The Nutritionist (AMTS)

Dr Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University, Talks about the Progress in Reducing the Environmental Impact of Dairy

Dr Van Amburgh’s talk focused on the science and progress that has been made in lessening the environmental footprint of milk production. His presentation provided some details that help us better understand actual impacts and changes that can be made to decrease excretions and emissions going forward.

Dr Fessenden manages much of our biology training for AMTS, especially in Europe. His considerable knowledge of the model biology and experience working with nutritionists around the world combined to produce a very well attended webinar with many questions from the audience. Dr Bill Prokop of Dairy Innovations joined in the discussion.

Dr Jude Capper and Dr Sara Place Communicating about agriculture to the non-ag community

Jude and Sara are both experts and vocal advocates on sustainable farming practices. They gave us an overview and some pointers for communicating to the non-farming community. There is a lot of misinformation offered on social media and in the press. We learned some facts and some methods of best sharing our knowledge

Dr. Chris Chase offered a very interesting presentation on the effects nutrition can have on the immune system. The first webinar of 2018, it was a continuation on the mini-unit on immunology and nutrition begun by Drs. Lance Baumgard and Michael Ballou in 2017. We were joined by Paula Turiello, translating into Spanish and broadcasting in Argentina, and Tom Long, our new partner in China. Tom translated into Mandarin. Marcelo Hentz Ramos from Brazil was unable to join us.

In addition to an excellent presentation, the question and answer period was terrifically informative.

Dr Jennifer Van Os presents on heat stress for the August The Nutritionist Webinar.

Dr Jennifer Van Os from the University of Wisconsin-Madison was the speaker for The Nutritionist August webinar on the topic of heat stress in cows and calves. Her talk focused on her current research on improving the welfare of dairy cattle by using various methods to reduce heat stress. She discussed the benefit and best methods to deliver cooling water to cattle to help lower the effective temperature for animals during warmer months. Dr Van Os’s research focuses on management practices that help improve the general care of dairy animals in the area of housing, grouping, and heat stress. Jennifer did post-doctoral research in the lab of one of our previous speakers, Nina Von Keyserlingk

Dr Mike DeGroot gave an excellent and very practical webinar as the second presenter in The Nutritionist Series. Mariann Fessenden and Tom Tylutki coordinated the English language WebEx presentation from Groton NY. Almost 2800 miles away in Visalia, California, Dr. DeGroot gave a tremendous presentation on the use of By-Products. The presentation was broadcast worldwide in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Paula Turiello in Argentina facilitated translating the Adobe webinar for over 100 registrants. Marcelo Hentz Ramos, director of 3Rlab in Brazil coordinated the Portuguese Language GoToWebinar for which he had over 200 attendees sign up. The English language had over 75 people pre-registered. One of the great features of these events are the Question and Answer session at the end. We are uniquely able to field questions from participants in all three languages.

Dr Baumgard presented work he has been doing in the area of leaky gut and the effects it may have on milk production and animal performance. He has evaluated how heat stress alters post-absorptive fuel selection in growing and lactating farm animals. He also focuses on the mechanisms that govern nutrient partitioning during the transition period of lactating dairy cows.  His primary goal is to identify nutritional strategies that can improve productivity and production efficiency in monogastrics and ruminants.

This episode is a tour of Beaver Creek Farm in Michigan and Legend In Russia. Vadim acts a manager at both locations. We look at feeding management, grouping, and a little bit of milking management. 

In the September The Nutritionist webinar we hosted Dr Heinri Spangenberg of Westside Enterprises in South Africa. Having spent almost 30 years in the animal science industry, Heinri oversees all technical sales and supports for Westside. In his webinar he focuses on Fractionated of Precision feeding in parlours.

Dr VonKeyserlingk’s talk about rethinking methods for feeding and housing dairy calves completed the replacement animal mini-series begun in April with Dr. Jim Drackley on the nutrition of weaned and early post weaned calves and Dr. Mike VanAmburgh’s heifer to calving talk in July. Her talk focused on housing, behaviors, and quantity of feed rather than the breakdown of the nutritional components of the feed. Lots of questions and the end of an exceptional talk!

Dr Bill Stone, Director of Ruminant Technical Services for Diamond V, presented on Minimizing Variation Between Formulated and Consumed Rations:
A Key to Enhanced Herd Performance.

The May 2020 The Nutritionist webinar had a focus on the more mechanical and people oriented side of ration formulation. As pioneers int he area of TMR Audits, Diamond V has focused on teaching farmers what the possible areas of deviation can be when looking at reasons cow may not be attaining full performance.   Be sure to check out the rest of the 2020 The Nutritionist series.

Dr Joe McFadden, Cornell University

August 11, 2022

Dietary solutions to inhibit ruminal methanogenesis: Where are we now, where do we go next, and how do we get there?

Dr Joseph McFadden leads a research program at Cornell University focused on dairy cattle nutrition with a focus on improving nutrient digestibility, liver and gut function, and the efficiency of milk production. He is leading the development of a Cornell program and center to evaluate the effects of feed additives and drugs on methane and milk production using standardized procedures with the development of a climate-controlled respiration chamber system to study enteric methane emissions from dairy cattle.

Dr Goff is the guy in hypocalcemia. He has been involved in research through government, industry, and academia over the last 30 years. This webinar saw many questions from both session audiences. It is a long recording, coming in around 3 hours but packed with information!  Be sure to check out the rest of the 2020 The Nutritionist series.

Dr Undersander discussed seed selection, harvest timing, and treatment of corn silage as it relates to digestibility and production.

This podcast is an overview of the history of the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System from it’s inception in 1978 up until version 6.1 released in 2010. We were greatly assisted by information derived from an earlier blog posting by Danny Fox and a wonderful paper called The Sniffen Affect by Chalupa and Boston. Information about the evolution of the model in the last decade was pulled from various proceedings papers coming out of Mike VanAmburgh’s research group. We hope you enjoy this little bit of history in anticipation of the upcoming release of the CNCPS version 6.5 and our subsequent release of AMTS.Cattle.Pro, version 4.0.

The Real Story about Climate Change and Animal Agriculture

Dr Frank Mitloehner, professor and air quality specialist in cooperative extension in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis. The CLEAR Center brings clarity to the intersection of animal agriculture and the environment, helping our global community understand the environmental and human health impacts of livestock, so we can make informed decisions about the foods we eat and while reducing environmental impacts. This talk is the second time we have featured Frank on the Nutritionist, you can listen to his 2020 webinar here.

Dr Elena Bonfante and Dr Bill Prokop of Dairy Innovations Italia and Dairy Innovations, in Italy and USA, take us on tours of three Italian dairies in northern Italy. Each farm has a unique approach to sustainability; one has a bio-digester, one is a blend of parlor/robotic milking system and makes milk for Grana Padano cheese production, and the third produces milk for Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese production. 

Dr Nicolas DiLorenzo delivered his postponed (due to hurricane) webinar on forage utilization in beef diets. This webinar concluded our 2018 Beef Nutritionist Series.

Dr. Tom Jenkins, Clemson University talks about Fatty Acids in Diets of Dairy Cattle.

Noted instructor and researcher, Dr. Tom Jenkins, regularly talks about the use and effect of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in the diets of dairy cattle. We were pleased and honored to have him speak on that subject for the webinar.

Dr Jude Capper, Livestock Sustainability Consultant, gave a presentation on what strides have been made since 2007 in the area of dairy production and environmental impacts.

Jude is a passionate advocate for animal agriculture and has focused her research on measuring and understanding the affect the agriculture industry has on the environment. As @bovidiva on Twitter, Dr Capper champions greater understanding of the actual impact of agriculture to consumers.     Be sure to check out the rest of the 2020 The Nutritionist series.

Her presentation in pdf form:

The Nutritionist 2020 Capper PDF

We were especially happy to welcome Dr. Bauman so close after the Bauman Symposium at ADSA in late June

Dr. dale Bauman’s talk provided some historical perspective on past theories for the underlying causes of Milk Fat Depression. He brought us up-to-date with the current research.

Many of the questions at the end were very practically directed to on-farm troubleshooting. As Dale will be the first to state, his research and experience is more biochemical than preventative or curative. We have compiled the questions to pull together a posting with input from more extension focused educators. Stay turned, when complete, the link will be here.

Dr Overton provides the midpoint in our unit that focuses on the transition period. In the past the dry period and transition cow was relegated to the corner of the barn with little attention given once she stopped milking. The resultant metabolic syndromes that nutritionists managed at freshening gave evidence that more attention should be paid to the diets of cows between lactations. Tom continues our focus on the transition cow and her diet with a discussion of the steps nutritionists should take to help ensure the dry cow emerges ready to perform optimally during her next lactation.

Rick gave an excellent presentation about the animal behavior factors that affect the productivity of dairy cattle. He discussed the impact bunk space, parity, and dominant cow proximity have on dry matter intake. It was a great talk-Rick is always an engaging presenter. Because Rick is such a Johnny Cash fan, we changed our usual pre-webinar music from classical to classic Johnny Cash–it was kind of fun.

Dr Dahl has conducted considerable research into the effects of heat stress. This talk focused on his studies that have shown correlations to reduced milk production by the dam in the lactation following dry period heat stress. He also discussed the lifetime performance of daughters born to heat stressed dams.

Dr Chaouki Benchaar, from the Sherbrooke Research and Development Centre presents research on Dietary options to reduce enteric methane emissions from dairy cows.

Dr. Benchaar is a research scientist at the Sherbrooke Research and Development Centre (Quebec) of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). An internationally recognized researcher, he received his Ph.D. from Institut National Polytechnique of Toulouse in France. Since joining AAFC in 2000, Dr. Benchaar has made numerous notable contributions to the dairy and the livestock feed industry.

Dr Tom Tylutki takes us on another farm tour in the inaugural The Nutritionist 2021 webinar. After a very snowy walking of the barns and discussion of the groups, Tom answers questions on his approach to nutritional troubleshooting.

The energetic and knowledgeable Dr. Marcia Endres gave an excellent presentation on management techniques and nutritional considerations when working with robotic milkers. In the recording process the sound quality for the afternoon session was very poor; for that reason it was left off.

Dr Andreas Foskolos,University of Thessaly on Dairy Goat Nutrition .

Dr Foskolos gave the first of a two-part webinar mini-series on dairy goat nutrition. This webinar acted as an introduction to management systems, breeds, and seasonal differences in nmanaging dairy goats and serves as the foundation for the second webinar on December 10. It was an excellent and detailed presentation followed by extensive questions. The next webinar will cover nutrition and give attedees an opportunity to see the functionality of the Small Ruminants modle in AMTS.Farm.SmallRuminants. Dr Tom Tylutki, of AMTS will join in the discussion. 

Dr Alfredo DiCostanzo from the University of Minnesota talks about about using backgrounds, the process of utilizing available feedstuffs, to control the growth and sale date of growing animals to better adapt to market variables.

Dr Wattiaux offered an excellent presentation on hie research, in collaboration with UW-Madison Departments of Agronomy and Biological Systems Engineering, on the sources of Greenhouse gas emissions on the Dairy farm and what actions can be taken to mitigate those excretions. There were some very excellent questions offered; be sure to listen all the way through!

Dr Hanigan presented an argument against considering amino acid and protein in the traditional weakest link or single limiting aa hypothesis. He proposed that we consider it rather a leaky bucket with, perhaps, multiple aa shortfalls limiting efficiency and productivity.

Dr Tom Tylutki, AMTS CEO

October 13, 2022

Formulating for Profit and a better Environment

Our own, Tom Tylutki, will use the CNCPS-based AMTS formulation model to look at the effect various feeds and diets will have on emissions. The excretion and emission equations in the CNCPS allow you to formulate with those results in mind. Tom discusses some of the thoughts and products mentioned in earlier webinars but then pivots some what to look at where real efforts can be placed. What are the best strategies. For more of Tom’s past formulation focused webinars; look at 2015, 2016, 2020, Feb 2021, and Oct 2021

Dr Jhones Sarturi from Texas Tech University specializes in developing strategies to improve, evaluate, and better utilize by products, forages, and grains in ruminant diets.

Heather Dann is a research scientist at the William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute in Chazy, NY where her research has focused on dairy cow nutrition and management. Most recently, she is looking at ways to use milk analyses for real time management decisions.

Dr Laura Hernandez spoke about her recent and ongoing research into the role Serotonin plays in Calcium metabolism. The next three webinars will focus on Transition cows as we are joined by Tom Overton and Phil Cardoso in April and May. Co-hosting duties were shared by Paula Turiello, translating into Spanish and broadcasting in Argentina, and Tom Long, our partner in China translating into Mandarin. Marcelo Hentz Ramos from Brazil was unable to join us.

Dr John Goeser presents both in his capacity as animal nutrition and Research and development director to Rock River Laboratory and adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison on using laboratory analyses to improve animal performance.

Dr Drackley, University of Illinois, was scheduled to present in May but had to cancel on the last minute. At the time he offered to return with updated calf feeding recommendations at the end of the year. Since the new NRC recommendations have not yet been released, he gave a presentation on colostrum. This is a great refresher and discussion of issues farms may be having with obtaining high quality colostrum.

Dr Trevor DeVries from the University of Guelph talked about ways to adjust nutritional management with the intent of optimizing management to fit natural animal feeding behavior.

Dr Gordie Jones spoke of his experiences as a veterinarian, nutritional advisor, and herd owners in working with transition and fresh cows to ensure they have healthy, productive, and successful lactations. Gordie gave some wonderful answers to the participants looking for solutions to their cows’ metabolic problems.

He also recommended the New Large Herd Dairy Management e-book available through ADSA

Dr Ale Relling from The Ohio State University, delivered his presentation on the role of the dam’s nutritional status in predicting calf growth and rate of gain.

Dr Akira Saito gave a presentation about using milk replacer in automatic feeding systems. He has also done considerable work with Waygu and Waygu-cross calves to improve growth and later performance. Dr Mike Van Amburgh and Dr Jim Drackley joined Dr Saito for the presentation question and answer period.

Dr Cardoso continued our theme that focuses on the giving nutritionists the best tools for helping cows emerge from the transition period ready to have a productive and reproductively successful lactation. He took the multiple language aspect to the extreme, occasionally answering in Spanish. The questions were many, the audience very engaged by the presentation.

In response to requests from listeners, Dr Cardoso has agreed to share a PDF of his presentation and a paper Co-authored by Mateus Toledo on feeding rumen-protected methionine. Those resources can be accessed here.

https://agmodelsystems.com/the-nutritionist-2018-webinar-series-dr-phil-cardoso-transition-nutrition-in-relation-to-reproductive-health-may-9-2018/

Dr Peter Yoder presents on protein metabolism and Amino Acids in July’s The Nutritionist Webinar.

Dr Peter Yoder is the Technical Services Manager at Perdue Agribusiness. He recently completed his PhD program in the Hanigan Lab at Virginia Tech. His primary focus was on Amino Acids and dietary nutrient variation. His talk focused on the amino acid requirements in dairy cow nutrition.

His presentation in pdf form:

The Nutritionist 2020 Yoder PDF

Dr Barbano is a noted Cornell Food Scientist whose work focuses on milk fat analysis. His recent research has worked closely with The Miner Institute and St Albans Co-op. Dr Heather Dann joined during the Question and Answer period to help with nutrition questions.

Dr. Tom Overton kicked off of the first in our 2016 series of The Nutritionist.

His talk received the highest number of pre-registered users to our webinar series since we started. Over 60 people from countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and North America joined us for the live presentation. Tom gave a detailed and informative speech despite the hazards of flying snowballs (the office gets a little out of hand sometimes).

Dr. Melanie Hemenway is a State Field Veterinarian for the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets and coordinates the New York State Cattle Health Assurance Program (NYSCHAP).

She is currently overseeing a 3 year grant from FDA for outreach to animal agriculture groups about the new Veterinary Feed Directive and Antibiotic Stewardship.   She has given several presentations on this topic to veterinarians, farmers, feed companies and educators.

The new Veterinary Feed Directive went into effect 1/1/2017 creating changes in the availability, oversight and use of medically important antibiotics used in animal feed and water.  This presentation will help clarify the reasons for this change, what drugs are affected, the emphasis being placed on veterinary oversight of the use of these drugs on farms and the responsibilities of the veterinarian, feed company/mill and the farmer.

Geared to the hands-on nutritionist, Dr Niles Jennett from Chandler, Arizona, USA, gives a detailed talk on his approach to better herd ration management. We had unfortunate recording difficulties during the afternoon presentation and were unable to capture the question period. We did get a question from our Spanish language translation and have added that to the recording of the evening session

Dr. Sam Fessenden: Experiences on a Robot Dairy

Dr. Sam Fessenden gives us a very personal tour of his Silver Spirit Dairy, the Minnesota Dairy he runs with his wife and her parents. He shares some of the building, cow behavior considerations, and nutritional approaches he has taken in his first year working in a 120-cow with two Lely A5 milkers. This is Sam’s third Nutritionist Webinar and you can find his webinars on using Farm Data in Nutritional Models and optimizing formulating in the CNCPS model in our archives. Not just a great speaker, Sam also helped create the Robot Tutorial in our AMTS Video manual on YouTube. This webinar concludes our 2021 Nutritionist Series.

We were very pleased to host the very well spoken Dr Jenkins for the second time in the Nutritionist webinar history. He provided some recommendations and guidelines for nutritionist striving to maintain a healthy butterfat component in their clients herds.

Apr 15, 2021 | The Nutritionist 2021

Dr Philippe Hassoun, INRAE (France) teaches us about feeding milking sheep in the INRAE system. Read more for the recording.

Dr Adam Lock, Michigan State University, gave a talk about fatty acid metabolism in dairy cattle. Adam answered question in the morning and afternoon from participants that spanned the globe.

The November episode of The Nutritionist 2021 hosts Daniel Scothorn of Scothorn Nutrition. He takes us on a tour of one of his clients in Nova Scotia, Canada looking at feeds, housing for groups, cow comfort, and diets. His webinar can be viewed at https://agmodelsystems.com/the-nutritionist-2021-webinar-scothorn-november/ 

Representatives from three of the major forage labs were the presenters.

In March we held another first for our webinar series: multiple presenters in three locations. It went off well and we had some great questions from the audiences. Ralph Ward was originally scheduled to speak for Cumberland Valley Analytical Service. He was unable to make it, so Matt Michonski was kind enough to fill in. Sally Flis from Dairy One Forage Laboratory and Dave Taysom from Dairyland Labs rounded out the panel.

Dr Andreas Foskolos,University of Thessaly on Dairy Goat Nutrition . Dr Foskolos gave the second of a two-part webinar mini-series on dairy goat nutrition on December 10, 2020. This webinar was a follow-up to the initial webinar on November 12.

Dr Tom Tylutki: Feeding Strategies for crazy times

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 it exacerbated an already volatile world pricing structure for feed, fuel, labor, and nearly every other input in food production. There is serious concern of global food shortages, extraordinary food cost inflation in countries that can get food, and supply chain problems for those countries that do have food to export. Combined with predictions of continued drought in major grain producing areas and the complications of entering the third year of a global pandemic, the outlook is grim. Tom looks a some of the issues he is seeing and advises on strategies for maximizing production not only to weather the crisis but also to make as much milk for a struggling world food supply. This is a long, scary webinar. We had great questions from around the world. We were honored to be joined by most of our AMTS distributors who asked questions or offered insights on their part of the world.

Charlie has been actively involved in the CNCPS model research almost since its inception. He has kept current and forward pushing by contributing to ongoing research through various university and industry liaisons. The questions in this session were, at times, challenging and the answers were always enlightening. Charlie is always a delight to work with!

Dr Michael Ballou from Texas Tech University discussed strategies to improve the immunological function of dairy cattle. He covered stress, the impact on immunity, and methods to control stress and improve response.

Dr DeSouza recently completed his PhD working in the lab of Dr Adam Lock, focused on fatty acid nutrition during the transition period in dairy cattle. Jonas focused some of his undergrad and Masters work in the same area while studying in Brazil. There was an extensive question and answer session for this, our first webinar in the 2020 The Nutritionist series.

Dr Phil Cardoso’s March 2021 The Nutritionist webinar was a great look at the details of researching transition cow issues.

Dr. Mike VanAmbugh, always popular, returns to the Nutritionist to talk Heifers.

Mike VanAmburgh, Professor at Cornell University, is often asked to speak on current developments in The Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS) in his role as primary researcher. He also has conducted considerable research in calf and heifer nutrition, giving us useful information towards building a herd focused on optimum productivity. We were very pleased to have him back as our first repeat The Nutritionist speaker. His first talk on the updates to CNCPS in February 2015 is our most listened to webinar!

Dr Larry Chase, Professor Emeritus, Cornell University, gave a presentation focused on Cows, Gases, and the Environment. Larry’s research in nutrition has long been focussed on reducing the effect of dairy cattle on the environment. In the last 10 years he has guided the feeding of protein to reduce excess nutrient deposition in the environment. As part of an ongoing study of feeding systems and the environment, Larry spoke of various ways of looking at ways to reduce negative climate effects.

We were excited to have Dr Danny Fox, Emeritus professor, Cornell University join us in our Groton office for a fantastic talk on beef nutrition models. We apologize for some problems in the recording, there was a fairly intense storm in Groton that day and our internet was affected. You may notice some hang-ups and skips.

We have Dr Tylutki, AMTS CEO, back for a farm walk of the heifer facilities on the same farm that we have toured last fall and in February of this past year. Tom introduces the concept of looking at diets from the aspect of those that are Biologically Optimal, Environmentally Optimal, and Financially Optimal. As before he referenced past blog posts, the links for which are: Nutrition Tools: Heifers, Nutrition Tools: Dry Cows, Nutrition Tools: Lactating Cows.

Dr Mike Van Amburgh, professor at Cornell University, gave a talk that discussed some components, which he referred to as bioactive factors, that are present in colostrum and transition milk. He discussed research that suggests these components may have strong influences on growth and health of the calf.

Mr Dineen is completing his PhD at Cornell University after which he will return to Ireland where he will hold a position at Teagasc Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation Center in Fermoy. Mike covered some of the research he has done that looks into digestibilities and rates of passage of in Irish pasture-based diets.

Dr Sotirios Karvountzis of MENDIP Veterinary Services, UK gave a terrific presentation on the value of a Team approach to maximize herd productivity, efficiency, and health in the July The Nutritionist webinar.

Mar 18, 2021 | The Nutritionist 2021

Mr Aoun provided an excellent, well constructed webinar with information on selection, traditions, and nutritional considerations for profitable fattening and marketing of sheep.

The series is intended to give the presenters the chance to deliver messages devoid of company bias. Tom, who many know from his position as CEO of AMTS, continues to work on and contribute to the CNCPS model development. He does this from a purely scientific perspective; his webinar gave him the opportunity work in that realm.

We experienced our first Spring lightening storm just prior to the webinar; this resulted in some connectivity issues that caused our audio to be a little choppy. As you listen, you may notice some dropped words, we hope it will not be too distracting.

Dr. Jim Drackely: Feeding Calves–Weaning and Early Post Weaning Strategies.

Dr Drackley gave a tremendous seminar about research in successful calf raising to maximize health, growth, and future productivity. His discussion and an extensive question and answer period was very well attended. This presentation was the first in our min-series of calf/heifer related talks. Dr. Mike Van Amburgh and Dr. Nina Von Keyserlingk will follow up in July and November, respectively.

The first in a series of informational webinars in The Nutritionist was delivered and recorded from our Groton Office. Mike VanAmburgh, Tom Tylutki, and Mariann Fessenden were joined by Marcelo Hentz Ramos in Brazil and Paula Turiello in Argentina and over 250 attendees world wide. Mike delivered a marathon presentation on the updates to the CNCPS platform. In addition to an excellent presentation, the question and answer period was terrifically informative. Settle in, it is a long talk–well worth it.

Dr Bill Weiss presented about mineral recommendations in dairy cattle. He discussed formulation to meet requirements vs formulating to optimize health and production. Questions were many and varied.

We are very pleased to host the professor emeritus from Stellenbosch University in South Africa. His research has focused on maintaining a healthy pH in producing dairy cattle. Some discussion was given to grazing situations for nutritionist who are striving to balance pasture diets.

Dr Tom Tylutki, CEO of AMTS gives a farm tour and answers A LOT of your questions.

Dr Tom Tylutki, the CEO of AMTS, gave us a farm tour of a large upstate New York dairy where he is the nutritionist. We had a chance to walk the cows with Tom. This tour was an overview of what he looks at on farms when he is consulting. Future webinars in 2021 will give a deeper analysis of this farm and the information he looks at when he considers a farm’s nutritional needs. Tom showed us the feed center, milk-calf housing, replacement heifer facilities, dry cows, and lactating cows groups. It was a wonderful, informative tour– the question and answer session from the morning and afternoon allowed for over 3 hours of discussion with topics ranging from calve to crops to production to repro. There is no accompanying PowerPoint. This is a long but very good webinar!

Apr 8, 2021 | The Nutritionist 2021

Click Read More to listen to the recording of Marcelo Hentz Ramos as he talks about the Brazilian dairy industry.

We were very pleased to host a first, for us, webinar from the other side of the world. Ian Lean wears many hats serving as a veterinarian/nutritionist/ professor for Scibus, a nutrition extension group, and the University of Sydney. Dr Lean focused primarily on nutrition for the transition cow. He also covered the use of pasture in transition diets at the end of his discussion. Please note: The volume, especially for Dr Lean, is relatively soft. I increased it as mush as I could. You may need to set your system volume higher for this recording.

Dr Heidi Rossow from the University of California, Davis Veterinary School in Tulare, California, presented her findings on modeling nutrient metabolism and dairy feed management in California. Her primary area of research is in computer modeling focused on systems analyses of dairy feed management and production to develop methods to evaluate cow performance and feeding consistency.

Being the boss has privileges. We lined Tom up to talk about advanced formulation but essentially told him he could talk about anything he wanted. And he did. Tom started out explaining in more detail the NDF analyses and time points. He also spoke about starch digestibilites. It was a little bit of everything and a lot of good information.

John Winchell, AMTS.Cattle power user and ruminant nutrition specialist for Alltech applies his field experiences in creating and balancing diets for his sheep owning clients. He shares his thoughts and tips and takes a lot of questions in this May 20, 2021 webinar.

This is the final of three sheep-focused webinars we held spring 2021

Dr Silva Del Rio’s talk was focused on feeding accuracy: What we need to do to ensure that our fed diets are as close to the formulated diets as possible. She has done much research on the multitude of ways that feeding system can breakdown, usually as a result of human errors at the mixing wagon. Her well presented talk is a natural follow-up to Dr Undersander’s discussion on the factors in making good corn silage. Dr. Silva Del Rio would also like listeners with any questions to feel welcome to email her nsilvadelrio@ucdavis.edu

Our WebEx platform suffered an unexpected failure of the recording feature. It may have been operator error but Dr. Shaver was kind enough to re-record the presentation so that we could have it archived. Unfortunately the polls and the Q&A session were lost.

Dr Rick Grant, President of The Wm H Miner Institute, spoke about the relationships between undigested fiber, primarily forage, (uNDF240) and physically effective fiber at that same time point (peuNDF240). He has conducted some recent research to further examine the role that those two fiber characteristics can have in how we look at a diet formulation.

Barry Bradford, from Kansas State University discussed the differing ways of measuring NDF and NDF digestibility. His talk focused on lab results and what numbers are important. Barry’s research focuses on interactions of inflammation and metabolism. The question and answer period was very focused on maintaining butterfat.

Dr. Bill Prokop, of Dairy-8 and AVA, gives focused insight on troubleshooting diets .

Bill serves as a consultant on many farms in the US and globally providing practical advise for attaining success measured by high producing, healthy, contented cows. He speaks on protocols for measuring inputs and methods for detecting sources of problems when they occur. Through Attica Veterinary Associates he presently serves as Director of Operations at the Cornell University Ruminant Center. Held during the Cornell Advanced Nutrition Short Course, our webinar included a live, physically present audience.

Dr Trevor DeVries, University of Guelph and feeding for Automatic Milking Systems (Robots) .

This month's webinar with Dr Trevor DeVries focused on nutritional considerations when working with robots herds in the October The Nutritionist. Trevor, whose work at Guelph focuses on best practices in nutrition, housing, and management that promote healthy behaviors in dairy cow health. Trevor has been a past Nutritionist speaker and is much in demand for his current research in robot, or, more accurately, automated milking systems. In his presentation Dr DeVries offered insight on research with free flow and directed flow system, best practices for formulating partially mixed rations (PMR) and pellets, and some of the health risks in robot milked herds. The interest level and subsequent questions for both webinar times was very high. The question period was lengthy with insight and experiences shared both ways. Unfortunately, we had technical issues with the recording of the questions from the morning webinar and have only a partial recording.

Dr Rick Grant of the William H Miner Institute take you on a tour of the research facility focusing on cow comfort. 

Dr Adam Lock joined us for The Nutritionist talk on feeding fats to Dairy Cattle. The topic was very engaging and the audience questions lively. As always, Dr Lock was a pleasure to listen to and the information was terrific.

The Nutritionist 2022 Webinar May Block

May 12, 2022 | 2022 Webinars, Byproducts

Dr Elliot Block, Research Fellow and Director of Technology in Animal Nutrition and Food Production, gave a talk on the sustainability and uses of palm oil in dairy diets. He laid out the facts and debunked the myths of feeding palm fats.

The April 2020 The Nutritionist webinar featured Dr Frank Mitloehner on how we can feed the planet without losing it to climate charge wrought by emissions from beef and dairy production.