Rumen, The Missing Link In Efficiency

The dairy cow is only as efficient as the system that feeds her, and research from Zinpro shows that all starts in the rumen. Jeff Tikofsky, dairy technical nutritionist at Zinpro, called rumen the holy grail when it comes to increasing efficiency in each individual cow.

“And when I talk about efficiency, I'm talking not just about feed efficiency, not just about conversion of nutrients into productive function," Tikofsky said. "I'm also talking about economic efficiency. If we can get the cow to manufacture these nutrients herself with the machinery that she was designed to utilize for this purpose, then we're going to increase both productive efficiency, feed efficiency, economic efficiency, all of those things.”

Time To Return To Rumen

Tikofsky said over six decades of research has revealed the key role isoacids play in rumen. And rather than working around rumen, he encourages producers to support the microbial systems as it was designed to function, a shift back to “rumen-first” thinking.

He added when focused on isoacids as well as bacteria, dairy operations can enjoy a better bang for their buck. Tikofsky said it’s not just about improved milk production.

“We're not making any more land out there, they need to get as much as they can out of, you know, every pound of feed they put up because there's more and more and more cows and we're more and more strapped for supply to feed those cows," Tikofsky pointed out. "So, they've been very focused on efficiency. And that initially came as a little bit of a surprise because we're in, even in places where we've been able to demonstrate, ‘look how much more milk you made.’, a lot of them have said, ‘well, that's great, but how much more efficient have we gotten because that's what we're really after?’.

Less Feed Consumed, While More Milk Is Produced

Research shows isoacids help cows better partition nutrients when and where they are needed most, leading to 2% decreased dry matter intake and 5.5% improved feed efficiency. All of this while field trial exhibited an improved peak milk production by up to 10%.

Learn more about the important role rumen plays by visiting Zinpro's Website.

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