Abstract #M318

# M318
Mycotoxin mitigation when feeding Equalize Dairy.
Kayla M. Hultquist*1, David P. Casper1, 1Furst-McNess Company, Freeport, IL.

The 2016 corn crop was heavily contaminated with mycotoxins; thus, the objective was to evaluate 2 commercially available products—Competitor (COMP) and Equalize Dairy (EqD; both from Furst-McNess Company)—to mitigate mycotoxins. Both products are combinations of technologies that have multiple mechanisms of action. The experiment was a completely random design (CRD) using 157 lactating dairy cows (80 COMP and 77 EqD) initially balanced for parity, days in milk, and milk production and then added on a rolling basis with a 1 wk covariate and 8 wk experimental period during June and July 2017. The COMP and EqD were incorporated at 45 and 30 g/cow/d, respectively, when cows received 4.54 kg/d pellets when milked via 2 Lely Astronaut A4 robotic milking systems housed in a freestall facility. Corn based ingredients used in the partial mixed ration and robot pellets contained varying vomitoxin, zearalenone, fumonisin, and sterigmatocystin concentrations. All data were subjected to least squares ANOVA for a CRD via the PROC MIXED procedure of SAS (version 9.4, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC) as a repeated-measure ANOVA. Milk production (34.5 and 38.1 kg/d for COMP and EqD, respectively), 4% FCM (32.8 vs. 35.7 kg/d), and ECM (32.3 and 35.0 kg/d) were greater for cows fed EqD compared with cows fed COMP. Milk fat percentages (3.70 and 3.66%) were similar for cows fed both treatments, but milk protein percentages (2.95 and 2.92%) were reduced for cows fed EqD compared with cows fed COMP. Milk conductivity measurements, as an indirect evaluation of somatic cell count, were lower in all 4 quarters for cows fed EqD compared with cows fed COMP. Body weights were similar for cows fed both treatments, while pellet dry matter intakes (4.6 and 4.9 kg/d) were greater for cows fed EqD compared with cows fed COMP. Total-tract nutrient digestibility of P (54.3 and 98.5%) was greater for cows fed EqD, while K (90.6 and 86.2%) digestibility was lower, but other nutrient digestibilities were similar. In conclusion, feeding Equalize Dairy demonstrated an improvement in lactational performance and feed intake when dairy cows were fed mycotoxin contaminated feeds compared with cows fed the COMP product.

Key Words: dairy cow, milk yield, mycotoxin