The research question of this study was "Can we milk environmentally friendly and still make a good income?". The study was conducted on data from 112 dairy farmers (BE/NL) who frequently enter their feed lists into Farmdesk.
The figure below teaches us that farm economics can indeed go hand in hand with environmentally friendly production: the higher the protein efficiency, the higher the profit per cow.
If we can improve protein utilization at the animal level, we are obviously going to reduce nitrogen emissions. Since protein consists of a chain of amino acids and each amino acid has an amino group that contains a nitrogen atom, if protein utilization is efficient, there will be a reduced likelihood of nitrogen losses, which are environmentally desirable.
We can answer society's demand for minimal nitrogen loss by striving for high efficiency, which in turn we can achieve by pursuing high protein efficiency.
Controlling protein efficiency
Protein efficiency is directly related to cow productivity. Moreover, we find that increasing crude protein content in the ration lowers protein efficiency.
The energy supply also plays a positive role in protein efficiency: more starch in the ration yields better protein utilization. This is more true for total starch content than for resistant starch content, from which we conclude that rumen-level starch is relatively more determinant of protein efficiency. We see here the necessary interplay of protein and energy in protein digestion nicely illustrated.
The ration parameters that apparently have a (rather limited) negative effect on protein efficiency are crude fiber and FOS.
Witness from our Farmdesk practice
The Farmdesk farms are always divided into three categories regarding their farm performance, with the 25% least good farms (in terms of feed profit per cow) in the FD-low group, the 50% middle farms in the FD-mid group and the 25% best farms in the FD-top group.
The Farmdesk testing farm (blue dot) scores well in terms of FPCM per day and good in terms of feed efficiency. These are often parallel things and there is also a clear link between milk production and feed efficiency on the one hand and farm performance on the other.
Protein efficiency is high on average in the FD top group, while protein content in the ration there is relatively low. The Farmdesk testing farm (blue dot) is a living witness to this.
Be aware that a low crude protein content in the ration can cause a farm to fall into the low-performance group as well as in the high-performance group.
Moral of the story
"Environmentally friendly farming can also be lucrative - and striving for good economic results can also be environmentally friendly!"
By squeezing the protein-based ration at random, however, you run the risk of a weaker economic performance.
While judicious squeezing the protein content in the ration may well pay off from a business perspective via the quest for higher protein efficiency. For protein utilization, however, the energy supply is then very important. We can see this in the positive effect of starch supply on protein efficiency and accompanying good farm economics.
If we combine a sufficient protein supply with a good relationship between rumen protein and rumen energy, where the digestion rates are aligned, efficient microbial intestinal digestible protein can be made in the rumen which can be readily digested in the small intestine. Provided we then have sufficient glycogenic energy at the level of the ribosomes in the udder tissue, the absorbed amino acids can also be readily converted to milk protein.
