How Can Cottonseed Help Dairy Producers?

Milkfat and protein yield are the main drivers of ROI on dairy operations.  Dr. Kevin Harvatine, a professor of nutritional physiology at Penn State University, says high-fat feed additives like whole cottonseed can help dairy producers maximize milkfat content on their farms.

"People are drinking less fluid milk, but they're at an all-time high consumption dairy products because they're eating cheese in other high fat and protein dairy products," Dr. Harvatine noted.  "So, the milk market right now pays producers for fat and protein and not for the water that they're producing. So, depending on your milk market, maybe 80-plus percent of the value is fat and protein, about an equal split between those. We've had a big influence through genetic selection on our dairy cows. So, ten years ago, they started selecting for both fat percent and milk yield. So, the last ten years, we've gone from an average of about three seven milk fat, to right now, we're probably running a 12-month running average of about four one milkfat.”

Based on his research, Harvatine talks about the advantages for dairy producers who integrate high-fat content feed additives like whole cottonseed into their cattle’s diet.

“Dairy cows cannot make milk fat from thin air. If you look at what a cow needs, the groceries to do that, about half of those fatty acids come directly from her diet. Half of them, she's going to make from the nutrients that she digested from the corn grain in the forage," Harvatine said.  "So, if we have a cow that's making more milkfat, we have to keep up to that, and providing dietary fat is how we do that. We always talk about cotton seed bringing three main nutrients: fat, protein, and fiber. The benefit of cotton seed is that if the oil is within the seed and it's slowly released in the rumen, then it has less of an effect on rumen fermentation because if we feed too much fat, especially unsaturated fat like we find in our oil seeds, we can disturb the rumen and cause milkfat depression, where cows drop in milkfat. Then the dollars that farmer is getting for that milk is going to really drop off.”

So, what should dairy producers look for when trying to maximize their milk production through the use of high-fat feed additives like whole cottonseed and advanced genetics.

“So, the first thing I always say is we need to make sure we're meeting our expectations," Harvatine noted.  "So, we have this genetic increase in potential, so we have to keep up with that. Our goal should be different today than it was ten years ago. We also have a change across the year. We should expect the highest milk fat on January one and the lowest on July one. So we need to first know what we should be doing, and if our cows are not meeting that, we need to start asking why. Part of that is milkfat depression, which I mentioned. Cottonseed reduces the risk of milkfat depression. The other part is if we're shorting that cow on dietary fat, then cotton seed is the source there.” 

Tests, he added, show cows efficiently digest the cottonseeds as well.

"We recently had looked at the passage of intact seeds into the manure because some producers look in the manure and they see a whole cottonseed, and they worry if they're not getting the value out of that seed. What we found is quite a low value, so between one to four percent, depending on the experiment in the cows, of that seed is actually passing intact, so we’re getting the advantage of slow release in the rumen, but it's still predominantly getting digested and utilized.”

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