Recent movement in the ethanol industry to extract some of the oil from the co-product distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) has grabbed the attention of the livestock feeding sector. With change comes opportunity and the dairy industry is poised to capitalize.

Amino acids (AA), essential nutrients for dairy cows, cannot be considered optional feed additives. When AA levels in the ration are properly balanced, milk production, the cow’s reproduction and health each benefit.

Each year, the American poultry industry produces roughly nine billion chickens for meat that is sold in markets in the U.S. and around the world. In 2010, the USDA reported that the total live weight of chicken processed in the U.S. was 49.3 billion pounds.

Problem Milk components varied significantly, despite consistent milk production.Rambling Acres in Stetsonville, Wisconsin, consistently averages 95 pounds of milk per cow year-round, with periods of 100-plus pounds.But despite this stellar milk production, components would continuously vary.

Nutrition tweaks and adjustments are a necessary part of good ration management, and the right decisions made at the right time can pay big dividends. However, field assessments have found that for these ration tweaks to be effective, any underlying herd challenges must be identified and resolved first or the ration adjustment can be an expensive exercise in futility. It’s essential to make sure a dairy’s underlying herd management makes the grade before fine-tuning the ration.

Dairy calf feeds are normally low in functional fatty acids (butyric acid, medium-chain fatty acids, and linolenic acid – see Table 1) known to influence metabolism and immunity – and calves respond to their supplementation. Additionally, calf feeds are normally high in linoleic acid and, if it is increased in the diet, calf performance is often decreased.

Why do cows – rather rumens – behave differently on the same diet? We know that animal differences (i.e. age, parity, DIM, genetic potential) and management factors (i.e. crowding, time budgets, facilities) greatly affect production and animal health.

There was a time when dairy farming in the U.S. consisted primarily of the neighborhood dairy farm milking a handful of cows, requiring a few acres for hay and pasture, producing just a few gallons of milk per cow per day. If you would have told a dairy farmer at the turn of the 20th century that in 100 years a cow would be producing over 15 gallons of milk after she freshened, he would have looked at you like you were daft. About as ridiculous as a man flying in the sky with the birds. Well, today we have a behemoth industry in which the average dairy cow produces over 20,000 lbs of milk per lactation. We have better management, better genetics and better nutrition to thank for all that milk.

Olive pulp (also called olive pomace or olive cake) is what remains after olives are crushed and the olive oil is extracted. Olive pulp contains the pulp, skins, stones and water. The California Olive Oil Council reported that in September 2011 there were approximately 30,000 acres of olives for oil production in California and that there will be 5,000 new acres planted each year through 2020. The amount of olive pulp available as a byproduct feedstuff for ruminants will increase in the future.

The 21st Annual Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference was held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on April 24 and 25, 2012. This annual conference provided its 450 attendees the opportunity to learn about a wide variety of nutrition topics, including talks on nutrition and milk composition, forage management, dairy farm profitability and timely topics such as use of automatic calf feeders.