Dr. Andre Bannink, Wageningen UR Livestock Research, conducted a presentation titled, “Variation in rumen fermentation and rumen wall during transition period” during the Dairy Solutions Symposium, sponsored by Alltech. I spoke with him about his topic during our gala dinner reception.
He is a “modeler” which means he develops mathematical models which predict how the animal responds on a diet. He says there’s a big debate on rumen acidosis here at the symposium and a lot of questions being asked. For a solutions symposium he thinks more questions have been raised than answers. His presentation focused on how well a high yielding early lactation dairy cow rumen can adapt to a big increase in feed intake. He conducted a test comparing two groups of dairy cows. One received a very quick increase in feed and the other was “steamed up” (his term) much more slowly. The main conclusion was that the rumen wall was very capable of adapting to either strategy with very little difference between the two. They compared 10 days to 20 days. So now he thinks further work should be done to see if there is a limit to how fast you can “steam up” a dairy cow.
Dr. Andre Bannink Interview