Our study was conducted at a commercial family dairy farm in Alveringem, Belgium. The barn houses 230 multiparous Holstein milking cows, milked by four Lely Astronaut A5 milking robots. We compared a group of control cows to those fed with CholiGEM. CholiGEM was mixed into pellets at the feed mill, and these were fed to dairy cows in the treatment group 14 days before calving and up until 40 days after calving. Cows in the control group were fed the same pellet feed as usual without CholiGEM. The trial design was an OFF-ON design whereby control cows calved during February-May, while CholiGEM cows calved in August-October.
During the first 120 days in milk, CholiGEM increased extra FPCM yield by 2.3kg. Cows in the CholiGEM group had no clinical ketosis, whereas the control group had 13% incidences of clinical ketosis. Blood NEFA concentrations were lower in the CholiGEM group than in the control group. The body condition score (BCS) was similar in both groups, indicating an efficient fat metabolism for higher milk production in the CholiGEM group. Additionally, cows in the CholiGEM group had 55 fewer open days and required 24% fewer inseminations.
We saw that CholiGEM supplementation improves milk production, health, reproduction, and overall better longevity of cows. The control group had 22% culled cows, while the CholiGEM group had only 12%. That’s because CholiGEM provides a direct ROI of 1:6 by improving milk productivity, and it has indirect/medium to long-term benefits in reproduction success and culling rate reduction.
Read more about formulating ruminant health with CholiGEM for better transition and milk production in our technical literature.
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