Urea & Polyethylene Glycol

[HDRider]

Can someone explain this statement for me?

"A very good example of the appropriate use of technology is rumen supplements (urea) and tannin neutralizers (polyethylene glycol) to increase grass and bush intake and utilization"

 

[Son of Butch]

Urea cheap protein supplement.
Polyethylene Glycol - We used on all our dairy cows at freshening, giving it as a drench to aid in adjusting to hot dairy rations and help prevent early lactation, high production, negative energy induced ketosis.
Maybe someone else can chime in on how it is used in beef cattle.

 

[Howdyjabo]

Its just saying that while neither the urea or gylcol is a natural feed for ruminants they still have value when fed properly.
The urea provides cheap/condnesed nutrients to the rumen bugs which in turn feed the animal. Glycol has value just for supplying easily metabolized extra energy. Research is showing that glycol binds with tannins making forage high in tannins ( that was not digested well and had health implications) a more valuable feed resource.

The use of both urea and glycol in supplements could have a huge impact on 3rd world livestock production. And it could be very useful here in certain circumstances.

 

[Bigfoot]

Think of it, as fertilizing the small microorganism in the rumen. It increases how well they can break down the hard to digest sugars in roughage. May also increase volatile fatty acid production as well.

 

[HDRider]

That all makes perfect sense.

Thanks

 

[TexasBred]

Can someone explain this statement for me?

"A very good example of the appropriate use of technology is rumen supplements (urea) and tannin neutralizers (polyethylene glycol) to increase grass and bush intake and utilization"

This is true, however, urea works best with a high protein diet as it requires the rapidly fermentable carbohydrates to help with the maintenance of the rumen bacteria. Most producers that really watch costs will feed a ration containing urea. AT 281-287% equivalent protein, one pound of urea has the protein equivalent of 7 lbs. of cottonseed meal and about 6 lbs. of hi-pro soybean meal so you can see part of where the savings occur. Unfortuantely it has zero energy, vitamins and minerals so these have to accounted for in balancing the remainder of the ration.

Polyethylene glycol is seldom used down this way as it's little more than an added expense and the same basic benefits can be obtained especially in the dairy industry with a proper close up dry cow ration and transition ration before going totally to the lactation ration.

 

[gizmom]

Some years back we tried liquid feed which was very high in urea. We had a breeding nightmare that year, our conception rate on ET went from 70% to 30% the only management change was the liquid feed. Our embryologist at the time said he felt the problem could be the urea in the feed if they got to much it could cause issues with reproduction. I don't know for sure if that is what happened but we quit using the liquid feed and our conception rates went back to 65% the following year. I am not trying to bash liquid feed just telling our experience with it the one time we tried it. I know some folks love it.

http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_circulars/CR ... lcome.html

This was a pretty good article on urea.

gizmom

 

[TexasBred]

Never had any breeding problems and we always had it in our dairy feed but it was at a recommended rate for cattle being fed that high amount of a grain mix which is usually no more than 20 lbs. per ton of feed. Liquid feed contains much more than that but intake is limited. Liquid on the other hand is extremely low in energy.

 

[Lucky_P]

The urea deal has been well-known for decades... rumen microbes can take that non-protein nitrogen source and couple it with carbohydrate backbones to make protein.
The polyethylene glycol was a new one for me... had not seen it before... but looks like it could be useful as a supplement in grazing high-tannin forages like sericea lespedeza.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18849376