Featured in Dairy Farmer April 2010
Opening up the structure of dietary fibre helps get the microbes working a lot faster
An open day at a Lancashire Farm highlighted ways in which the enzyme-based additive Optimize Plus is claimed to improve the nutrition of our dairy cows.
A significant oversight in previous research into improving dry mater intakes of dairy cows has underestimated the impact of the speed at which microbes in the gut get to work, according to Dr Roy Fawcett of the Edinburgh-based Bio-Parametrics.
He told farmers in Lancashire that gas collected from the simulated action of microbes in a cow’s gut held the key to assessing the value of each component of the diet. “To achieve this level of understanding of what’s going on in the rumen gives us the ability to manage the diet more efficiently. And our research has shown that enzymes made available within the forage are opening up the structure of the fibre in the forage so that the microbes can do their work faster,” said Dr Fawcett.
Non digestible fibre (NDF) will normally digest at around 5% per hour but where the correct enzymes are present within the forage – as provided by the additive - the rate of digestion is around 10% per hour.
“That’s doubling the rate of degredation of the forage which is very impressive but, by opening up the structure of the forage, it’s reducing the lag-time for the microbes to start work and begin the fermentation process.
“So why is this important to dairy farmers?” asked Dr Fawcett, who is also member of the Forage Analysis Assurance Group. He explained that digestion was “dynamic” and that there was a degredation process underway as the feed passed through the cow. If the microbes are encouraged to work at a faster rate, and the mean-time in the gut stayed the same, more useful nutrients could be extracted from the diet and so be of greater use to the cow in terms of improving production.
Farmers attending the farm open day in Lancashire, organised by EnviroSystems, also heard how yeast – as little as 50g – can help lift individual cow yields by up to three litres a day. “It seems almost impossible that there can be enough energy in 50g of yeast to make such a difference to yield, but the answer lies in the way we’ve developed our feeding systems for dairy cows.
“The move to TMR diets has produced a “fluffed up” mix full of oxygen. In a compressed clamp of silage there’s no oxygen present but when we make it into a TMR we add oxygen and that creates a toxic environment for rumen microbes when what we should actually be producing is a system of anaerobic digestion.
“Oxygen will have a negative impact, but once you add yeast to this warm and moist environment at 39 degrees it has the ability to “explode” into action and sequester all the available oxygen supply. And in growing itself on the oxygen supply it creates more energy for the system.”
“The art of ration balancing is not simply about getting the proportions of energy and protein correct but also the need to maintain the pH at a high level. And the difference in a pH of 5.8 and 6.6ph is equivalent to 3.5 litres of milk a day,” said Dr Fawcett.
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