Breaking free from the chains of the past Where
truth moves faster than a Holstein calf No law
waiting on some printed page We're charting new
ground in the digital age From genomic codes
to robot facts We cut through the noise, no hold
them back not your daddy's dairy news tonight
we're sparking Welcome back to the Bullvine Podcast,
where we cut through dairy industry noise to
get you the insights that actually matter for
your operation. And today we're diving deep into
a feature piece that's got some serious buzz.
This one has layers that'll make every farmer
rethink their approach to daily feed consistency
and butterfat protection. I love this topic.
We are talking about... potentially six figures
of lost revenue that can be solved with a piece
of molded plastic that costs, what, $200? That's
it. We are focusing on the humble Penn State
particle separator, the PSPS. It's the paradox
of profit, really. It's the ultimate irony, isn't
it? I mean, I've been on dairies with multi -million
dollar investments, robotic milkers, thermal
imaging, the best genetics money can buy. What
works. Everything. And yet the PSPS, the one
tool that makes sure the whole feed delivers.
system actually works is still sitting in its
original cardboard box, maybe, you know, tucked
behind the mineral supplements, untouched. I
remember that quote from the source material
that just hammered this home, the herd manager,
who said, we've been too busy to get into the
routine. Too busy. Too busy to capture $60 ,000
of profit. That phrase, too busy, that's where
efficiency just collapses on so many farms. You
get so busy dealing with the results of the problem,
the acidosis, the lame cows, the tank test that
makes you cringe. Right, you're firefighting.
Constantly. You're firefighting instead of investing,
what, 15 minutes a week to prevent the fire from
starting in the first place. And we have to be
clear, this isn't about... minor tweaks or a
little bit of slippage, the stakes here are genuinely
massive. The data shows inconsistent TMR is a
five to six figure leak per year. This isn't
margin slippage, it's revenue destruction. When
that particle size drifts, when the physical
structure of the feed is off, you are routinely
losing three to eight pounds of milk per cow.
Per day. And the part that really hurts. The
butterfat. You're losing 0 .3 to 0 .6 percentage
points of butterfat. Losing half a point of fat
when component premiums are driving your entire
margin, that is an absolute disaster. So you
run the numbers on, say, a 600 -cow herd with
that kind of drift. We're talking about thousands
and thousands of dollars every single month that
are just evaporating. Gone. It's money left on
the table because five minutes of quality control
felt like too much trouble. And this is why we
have to challenge the core assumption today.
We have to challenge the idea that you're a nutritionist's
paper ration. That beautiful, optimized spreadsheet.
The one that cost a fortune to develop. That
one. We have to challenge the idea that it actually
matches what the cow eats. Because if the physical
structure is wrong, that spreadsheet is, frankly,
irrelevant. Exactly. The core controversy is
that this one tiny physical factor, the length
and distribution of feed particles, determines
whether you get sera or you get superior components.
It's the difference between buying expensive
feed and using expensive feed. The physical delivery
system is what translates nutritional potential
into component reality. We can optimize the chemistry
all day long, but if the mechanical structure
fails, all that high -priced chemistry is useless.
Okay, let's unpack this. We're jumping right
into the deep dive on consistency as quality
control, because this really requires a fundamental
shift in how you think about feeding. I think
we have to start with that quote from Dr. Mike
Hutchins. He said, feed uniformity is your daily
quality control system. without it you're guessing
that is the most honest and maybe the most brutal
truth you can give a producer it is the daily
quality control i mean think about it if you
were running a food manufacturing plant You wouldn't
let the size of your ingredients fluctuate wildly
from batch to batch, would you? No way. The quality
of your final product would plummet. And on a
dairy, the final product is milk components.
The raw material delivery system is the TMR.
And what farmers need to get their heads around
is that the chemical composition of the feed,
that's relatively stable once it's in the silo,
but the physical structure, that critical particle
size, that's volatile. Volatile is the perfect
word. It changes based on the mixer speed, the
wear on the augers, how dry the silage is, the
mixing time. It can be different load by load,
day by day. And in this market, every single
lost component point is a self -inflicted financial
wound. We're breeding for butterfat. We have
to feed for it too. So let's get into the biology
because this is where that quarter million dollars
is hiding. It all centers around one thing, the
rumen mat. You really cannot overstate the importance
of the rumen mat. The rumen is not some simple
mixing bowl. It's a highly sophisticated, stratified
ecosystem. Right. And for it to work right, it
needs long particles. We're talking about the
stuff that's greater than 19 millimeters to form
a floating physical mat like a raft on top of
all the liquid. This is just non -negotiable
physiology. And that mat does a few critical
jobs. First, it controls retention time. It physically
traps the smaller digestible particles, the grains,
the fines, and holds them in the fermentation
chamber so the microbes have time to work. So
if the TMR is too fine, there's no mat. And all
that expensive energy gets washed out before
the cow can use it. It goes right out the back
end. The mat is also where the good microbes
live, right? The fiber digesters. It's their
preferred habitat. They colonize those long,
buoyant particles. If the mat fails, those critical
microbial populations struggle. But the most
important thing... The part that directly connects
particle size to Sarah is cud chewing. The physical
presence of that coarse material forces the cow
to ruminate. It stimulates rumination. It makes
her chew her cud for hours. And cud chewing is
the cow's own internal organic buffer system.
It's the engine of her antacid response. We are
talking about... A massive amount of saliva,
50, maybe up to 90 liters per cow per day. And
that saliva is packed with sodium bicarbonate
and phosphate buffers. So less chewing means
less saliva. Less saliva means rumen pH drops.
And if it drops below 5 .8? You're in SARA territory.
So when you use the PSPS to measure physically
effective NDF, the PNDF, what you are literally
measuring is the diet's power to trigger those
90 liters of essential buffering fluid. It's
an early warning system. And when that consistency
fails, when the structure breaks down, you don't
just have one herd anymore. You get these phantom
herds inside the same pen. Exactly. The dominant
cows, the boss cows, they go through and sort
for all the tasty high starch grain. They just
push the long fiber aside. And they get these
massive slugs of carbohydrates, which sends their
rumen pH into a nosedive. And you can't just
assume the submissive cows are OK. No, they get
what's left. They get the orts. They're left
with a high fiber, low energy, unappetizing diet
that the boss cows rejected. So they're not limited
by their genetics anymore. They're limited by
a lack of energy. They just. chronically underperform.
So your beautiful spreadsheet that assumes every
cow eats the exact same thing is completely broken.
You've got sick, acidotic cows, and at the same
time, skinny, underperforming cows. That variation
is where all the profit just evaporates. It's
a management nightmare. Okay, let's shift gears
and get into the science inside the box. We need
to detail these guidelines not just as numbers
on a page, but as physiological needs. This is
where you get the actionable data. This is the
Rosetta Stone of TMR. The shaker box breaks the
ration into four distinct physical parts, and
each one has a specific job in the rumen. Let's
start at the top, the biggest particles. This
is the sorting risk zone. The top sieve, everything
greater than 19 millimeters. The target range
here is really tight, 2 to 8%. That's your structural
scaffolding. That little bit, that 2 to 8%, is
what guarantees cud chewing and mat formation.
If you fall below 2%, You basically have zero
defense against Sarah. But, and this is a big
but, if you go over 8%, especially if you're
pushing 10 or 15, you're giving the cow too much
choice. Those long, ropey bits of hay are just
too easy for her to sort out. That's the key,
isn't it? It's not just enough fiber. It has
to be fiber that can't be easily sorted. Precisely.
Next up is the largest fraction, the middle sieve,
8 to 19 millimeters. This is the workhorse. The
target is 30 to 50%. This is your sweet spot.
It's long enough to be part of the rumen mat,
but it's short enough that you can't easily push
it aside. This is where your highly digestible
fiber lives. Then you've got the lower sieve,
4 to 8 millimeters. Target is 20 to 30 percent.
This stuff sinks faster. It provides huge surface
area for the microbes to attach to. It just makes
fermentation more efficient. And finally, we
get to the danger zone, the pan. Anything under
four millimeters. You have got to keep this under
20%. If you are above 20 % in the pan, you are
basically loading the system with rocket fuel,
rapidly fermentable grains. fines, it creates
an explosion of acid that the cow's natural buffer
system, which is relying on that little bit of
long fiber, just cannot handle. Okay, that leads
us directly to the mechanism of milk fat depression.
We've spent some time here because this is complex,
it's not well understood, and it's where the
real high -value insight is hiding. I agree.
Farmers know high grain means low fat, but they
usually think it's just, you know, a lack of
building blocks for fat. It's not. It is a targeted
biological assassination of the butterfat production
process. So you have a physical problem. Too
much in the pan, not enough on top, which creates
a chemical problem. Rumin pH drops below 5 .8.
How does that cause that specific severe drop
in milk fat? It's a microbial coup d 'etat. When
the rumen gets acidic, the good cellulitic bacteria,
the ones we need, they get inhibited. They start
to die off because they need a pH above 6. And
as they die off, something else moves in. You
get a population boom of acid -tolerant bacteria.
And these guys start processing the unsaturated
fatty acids in the diet, the fats from corn silage,
soybeans, supplements. This is the biohydrogenation
pathway failure we hear about. Exactly. Normally,
the good microbes take those unsaturated fats
and turn them into harmless saturated fat in
a safe, multi -step process. But when these acid
-loving bugs take over, they interrupt that process.
They create these intermediate fatty acids. And
one of those intermediates is the killer. It
produces a specific isomer known as trans -10,
cis -12, conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA. And
this molecule isn't just waste. It's a highly
potent biological signaling molecule. How potent
are we talking? It is frighteningly potent. Research
shows that if the cow produces just a few grams
of this specific isomer a day, it travels through
her bloodstream and acts like a biological kill
switch on the mammary gland. Wait, a kill switch?
So it's not just slowing things down, it's...
actively stopping production. It specifically
targets the genes responsible for making these
short and medium chain fatty acids that make
up the bulk of milk fat. It tells the udder to
halt production. So the cow has the energy, she
has the building blocks, but this one molecule
is literally telling her udder to shut down.
Correct. It doesn't just limit production, it
actively shuts down the machinery. And the dose
response curve is steep. Even small, chronic
TMR inconsistencies that create a constant state
of Sarah can depress your fat yield by 25 to
50%. The PSPS is measuring your risk of creating
this component -destroying agent. If that's not
enough to make you shake that box once a week,
I don't know what is. You're not just measuring
particle size, you're measuring your defense
against this kill switch molecule. And we can't
forget the other physical cost of low pH. The
fat is the visible part. But that constant acid
burn damages the lining of the room and wall,
it reduces nutrient absorption, and leads to
the release of histamines and inflammatory compounds.
And inflammation is the direct highway to laminitis.
It is. That systemic inflammation is a huge contributor
to foot problems, which leads to lameness, which
reduces DMI, which increases culling. It's a
vicious cycle. The loss of half a point of butterfat
is the cost you see on the milk check. The lameness
is the hidden cost of that same inconsistency.
So it's a full system failure, all started by
a few percentage points of fine material in the
TMR. Okay, now we have to close the loop. Particle
size is what goes in. Fecal starch is what comes
out. Together, they're the full audit. This is
the economic accountability check. If you're
using the shaker box, but you ignore fecal starch,
you're only seeing half the picture. The starch
test tells you how much expensive feed you are
literally flushing down the drain. So what's
the benchmark? We need hard numbers here. The
benchmark for fecal starch should be below 3%.
That's optimal. If you're below 1%, you are running
a gold standard operation. And the warning signs.
3 % to 5 % is an alert. You're losing efficiency.
But once you're consistently above 5%, that's
a full -blown economic alarm. You're losing significant
money because the feed is just moving too fast.
Let's nail down that cost. What's the financial
hit of that inefficiency? The research is really
clear on this. For every 1 % increase in fecal
starch above that 3 % threshold, you lose about
0 .7 pounds of milk per cow per day. Okay, let's
run that thousand cow dairy scenario from the
research because the number is just staggering.
So let's say a herd goes from a goal of 1 % starch
loss up to a poor, but honestly very common 6%.
That's a five point difference in waste. Five
points times 0 .7 pounds of milk. That's three
and a half pounds of milk lost per cow every
single day. For a thousand cow herd, that's 3
,500 pounds of milk lost daily. Annually, that
is over 1 .8 million pounds of milk that's just
poured into the manure pit. And if we use a conservative
milk price, say $20 per hundredweight, that inefficiency
is costing that farm $256 ,000 a year. And that's
the crucial point. That quarter million dollar
loss is just the lost milk revenue. Right. It
doesn't count the cost of the expensive corn
you bought and paid to process only to flush
it. It doesn't count the vet bills for the laminitis
cases that the underlying acidosis caused. The
real economic loss is probably one and a half
to two times that number. The ROI on a $200 plastic
box is astronomical. It's instantaneous. Okay,
but I'm not just buying that it's correlation.
How do we prove the shaker box fixed it? There
are so many variables on a farm. That's a great
challenge. The PSPS is what lets you isolate
the variable. If you test your feed and your
pan fraction is, say, 20 % way too high and your
fecal starch is 6%, that is a direct link between
physical structure and washout. Okay. So you
make one change. You adjust the mixer time. And
three weeks later, your fecal starch is down
to 3 % and your pan fraction is 18%. You have
empirical proof that the physical structure was
the bottleneck. The PSPS gives you the data to
prove it. It provides the accountability. Got
it. Now let's get into practical troubleshooting.
The fix is totally different if the TMR is too
fine versus too long. Absolutely. Two distinct
failures. Let's start with scenario A, the too
fine leak. This is usually a mixer wagon problem.
And this happens a lot in winter, right? Forges
are drier, operators run the mixer longer to
break up frozen chunks, and they just pulverize
the fiber. And this is the deceptive part. The
operator looks at the TMR and thinks, it looks
great, it's so uniform and fluffy. But in reality,
the structural integrity, the PNDF, has been
destroyed. So the cow is eating this finely ground
mash, the rumen mat collapses, the particles
are dense, and they just get flushed out. wash
out. The feed retention time plummets. Instead
of 35 hours, maybe it's only 20. The microbes
just don't get enough time to do their job. And
that's why you see high fecal starch. Not because
the kernel processor failed, but because the
structure failed and the feed moved through the
cow too fast. The fix is usually simple. Reduce
mixing time. For a lot of vertical mixers, just
cutting the final mix from five minutes to three
can be revolutionary. And check your hardware.
Are your kicker plates too aggressive? Loading
order is huge, too. You don't want to throw fragile
hay in an empty mixer and just grind it to dust
while you load everything else. Put it in later.
And another quick fix is moisture. A fine TMR
will segregate in the bunk. Adding 5 to 10 %
more moisture water, molasses helps bind those
fines to the bigger particles and stops sorting.
Okay, now the flip side. Scenario B. The too
long trap. This is usually dull knives or, you
know, just fear. It's driven by the fear of Sarah.
Farmers think longer fiber is safer. But if it's
too long, it's just an obstacle the cow sorts
around. The PSPS diagnostic is clear here. If
your top sieve is consistently pushing 10, 15
percent, your sorting risk is in the red zone.
And the way you prove it is you compare the fresh
TMR to the refusals, the orts. If your fresh
TMR is 6 percent on the top screen, but the orts
the next morning are 25 percent on top. sorting
is confirmed. The cow has physically selected
against the structure you designed. And for a
fresh cow, that is a metabolic hand grenade.
It is absolutely devastating for the fresh group.
They're already fragile. If they sort for a high
starch meal right after calving, you just fast
track acidosis, which drives down DMI, which
leads straight to ketosis and DAs. It's a cascading
failure. Let's talk about the specific challenges
the Penn State data uncovered. The ballage challenge
was a big one. Huge. Ballage, for all its benefits,
can be a mixing nightmare. Herds feeding it were
frequently testing at 20 to 40 percent on the
top sieve. So a third of the feed is way too
long and super sortable. That's four to five
times the limit. The physical nature of the bale
just resists breaking down in the mixer. You
get these massive ropey clumps that the cow just
refuses to eat. So if you're using ballage and
your top sieve is high, the fix isn't just about
mixing longer, is it? No. In fact, that might
make the fines worse. It often means you have
to pre -chop the bales or you have to look back
at your harvest protocol. The mixer can't fix
bad forage processing. The PSPS just makes the
problem visible. And they also found a case that
showed the opposite problem. The too fine leak.
Yep, the case where physically effective fiber
dropped to 16%. The TMR was so fine that the
washout was so fast you could see whole corn
kernels in the manure. That's your quarter million
dollar loss right there in front of you. The
PSPS stops you from blaming the corn processor
when the mixer is the real culprit. It redirects
your troubleshooting. If milk fat drops, shake
the box. If you see sorting, add moisture to
make the TMR sticky. If it's too fine, cut the
mix time or add a bit of straw late in the load.
The box turns your diagnosis into an action plan.
The whole goal here is to get away from reactive
firefighting and build a culture of consistency.
But when a farmer makes the change, they have
to manage their expectations. The rumen doesn't
heal overnight. We need to walk through the 21
-day recovery timeline. This is where so many
producers fail. They fix the mix on a Tuesday,
check the test on Thursday, see no change, and
go right back to the old broken way by Friday.
You have to respect the biology. Okay, let's
walk through the three weeks, step by step. What
should you be tracking? Days one to two is behavioral
stabilization. If you fix the structure, sorting
should stop almost immediately. Look at the refusals.
Are they more uniform? And check your rumination
monitors. You should see cud chewing time start
to tick up. Then comes the physiological relief.
Days 3 to 5, intake response. Dry matter intake
should climb by 2 to 4 pounds. The cow just feels
better because her rumen pH is stable. She's
happier to eat. And production follows pretty
quickly after that. Days 5 to 7, you'll see a
milk volume rise, a bump in the bulk tank of
3 to 5 pounds per cow. That's the direct result
of higher intake and less wasted starch. But
the component change, the money shot, that takes
longer because of that whole biohydrogenation
pathway mess. That's week two. Days 10 to 14
is the butterfat lift. This is when the magic
happens. That trans -10, cis -12 CLA is gone,
the good microbes have repopulated, and the mammary
gland finally turns the fat synthesis genes back
on. You'll see your butterfat lift by 0 .2 to
0 .3 points. And when do you finally declare
victory? Day 21, that's full stability. By then,
the rumen lining has healed, the microbial ecosystem
is stable, and metabolic inflammation is down.
You have to commit to the change for three full
weeks. That 21 -day window changes the PSPS from
a crisis tool into a strategic tool. And that
leads to operationalizing it, making it a habit.
It has to be cultural. I call it Feed Quality
Friday, a 15 -minute scheduled event. Test the
fresh TMR, test the refusals, log the data, share
it with the team. And the numbers back up that
tiny time investment. Absolutely. The data shows
farms that monitor regularly reduce their component
volatility by nearly 30%. That means predictable
milk checks. And the financial impact of that
stability. It translates to saving $50 ,000 to
$60 ,000 a year on a 500 -cow herd just from
reducing those swings and improving efficiency.
A 15 -minute habit is generating the salary of
a full -time employee. But more than the money,
it changes the culture. It builds accountability.
It shifts the mindset. When you post the PSPS
target chart next to the mixer, the feeder stops
guessing and starts operating with a clear, measurable
goal. I need the pan at 18 % and the top at 6%.
They become a feed chef instead of just a mixer
operator. They start to own the quality of the
final product. And they start catching problems
like dry silage before it ever shows up as a
pH crash two weeks later. It moves management
from reactive to proactive. Which brings us right
back to that quote from Dr. Hutchins. Technology
gives you options, but discipline delivers results.
The PFPS isn't fancy tech. It's a discipline
tool. It is the truth serum of efficient dairy
farming. All right, a producer is driving back
from the feed mill. They've heard all this data,
the $256 ,000 loss, the deadly CLA isomer. What
are the three not negotiable, actionable steps
they need to take right now? Let's break it down
into immediate, medium, and long -term actions.
Takeaway one, focus on the unopened box. This
is for this week. The insight is this, the PSPS
is your highest paper minute tool. It's the cheapest
insurance you can buy against component loss.
You cannot afford to assume your paper ration
is what your cows are actually eating. And the
action. Find that separator this week. Run one
sample of your fresh TMR and one of your refusals
from the next morning. If the refusals have way
more long stuff, you are sorting. Adjust your
mix immediately. Add moisture. Check your chop
length. Do it for the weekend. Takeaway two,
establish the 21 -day rule. This is your medium
-term strategy. The insight here is that rumen
recovery takes patience. You are changing a microbial
ecosystem, and that takes a full cycle. Don't
quit after five days. And the action. If you
find and fix a structural problem, commit to
that change for a full 21 days before you judge
it. Track your DMI, rumination, and locomotion
scores daily, and know that the big butterfat
lift won't show up until week two. Manage your
expectations based on the biology. And finally,
takeaway three. Zero tolerance for starch and
structure failure. This is your long -term positioning.
The insight is that fecal starch above 3 % is
expensive feed being flushed away, costing you
almost a pound of milk per day for every point
over that line, and it is almost always a physical
structure problem. So the action is to create
a closed loop. Exactly. Integrate your PSPS results
with regular fecal starch testing. Use that shaker
box data to enforce a culture of consistency
with your feeding team. Make physical quality
control a primary KPI that protects your entire
margin from metabolic chaos. This has been another
deep dive from the Bullvine podcast. For more
straight talking, no BS industry analysis, head
to www .thebullvine .com. Subscribe wherever
you get podcasts. We're out with new episodes
every day, and next time's topic will be analyzing
the true cost of forage inventory shrinkage and
spoilage, and how much money you're leaving in
the silage pit.