Real Science Exchange-Dairy

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...

This episode was recorded in Reno, Nevada, during the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference.  Dr. Hemme begins with a demonstration of three different-sized glasses of milk representing the daily average dairy consumption in China, Europe, and the world as a whole. He explains that when you make predictions, it’s good to identify the two main drivers of uncertainty in your industry. In the case...

Dr. Nicholson details the high points of his presentation, including a milk price outlook, implications of changes to milk and milk component pricing that will take place in June, and changes in butterfat value over time. As a result of the pricing changes, milk component values are expected to decrease. (3:15) Net impacts on milk prices for a dairy will depend mostly on where they’re located, but...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Petfood Forum in Kansas City, Missouri. In 2020, the Institute for Feed Education and Research (IFEEDER), American Feed Industry Association (AFIA), North American Renderers Association (NARA) and Pet Food Institute (PFI) collaborated to publish the Pet Food Consumption Report. The organizations collaborated again to publish a second edition in 2025, which Lar...

This episode was recorded in Reno, Nevada, during the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference.  The panel discusses their individual experiences with outbreaks in different states. Beth talks about her group’s microbial surveillance technology they used to compare rectal swabs from positive and non-positive herds. They noted elevations in specific virulent E. coli, Salmonella spp., and Clostridiu...

This episode was recorded in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 2025 Tri-State Dairy Conference.  Dr. Laporta gives an overview of her presentation, focusing on the impact of heat stress during the dry period on the cow, her daughters and her granddaughters. She covers heat stress impacts on mammary gland involution, as well as fetal programming effects on the daughter and granddaughter. (3:37) Daugh...

This episode was recorded in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the 2025 Tri-State Dairy Conference.  Dr. Grant gives an overview of his presentation at the conference, highlighting cow time budgets and the importance of natural cow behavior to health, welfare and productivity. The impacts of overcrowding, including rumen pH and de novo fatty acid synthesis, are a key component of his message. (7:07) Eat...

This episode was recorded in Reno, Nevada, during the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference. The panel is reviewing a presentation given by Dr. Rick Grant, who was unable to be on the podcast.  The presentation was based on the idea that crowding is a subclinical presence. If you manage it with people and resources, a dairy can do very well. But if something happens in that crowded situation, l...

This episode was recorded in Reno, Nevada for the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference.  Dr. Shabtai gives an overview of her presentation. Afimilk has a new technology that includes a feed efficiency sensor to determine eating, rumination, heat stress monitoring and more. The Feed Efficiency Service combined with the AfiCollar can estimate dry matter intake, which, when combined with Afimilk’...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada.  Dr. Sabine Mann, Cornell University; Dr. Will Mustas, Progressive Dairy Solutions; Dr. Don Niles, Dairy Dreams LLC; and Joey Airosa, Airosa Dairy Farms, introduce themselves. (0:48) Dr. Mann outlines the high points of her presentation. Giving an adequate amount of high-quality colostrum quickly after birth...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Western Dairy Management Conference in Reno, Nevada.  Gregg Doud, National Milk Producers Federation, begins with an overview of his talk regarding recent and ongoing investments in the dairy industry. Dan Siemers, Siemers Holsteins, notes they were able to build a new dairy and find a new milk market because Agropur built a new plant in their area. Corey Geig...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium. Panelists Dr. John Goeser or Rock River Laboratory, Inc.; Dr. Bob Kozlowski, PAS of Dairy NExT, LLC and Dr. Tom Overton of Cornell University introduce themselves and give an overview of their backgrounds. (0:10) Dr. Goeser begins with three different ways to define forage quality: energetic potential, particle size as an...

Dr. Drackley begins with an overview of his presentation at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium, focusing on the NASEM requirements for pre-weaned calves. He mentions some differences in energy and protein requirement calculations compared to the NRC system, as well as increased vitamin E recommendations and a more biologically based factorial approach to calculating mineral requirements...

Dr. Hansen’s lab conducted several in vitro experiments where choline chloride was supplemented to beef embryo culture media for the first seven days of embryonic development. Calves resulting from the choline-supplemented embryos were consistently 17-20 kilograms heavier at weaning. In the feeding experiment presented at the Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium, Dr. Sagheer fed rumen-protected ch...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium.  Dr. DeVries’ research focuses on farm-level decisions and modeling. The University of Florida dairy has implemented the use of beef semen. Dr. DeVries describes some of the factors that go into a partial budget for this system as well as details some of the factors involved in implementing beef on dairy. The UF dairy geno...

This episode was recorded at the 2025 Florida Ruminant Nutrition Symposium. Dr. Johnson and Dr. Felix begin with brief descriptions of their background. (1:26) Dr. Johnson’s presentation at the symposium focuses on beef quality aspects of using beef sires on dairy cows. Using the same Angus semen, his research model compared Angus-sired beef calves raised in a conventional cow-calf system, Angus x...