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Navigating Feed Price Fluctuations: Strategies for Ruminant Nutrition

As feed prices fluctuate significantly—from highs in 2022 to lower levels in 2024—dairy farmers and the dairy industry must adapt their strategies to enhance income over feed costs or manage least-cost formulations when milk-to-feed price ratios are constrained.

Ruminants possess a unique ability to extract energy from fiber due to the fermentative activity in their rumen. This distinctive digestive system allows them to degrade and ferment fiber through microbial processes. The fiber components, along with the production of volatile fatty acids (VFAs), provide the majority of energy for these animals. Therefore, optimizing rations to maximize fiber digestibility is crucial for extracting more energy from the plant’s cell wall components, such as forages and food industry by-products

A deeper understanding of fiber degradation in the rumen can help identify strategies to ensure that fiber is no longer an untapped energy source. Nutritionists aim to maximize fiber digestibility to enhance energy extraction from these components.

Improving feed efficiency in ruminants also means optimizing the quantity of feed produced per hectare, which is essential for sustainably meeting the demands of a growing global population. Utilizing science-based nutritional solutions to enhance the digestibility of locally available raw materials—despite environmental challenges like heat stress—is a key driver of Income Over Feed Cost (IOFC) for farmers, while also respecting natural ecosystems.

Feeding LEVUCELL SC to ruminants enhances fiber degradation, providing nutritionists with the opportunity to assess the energy value of specific forages and design tailored diets that target higher income or lower feed cost scenarios. Over the past 25 years, significant research has been invested in understanding its mechanisms of action, resulting in more than 100 scientific publications. Research continues to focus on quantifying the effects of this live yeast on fiber degradation across various forage types worldwide. With an in vivo database encompassing over 350 forage types, Lallemand Animal Nutrition collaborates with independent third parties to develop formulation and nutrition software. This technology predicts the impact of the supplementation of LEVUCELL SC on parameters such as rumen pH, milk production, and IOFC.

The accuracy of these predictions models is continually improved through ongoing research into animal performance. By sharing diet compositions and ingredient quality, customers can receive tailored insights on the response to using LEVUCELL SC (Saccharomyces cerevisiae CNCM I-1077) live yeast. This allows nutritionists to gain more precision when formulating diet and engage in meaningful discussions with farm managers about how the additive can best align with their strategies.

In summary, adopting precision feeding strategies like this one can lead to more productive herds while lowering feed costs per kilogram of milk produced. Ultimately, this approach enhances feed efficiency and can help improve the sustainability of our cattle farming systems.

Specific live yeast: LEVUCELL SC