I have been challenged for the last three days with the concept of waking the sleeping beast in the rumen. One of the roles that I want CWT to play is to see and evaluate things before the mainstream industry catches wind. During the formative stages of CWT, I kept hearing about a product that Mark Holt developed (OZ45). It is designed to supply food for the protozoa. Joanne’s (my wife and partner in crime) commented that protozoa are excellent sources of MP but the grew too slow. This changes that. Nonetheless, I decided it was time to see cows, kick some manure around and looking to eyes of dairymen that are using the product. What I saw makes me want to dig deeper. When I came to Wisconsin to see these dairies, I was saying (“bull shit“) under my breath. There is plans for a 3500 dairy to place 1 of 2 matched high cow pens on the product and compare the data. This herd has excellent data (DC305, daily milk weights, and FeedWatch) and I will be doing the weekly data summary of milk and feed efficiency.
I too have been keen to follow the development of OZ45 corn as there is soon to be a manufacturing plant opened near Lancaster. I was given a NDS profile named OZ45 v3 and is locked from editing. When comparing to the CNCPS fGSC the analysis offered by the Holt group is VASTLY different than corn (AAs, Kds, Starch, etc.). So they’ve tricked the analysis to make it work inthe model. Ultimately cows will tell the truth and then if it does work as predicted the “market” will decide if it is priced correctly. We are watching.