▶ Roasting and Feeding High Oleic Soybeans to Dairy Cattle

0:05
Thank you, Laura.

0:06
As I was introduced, I am a dairy specialist.

0:09
I do not pretend that I am agronomy focused.

0:12
If you saw the plants on my patio, you would understand why that was not my calling.

0:17
But I do have a strong background in dairy cattle and dairy nutrition.

0:21
So today the approach I’m going to take is give you a kind of the background and the recents and what’s probably happening to these beans after they leave the leave the field, understanding that this is a pretty agronomy focused crowd.

0:36
So luckily Jordyn gave me a great background already on what a high oleic soybean is.

0:42
So I don’t need to spend too much time talking about that, right?

0:45
It’s the difference.

0:47
Oh, there we go.

0:48
OK, different fatty acid profiles.

0:50
It’s the lower linoleic in the bean, the higher oleic.

0:54
That is really interesting farmers. Linoleic, it has the highest risk of milk fat depression.

1:01
That’s why we don’t see a lot of conventional full fat beans fed in dairy diets.

1:06
But oleic acid has a much lower risk of calcium milk fat depression.

1:11
I always tell people it’s no like it’s not a no risk bean you can still have some risk there, but it is much, much lower than a bean that has a lot of linoleic acid.

1:21
And so this fatty acid profile is the big driver of the interest.

1:25
The other thing people sometimes forget, and we can’t forget is this is still primarily a protein source on farm and in diets.

1:34
So yes, we do have this benefit of having a different fatty acid profile, but also now we’re able to grow not only fat on farm, but another protein source on farm.

1:45
So in terms of how cows respond to high oleic soybeans, I always put the slide up because it’s really, really important for people to understand how cows respond to feeding these beans is really going to vary between farms because it depends on what ingredients you’re replacing and what that diet formulation is.

2:05
So for example, if a farm has a really low energy diet, don’t really have any fat sources in there, maybe aren’t super focused on protein formulation, adding in high oleic soybeans could result in some pretty big changes and responses.

2:21
Now if a farm is feeding a diet that already has oleic fatty acid supplements, they’ve really dialed in their protein nutrition.

2:29
They might not see as big of changes.

2:32
So it’s important when you’re thinking about it for your farm or farm, or you’re working with, you do need to think about what does the diet currently look like. In terms of research responses,

2:42
So the primary areas that have been looked at so far when feeding dairy cattle is milk components, milk yield, and then feed intake.

2:52
And the big take away is that putting high oleic soybeans into diets typically increases milk fat yield.

3:00
That is across studies, I’ve kind of looked at what that average is and it’s usually about .15% percentage units of butter fat or in those specific trials in those cows, it was about .22 lbs of butter fat per cow per day.

3:16
Really no reportable changes in milk protein or at least nothing that significant.

3:22
Milk yield sees some changes.

3:25
It’s either really no change or some increase in these studies.

3:29
It probably ties back a little bit to diet formulation, but there is the potential for increase in milk yield.

3:35
I will say there’s no studies that see decreases in milk yield.

3:40
So there’s not really a risk there of losing milk and then dry matter intakes or feed intakes.

3:46
It’s been pretty inconsistent across trials.

3:49
Some have seen increases, some decreases, some it stays the same.

3:53
Typically it’s not significant.

3:55
So not surprising for farms if they do see some changes, especially if they’re also kind of changing other things in the diet at the same time.

4:03
But the general take away from feeding the high oleic soybeans in these research diets has been seen an increase in milk fat yield, potentially some increase in milk yield and then not much change for protein and dry matter intakes.

4:18
These are some of the common questions we get.

4:21
First one is how much of these beans should I feed, right?

4:24
That’s going to determine how many acres you need to grow, what you need to plan for in terms of an optimal level of what’s the best amount to feed.

4:33
There’s no research trial that’s really identified that and it’s going to probably vary by farm to farm based on what your diet is and based on what your nutrition needs frankly are.

4:45
It is recommended if you’re thinking about starting this, a general starting point people have been working with is about 8 to 12% of dry matter.

4:53
That usually translates to about four to 6 lbs per cow per day and then adjust from there based on cow performance, diet, availability of these beans.

5:04
When people are putting these beans into the diet, the common formulation approach, is there then going to reduce supplemental fat sources in the diet.

5:14
They don’t necessarily pull out all of the fat, right?

5:16
There can be some benefits to some other fat sources in there.

5:19
But since we’re adding in much more oleic fat, we can reduce some of that in the diet.

5:25
And then also again we’re adding in a protein source, especially a rumen undegradable protein source.

5:31
So seeing people then pull out some other RUP sources in return, the big thing is the diet still needs to meet overall nutrient needs, including energy and protein.

5:43
And I mentioned this because there’s a study out there where they fed various levels of high oleic soybeans to dairy cattle.

5:49
In one of those levels, the highest was 16 lbs per cow per day.

5:54
And they didn’t see bad responses.

5:56
Cows responded alright to it.

5:58
And so we know, OK, we can feed it up to there, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most economical.

6:03
That doesn’t mean that we have maybe balanced the diet the absolute best that we could.

6:08
It just means we could go there and it could be fine.

6:10
So when we formulate these diets and when you’re thinking about how many we should feed, we still need to keep in mind all those other nutrients.

6:20
This is a big topic is roasting these beans.

6:23
And I’ll explain in a slide why we’ve been talking about roasting beans so much lately.

6:27
But roasting the soybeans, whether it’s conventional or high oleic, when we’re feeding these to dairy cattle, roasting or heat treating of any kind is best practice.

6:38
The reason being is it increases ruminant undegradable protein.

6:41
So that’s protein that’s going straight to the small intestine.

6:44
It allows us to supply amino acids more efficiently to that small intestine and it increases it from about 25% in raw beans to around 40 to 60 or sometimes higher in roasted beans.

6:57
The other thing is it reduces anti nutrients.

7:00
So trypsin inhibitor, that’s something of concern.

7:03
A lot of time for a monogastric friends like pigs.

7:06
It can mess with protein digestion.

7:08
And then urease is more of a concern for our ruminants.

7:11
So like dairy cattle, because we do feed a decent amount of protein or urea in diets and urease can do some funky things.

7:19
So we want to roast these beans.

7:22
Roasting has been a long, long time practice

7:25
When we talk about soybeans, right? It’s not that difficult to call a feed mill and say, “Hey, I want a load of roasted conventional soybeans.” And they’ll say, “OK, we’ll send some out. Either we have them, we know a mill that has them.”

7:38
You can usually find them pretty easy.

7:40
That’s not the case of highlights soybeans yet.

7:44
The reason being is as Jordyn kind of mentioned with that stewardship aspect, not every mill or mobile roaster or whoever it may be is set up to roast high oleic soybeans.

7:58
So all of those mills that can roast conventional soybeans are not necessarily always able to roast high oleic soybeans.

8:05
We also have a limited commercial ability to kind of call up a mill and purchase these roasted beans because of that aspect.

8:12
And then this has led some farms to then start considering, “Should I purchase a roasting unit on farm? Roast my own beans because I don’t have these other avenues available?”

8:22
So now we’re going back to the basics because now farms are starting to bring this on farm or really think about who’s going to do it for them.

8:29
So we need to start talking about this again so we know we’re doing the best we can and making the best feed when we roast.

8:36
So I’m going to talk about roasting in best steps.

8:39
And so I break it down into about 6 key steps that we need to be doing and looking for to make a good roasted soybean.

8:47
The first is we need to heat it.

8:48
It’s kind of obvious or it’s in the name.

8:50
We’re roasting it, but we need to steep these beans, cool them down, store them, process them.

8:58
So grind them in some form and then do test.

9:01
And I’m going to step through each of these parts of the process.

9:06
So the first step, this is the one everybody thinks about when you say roasting soybeans, heating the soybeans up.

9:12
So you want to get soybeans heated to about 295-300°F.

9:17
That’s kind of been the long term recommendation from the initial research that was done back in the 80s and 90s.

9:24
And we want these beans to closely maintain this temperature as they exit.

9:28
So we don’t want them to hit that temp and then get really cool right away.

9:32
There’s a lot of roaster options out there.

9:34
There’s kind of three general categories of them.

9:38
I would say we have flame roasters.

9:40
This is commonly what like a mobile roaster will use very high capacity, can do a lot of beans in a short amount of time.

9:48
We have an enclosed chamber roasters, which is the term I use for what this kind of cannon look in rooster is here.

9:55
These are becoming more common on farms that are looking to purchase roasters.

9:59
Right now the beans kind of go up that entire roasting chamber.

10:04
There’s some insulation, some heat jacketing happening and they’re roasting beans that way.

10:09
And then there’s high temperature air dryers.

10:12
Those are really high capacity equipment and they do a really great job.

10:16
They’re pretty expensive though, but we do see them in more feed mills that are planning to really run a lot of beans is where you will usually see high temp air dryers.

10:26
So we’ve roasted the beans to heat them up to this 295 to 300.

10:30
We then need to steep them.

10:32
And this is a step that is kind of forgotten or maybe new to people unfamiliar with roasting.

10:38
So steeping is holding those beans at a consistent temperature without cooling them.

10:43
And the reason we do this is it helps increase the heat treatment effectiveness and really allowing that heat to kind of penetrate into the bean.

10:51
What that steeping chamber looks like varies a lot by farm.

10:57
The general kind of idea is you want a unit that has enclosed sides.

11:02
So in these pictures, they’re using basically old bins.

11:05
Old bins actually get used a lot for steeping chambers.

11:08
Some people will use grain carts.

11:12
It really depends on the farm.

11:13
But the big thing is we want to steep them for about 30 minutes and we want to avoid steeping in open areas.

11:18
So we don’t want to like dump a pile on a concrete pad just out in our feed area because the outside of that pile is going to cool down way quicker than the inside.

11:28
And then we get some inconsistencies there.

11:33
After we’ve steeped these beans, we want to cool them, want to cool them for a couple reasons.

11:38
The first one is obviously safe storage handling, cool them down for that reason.

11:43
The other reason is if we do not cool these beans, if we allow them to essentially steep for a really, really long time, we can actually overheat them.

11:51
So cooling, just make sure we kind of stay out of that overheated area and avoid it as much as possible.

11:57
And here I have the general safe temperatures that are recommended out there.

12:02
We also, when we store these beans, whether it’s a bin, a commodity bay, whatever it may be, right?

12:09
We want to keep it somewhere dry and debris free.

12:11
This is a quality feed and this is a feed that’s going to go to our animals and we want to treat it that way.

12:16
So we need to regularly inspect bins, bean condition and wherever we’re storing it.

12:22
If we can periodically just completely clean that out so we don’t get gunk and junk growing in corners, that’s going to be ideal.

12:32
A question that does come up is how long can I store these beans?

12:36
This graph is for whole unroasted soybeans.

12:39
Because we know whole unroasted soybeans, if we’re at like a good temperature, good moisture, we can store them for a pretty long time.

12:47
There’s no specific study that looked like at roasted beans.

12:51
If it’s different, I think kind of the general guidance people are going with is it’s probably pretty similar that if we’re at a low moisture content, low temperature, they can store for pretty long.

13:02
When we grind these beans, we do start to have a shelf life.

13:07
What that shelf life is is not exactly known.

13:12
There hasn’t been a study that’s looked at what it is.

13:15
But the general idea and guidance that I’ve been giving and that other people tend to work with is treat it like any other commodity in your feeding center.

13:25
How often do you want to switch out your commodities so they stay fresh?

13:30
So a lot of people are working with about maybe a one month turnover, a little bit more, a little bit less, depending on what the structures are, if they’re in a nice bin or maybe if they’re out and more of a open area, basing it off that.

13:44
But we just don’t want it to sit for a really, really long time, like an entire year.

13:47
We’ll probably have some issues. Grinding.

13:52
If you talk to a dairy nutritionist, they’ll probably tell you this is one of the big questions that are just asked at all the conferences right now.

13:59
How fine do we grind high oleic soybeans?

14:03
What we do know is feeding ground high oleic soybeans is best practice.

14:07
It has a more consistent effect on production than feeding whole beans.

14:10
The reason being is we’re breaking that bean open.

14:13
There’s more surface area.

14:15
The rumen microbes can get at it.

14:16
We get more digestion than feeding a whole bean.

14:19
What the optimal grind size yet is yet to be determined.

14:23
It’s kind of a debate.

14:25
What we do know is it should be at least cracked into quarters and eighths.

14:29
That was the long time recommendation for conventional beans and people would say usually don’t go further than 1/4 or 1/8  just because you could be done overexposing that linoleic acid in the bean which we wanted to avoid.

14:42
Now with these high oleic soybeans, that’s not as much of a concern.

14:47
We can go too fine and I’ll talk about that in a minute.

14:51
But we do know we can probably go finer than quarters and eighths.

14:54
So a lot of recent research has been using around a 700 to 800 micron kind of somewhere in that range.

15:02
I’ve seen people go up to 1000 and be fine.

15:05
And probably what that micron size is, the best one for your farm is kind of going to depend on what’s in your diet.

15:12
We do know if we go too fine, we can risk first of all, having higher rumen digestion, which if the goal of this feed is that it is a rumen undegradable protein source.

15:25
If we have more rumen digestion, we’re kind of doing the opposite of what the goal was.

15:30
We can also, and it’s not on here, we can overexpose fat.

15:33
If we’re feeding really high levels of these beans and we’ve really ground them really fine, that fat is super available in the rumen.

15:41
And like I said, this isn’t a no risk fat.

15:44
You can still have issues if you really over feed oleic fat.

15:49
So if we go too fine and we feed a lot, we could have some issues.

15:53
Now if we go too coarse, right?

15:54
The big issues, you just have lower overall digestion.

15:57
You don’t get as much nutrient power out of that being as what you want.

16:04
This is the other big question at conferences and meetings.

16:08
How do we test these beans and roasting quality of these beans?

16:13
There are some common tests that get used quite a bit.

16:15
The first one is the protein dispersibility index.

16:18
This is probably the most common one we hear about.

16:20
So the recommended value is between a 9 and 11%.

16:25
There is some flex there.

16:27
We do know though, like if you go below a nine percent you have probably over roasted these beans and you can pull back.

16:34
If you go above 11% you’re getting into the under roasted territory.

16:40
There is probably some flexibility on the upper side.

16:43
What I see out there other people say is between 11 and 14% you’re getting slightly under roasted, but we certainly know if you’ve gone over 14% you’ve probably really under roasted these beans.

16:55
Time to look at your settings and check the roaster.

16:59
Another test that usually most labs tack on to the PDI if you request the PDI is the urease activity test.

17:07
Recommended values of .0 to .15 pH rise.

17:10
This is a good indicator of if we’ve hit the level of heat treatment we need.

17:16
It’s not a great indicator if we’ve gone too far because once we hit zero and your ACE activity is at a zero, we don’t know if we’ve just kept going further than we need to because we hit zero, right?

17:28
So it’s a good indicator if we hit what we need, not a good indicator of if we’ve gone too far.

17:34
And then in terms of feeding these beans, there’s kind of two tests that get used to look at the protein, specifically the rumen undegradable protein.

17:43
So it’s the in vitro RUP 16 hours. Really long name and they’re assay.

17:48
So that in vitro test, it helps us estimate, right?

17:52
This is an estimate of rumen undegradable protein.

17:55
There can be some variability with this test.

17:58
In general, when we’re working with these types of tests, it’s usually best to send all of your samples consistently to the same lab because that can help eliminate between lab variability.

18:08
So you know you’re working with a similar playing field.

18:12
And then the Ross assay estimates, OK, of that RUP, how much of it is actually digestible?

18:18
Because just because it’s RUP doesn’t mean it’s digestible in the small intestine.

18:22
It can be indigestible there too.

18:25
So we want to make sure that we’re looking at both of those to make sure especially we’ve overheat treated these beings, we start to lock up that protein and it’s not ingestible in the small intestine either.

18:37
Okay, so those are our 6 steps.

18:39
We got to heat them, steep them, cool them, and then at some point in time we need to store them, process them and test them.

18:48
So key takeaways, first of all, roasting and grinding is going to help improve response to high oleic soybeans.

18:54
We have research that shows this. You want to follow best practices when doing that regularly check your roast quality.

19:01
Choosing who roast your beans is a big question right now.

19:04
Whether you work with a mill, a mobile roaster or do an on farm roasting system, it’s going to depend a lot on your local infrastructure, price, how much risk and control you want to take on.

19:15
None of them are a bad option. They all just have their pros and cons.

19:19
Keep an eye out in the future.

19:20
We talked about this actually at our high oleic soybean field days and now I’m working on converting that to an online resource.

19:27
So see, in the future we’ll have a resource that kind of helps you work through that question of which might be best for your farm.

19:34
And then this is the big one, economic considerations, how cows respond to these beans, how much they cost.

19:39
It’s going to vary a lot by farm.

19:41
Set up your needs,

19:42
Your rational formulation. Estimates are a good start.

19:46
But if you’re really considering these beans and feeding these beans, work with your team of advisors, run your own numbers.

19:51
That’s going to help you figure out how this fits in fits into your farm. So with that, I’m happy to answer any questions.

20:02
Thanks so much, Katelyn.

20:04
I think you can keep the nutrition advice.

20:06
I won’t be creating any dairy diets anytime soon, but that’s fair.

20:10
I appreciate all the information that you shared about why these beans are a good option, especially for our dairy systems.