RUMEN acidosis can be a serious problem, particularly in high yielding dairy cows and intensive beef finishing systems but a new product has been making a name for itself by countering the effects of it.

Since last October, East Coast Viners have been offering a range of ruminant feeds containing Alkagrain, a product which is proven to reduce the incidence of acidosis and they have already had some excellent results and feedback from farmers.

It is produced by treating barley or wheat with Home n' Dry pellets which release ammonia, resulting in an alkaline cereal which can be added to blends and pellets to counter rumen acidosis. Five F Nutrition, the makers of Home n' Dry have had great results with Alkagrain for over 30 years. Now, ECV has introduced Alkawheat to their Star range of dairy cakes and Alka range of beef feed to optimise production on the farm.

Large scale farmer and director of East Coast Viners, John Forbes, would not want to sell anything that was not proven, so Alka Intensive Beef Blend was fed to his bull beef, checking intakes and performance. Farm manager, Gavin Smith, said “It was good to work with. The bulls were content, intakes were good and they finished well.”

ECV also included it in AlkaNut Topstar dairy cake for John’s dairy herd which is milked and fed by robot at Auchendreich. “Robot feeders are great, but it is important to avoid rumen acidosis in high-yielding cows which are making a lot of trips to the robot and eating a lot of cake,” said Gavin. “We’ve tried the cake with the Alkagrain in and out and it made a big difference.”

At the moment, the 300 cows at Auchendreich are averaging 9500 litres per lactation, eating cake at the robot and 5.5 kg of blend mixed with grass silage, wholecrop and 10 kg draff.” A few of the high-yielding cows can eat as much as 12 kg of cake per day in the robot.

“We have cows that give over 60 litres per day at peak, the more milk she’s producing the more trips a cow makes to the robot and the more cake she’ll get, so rumen acidosis can be a problem with high-yielding cows,” added Gavin.

“The Alkagrain in the dairy cakes has solved that problem for us and the high-yielders are able to eat the cake they need.”

It's a similar story with intensive beef finishing at the Taylor family's Easter Ochtermuthill at Crieff.

Beef and sheep farmer, Jimmy Taylor, has had good results since he started using an intensive beef blend in November, 2016, with the antacid built in.

The Taylors have farmed the 200 acres at Easter Ochtermuthill, Creiff since 1968. Jimmy runs the farm with help from his mother, Christine, who does the books, while son James works at Caledonian Marts, at Stirling, takes on contracting work and works on the farm when needed.

The farm is in grass, apart from a field of turnips which is fed to store lambs. Forty acres are cut for hay, most of which is sold, and around 20-25 acres are cut once for big bale silage for the sheep.

He buys store cattle at between 400 and 500kg to finish in 90 to 100 days and has traditionally fed them on ad-lib ECV Barley Beef and hay, but he has been impressed with the combination of new new Alka blend and his own blend using barley from his brother-in-law and ECV Alka Beef Balancer mixed 50:50.

The first thing he noticed was a reduction in the amount of hay the cattle were eating. He said: "Their forage consumption has literally halved and their dung is much drier, so I’ll save a bit on bedding too. I’ll need to be on it a bit longer and see more cattle in the system, but my initial impression is they’re doing better, though not eating any more.”

ECV's nutritionist, Stephen Harper, pointed out: “The reduced forage intake isn’t too surprising, because the alkaline feed buffers the rumen and they won’t need to cud as much to produce their own buffer.”

The first five Limousin crosses to be fed the new diet were sold through Caledonian Marts at their first January sale. They averaged 610 kg, having put on 150 kg in just over 90 days and averaged £2.35/kg.

Jimmy is a well-known sheep producer in Perthshire and has a flock of 200 pedigree Beltex and 350 Beltex cross ewes, all put to Beltex tups. This year the ewes are getting ECV 18% ewe nuts. He said: “I’ve tried different feeds for the ewes and have found that you can’t get something for nothing.”

The first 100 pedigrees and 100 commercial ewes lamb inside in February. The Beltex ewes and lambs then go back outside, where the ewes keep getting their ECV nuts and a few turnips. The cross ewes stay in the shed, until the lambs are weaned on May 1. They then receive lamb finisher pellets in a creep and some of the lambs are at their target weight of 45 to 50kg by the time they are weaned. The rest of the ewes lamb in April and their lambs finished off grass.