Real Science Exchange-Dairy

In this episode, we feature some of the winners of poster and oral presentation competitions at the 2025 ADSA Annual Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. Abstracts can be found here: ADSA 2025 Annual Meeting MS Oral Presentation, Production Guests: Trinidad Fernandez-Wallace and Dr. Lautaro Rostoll-Cangiano, University of Wisconsin-Madison Co-host: Dr. Laura Niehues, Balchem Abstract 1218: Immunity at...

Dr. Dahl presented a Real Science webinar on heat stress on April 1, 2025. You can find the webinar at balchem.com/realscience . This episode of Real Science Exchange further explores the key elements of Dr. Dahl’s webinar. Dr. Dahl talks about geographical differences in whether farms provide cooling for dry or lactating cows. Cows get heat stressed long before humans. Some farms are concerned th...

This episode was recorded in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 2025 Tri-State Dairy Conference. Dr. Fessenden gives an overview of his presentation which covered both research and field information on automated milking systems. He recommends going back to basics and formulating a rumen-friendly PMR with a complementary palatable feed that encourages the cows into the robot system. (5:57) The panel d...

This episode was recorded in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 2025 Tri-State Dairy Conference. Dr. Schwanke begins by describing how we can shape cattle personalities through handling and management and adapting our strategies to accommodate different personality traits so as to not cause undue stress. Personality traits are consistent across time and context, which is nuanced by the other animals...

This episode was recorded in Reno, Nevada, during the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference. Dr. Hutjens’ presentation focused on herds producing seven pounds of milk fat and milk protein per cow per day, and the genetics, on-farm management and nutrition to make that happen. The panel discusses where components could top out, how added dietary fat has influenced components and the importance o...

This episode was recorded in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 2025 Tri-State Dairy Conference. Dr. Firkins’ presentation covers key aspects of how to improve digestibility of different diet components: fiber, starch, fat and total diet. (4:31) The negative relationship between starch in the diet and fiber digestion has been well known for more than 50 years. A recent meta-analysis showed the depres...

This episode was recorded in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 2025 Tri-State Dairy Conference. Dr. Boerman notes we know cows experience a negative metabolizable protein balance in early lactation, which means they’re mobilizing skeletal muscle to make up for that. Dr. Boerman and her group have been interested in strategies to measure how much muscle they’re mobilizing, when they’re losing it and...

Balchem’s Bourbon & Brainiacs event took place at the Frazier History Museum during the 2025 ADSA annual meetings in Louisville, Kentucky.  After introductions, Dr. Lucy shares about the ADSA monthly podcast, Dairy Digressions , which he hosts. He discusses listener demographics, the diverse paths to becoming a dairy scientist and inspiring young people to pursue a career in dairy science. The pan...

This episode was recorded in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 2025 Tri-State Dairy Conference. Dr. Carpenter gives an overview of her presentation. She summarizes an Extension risk management project regarding heifer development, assisting dairies in benchmarking their heifer growth and development. Key focus points include reducing morbidity and mortality and timely breeding to achieve goals for a...

Guests: Dr. José Santos, University of Florida; Dr. Jeff Firkins, The Ohio State University; Dr. Bill Weiss, Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University; Dr. Jimena Laporta, University of Wisconsin; Dr. Jim Aldrich, CSA Animal Nutrition; Dr. Tom Overton, Cornell University; Dr. Mark Hanigan, Virginia Tech University; Martin Bengtsson, Balchem; Dr. Barry Bradford, Michigan State University; Dr. T...

This episode was recorded in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 2025 Tri-State Dairy Conference. Dr. Jaborek gives an overview of his presentation including sire selection, how beef on dairy crosses compare, feedlot performance, liver abscesses and red meat yield. (6:21) Beef sire availability and quality have changed over time with the development of selection indexes and selection criteria. Calving...

Balchem’s Bourbon & Brainiacs event took place at the Frazier History Museum during the 2025 ADSA annual meetings in Louisville, Kentucky. This bonus episode takes a deep dive into bourbon tasting! After introductions, Steve leads off in his role as the bourbon steward and describes the two bourbons and a rye whiskey for the tasting. (2:14) Steve gives some instructions on the best way to taste bo...

In the Real Science Exchange Legacy Series, we celebrate the pioneers who have shaped the dairy industry. In this episode, we honor Dr. Charlie Staples, a distinguished professor at the University of Florida, whose groundbreaking work in dairy nutrition and mentorship touched countless lives. From his 35 years of research mentoring 23 graduate students to earning the American Dairy Science Associa...

Dr. Hristov gave a webinar titled “Histidine: a limiting amino acid for dairy cows” on March 4, 2025, and joins the podcast in this episode for a deeper dive into the topic.  Panelists introduce themselves and give some background on their interest in histidine (00:52) Dr. Hristov gives an overview of his webinar presentation, touching on some of the first research projects that showed lower prote...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. Dr. Cantor gives an overview of her presentation at the conference, focusing on data from accelerometers and robotic feeders to predict calf sickness. While the correlations are there and we know calves change activity, behavior and feeding behavior before they get sick, there is more work to be done before...

Earlier this year, Balchem and Progressive Dairy Magazine partnered to create a new webinar series, The Real Producer Exchange. In this podcast episode, Scott and Walt reflect on the first webinar in the series, where Clare Alderink from Brian Ryzebol Dairy was the featured producer. Walt gives an overview of the premise and setup of the webinar series along with a brief overview of Clare’s backgr...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. Stan begins with an overview of the dairy checkoff since its inception in 1983. At that time, dairy farmers were producing 139 billion pounds of milk, but only 122 million pounds were being consumed. Dairy promotion has evolved to focus on research and education about nutrition, crisis management and even pa...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. Mike gives an overview of his three presentations at the conference regarding heifer supply. The panel discusses how the industry went from too many heifers to not enough heifers. (3:46) Clay asks Dan about his breeding philosophy from a semen standpoint right now as a purebred Holstein breeder. He suggests...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. Dr. Lock begins with an overview of his presentation, discussing nutrition and genomics impacts on the speed of progress in milk fat production. He also talks about historic differences in milk fat production in Europe compared to the US. With the reduction in generation interval that genomics provides, a mo...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. Dr. Kononoff begins with some renewable fuels history. Since the renewable fuels standard in 2007, corn production for ethanol has increased to around 50% of the crop going to ethanol production. With the subsequent increase in fuel has come an increase in distillers grains and the industry has learned how t...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada. Dr. DeVries gives an overview of his presentation on the economics of feeding more than one ration to lactating cows, with special consideration for additional costs (beyond increased feed costs) such as delivering additional loads of TMR, labor cost and mixing errors. He notes that producer surveys indicate...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Petfood Forum in Kansas City, Missouri.    Austin begins with an overview of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). Their membership consists of all government officials in the US and other countries who are charged by law to regulate animal feed, including pet food, in their jurisdictions. Canada, Costa Rica, and the US all participate in...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium.    Dr. Baumgard begins with an overview of his presentation, “Importance of gut health to drive animal performance and health.” He notes the metabolic and inflammatory fingerprint of all stressors is essentially the same, indicating they likely all emanate from the gut. Overall, we’re gaining a better understanding of how...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium.  Dr. Bach gives an overview of his presentation, highlighting that buffers make the rumen resistant to a decrease in pH while alkalizers immediately increase rumen pH. He prefers magnesium oxide, an alkalizer, over sodium bicarbonate, a buffer. Both are effective, but sodium bicarbonate requires a larger amount, thus takin...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium.  Microbial protein has always been Dr. Frikins’ main interest. It’s the most important and consistent source of protein for the cow, with a very high amino acid content. Histidine is the only exception, but bypass protein sources high in histidine complement microbial protein well. Our assessment of microbial protein is al...