A study across 10 different farms has revealed how ForFarmers’ RumiBest product boosts milk yields through improved digestibility of fibre. Product Manager Bruce Forshaw explains.
Quantifying the benefits of feeding RumiBest was the central aim of on-farm trials coordinated by ForFarmers.
Bruce Forshaw says: “We’ve been offering the RumiBest product to our customers for more than two years and its ability to boost milk yields, milk fat and milk from forage through better utilisation of fibres, is now widely accepted. However, we wanted to put some numbers on that and find out a bit more about it.”
The 10 farms selected to take part in the trials covered a variety of systems, had grass silages with an NDF higher than 50 and none had fed RumiBest before.
“First we went out to each farm and took benchmark figures for the NDF in the PMR and in the dung using dung sieves and a polispec NIR scanner. By comparing the two we can work out the digestibility of the NDF as it progresses through the cow before and after the introduction of RumiBest.”
RumiBest was then added to the diet. On seven farms it was added to the compound feed and for the remaining three it went into the compound as well as being topped up outside the parlour using ForFarmers RumiBest farm pack.
The analysis was repeated after feeding RumiBest for about six weeks, depending on delivery dates of the compound, and the results compared along with analysis of milk data. Where possible this was collected via ForFarmers OptiRobot programme which can be used across most makes of milking robots.
“Another interesting observation of the OptiRobot data showed increased visits to the robot but this was outside the scope research into,” adds Bruce.
“The dung sieve sorts the contents into three different sizes. What we hoped to see was a general move down through the sieves which would indicate more of the fibre was being digested. And that’s exactly what happened. After feeding RumiBest the proportion of long fibres in the dung fell by 10% while the smallest fibres increased by 16%.
“This clearly demonstrates how much more was being digested after introduction of RumiBest.”
In fact, the polispec readings showed that RumiBest improved Total Tract Neutral Detergent Fibre digestibility (TTNDFd) by an average 5.1% across the farms.
“With every 1% worth 0.23 litres of milk we would expect to see 1.2L of milk improvement. We saw this on the block calving herds, but in the autumn calving herds which were later in lactation, we saw a drop in milk of 0.4 litres where we would have expected a drop of about 2 litres, which suggests improved milking persistency too.
“We know RumiBest delivers, from seeing the improvements our customers have experienced, but we wanted to understand more about it through this trial. The gains have come solely from RumiBest increasing the digestion from forage,” he stressed. “We didn’t increase the amount of compound fed or change any other factors.
“Our trial backs up what was also found in the USA, Netherlands, France and Italy. It’s great that we now have more evidence of how this additive can support herds wanting to increase milk from forage and reduce carbon footprint.”
RumiBest is a feed additive created from a unique combination of plant extracts, spices and tannins which stimulate rumen microbes and gut flora to help drive more efficient conversion of forage to milk and have an enzymatic effect in the intestine.
It is an exclusive product to ForFarmers in the UK and Europe.
RumiBest is included in the Optima Silage and Optima Graze Enhance dairy compounds.
It is also available as a farm pack for inclusion in PMR and TMR diets. RumiBest is also available in blends across the UK.
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