RRL-Blog

Review animal health challenge areas to assess feed hygiene

Posted on
April 10, 2018
by
Buffy Uglow    buffy_uglow@rockriverlab.com

Review Animal Health Challenge Areas to Assess Feed Hygiene

By: John Goeser, Animal Nutrition, Research and Innovation Director

As new and different farm management schemes are adopted and new ensiling technology continues to emerge to improve feed fermentation across all sectors of the agriculture industry, the opportunities for improved feed hygiene also grows. The term ‘feed hygiene’ refers to the anti-nutritional factors that affect the purity and sanitation of feeds - from the field, to fermentation, and through feed out. Even while knowledge in the sector of anti-nutritional factors continues to grow, and management factors that contribute to poor feed hygiene are identified, an easy solution to combat all of these aspects remains unfound.

We are recognizing bacterial loads in feedstuffs to a far greater extent than ever before, and they are appearing in more places than ever before. For instance, clostridia outbreaks are usually resigned to just haylage, but we can also find these bacteria in corn silage and even TMR. When anti-nutritional factors, like fungi or pathogenic bacteria, are present in feed, it is a sign of contamination. These anti-nutritional factors arise from feed contaminations and management practices like dirty buckets, tracking dirt into feed, spoiled feed polluting fresh feed in mixers, and bird excrement, in addition to being field-borne.

Four Contributors

Regardless of how the contamination occurs, animal health challenges likely spawn from multiple compounding factors and I focus upon four major contributing categories. The first thing producers and their consultants should do is identify what they are dealing with. Review the four contributing areas, then utilize analysis and on-farm assessment to determine what the animals are up against.

1. Fungal contamination: Mold, yeast and mycotoxins

Mold, yeast and mycotoxins are relatively well understood compared to other factors here, but there is always more to learn. I recommend analyzing feedstuffs that are suspect for any of these anti-nutritional factors. Depending on the analysis chosen, a producer can determine the level of the mold, yeast or mycotoxin in the feed, and in some cases, even identify the species.

 2. Environmental and Management Stress

Temperature swings, overcrowding, poor cow comfort, or anything else that stresses animals can contribute to a less than optimal immune system responses. When an animal is stressed, cortisol is released, which in turn suppresses the immune system’s ability to fight pathogens, ultimately showcasing itself in the form of a sick animal.

3. Nutritional Stress

Nutritional stressors such as variations in feeding, inconsistent feed delivery or slug feeding, not pushing feed up frequently enough, delivering the wrong diet, or poor starch digestibility can really wreak havoc – especially on ruminants. Ill starch digestibility can result in an influx of grain into the hindgut. If it doesn’t digest in the rumen, compensatory digestion in the small intestine takes place, which may provide an environment for pathogenic, opportunistic fungi or bacteria.

4. Pathogenic or efficiency-robbing bacterial load

A successful fermentation should wipe out many bad bacteria. For example, enterobacterial populations, which are generally undesirable, have been shown to be completely eliminated by a successful silage fermentation. Keeping bacteria at bay or killing them off is part of the fermentation process. However, inadequate fermentation from oxygen infiltration via poor seals or plastic damage, aerobic feed spoilage, or feed contamination at feed-out (i.e. mud or manure getting into the TMR) can result in the presence of bad bacterial loads.

Every Farm is Different

Each farm is a petri dish, and each farm is different. Producers should consider that which they can’t see – there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. Various areas are contributors to the continually growing feed contaminations, including greater anti-nutritional factors in the fields following changes in tillage practices or warmer and wetter conditions. Rock River Laboratory has also recognized a seemingly linear increase in log counts of feedstuff fungal measures for the past five to seven years. Cows can usually fight off the low-level factors without an impact on their health, but increased contaminant intakes with today’s high producing herds, combined with mycotoxins or stress, are bringing high-production cows to breaking points.

Merging Veterinary and Nutritional Science

As bacterial challenges arise and grow into clinical outbreaks, a veterinarian’s insight may be needed to assess and provide antibiotics, etc., in addition to a nutritionist’s assessment. Producers should work with both their nutritionist and veterinarian to minimize or rid the herd of the animal health challenges.

 Develop a strategy with your veterinarian and nutritionist to combat the identified subject. Consider running a TMR Hygiene Diagnostic test and put a strategy in place with a goal to greatly diminish or completely banish all on-farm feed contamination.

Poor feed hygiene combined with compromised animal immune status and feed management lapses packs a punch, with the potential to put large groups in the sick pen. Regardless of the type of animals fed, producers should proactively monitor feed visually and with analysis to assess risk factors that are either obvious or invisible to the human eye. By putting protocols in place for successful fermentation, the risks of anti-nutritional factors are reduced, but more often than not, proactive nutritional management strategies should be followed as more and more detriments to good feed hygiene surface.

Posted in:
Animal Nutrition