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NUTRA-CULTURE™ - HEALTH BENEFITS

The digestive system of ruminating animals (cattle, goats, sheep, bison, antelope, deer, alpacas, camels, bison) works most efficiently when digesting fresh green feed. Feeding ruminant animals fresh barley fodder increases oxygen efficiency by increasing the red blood cell count thereby resulting in increased oxygen, requiring less energy by the animals.

The Nutra-Fix Nutra-Culture Fodder Wheel technology allows for 'seed to feed', in six days. Beyond the six day growth, nutritional value decreases and issues begin to arise with mould. However, given that the fodder wheel completes it`s production at the six day mark, nutritional levels are at peak. In addition, Nutra-Fix provides a natural, organic mould inhibitor and probiotic product which is an additional health benefit by way of beneficial bacteria in the diet. Nutra-fix customers using the above combination to produce fodder, do not experience mould as an issue, and see an obviously healthier looking animal.

In addition to the cost benefit of adding fodder to the ration by reducing grain, the health of the animal is also increased by the decreased amount of grain in the total ration. Incidence of acidosis are reduced when grain is reduced due to the rapid fermentation process required to digest the grain, and higher requirement for acid to complete the digestive process.

Ken Wilson, of Wilson Farms in Black Lake, NY shares his results below. Prior to feeding fodder, the Wilsons were known for high milk production. For the last five years they have averaged at least 90 pounds of production per cow.

“High milk production is driven by our forage program. Now on fodder, herd production dropped to around 78 pounds per cow, the grain fed per cow dropped from about 28 pounds down to five pounds now.

We measure everything here. We are focusing on our Income Over Feed Costs, income per cow and herd efficiency areas such as cull rate and the breeding program. We also noticed that we are dealing with about 20 percent less manure. Basically we are feeding more forages so our feed program consists of more of what we produce here on our farm. Our goal is to have enough fodder to feed 50 pounds per cow and to produce 80 pounds of milk despite being fed no purchased grain,” stated Wilson.

A recent forage analysis reported the fresh barley forage as 11.1 percent dry matter, 16.1 percent crude protein, 22.9 percent acid detergent fiber, 39 percent neutral detergent fiber, 16.5 percent starch, 18.7 percent simple sugars and 22.9 percent water soluble carbohydrates. “We recently nursed a sick cow that we thought we may have to put down back into the herd on the fodder. We are finding that chopped feeds have an acid pH while the barley sprout is an alkaline. We are also learning that the hulls contain a colostrum-like compound that is high in conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) that helps the developing sprout. This could be part of the benefit to our cows,” offered Wilson.

*Read Scholarly articles for conjugated linoleic acids (CLA's)