Humans and animals: Who’s eating a balanced diet
Do you eat a balanced diet?
That term can mean something different to everyone, but usually, ‘a balanced diet’ includes fruit, meat, grains, and eggs.
Humans need to eat certain foods in order to receive amino acids that we can’t make. Those are called essential amino acids. Not that the ones we can make are any less important, but we just can’t create the essential amino acids.
Cows, on the other hand, have us beat. They are faster, stronger (ever tried to lead an unwilling calf on a halter?), and are able to make their own essential amino acids.
The bacteria in their rumens, which is one of their four-part stomach system (rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum), creates whichever amino acids the cows are not getting in their diets.
Pretty neat, huh? The dairy industry has been balancing amino acids for years, since more easily digestible foods means an increase in productivity. Feed for dairy cows is usually very high quality. It takes more energy to digest and use low quality feeds, which works for cow/calf producers as margins are very tight and low quality feeds cost less. Cows in that operation are not needed to perform as well as cows in dairies, though- which is why dairy operations (although their margins are not any less tight than the cow/calf guys) spend the extra on good feed.
Now, with the Farmers Business Network (FBN) and Boveta Nutrition, LLC study in Nebraska, the focus has turned toward balancing amino acids in the step or steps after cow/ calf- backgrounding and stocker operations.
The partners plan to conduct more studies in the midwest, including our own state. But while it may be the next big thing on the finishing side of the cow/calf operation, it is good to keep margins in mind.
Yes, high quality feeds mean that the calves will grow faster, be bigger, and look better than they would on low quality feeds. However, those higher quality feeds come at a higher price, sometimes disproportionately to their difference in quality.
Furthermore, FBN and Boveta’s claim of decreasing methane with their amino acid balanced diets may not be a good thing for the cows. Cows have bacteria in their rumens, just like we do in parts of our bodies. Rumen bacteria produce methane naturally in their fermentation cycle, and less methane means less fermentation.
Does that mean healthier cows? Fewer bacteria often indicate less health- take the study ‘The shrinking human gut microbiome’ by Andrew Moeller, published in 2017 to a microbiology journal. He makes the case for the less diverse microbiome being responsible for more diseases, infections, and metabolic syndromes.
That’s why we should approach this amino acid balancing trend in finishing operations with caution. It is more efficient to feed high-quality feeds to calves, to get them to grow faster. But it’s also more efficient to get fat from eating concentrated foods like Twinkies, rather than vegetables and meat. The two approaches are the same- and we know that a Twinkie-fed human is not as healthy as a vegetableand meat- fed human.
Before we cut down on the cow microbiome, let’s consider this: Less fermentation is not a good thing in a foregut fermenter like a cow. They were made to ferment feeds of a low quality to get what they need out of them. As good as FBN and Boveta are making it sound to lower methane outputs in cows and be ‘green,’ the truth of the matter is that cows ferment to survive. They can’t help it; it’s the way they were made.
We drive cars and fly in planes often for fun.
Which should be the first to go in an effort to be green- fun or survival?