From the ending of the “age of pathway biochemistry” to the beginnings of “nutritional physiology,” the 1970s was a dynamic and fertile time for biochemistry, nutrition, physiology, and animal sciences research. Likely even more so, in the animal and dairy sciences there was a well-recognized need for basic biology research on all facets of animal metabolism to help explain and improve the practical farm situation and food production. The young scientists of the day, including Ransom Baldwin V, Allen Tucker, Don Beitz, Don Palmquist, Dale Bauman, Jerry Young (to name a few), concentrated on unravelling the metabolic and physiological pathways of the rumen and the body organs and their nutritional and endocrine control in support of lactation. A natural and sequential timeline starting with discovery of bio-hydrogenation of fatty acids in the rumen and their (predicted) effect on milk fat synthesis; the discovery of variations in pathways of fatty acid biosynthesis in the rumen, adipose, liver and mammary glands; continuing on to the definition of control of enzyme transcription and translation in metabolism and low milk fat syndrome; induced lactation and the ideal combination of steroid and protein hormones in the control of mammary development and ‘ending’ with the foundational discovery of reciprocal control of anabolic and catabolic pathways in the mammary gland and adipose tissue during late pregnancy and parturition. The theme of the research was on defining not just the pathways but the complex control on enzymes, pathways and organs leading to support of the dominant physiology state, a now fully integrated concept defined as homeorhesis, to close the decade. Essential and inseparable from the outstanding science was the human respect, collegiality and downright fun that research was in that time and place.