There are many reasons why your cows could be producing less milk protein than you would like.

Your cows are like high performance cars. Unlike a car though you can’t lift up the bonnet and take a look inside.

That’s where our imagination comes in.

And the brainstorming.

 

• Is it because milk volume is dropping?
• Or is your protein test low?
• Perhaps it’s a combination of both?

A key concept to understand is that most of the protein in a cows diet is broken down to smaller amino acid units and used by the microbes in her rumen for their own growth. It’s these bugs that supply the cow with her protein as they get washed down to her intestines and absorbed there.

1. Increasing a cows dry matter intake will improve milk volume and therefore total kg MS protein
2. Another way is to improve rumen health by giving cows a little scratchy fibre like straw. This encourages chewing and saliva production which leads to the optimum PH for the microbes to grow. A little goes a long way. 
3. Improving the digestiblity or the quality of her diet will help too.By supplementing summer grass with a crop or silage or palm kernel for example.
4. Microbes need fuel or rumen fermentable energy to grow e.g. adding starch in the form of maize silage to a cows diet will result in more milk protein.
5. The process of converting dietary protein to bug protein and then to milk protein is never 100% efficient. You need lots of protein [and not all NPN or non-protein nitrogen] to begin with.
6. Grass has fewer of the essential or limiting amino acids than is present in milk. Like methionine. Soya can provide a cow and her microbes with these and improve her protein test. You’ll be able to get away with a lower crude protein content of her total diet. Of course any solution needs to be cost effective. Will you get a return on your investment?
7. At the udder level, mastitis can divert protein away from milk and into the blood to fight the infection. So do all you can to prevent this from happening with good milking technique, cow comfort and well maintained machines.

 

 

For sure it’s not a simple thing… making more milk protein without stripping condition off your high genetic merit, high producing animals.

Especially now in autumn when you’re wanting to put condition on them, not take it off!

Would you like to discover more about dairy cattle nutrition? Go here for my super affordable 365 Ways To Feed Email Series.