Abstract #M283

# M283
Mycotoxin mitigation on commercial farms 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 on 2 large commercial dairy farms. Both products are combinations of technologies that have multiple mechanisms of action. The experiment was a completely random design (CRD) using approximately 5,300 lactating cows with 13 pens fed COMP and 8 pens fed EqD for Dairy WP and approximately 2,800 lactating cows with 3 pens fed COMP and 5 pens fed EqD for Dairy WD for 8 wk during February and March 2017. The COMP and EqD were incorporated at 30 g/cow/d in the total mixed ration (TMR). Cows were housed in a freestall facility and milked 3 × /d with all milk weights electronically recorded and averaged by cow and then by pen on a weekly basis. Amounts fed and orts were recorded for each pen daily. Corn based TMR ingredients contained varying fumonisin, zearalenone, and vomitoxin 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) with pen as the experimental unit and week as a repeated measure. Milk production data were covariately adjusted using the week before trial initiation when all cows were fed the COMP. Milk production tended to be greater for cows fed EqD on Dairy WP (35.6 and 38.3 kg/d for COMP and EqD, respectively), but was similar for cows fed both products for Dairy WD (42.4 and 42.1 kg/d) and was similar overall (39.0 and 40.2 kg/d). Milk fat percentages were similar on Dairy WP (4.44 and 4.32%), but were greater for cows fed EqD on Dairy WD (3.70 and 3.85%) than cows fed COMP. Somatic cell counts were significantly lower for cows fed EqD on Dairy WP and tended to be lower for cows fed EqD on Dairy WD compared with cows fed COMP. Dry matter intakes were similar on Dairy WP but were increased for cows fed EqD on Dairy WD (26.0 and 28.7 kg/d) and were greater overall for cows fed EqD compared with COMP (26.2 and 28.1 kg/d). In conclusion, feeding Equalize Dairy demonstrated a potential to improve lactational performance and feed intake when dairy cows were fed mycotoxin contaminated feeds.

Key Words: dairy cow, milk yield, mycotoxin