The Moos Room™

00;01;01;03 - 00;01;13;20
Brad
Welcome to The Moos Room, Brad here. We have a special guest as well. Today we have Doctor Kirby Krogstad from the Ohio State University. So welcome, Kirby.

00;01;13;22 - 00;01;20;09
Kirby
Thank you. Thank you. And for the record, I might be one of the few Buckeyes that only says Ohio State. I always forget.

00;01;20;11 - 00;01;47;01
Brad
And I know we get we get in trouble with that with people from Ohio State University that go there. But we we will claim you. Obviously Kirby is originally from Yoder, Minnesota. So from southeast Minnesota. Like I am so a good Minnesota native went to Sdsu, got his bachelor's there and Ms. from Lincoln University of Nebraska and then a PhD at Michigan state.

00;01;47;02 - 00;01;49;11
Brad
So you've kind of been all over the US.

00;01;49;11 - 00;02;05;22
Kirby
It's been a good experience. I joke when I was in my undergrad, you know, I went from South Dakota State down I-29 to Lincoln, and then I actually interviewed with Doctor Bradford while he was at Kansas State. And so I was, oh, going to be the I-29 education, right. Just keep going south. But then he went to MSU and I had the great opportunity to go over there with him.

00;02;05;22 - 00;02;06;11
Kirby
So it's been fun.

00;02;06;11 - 00;02;13;13
Brad
Yeah. And he's a good guy. He's a great nutritional physiologist I think is what what he would be considered. And yeah, he's one of.

00;02;13;13 - 00;02;16;02
Kirby
The one of the good researchers. Sure.

00;02;16;05 - 00;02;33;00
Brad
But Kirby, he's you are working in dairy nutrition research and extension at Ohio State. And today we really wanted to talk about rumen gut health and some of the recent research that you've been working on there. And so tell us a little bit about what you're doing.

00;02;33;01 - 00;02;51;29
Kirby
So it started for me, actually, I like to tell this story because I think this goes back to where the interest in dairy cow nutrition came from. But, so I did I did grow up in southeast Minnesota, but I also my dad also milked cows in South Dakota. And I remember I would I would live with him in the summers, and we had a summer where we had, a trip over the weekend.

00;02;51;29 - 00;03;12;15
Kirby
So we left for the weekend, and I had my show cow in the barn. Right. Every kid has their show cow they're proud of. And, we left for three days. And like any small dairymen, we we're milking 330, 340 cows. Came back to a, a bunch of problems. So came back Monday morning, and we had sick cows and we had a couple of dead cows that popped up, and we never really figured it out, but they had bloody gut and we cut them open.

00;03;12;15 - 00;03;27;03
Kirby
You know, they had hemorrhagic bowels, what it looked like. And and, you know, we checked mycotoxins, we checked diets, you know, it was summer. So there's some heat stress and and we never really figured it out. I think ever since then I was curious about how we feed cows or manage cows to optimize the health of that GI tract.

00;03;27;06 - 00;03;52;15
Kirby
And so that's kind of where it goes back to ultimately. And so then when I got to Doctor Bradford's lab, I started thinking a lot about diet from an ability and ration formulation, effective fiber, starch, things like that, and how that all factors into a good diet. And so we reviewed a bunch of data and we wrote a little mini review on that, trying to understand if the amount of carbohydrate or the amount of starch in the diet is related to any of those general systemic inflammatory markers that have become measured.

00;03;52;15 - 00;04;12;26
Kirby
So often and get talked about a great deal, because we thought perhaps, maybe if we're pushing a lot of starch through these cows, maybe we do have some kind of stress or inflammation. But in that paper, we didn't. We didn't observe any, systemic pattern. We didn't observe anything consistent. But there's a limited data set. And so we kind of took that and we noodled over it and we thought, what are the limitations here?

00;04;12;29 - 00;04;30;17
Kirby
And so we ran another study to try to look at, the rumen tissue more directly. So instead of just taking a blood sample. Right. There's a lot of things you can find there, but there's a lot of things you don't know. And so we wanted to do a study, and we, we did an acidosis challenge type experiment where we fed what I would consider kind of a normal diet.

00;04;30;17 - 00;04;53;21
Kirby
It was a 24% forage andf diet based on corn silage and halo, kind of typical Great Lakes whiskey and Minnesota type diet and about 26% starch, all that dry ground corn. But then we switched those cows to a diet with wheat and barley, and we substituted the wheat and barley for the forage. So we took out a bunch of forage, added a bunch of really fermentable grain to try to disrupt that barrier.

00;04;53;23 - 00;05;03;09
Kirby
And, so yeah, that's an interesting study. Our herd manager at Michigan State was really worried about it. He's like, oh God, we're going to have diarrhea all over, you know, all kinds of issues, right?

00;05;03;09 - 00;05;23;09
Brad
Yeah. And I think that's one thing that people think about is we're so used to feeding, you know, corn silage and hail edge and, and just corn grain. When you talk about switching to a different grain, people go, whoa, I don't really know how to feed that or what it can do to the cow. So it's it's always a challenge trying to figure out some different outside of the norm feed stuff.

00;05;23;09 - 00;05;23;17
Brad
Yeah.

00;05;23;17 - 00;05;38;26
Kirby
I mean, I think we get so used to the, the unknown and like, in this case, like I said, we get used to these really good forages, high quality forage because we're blessed around the Great Lakes in the Midwest to have those resources. But the folks in like the West and Southwest, they've gotten really good at feeding low forage rations.

00;05;38;28 - 00;06;03;24
Kirby
And so it's not a, you know, you can do it well. And in this case, when we did that, our forage in the F went from 24 down to 16. And so we're kind of worried. We're like a little low. We're going to have some milk fat depression some acidosis, all this stuff. Well when the study got done the cows that were on that acidosis acidosis challenge diet I say in quotations, they were they actually made more milk, they made more milk fat yield and more milk protein.

00;06;03;24 - 00;06;20;09
Kirby
And so we didn't actually push the room in as far as we thought we did. But the goal was to look at that tissue, right? We wanted to really get down to that tissue. And so when we feed those hotter diets, what we observed was, first of all, the the tissue structure kind of shifted, the what we would call the, lamina propria.

00;06;20;09 - 00;06;37;11
Kirby
It's kind of the where all the blood vessels are. Right. It's all the machinery. It's under the main barrier of the rumen with the room and fluid that, that grew pretty dramatically. So maybe more blood flow or, or something growing out going on. But then the protective barriers, the that kind of keep the room and separate from the room and fluid, those thinned a little bit.

00;06;37;14 - 00;06;58;08
Kirby
Oh really. Yeah. And so that was kind of the that's the first experiment. It's kind of the direction our team is going. But so we did see this rumen wall change when we changed that diet changed the amount of ferment ability in there, but not to the point where it's dramatic. So then I go back to that story with my cow at my dad's is like, okay, if we if we thin the room and wall, is that almost like a risk factor?

00;06;58;11 - 00;07;01;02
Kirby
And I don't I don't know if it is. This is I'm just kind of throwing.

00;07;01;02 - 00;07;03;12
Brad
Things right, right, right. Exactly who.

00;07;03;14 - 00;07;24;23
Kirby
And so perhaps that's a risk factor if you stack a stressor on her, if you give her heat stress or if she's got milk fever or something, then perhaps she's at risk for some more generalized insult or some inflammatory challenge. And, yeah. So that was kind of what started it. And we've continued some of that now at Ohio State, but it's a really intriguing area.

00;07;24;25 - 00;07;53;21
Brad
Yeah. And it's I think it's one of the things that we might not think about a lot is gut health and how actually gut health can either help or hurt the cows in the future. You know, it's kind of the same with the humans. A lot of it goes back to the gut. And if you throw, like you said, a stress on top of it, heat, stress or some other challenge disease, challenge, mastitis, you name it, things can go downhill really fast.

00;07;53;23 - 00;08;13;05
Brad
And it really it goes back to the gut and and that's I think the important part that in my mind, I think that we forget about sometimes is that, oh, the cow had heat stress or the cow had this and we see this, but it really goes back to that rumen and that. That's the machinery of the cow and where we can see everything and change everything.

00;08;13;08 - 00;08;28;26
Kirby
Oh yeah. Absolutely. And I think the hard part from, you know, from an academic perspective is we're both academics sitting here doing this conversation is we want to answer those questions, but they're just they're hard to answer. So I always I had a a conversation with a few nutritionists from the West and the southwest on this kind of topic.

00;08;28;26 - 00;08;44;06
Kirby
And, and they were asking great questions, but then eventually you just got to be like, we don't know, like we have some idea that, like the one we always know, if you increase starch, room and pH is going to go down a little bit and the room and PFAs are going to change a little bit, and fecal pH might even change a little bit.

00;08;44;08 - 00;09;04;04
Kirby
But in my mind, none of that necessarily is bad. It's just another metric. And what so do we know if, reduced room and to a certain degree is a bad thing? Probably eventually. I think anyone with good sense would say that's going to be an issue for that animal's health. But what to what magnitude? And I don't think we have that really worked out very well.

00;09;04;06 - 00;09;24;10
Brad
Well, and it's interesting because I think if you if you think about it from across the US up here, obviously in in the Midwest where we both are, corn silage, hail and corn make up the most of most of their dairy ration because that's what we grow well here. But if you go, you know, I spent a lot of time in California out there.

00;09;24;10 - 00;09;47;21
Brad
They're feeding wheat silage and a lot different forages. Obviously there's a lot of byproducts. Yeah. And holes and you name it out there. So how does how can we use some of those different feedstuffs to actually improve the gut health to the question I always ponder myself is, do we always have to feed corn silage? And hey, is there something else?

00;09;47;24 - 00;10;01;02
Kirby
Right? I, I think that's an awesome question. And it's one that I always sit in here like, oh, we do that because we get good economic amounts of feed, right? We get great tonnage. And it's it's cheap. Right. And it's good quality. I mean, corn silage, good ingredient, but it is not the only game in town. Right.

00;10;01;02 - 00;10;18;16
Kirby
We got a lot of options. That's the best part about ruminants. We could feed them left, right and center and they'll make something work. I think there was a a professor, doctor Almond Tano, I think, was the one the quote was attributed to. But he's like, you could feed a cow peanut butter. And as long as she got the rest of her nutrients, she'd be fine.

00;10;18;16 - 00;10;34;25
Kirby
Right? Right. And so I was like, you know, I think that's that's the way I think about it. It's like when we go out west, those non forage fiber sources are excellent sources of of providing a little bit of fiber to that cow, keeping that rumen healthy. And we actually just did a study here at Ohio State, where we fed a low forage ration.

00;10;34;25 - 00;10;54;03
Kirby
So I was saying that, in that first project to Michigan State, we're looking at diets like 17 forage in the F and 24 forage in the US. And those are the bookends of what the textbook would say is optimal. That's the high, low end of optimal. So then I'm like, what if we do a 12th forage. And yeah, so just drop the bottom out of it, feed a diet that only had a third of it as forage.

00;10;54;03 - 00;11;13;28
Kirby
So we had a little bit of corn silage, a little bit of hay, like a little bit of grass hay. And we wanted to find out how much starch we could feed in that diet and replacing it with a non forage fiber byproduct, like talking about. And so like when we're feeding enough forage we know that we can push that starch level up 2830 32% and get a lot of really good milk out of that cow.

00;11;14;00 - 00;11;37;15
Kirby
Like we saw in that first study I talked about. But in this case, when we do that in the low forage diet, we increased starch from 20 to 30. Our milk fat went from 3.95 to 3.2, and our energy corrected milk went from 53 kilos down to 46. And so. Right. Those context matters. So in that case in that low forage ration, those non forage fiber sources are an excellent way to balance out that rumen not to the gut health.

00;11;37;15 - 00;12;01;29
Kirby
Part of that question. We we are still measuring but we did do some systemic inflammation markers and we didn't see any systemic inflammation in these cows that that's really abnormal. Really weird diet. So even I think what I've been trying to remind producers is like, if you have forage quality issues, if you had a drought, if you had a flood, if you just have mycotoxins issues, you don't have to feed 18% forage.

00;12;01;29 - 00;12;11;24
Kirby
And if there's ways to feed these cows where you can dilute out that problem, feed and bring in things like a soy hollow beet pulp, DPG, even in some cases, and make that work.

00;12;11;27 - 00;12;36;22
Brad
So let's talk about one of my favorite topics or, or or some. So if you don't know, I follow you. I read your LinkedIn. Kirby's very, out there on LinkedIn. He even has a Substack. So I like to know because I'm not a nutritionist by training. So I, I try to be dangerous, but I try to catch up with the nutrition world.

00;12;36;24 - 00;13;09;03
Brad
So why not? One of the recent, obviously, methane or environmental gases is always a concern with farmers. And so what do we think about that? And how can we sort of use the nutrition of a cow or the diet of a cow to help, you know, dare I say, reduce methane emissions? Because if we talk about reducing methane emissions, there comes a whole host of other things that we might not want intended consequences decrease dry matter intake, right?

00;13;09;06 - 00;13;16;16
Brad
We can change the profile of the milk. There's just a lot of things or I think there's a balance in there somewhere. But yeah, I agree.

00;13;16;18 - 00;13;32;12
Kirby
Certainly a balance exists and I appreciate it. I appreciate the shameless plug for my newsletter, some writing. Thank you for that. I, I think, you know, on this methane question, we have a lot of tools at our disposal, like just nutritional ones. We've talked a lot about starch on this conversation. That's actually one of the tools we have.

00;13;32;15 - 00;13;53;05
Kirby
If we want to push more dietary starch into that cow, we can reduce her methane footprint, especially on a like per kilo of dry matter intake, but also on an absolute level. But it's probably only going to be like five, eight, 10% depending on how much starch you push through that cow. But we've talked about all the risks that go along with that is if you go too far, we're going to lose milk fat eventually.

00;13;53;05 - 00;14;11;01
Kirby
You just will eventually just lose milk fat. And you could risk ruminant acidosis and you could risk some gut health issues that we're still working on defining. Right. What would happen to the rumen or the hind gut in that environment? You know, in some of those other, there are other tools and some I think are more reliable than others.

00;14;11;01 - 00;14;33;22
Kirby
You know, like seaweed is super reliable. It reduces methane, we know that. But also reduces feed intake. And we're still figuring that one out. And also there's there's I think some initial research this would be like 2010, 2012, I think someone was starting to look at this, seaweed bit, but they had some, rumen tissue changes with seaweed and I don't I don't remember the details.

00;14;33;22 - 00;14;50;05
Kirby
I was hoping to dig too deep into it, but. Yeah. So that's one of those that we're still working on figuring out. But I think the other tools like the VR product and three NLP, another reliable one, but they just came out with, a meta analysis that we do actually get a small reduction in dry matter intake with that.

00;14;50;05 - 00;15;05;09
Kirby
I don't remember the magnitude. I think it might have been like a pound, pound and a half. But you get that reliable 30% reduction in methane. And if you're in a program that's paying for that, it might make sense. But that's also, something that's still kind of coming around.

00;15;05;11 - 00;15;30;00
Brad
Right? That there's a lot there's a lot of things. And we I've kind of delved into the seaweed aspect here from a grazing perspective. And yeah, we can reduce methane emissions, but it reduce if you look at, at my data and it's working its way through publication. But lower methane is because lower of dry matter intake. So was it, you know, is it the dry matter intake causing the lower methane or is it actually the seaweed that's doing it.

00;15;30;00 - 00;15;49;28
Brad
And it's kind of one of those things. What is it. And and you look at there's lots of other product you talk about Boveda. There's Eglin is is another one that you can reduce methane emissions. And tried to do that, but I think we'll see a lot more of these into the future. Obviously. But I think there needs to be more benefit.

00;15;50;00 - 00;15;56;21
Brad
Yeah. Did Brad's opinion, again needs to be more benefit than just reducing methane emission. You need to get some other benefit.

00;15;56;23 - 00;16;17;22
Kirby
I would completely agree. I mean you need to have an economic benefit, especially I think in the stage where we are with, the legislative dollars that were supporting that effort or still are kind of up in the air. And so how that might shift really will change the economics of the whole thing. But I agree, if we're feeding something, the farmers should have a benefit at the farm gate.

00;16;17;25 - 00;16;36;25
Kirby
And I think just like you mentioned, AGL and that's a an option, the the problem or the challenge with essential oils though is that data is always noisier. It's just always more challenging to get a really clean, consistent response. So, you know, again, there's a 2020 meta analysis that shows some benefit like 8 or 9% reduction, I think is what it is in that meta analysis.

00;16;36;28 - 00;16;55;21
Kirby
But then there's recent research here in the United States. In, what I would consider like a more confinement setting, a more, high intensity setting. And we don't see that same reduction. So there's like case to case basis on those essential oils. That can be tough. But I know Organic Valley I think they're paying $35 per head per year for AGL energy right now.

00;16;55;21 - 00;16;58;27
Kirby
And so there's definitely programs out there that make that work.

00;16;58;29 - 00;17;20;28
Brad
There's definitely benefits to that. Help with that and will help farmers do that. We'll see where they go into the future. Yeah I'm not I'm not skeptical but I'm just I think there be a lot of changes that we'll see. And I think it will actually go back to what we kind of originally started talking about was improving gut health, improving the room and function.

00;17;20;28 - 00;17;31;22
Brad
And I think just by optimizing feeds, nutrition, I think we'll be able to go a long way in helping environmental footprint of dairy production.

00;17;31;22 - 00;17;46;27
Kirby
Oh for sure. And I think, you know, the forage quality is always going to be the first, like for me, when I when I'm talking to students and producers, it's like forage quality is the beginning, middle and end. You know, forage quality will improve your, greenhouse gas footprint because we'll get more pounds of milk out of that pound for it.

00;17;46;27 - 00;18;13;08
Kirby
And the other part I think we'll see more of in that space and interacting with the animal is it'll be more of a whole systems approach where we'll start looking at that whole farm footprint more completely and more, more, intensely. And so what I think, especially for the producers listening and this isn't to be an alarmist or anything, but if you don't have your records in order to be able to demonstrate like this is my feed use, this is my fuel use, right?

00;18;13;08 - 00;18;29;29
Kirby
Eventually we may get to the point where those records are going to be really important. Important, and people are going to really be paying for that farm that is showing that they are minimizing their resource use for every unit of milk output. And so I think getting those records up to date will really be an important thing in the next probably decade.

00;18;30;06 - 00;18;52;06
Brad
That is a topic that I am very passionate about is records and recording, and I think you hit the nail on the head with trying to utilize whatever software programs to help just keep track of things. You have your record, you know what, the cows are fed, you know what your inventory is. You know all everything about these cows from a nutritional aspect, right?

00;18;52;06 - 00;19;02;18
Brad
And I think those the processors are going to start coming to farms and going, what is what what's your information? We'd like to see it. Yeah. And I think it's coming. It's coming.

00;19;02;18 - 00;19;24;02
Kirby
Absolutely. And those things are coming by popular demand. Right. Like those processors realize at the at the grocery store, consumers ask those questions. They may not necessarily be changing their spending patterns yet, but they are asking those questions. And I think if we can be really proactive and stay ahead of that, I think it's a great example of of how our industry continues to be responsive.

00;19;24;02 - 00;19;33;05
Kirby
That's what I like about dairy. I think we're really responsive to those things, even if we might be a little cranky about it at the start. We usually address those concerns as well as we can.

00;19;33;08 - 00;19;55;04
Brad
Right. And I think it's important, like, like I said, before we started, recording here, we were both chatting about our university dairy herds and how we're out in the barns and being in with cows. But I think, you know, I'm out there. I'm looking at the feed software that we have on our dairy and just tracking it now, the, the, the herd manager texted me this morning that said, hey, these cows are loose.

00;19;55;04 - 00;20;14;27
Brad
We you know what's going on, we need to figure out. And I said, oh, well, we got to go back to the feed program, to the data that we have to try and figure out. Oh, is did somebody put way too much soybean meal in the ration this morning, or did you know what's going on? And I think those things are are helpful in trying to trying to figure out what's going on with the cows.

00;20;14;27 - 00;20;34;19
Kirby
We had a similar experience here where, one of the my efforts, you know, in my, in my extension program is is really helping farmers understand the importance of, feed management and feed records. And so like, for example, at our university herd, we had an issue we just had we had thin cows at the end of lactation for the life of me, we just could not get them into a proper body condition to dry off.

00;20;34;22 - 00;20;52;25
Kirby
And I'd go into the feed computer, but we weren't tracking our refusal weight. And so it would say, oh yeah, this pen of cows is eating 70 pounds or 68 pounds or whatever it might have been. And, but since we weren't tracking refusals, we didn't actually know that Pan was maybe eating 61 pounds instead of 65. And so we started tracking that.

00;20;52;25 - 00;21;09;11
Kirby
And then we realized in that fresh period and first hundred and 50 days in milk, we were milking too much conditioned off these cows. They weren't getting there enough. They we had an intake problem. And when we finally took the, concerted effort to investigate, we found out it was a feed push up issue. We had feed availability problems overnight.

00;21;09;11 - 00;21;12;22
Kirby
Right. So if you're not tracking those records, you. Otherwise you'd never know.

00;21;12;25 - 00;21;25;12
Brad
Right? That's right, I agree. So what are some things you're looking forward to in the next year as far as nutrition? Studies. So what what are you working on now that we might see in, in the future?

00;21;25;18 - 00;21;40;22
Kirby
Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm been blessed so far. My first year at Ohio State. I've got a few great students, three really, really capable young women. And, they have worked on some continuing on this room and health and gut health works. We'll have some abstracts at IDSA about that. But we're going to I really want to continue chasing that.

00;21;40;22 - 00;21;59;19
Kirby
So we're going to try to really understand, you know, the how to optimize that carbohydrate profile with using the rumen health and the room and tissue as, as our outcome, instead of worried so much about milk yield, which is obviously critical. But how do we how do we optimize that tissue structure. And maybe where is that break point?

00;21;59;19 - 00;22;13;21
Kirby
Like where is that point where we're starting to cross over and tip into a problem areas? So that's kind of where my team is focused at the moment. And then I really want to do a little more, I did a little B vitamin work at, during my PhD, and I'd like to do a little bit more expanding on that story.

00;22;13;21 - 00;22;20;05
Kirby
So hopefully that's what you hear coming out of my team. But as you said, as I do it, I'm pretty active on social media, so you'll hear about it.

00;22;20;08 - 00;22;43;01
Brad
Yeah. Right. Well that's good. I it's always good to have, up to date stuff and what's coming out. And I think that, you know, there's so much information out there, but I think trying to provide that information to farmers in a ways that that everybody can understand that whether you're in California or the Midwest or somewhere else around the world, being able to figure that out and how to improve the nutrition of cows.

00;22;43;05 - 00;22;46;02
Kirby
Yeah, absolutely. And the good digestible format, I completely agree.

00;22;46;08 - 00;22;52;17
Brad
Okay. Any any other, any other thoughts? For the good of the, the cause this morning.

00;22;52;18 - 00;23;09;02
Kirby
No, I just I really appreciate you having me on. It was it's nice to get a chance to talk to a fellow Minnesotan for a little bit, and, and then everybody, everybody who's not from Minnesota probably thinks, like, we hang up, and then we just go eat lutefisk and laughter. But I, you know, it's it's not it's not quite like that.

00;23;09;04 - 00;23;39;15
Brad
No not quite, not quite. No, no. So okay. Well I think we'll, wrap it up there, this morning. So we, thank Kirby for joining us. Absolutely. And if you would like to follow him, you can certainly follow him on LinkedIn. Or you can find him on Substack, actually at the cow. Prof. Dot substack.com. And you will find lots of insightful information on nutrition and different aspects happening in the dairy world.

00;23;39;15 - 00;23;42;18
Brad
So we thank you for joining us. This morning.

00;23;42;18 - 00;23;43;21
Kirby
Kirby. Thank you.