Importance of Vitamins Stability in Premixes and Minerals

Dr. Greg Eckerle (01:34)
Do we see an increase in interest in vitamin nutrition in cattle over the past years? And if so, what has sparked the resurgence of looking at vitamins again?

Dr. Jason Warner
When we think about cattle nutrition, I think it’s certainly an area that we’ve seen some increased awareness and interest in the part of the industry over the last four to five years, particularly. And I think when you really take a look at it, that’s really primarily due to a couple of different main factors when we think about the increased interest that that’s caused. And I would say one of the main factors is that when we think back to four to five years ago, the livestock industry, the animal nutrition industry, experienced a shortage in a supply disruption of vitamins on the market and as a result, there was a pretty substantial price increase. […]

Dr. Greg Eckerle (04:09)
I remember that period of time the market was really volatile. It hurt a lot of vitamin suppliers and getting into the product for sure. But when we’ve changed how we’re doing that, what implications could we see due to those changes or anything in the cowherd or even in the feedlot animal?

Dr. Jason Warner
That’s a great question. It kind of depends on how you’re looking at the system, whether you’re looking at it from a forage-based cow-calf or stalker perspective, or if you’re looking at it more from a growing and finishing animal feedlot type of perspective. […]

Dr. Greg Eckerle (07:01)
What challenges does it come when we’re formulating as well as getting the vitamins to the animal, where can we benefit or what strategies can we help to make sure we’re supplying daily adequate needs?

Dr. Jason Warner
What it all comes back to is understanding how we best properly supplement that animal and deliver vitamins back to that animal. Regardless of whatever dietary situation that we’re looking at there. A big challenge that I think the industry has is understanding different sources and vitamin precursors and how those can be supplied to the animal, what the availability is, and what oxidation levels are like with those. […]

Dr. Greg Eckerle (09:41)
What type of things are going to be affecting vitamin stability and what were those antagonists that we mentioned?

Dr. Jason Warner
We can basically have degradation or destruction of those sources over time. The main things that we think about with respect to our fat-soluble vitamins, we think about things like sunlight, and UV radiation, and we know that those can have negative or deleterious effects on the stability of those sources. Heat is another one, and that’s a big one. […]

Dr. Greg Eckerle (13:55)
When we think about formulating products, are we generally still going to over-formulate to account for some of that loss instead of being right on the nose? Or are we lowering that due to cost objections that we’re seeing? Or how are we typically formulating those products today to account for some of this loss that we know that’s taken place?

Dr. Jason Warner
I think what we would really like to do is be able to account for the loss that we have over time and be able to accurately measure it. That would give us a lot more knowledge when it comes to formulation and being able to account for some of those losses. […]

Dr. Greg Eckerle (16:43)
Where do we see water and other forage components […] that may get in there and affect nutrition as a whole when it comes to vitamin nutrition?

Dr. Jason Warner
Water potentially could be something that when we think about water quality, can potentially impact what we can see from a vitamin digestibility and utilization standpoint, particularly, I think about one of the most common challenges that we see with water quality is sulfates or high sulfur content in drinking water for livestock. […]

Dr. Greg Eckerle (20:16)
Is there a benefit in your opinion, to protecting some of these vitamins, putting them in a matrix or some form of protected form to kind of guard them through these productive processes to make sure that what we formulate for, what we’re paying for, adding it to the product is getting delivered appropriately to the animal?

Dr. Jason Warner
I think that is an area that could certainly be really well utilized and would have a tremendous amount of benefit just for the industry in general. […]