What does feed hygiene mean to you and your dairy? How often is it looked at or discussed with the feed team and barn crew? I find this area sometimes over-looked on dairies and have tried to create more awareness of it when consulting. I think of feed hygiene like I do for my own children. My wife and I always make sure dishes are cleaned and sanitized well before using them to feed our two little girls. Because we know if they’re not, then it can lead to the kids getting sick or having a tummy ache. Well, the same can be said for our milk cows who are eating 110-150lbs as-fed TMR per day, so we shouldn’t use the same skid loader that’s used to scrape pens and push up feed with it. That’s an opportunity for E.coli, Salmonella and other pathogens to make their way into the TMR and cause health challenges.
Feed hygiene really encompasses a wide array of anti-nutrients including yeast, mold, mycotoxins, clostridium, Enterobacteria, E.Coli, and Salmonella to name a few. So how can we keep tabs on all these nasty pathogens to ensure cows don’t get sick, lose reproduction efficiency or lose milk production? For me there are three main areas of the dairy to routinely check visually and with lab testing as needed to assess how feed hygiene is on a dairy.
The first area is forages, whether put up in pile, bags or bunkers. Forages typically make up 50-65% of most milking rations, so the contribution by them is very significant. You have to ensure the forages were packed tightly and covered properly to eliminate/minimize spoilage. If there is spoilage, it must be pitched! There should be no tolerance for spoiled feed getting used because a high producing cow can get sick very quickly if it consumes any of this. Also, be proactive with checking forages for mycotoxins, in particular corn silage. As you embark on feeding 2021 corn silage, it’s just as important to have taken multiple mycotoxin samples as it is to know the nutrient profile. This allows you to be proactive if there are high toxin levels versus waiting a couple months after feeding and seeing repro fall off because Zearalenone was high and there were no binders in the mix to help the situation.
The second is the commodity shed area. Is it routinely cleaned up and ingredients rotated to ensure freshness? Is the area around the building hard surfaced to minimize dirt contamination? A lot of dirt contamination can lend its hand to HBS (hemorrhagic bowel syndrome) cases which often time leads to sudden death. So it’s not worth scraping up a bunch of muck feed in an effort to use it up. It is better to keep things clean and not risk losing a $1200-$1600 animal along with lost milk revenue. The way in which we manage the feeding center can have a huge impact on not only cow health but also shrink.
Third but not least are the free stall barns themselves. Feed alley cleanliness goes a long way in reducing dirt and pathogen contamination when pushing feed up to the cows. I recommend tire scraping the center of the feed alley at minimum once per day, preferably more, to minimize build-up and contamination. Also, clean under the headlocks. I find mushy, moldy feed under the headlocks more than I care to admit, which not only can end up in the feed but it is also a fly breeding area in the summer. Flies are not only annoying but can also spread salmonella. Lastly, help the barn crew understand what equipment should be used to push up feed and what is not okay to use. And, the cheapest nutrient of all (for most parts of the US), water, needs to be cleaned multiple times per week as that is another area I have observed high pathogen loads such as E.Coli.
Fortunately, there have been many advancements in lab testing to better quantify these anti-nutrients accurately for reasonable costs. I encourage you to use these resources to gain a better understanding of feed hygiene on your dairy and be proactive. Do not let feed hygiene be a hurdle that your dairy trips over as you head into feeding new crop forages with the change of seasons shifting to fall and then winter.
Jordan Hunt, PAS, is a consultant in GPS Dairy Consulting, LLC and offers full-service dairy nutrition consulting serving dairies in Iowa, southeast Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin. He specializes in feeding and inventory management, forage and commodity procurement, record and herd performance analysis, calf and heifer management, forage and crop plans, feed center layout and efficiency and team building.
