The Rumen Room Podcasts

This latest “bite sized” short podcast takes a look at summer crop establishment in New Zealand, including a detailed look at the tiny (unwanted) herbivores that eat forage crops. Charlotte Westwood chats with PGG Wrightson Seeds agronomy guru Greg Zeuren to hear about the successful establishment of spring planted summer forage crops in the Waikato region of the North Island of New Zealand.

In a down to earth, practical manner, Greg scene sets around deciding between direct drill or cultivation as approaches to crop establishment, discusses spray out and the importance of rolling crop areas post-planting, before moving on to managing risk of slug and insect pest pressure in newly established chicory, brassica, lucerne and other “small seed” forage crops.

Throughout the podcast, you’ll learn handy tips and tricks to help grow forage crops as a summer feed for our ruminants. Slugs enjoy Weetbix, really Greg?? Absolutely!

Finally, we’ll learn that if we’re not proactively monitoring our crops, there won’t be any forage crop left for our ruminants to eat this summer.

We hope that you enjoy our latest podcast.

Amazing feed quality or compost? This second of a two part podcast series focuses on how to make sure we get the very best quality feed from plastic-wrapped bales. Part 1 focused on how to assess baleage, and the importance of getting the dry matter (DM) % right to ensure a  tasty, good quality end product. In this, part 2 of our baleage series, we look at further factors that impact balelage quality, including chop length, bale compaction, individual or tube-wrapped bales, how to handle bales and answers the question of “just how long do we need to leave baleage from the point of wrapping until feed out”?

Baleage can be a fantastic way to conserve pasture or crop, moving forage from times of feed surpluses to times of feed deficits. Once wrapped in plastic, all baleage looks somewhat the same. Yet behind that plastic lurks all types of feed, from very high quality baleage through to absolute compost. This latest podcast focusses on assessing the quality of baleage as a feed for your stock. After discussing how to assess baleage, we move onto the importance of getting good quality forage into a bale at the appropriate dry matter (DM) percentage to optimise baleage quality. Part 2 of this podcast series will focus on further aspects of baling forage, including chop length, bale compaction, individual versus tube-wrapping of bales, and answers the question of “just how long do we need to leave baleage from wrapping until feed out”?

Hypothermia is a real risk for newborn lambs and calves - and is a significant cause of loss of newborns born outdoors during cold weather.  

When body heat is lost to the environment faster than a lamb or calf can replenish core body heat from within, hypothermia is likely. What factors influence the amount of heat that a lamb or calf can generate to keep itself warm, from the 'inside-out'?

Farm-level factors, specifically the nutrition of the pregnant ewe determine the extent of brown fat deposition in the unborn lamb. Keeping ewes in good body condition from mating to scanning, then from scanning to lambing favours better reserves of brown fat in unborn lambs and calves. More brown fat available at birth helps lambs and calves keep warm during the first few hours of life - potentially reducing risk of hypothermia in newborn ruminants.   

Building on this mid-winter topic introduced in Episode 51, this podcast explores practical, farm-based things that we can do to help our cows well in cold weather.  As a nutrition-themed podcast series, our latest episode focuses unashamedly on the importance of nutrition, but other topics are explored too.  The role for shelter for reducing effects of wind chill is discussed. Just why cows need more feed during a range of different winter weather events is covered. How the “Heat of Fermentation” inside the rumen helps keep a cow "toasty warm" is explained. The better types of supplementary feeds to offer cows during inclement weather are discussed.  The importance of good quality stock water for cows, even during mid-winter, is defined.

Keep warm out there Rumen Room Podcast listeners! 

Cold winter weather. Great if you love skiing, not so great for us and our ruminants when we’re out and about in rough weather. That said, ruminants can be remarkably resilient in cold winter conditions – to a point.

In this, part one of a two part podcast series, we explore why ruminants (focusing specifically on dairy cattle) can tolerate moderately cold winter conditions.  Risk factors that influence the degree of tolerance by cows to cold conditions are discussed. The range of coping mechanisms provided to ruminants by “Mother Nature” to improve resilience to colder winter weather are explored.

Part two of this latest podcast series (episode 52) will cover some practical, farm-based strategies, with a nutritional twist, that can help keep cows well through winter weather events.

Ingestion of soil during grazing of pastures and forage crops is a common and unavoidable event.   Soil contamination of silage and baleage is another challenge that we sometimes need to deal with. Our latest episode explores the whole topic of soil ending up where it doesn’t belong. How much mud and dirt do animals eat during grazing? What factors increase risk of animals eating too much soil? Are there any health or nutrition issues we need to think about when animals eat too much mud and dirt? What happens when we get soil contamination of silage? All this and more. We hope you enjoy our latest podcast.

2.25 Overview of content of our current podcast

4.00 How ruminants end up eating soil

4.30 Post-grazing residual management – it’s not only about soil ingestion

6.55 Soil type and structure

9.00 Plant pulling during grazing

11.00 Earthworms – wonderful things but how about those worm casts?

12.45 Hot, dry dusty conditions

13.15 Flood irrigation

13.55 Annual forage crops, including bulb crops (Fodder beet, swedes, turnips)

14.35 Different types of bulb crops and risk of soil ingestion

17.00 Sugar beet and soil tare

18.00 When soil contaminates conserved feeds. Risks for spoilage of silage

23.30 Listeriosis risk when soil-contaminated silage pH is high

25.05 What parts of a feed test reports could indicate the presence of soil in your silage sample?

27.20 Soil ingestion when animals have a depraved appetite and eat soil (pica)

29.20 How much soil do grazing ruminants eat during grazing?

34.45 Potentially good aspects of soil ingestion

39.00 Potentially not so good aspects of soil ingestion.

44.50 Risk of physical damage to the gastrointestinal tract when ruminants eat soil

Well known New Zealand-based veterinarian, nutritionist and farmer Dr Sue Macky joins Charlotte Westwood in our latest podcast. Sue steps us through everything to do with the individual dairy cow during the dry and transition periods - from the cow's point of view. Too often we get overly focused on the detail of the diet and management dry and transition dairy cows - and forget about focusing specifically on the cow herself. Not in this latest episode, this is very much about the cow herself!

Sue discusses a cow-centric approach to managing dairy cows from dry off, during the far-off dry period and into the “springer” period (close-up dry period) and colostrum mob.  This is one episode you simply will not want to miss!

0.40 Introducing Dr Sue Macky, defining her lifetime of global experience in dairy cow feeding and management

3.35 The dairy cow is an elite athlete, and should be treated as such

4.35 The New Zealand dry (non-lactating) cow period - redefined

5.10 Managing cows heading into dry off including redrafting cows for the dry period. Impacts on an individual cow with changing herd social structure discussed

7.10 Cow body condition score at dry off through to calving

7.50 Gut fitness in dairy cows; Capacity and muscularity during the dry period

10.20 Feeding cows through dry off – “don’t confuse the cow”

10.50 Immune functionality through dry off

11.40 Stock water supply and access by cows during the dry period 

13.30 Late dry period through to the transition period – setting cows up well

14.00 “Calves are obligate parasites during late pregnancy”

14.40 The challenges of pasture-based diets in late pregnancy

15.30 Mob size for springer (close-up) dry cows, it’s all about compromise

16.05 How long should cows remain in the springer mob?

16.30 The calving cow – the importance of access by cows to feed and stock water

17.50 The cow-newborn calf bond

18.45 Feed, water and calcium for freshly calved cows

20.10 Cow behaviour after calving – the modern cow vs. the cow of ancient times

21.05 Milking out a cow after calving (“energy in, energy out”)

21.35 Once-a-day milking of cows after calving, it’s all about gut fill and rumination

All plants would be green slime growing sideways along the ground if it wasn’t for lignin– True!  Find out more in our latest podcast covering everything from the good, the bad and the ugly about lignin. Learn how lignin impacts overall quality of ruminant feeds, and how feed management decisions change how animals process and digest lignin in their day-to-day diets. Find out how the lignin content of feeds changes with feed type and feed management, and what you can do to reduce intake of lignin in the diet of your sheep, cattle, deer or goats to improve animal productivity.

Here’s where to find the key sections in this our latest podcast talking all things ruminant nutrition.

0.51 Defining lignin

2.00 Just what does lignin mean for sheep, beef, deer and goats?

4.55 Lignin and plant cell walls – holding hands

7.10 If it weren’t for lignin, where would plants be?

7.30 How lignin messes with feed quality for animals

9.50 Plant cell contents aren’t bothered by lignin – why not?

10.35 Lignin, feed digestibility and MJME

12.45 How high is high? Interpreting lignin results as part of feed test results

13.55 Lignin alongside NDF, NDFd, and ADF

15.10 “Book value” lignin results for common New Zealand feeds

17.00 Do zero lignin feeds exist?

17.30 Lignin content of some common “dry” byproduct feeds

20.25 Lignin and NZ pastures

23.30 Plant maturity influences lignin content

26.15 Weather, pasture and forage crops and lignin

31.20 Managing pastures for reduced lignin content

34.05 Plant breeding and lignin, including BMR forages

Sliced on our morning cereal or perched on top of our iconic New Zealand dessert Pavlova, kiwifruit deliver a tasty powerpack of valuable nutrients for us humans. What about ruminants? Are reject kiwifruit from your local packhouse equally as good for our dairy cows and other animals on farm? Yes! A valuable source of energy delivered largely as water soluble carbohydrates, whole kiwifruit can be a very useful feed.  However… as for any byproduct feed, kiwifruit may not always meet our expectations as a stockfeed.

Join us for this latest podcast that explores the good, the bad and the (occasionally) ugly aspects of kiwifruit as a feed for ruminants, with a specific focus on kiwifruit feeding to lactating dairy cows.

Although this is a kiwifruit-focused topic, we include content that applies equally to the feeding of other byproduct fruit and vegetables. Enjoy!

Where to find the various topics within this podcast:

2.35 Overview of the episode

5.35 The nutritive value of kiwifruit – “so changeable as the fruit ripens”

6.45 Water soluble carbohydrates (WSC)

7.45 Neutral detergent fibre (NDF)

8.30 Crude protein (CP)

10.40 Ash and mineral content

13.10 Risk of rumen acidosis associated with kiwifruit feeding

19.00 Best practice approaches to minimise risk of rumen acidosis when feeding kiwifruit

20.30 The importance of knowing your kiwifruit on a dry matter (DM) basis - and not just a wet weight basis

21.35 Gradual adaptation by ruminants to a kiwifruit diet

22.40 The protective role of a rumen-full of long stem fibre in reducing risk of rumen acidosis

23.10 Day to day consistency when feeding kiwifruit is the key!

23.50 Maximum daily amounts of kiwifruit you can feed to dairy cows. The answer? “It depends”

25.05 Feed planning with kiwifruit – the “Three Versions” of a diet that contains kiwifruit

27.30 The role for Kiwi ingenuity and innovation when feeding kiwifruit

33.15 Handling kiwifruit storage on farm

34.00 What to do if kiwifruit is overripe?

35.00 Are rumen additives protective against kiwifruit-induced acidosis?

37.00 Risk of “choke” and rumen bloat with kiwifruit feeding

41.00 Know how much your kiwifruit are costing you. Converting $ per tonne wet weight to $ per tonne DM

44.15 The paperwork. Dairy Feed Declaration. Making sure your kiwifruit are fit to feed

45.45 Preventing birds from eating your stockpiled kiwifruit, helping out your local Regional Council.