INTERVIEW ▶▶▶
Nutrition (models) for better cow health
More focus on how the large intestine works, better rumen fermentation and going for non-GMO and locally grown ingredients; diet formulation for dairy cows has to deal with all of these new challenges. Wilfried van Straalen talks us through some of them.
BY EMMY KOELEMAN S
Wilfried van Straalen: “At Schothorst Feed Research we have invested a lot of time and effort in the feeding values of different raw materials. This means we can make reliable predictions”.
26 ▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 6, No. 2, 2019
chothorst Feed Research (SFR) is a well-known inde- pendent advice and research organisation for animal nutrition, based in the Netherlands. The SFR experts have clients all over the world. Regarding dairy cow
nutrition, SFR has an impressive track record of research pro- grammes. Dairy Global caught up with Wilfried van Straalen, research coordinator and dairy cow consultant at SFR about the changing way we feed today’s high producing dairy cattle and what the key topics are in diet formulation.
Dairy Global (DG): Is improving milk production still the main focus for dairy nutritionists around the world? Wilfried van Straalen (WS): “We see that producing more milk is, on average, still the main goal for many dairy producers around the world. But we also see that farmers and nutrition- ists are more aware of fertility, health and sustainability and the role of nutrition in this. An exception is maybe the lon- gevity issue. This is for example a big theme in some Western European countries like the Netherlands, spurred by the phosphate regulation. This means that Dutch farmers had to limit the number of cows on the farm, hence leading to a smaller number of youngstock for replacement. But in Asian countries for example, we see that the need to extend the longevity of dairy cows is less of an issue. But overall we can say that the aims of dairy farmers around the globe are the same, but the way farming is done and how cows are fed is changing.”
DG: Can you give a few examples of the changes seen in dairy cow nutrition? WS: “We see a number of things happening in the dairy in- dustry which has a direct effect on the way we feed the cows. One of them is the increasing demand from dairy processors regarding some ethical/environmental issues. An example of this is the demand to use GMO-free feed ingredients. In Ger- many known under ‘VLOG’. The farmers that produce for these processors therefore have less feed ingredients to choose from. At the same time, other types of protein sources are be- ing looked into, such as lupines or peas, and research is being done in how to make protein in these ingredients less degra- dable to use in dairy cow diets. The problem of these top down approaches, demanded by the processors, is that the nutritional value of the ingredients used is not the main con- cern. The GMO issue or the fact that the ingredients are sourced locally is often the main reason. The use of soy or palm kernel meal for example are two types of ingredients that are often used for cows and have a good nutritional pro- file. But we can question if these types of ingredients will still be used in European diets in the future, because the environ- mental impact is bigger than some of the locally grown crops. In the Netherlands we also see initiatives from the animal feed sector on calculating the environmental impact of feed
PHOTO: SFR
PHOTO: HERBERT WIGGERMAN
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