The Rumen Room Podcasts

Sliced on our morning cereal or perched on top of our iconic New Zealand dessert Pavlova, kiwifruit deliver a tasty powerpack of valuable nutrients for us humans. What about ruminants? Are reject kiwifruit from your local packhouse equally as good for our dairy cows and other animals on farm? Yes! A valuable source of energy delivered largely as water soluble carbohydrates, whole kiwifruit can be a very useful feed.  However… as fo...

A fundamental basic of ruminant nutrition – energy density of feeds – is covered in this latest Rumen Room Podcast.

Expressed as Megajoules of Metabolisable Energy per kilogram of dry matter (MJME/kgDM), energy density is an important driver of animal productivity and profitability.

In a down to earth, practical “gumboot level” manner, Dr Charlotte Westwood explores the basics of MJME as a concept and covers how feed testing labora...

Our latest podcast explores DCAD - one specific aspect of the diet of “springer” (“close-up”) dairy cows.

The Rumen Room Podcast has briefly discussed DCAD previously (Episodes 10 and 34).  Changing the DCAD of a springer cow diet potentially reduces risk of hypocalcaemia (low blood calcium) in cows before, during and immediately after calving.

This latest episode takes a deeper dive into the detail of DCAD, explaining what DCAD is...

Our latest podcast carries on with our heat stress 'theme' from episode 43, where we explored the challenges of hot temperatures on pasture species.

We’ve moved the theme of heat stress across to how heat stress effects dairy cows. We discuss how heat stress bothers cows, and investigate strategies to reduce the effects of summer heat on lactating cows of hot summer temperatures.

Featuring expert heat stress guest podcaster, Lori G...

Thiamine (Vitamin B1) deficiency - a nutrition/diet-mediated animal health condition sometimes seen in ruminant species - features in this, our latest Rumen Room Podcast.  Most often seen in young, spring-born ruminants during their first summer of life, thiamine deficiency is a sporadic animal health condition that most New Zealand dairy, sheep and beef farmers will be familiar with. Featuring five sections packed with informati...

Our latest episode features guest speaker Dr Ginny Dodunski who joins Rumen Room host Dr Charlotte Westwood for a chat about all things internal parasites. As a New Zealand-based veterinarian and self proclaimed “gumboot parasitologist”, Ginny requires little introduction to most kiwis involved in farming. With a background in veterinary practice, farm consultancy and more recently, working part time with Wormwise, Ginny joins us t...

This episode takes a deep dive into the topic of dietary iodine requirements of cows - and the relationship (or not) of iodine intake with the reproductive performance of cows.

Iodine is well down the priority list when tackling challenges of poor reproductive performance. Body condition score at calving and the extent and duration of body condition loss (‘negative energy ba...

With the ever-increasing inconsistencies of summer weather impacting on dryland dairying, forage crops deliver a valuable bulk of high-quality summer and early autumn feed. In our latest dairying-themed podcast, host Charlotte Westwood is joined by Waikato dairy farming couple, Mark and Courtney Harris - to learn of their investigations into the fit of different summer forage crops for their dairy business.

Farming across two prope...

With spring planting coming up fast for us here in New Zealand, our latest episode focuses on decisions around choosing the right pasture and forage crop seeds.

Host Charlotte Westwood chats with guest podcaster, Southland agronomist Brian Young about all things seeds. Brian’s background includes farming (sheep and beef, and dairy), shearing, working as a rural retail rep and, for the last 9 years, working with PGG Wrightson Seeds,...

This episode carries on from Episode 36, expanding the topic around feeding ewes well through lambing. First up, we cover off on the challenges of stress, and of pre-existing animal health conditions on the ability of a heavily inlamb ewe to look after herself and her unborn lambs well, from a nutritional point of view. The importance of getting stocking rate right at the point of set stocking is discu...

Our latest sheep-themed podcast covers a topic that can challenge our pregnant ewes when they have a belly-full of lambs in late pregnancy. Pregnancy toxaemia is a metabolic disease of ewes caused by underfeeding and/or stress when ewes, often those carrying twins or triplets, reach the final stages of late pregnancy. The podcast covers off what pregnancy toxaemia is (and how and why it occurs), clinical signs you might see in affe...

During mid-winter, it’s not uncommon to start the morning with frosted forages (pastures, winter brassicas, fodder beet and green feed cereals).  For break / strip grazed animals that are hungrily waiting for their regular shift onto a new break, frosted forages can potentially increase risk of rumen bloat or "frost bloat". 

In this our latest “bite-sized” Rumen Room Podcast, we cover why grazing ruminants, cattle particularly, are...

In this our latest podcast, we focus exclusively on the diet of “springer” dairy cows (otherwise known as “close up dry cows”).

Many factors are important when designing springer cows diets – relating not only to calcium metabolism but also to do with dietary energy, protein, fibre and, of course, the requirements for other minerals and vitamins.

Fo...

Intramuscular fat (IMF) is fat that’s deposited between and within individual muscle fibres (cells) in the skeletal muscle of animals. Also referred to as ‘marbling’, consumers of red meat often prefer meat that contains a higher level of IMF due to an enhanced eating experience.

In this, our second in a two-part series focusing on IMF in ruminant animals, we carry on a discus...

Intramuscular fat (IMF) is fat that’s deposited between and within individual muscle fibres (cells) in the body of animals. Often also referred to as ‘marbling’, the consumers of red meat often have a preference for higher IMF meat due to an enhanced eating experience.

In this, our first in a two-part series that focuses on IMF, we lay the foundations for our discussion around IMF. We define what IMF is, and describe why the increa...

This is our second of a two part series all about “drying off” lactating dairy cows. Part One of this two-part series (Episode 30) covered off the basics of why the cow and her udder need a dry period to rest and recuperate in preparation for a new lactation. What a “good” dry off process might look like was discussed, as well as the impact of once-a-day milking before dry off for cows that are still producing a lot of milk in late...

“Drying off” lactating dairy cows is the process of successfully and efficiently closing down the lactation process in readiness for the dry period – a time of rest and recuperation for not only the cow but also her hard-working milk secretory cells in her udder.

In this, part one of a two-part series about drying off dairy cows, we explore the basics of just why the cow and her udder deserve a well-earned break over the dry period...

In this our latest “bite sized” Rumen Room Podcast, we cover off a brief overview about rusty grasses. Often the first time you realise your pastures contain Crown rust (Puccinia coronata) or Stem rust (Puccinia graminis) fungi is when your boots turn an orange colour as you walk through the paddocks. (Note that these aren’t the only types of fungi to cause rusty coloured mottling on your grasses - we’re focusing on just these two ...