite astonishing that you can get six more pounds of fat corrected milk. So that's a good thing. Well, what about fat production? We also see fat production higher in cows that were fed AG line up in the confinement period 3.2 pounds of fat versus 3.0 during the pasture period, 3.0 pounds of fat versus 2.87. So higher milk fat per day for cows that were fed AG line compared to cows that were not.

00;23;11;18 - 00;23;41;28
Brad
So you get higher milk production and higher fat production with these cows that were fed. AG. If you look at it from a methane perspective, you know, they didn't really find much difference in methane production. They didn't see a lowering of methane. Maybe if you look at methane per kilo of fat corrected milk, you might have seen a little bit lower for the cows that were fed AG line compared to the cows that were not, but really no difference in methane production.

00;23;41;28 - 00;24;13;02
Brad
So the conclusion that New Hampshire had from this study was the, again, increased milk production, fat corrected milk and milk fat, which has pretty much huge economic implications to that. I know we have started exploring feeding some angle in here as well. It can be very expensive. You know, a 40 pound bag, $2,400. It is very expensive, but you feed such a small amount that 40 pounds will probably last most of the year.

00;24;13;04 - 00;24;38;28
Brad
And right now there are some carbon credits on feeding eagle in, especially for organic producers. So you get pretty good carbon credits. So there might be some advantages for feeding ag or organic dairy herds, and especially for conventional ones. Obviously, the carbon credit payments aren't as high, but you'll you'll get some carbon credits. So hopefully you learned a little bit today about a couple of the supplementation.

00;24;38;29 - 00;25;09;01
Brad
I know there's been other ones that have been out there. We talk about bovada and people are looking at different cashew nuts to see if we can lower methane emissions. There's many different products out there, but I wanted to give you an idea on some of the products that we fed, red seaweed and Eglin and what promise they may have for the future of the, the dairy industry to not only to reduce methane emissions, but actually improve milk and fat.

00;25;09;03 - 00;25;37;13
Brad
So with that, I think we'll end today. And if you have any comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals, please feel free to contact me at the Moose Room. That's CMO s r o m at u n edu or find us on the web at Rock Dairy or University of Minnesota Extension. With that, a great day. But.