Lifting a 1000-cow herd’s average milk fat percentage from 2.7 per cent to 4.0 per cent came down to a chain reaction of layered reasoning by nutritionist Ken Bailey.
The Western Australian, who owns and operates Haslen Technology, has been working across dairy, broadacre and horticultural operations to lift yields and improve soil systems for close to three decades.
Mr Bailey said his education at Marcus Oldham College taught him how to think, while his visits to the United States widened his scope of understanding; together, these have been key drivers in his ability to find results for his clients.
The journey has taken him down many rabbit holes, Mr Bailey’s relentless drive to find complete answers has led to some transformational discoveries for his clients.
Combination therapy
It is not one single factor that trumps another. Rather, Mr Bailey says cow health and performance are intrinsically linked to healthy soil and plants, balanced minerals and the use of potent probiotics — in that order. And, when it all comes together, it’s a symphony for any farm’s orchestra.
“What I noticed early on was there was a big gap between the people working with soils and plants, and the people that worked with the animals — and there was no seamless continuity within that.
“We’re working with the soil, building its minerals and therefore the nutrition in the plant. We want good, healthy plants with lots of diversity, so the animals have a good base to work from.
“Monoculture is really the problem, because when you have no plant diversity, the soil becomes sick. If I can have 20 or 30 plants in the system, I’m a lot happier.”
Mr Bailey said he still remembered an old vet who believed in organic practices, quoting a 1917 nutritional publication which said “to have healthy cows you have to graze them across a 100 different species of plants every five days”.
Probiotics accelerate mineral health
Mr Bailey said soil health was directly connected to an animal’s mineral health, and once the soil was depleted it was a three-year journey to correct any mineral deficiencies in the animals that were grazing it. However, the turnaround can be hastened by the strategic use of powerful probiotics.
“Magnesium is the one element nearly all nutritionists don’t use enough of,” Mr Bailey said.
“The ratio of calcium to magnesium needs to be 2:1. And it’s the same for the ratio of calcium to phosphorus [2:1]. That should be the foundation of your diet.”
He says the reality of feed-conversion efficiency is that cows eat for energy first, protein second, and minerals third. And, they will eat four or five times more than they need just to satisfy their mineral requirements if there is a mineral deficiency in their diet.
“If you’re satisfying the mineral needs, feed conversion comes back to the energy and protein, and the amount of DM [dry matter] those cows need can drop off dramatically.”
Probiotics are the final piece of the puzzle
Mr Bailey said the strategic use of potent probiotics sped up animal responses across the board.
“The uptake and conversion of the minerals into bio-available forms happens quicker with the probiotics, because you’ve got the rumen working properly. You need to have enough biology in there to achieve maximum digestion.”
And so it was for one of his clients who was struggling with a 2.7 per cent fat test.
“By increasing the magnesium and adding the probiotic over the top of that, we resolved the issue relatively quickly, and got it back to 4.0 per cent.
“A low protein percentage is a different story, because that’s related to starch, which is always related to the biology in the rumen — and that takes time to correct.”
Mr Bailey said it was a big lesson for him in the early days because he'd expected “all of those problems to be fixed in three months”.
“Some could be, but when you’re dealing with base minerals like calcium, magnesium and phosphorus — which is what bones are made of, and where most of our problems come from — it becomes a longer-term conversation.
“When soil fertility becomes depleted, it takes three years to bring it back, and it takes the same amount of time to get those minerals back into the cows.
“Once I got my head around that, I realised that probiotics could help speed up that process because they introduce the efficiencies needed to bring about that change more readily.
“Mostly what probiotics do is offer competition. They drive the rumen activity, and maximise the breakdown of the NDF.”
NDF is “neutral detergent fibre”, the most common measure of fibre used for animal-feed analysis.
Probiotics elevate herd health
Mr Bailey said animal health was another welcome benefactor of adding probiotics to the mix.
“It improves dramatically. There is an improvement in animal condition — they will put on another one to two condition scores.
“The SCC [somatic cell count] will also come down. That happens because there is biology in there that will go down into the udder and populate the teat canal with beneficial biology and that keeps the mastitis organisms out. Most people think it’s environmental, and therefore it enters the udder externally. That’s only part of the story.
“I have a client that was struggling to stay in grade two at his milk company with an SCC that peaked at 300. With minerals and probiotics, it’s now averaging 120 across 1000 cows. That’s a massive response.”
Mr Bailey said selenium also played a part in the overall result.
Choose wisely
When it came to his probiotic choices, Ken said he easily resonated with the levels of probiotics, bacteria and live yeast in Australian Probiotic Solutions (APS) and he recommended them to all his clients.
“APS have done an excellent job with what they’ve put in there,” he says.
“Bacillus subtilis is the bacteria that I really like, but there is a good spread of biology and yeast that has been chosen based on their performance. They’ve done their homework on what probiotics work, and what don’t.
“And, if you can have a probiotic in there that improves an animal’s feed-conversion efficiency, then that’s the name of the game, because, when you’re talking about farmers paying $300/tonne of DM for feed — whether it’s irrigated, silage or hay — the more production that you can get from that tonne of DM, the more profitable your business is going to be.
“So there can be some serious savings made right there.”
Probiotics recommended for calves
Mr Bailey said he recommended all his clients used BioCalf — a daily probiotic milk additive powder for calves — at 2 g/calf/day for the first two weeks, before dropping it back to 1 g/calf/day thereafter. He said it was a good tool for reducing the use of antibiotics in agriculture.
“To get the best out of that advice, I also recommend they have minerals going into the calves too,” he said.
“Otherwise the response to BioCalf will be below what could be achieved. The minerals are also important for disease suppression.”
Diversity brings networking
Ultimately, Mr Bailey finds it useful to move across all agriculture genres to give a complete service to his clients.
“I work with a lot of farmers that don’t have any animals at all, as well as with dairy and sheep farmers, which gives me a good cross-section of agriculture,” Mr Bailey said.
“I understand where good grain and hay quality is at.
“Being able to work across a great number of different types of farms, you can pick up a lot of good base knowledge and then share that around to others. I can also bring a lot of farmers together, like putting farmers producing quality grain and hay in touch with dairy farmers — that kind of thing.
“There is a lot of networking within my role.”
Just as he “networks” different areas of the nutrition jigsaw to gain the best result.