Feeding fresh cows has been an ongoing challenge for the dairy industry for many years, especially since the national average for a single lactation is over 22,000 pounds and climbing.

Each year, many thousands of tons of forages – corn and hay crops – are harvested and put up into bunkers, silos and piles for silage. A crop of ensiled forage represents a sizable investment in time and money for dairy farms as it’s being stored for future use.

Raising calves has been a challenge for dairy farmers for decades. Most neonatal calves on today’s dairy farms are separated from their mothers at birth and usually fed less milk solids daily than they could consume if allowed to nurse their mothers.

Trace minerals are those minerals required by dairy cattle and youngstock in very small amounts – usually at the milligram level per day. The occurrence of trace minerals in forages is largely dependent on the amount of those minerals found in the soil in which the forage is grown.

During the summer of 2015, the price of milk protein dropped below the price of butterfat for the first time in quite a while (Figure 1). In fact, the price of milk protein has lost more than half its value from where it was in early 2014, when U.S. protein exports were at an all-time high.

As the cost to feed cows continues to climb, and as environmental concerns continue to mount over nutrient pollution coming from dairy farms, much more attention is being directed toward researching and defining the proper amino acid balance for both milk cow growth and health as well as maximum milk production and optimal milk components.