Guests: Dr. Bill Weiss, The Ohio State University and Dr. Corwin Nelson, University of Florida

Joining together for another Journal Club to discuss vitamin D as a lactation influence on dairy cows are dairy leaders and nutritional experts Dr. Bill Weiss and Dr. Corwin Nelson. 

Dr. Weiss, professor emeritus at The Ohio State University spent nearly 33 years of his career focused on dairy cattle nutrition and has published more than 140 journal articles. He began the conversation, introducing the article “Effect of prepartum source and amount of vitamin D supplementation on lactation performance of dairy cows” and mentioning Mike Piondexter as the first publishing author. 2:20

Discussing the research study in depth was Dr. Corwin Nelson, Piondexter’s advisor. He began by introducing the Journal of Dairy Science article, highlighting the nutritional effects of supplementing vitamin D and the connection between feeding two different forms. 6:15

Dr. Nelson shared studies dating back to 1980 to indicate some vitamin D degradation. But added that most rations have between 30,000 to 50,000 units of vitamin D3 on top of basic international units. 9:40

In the article, the abstract shows productive measures such as body weight and condition, dry matter intake and factors. However, Dr. Weiss mentioned the majority of research data derived from cows during their last few weeks of weaning. 13:21

Dr. Nelson said that research also analyzed net energy between using colostrum and vitamin D, adding that feeding the 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the ration resulted in higher results of energy. 14:14

When looking at energy corrected milk, Dr. Nelson said in about 42 days he’s seen interaction between cows producing the most milk and the three milligrams per day of 25-hydroxyvitamin D supplementation. 19:01

Anti-inflammatory is another mode of action vitamin D has shown to effectively decrease in cows with lower serum. In fact, three to four weeks is the optimum benefit when it comes to supplementing less than the elevated 25-hydroxyvitamin D recommendation. 32:55

It was also mentioned that there may be a possible United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant opportunity to look at the long term effects of cow responses, maternal and neonatal vitamin D nutrition and a more focused approach to the immune system are all upcoming research modes of actions. 42:27

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