Daniela Roland: 0:06

Welcome to Bovine Banter with the Penn State Extension Dairy Team. I'm Daniela Rowland and I'm a dairy educator based in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. For our series on nutrition, joining us today is Zane Itle from Cambria County. Thanks, Zane, for talking with me today. As we get started, can you please tell me a little bit about yourself and your family and your farm?

Zane Itle: 0:26

Yeah, of course. It's great to be here. Like you said, my name is Zane Itle from Loreto, Pennsylvania, here in Cambria County. We're like in hours southwest or so of State College, so kind of like in that Evansburg, Altoona area for reference. Yeah, so here on our farm, we're a diversified dairy business. We milk around 250 cows with 230 heifers, so like a little over 500 head here on the farm. We farm close to 550 acres, two-thirds of which that we own, and rest is rented. And then we also have our own processing facility where we process a package, all of our own milk and make a bunch of different dairy products and um also deliver that to consumers and stores and whatnot. So we got a little bit of everything going on here.

Daniela Roland: 1:18

Okay, that's great. I'm sure you all are plenty busy with everything, with all the that going on. Yep. So diving into the nutrition side of things, can you give an overview of your nutrition program on your farm, whether or not you work with a nutritionist, and if so, what that relationship looks like?

Zane Itle: 1:34

Yeah, we work with um Doug Kennedy. He's a nutritionist here in this area. Yeah, we've been with him, feeding with him for almost, I think it's been almost six years, and four of which he was actually with Perina. And then the last two, he um left that company. He's been an independent nutritionist. Uh, so we we have a really, really good relationship with him. Really have enjoyed working with him, especially since he's been independent because it's allowed us a lot more flexibility on certain ingredients and pricing out of different mills, and then just having a little bit more buying power and playing the market a little bit more. He's pretty much here bi weekly, or if we're chopping and we want him to see feed that's coming in, or if we have an emergency, I mean, he can be here really, really quick. He only lives about, I don't know, a half hour from here. And most of his farms are kind of in this like Blair County, Cambria County area. Uh, so we don't have to worry about him traveling from far away, which some farms have to deal with that. Uh and then uh yeah, we're we're always very candid with each other. Me and my brother, we talk to him the most, we're almost always on the same wave blank. And we're we're both younger, I'm only 20, 28. So like I think he really appreciates you know being able to teach us his knowledge and what he's known, what he has learned from his experiences, and then also knows that like we're willing to try out everything and we're still learning this process too. So and then he, I don't yeah, he uh he also understands too, like every herd feeds different. So it's nice that he feeds a wide variety of herds and that like we can pull from those experiences, but at the same time, that like, hey, something may work here or not work here that doesn't work or work somewhere else. So yeah, we have a very good relationship with him.

Daniela Roland: 3:28

That's great to hear, and thanks for sharing all of that. That's great that you all are willing to learn from each other and try out different different things that do and don't work for your farm. So then what crops are you growing? And are you growing any small forages or and then also do you purchase any feeds?

Zane Itle: 3:45

Yeah, so we we grow right around 400 acres of corn. Half of that we will try to or plan to double crop with triticale, and then we'd do about 150 acres of uh just orchard grass for halage. And um, as far as purchasing, we right now we will um purchase like our lactating mix and our dry cow mix, and then we will purchase dry corn if we weren't able to make enough high moisture corn in that year, like if the yields were poor. And I think that's about oh, we purchased liquid molasses, we feed liquid mass molasses in our ration. So those are kind of the main uh main things that we do.

Daniela Roland: 4:28

Okay, thank you. So, how have the crops that you've planted for forages changed over the years? And what are some considerations you've had to make before making any changes or say from year to year?

Zane Itle: 4:39

Yeah, that's a good question. So, this this will be a little bit before my time. So I I had to talk to my brother about this, and then um, and just from what I remember, so like when I was growing up on the farm, it was mainly just corn and alfalfa. Uh, we didn't do any small grains whenever I was growing up on the farm, like I said, so maybe like 15 years ago, maybe even close to 20 years ago. And so it's it's really involved and it's it's what a lot of farms have went went through. Like we don't grow any alfalfa anymore. We're double cropping pretty much as as much as we can. But it took it took a lot of trying different things to get to where we are now, and that's not even saying that we have all the it figured out and all the answers now, like we're always still trying to do different things. But I can remember doing we, I think when they first started double cropping, we tried rye, and like that worked sometimes, but it seems like triticale is a more forgiven. And we've done a lot of different things like sorghum and oats, and then we still will when we um do new seedings of grass, we'll intercede that with barley. So we still do that to help it get started. But we've tried a lot, we've tried a lot of different um crops, and yeah, and as far as considerations before making a change, a lot of that's just inventories and playing around timelines. We utilize a custom chopper, uh so a lot of that is uh dependent on what those guys are doing.

Daniela Roland: 6:08

So yeah, sure, that that makes sense, and sometimes that can work for the better or it can be a little stressful, I bet. Just waiting on them sometimes.

Zane Itle: 6:16

Yeah.

Daniela Roland: 6:16

So what are some strategies you utilize during harvest and storage to try to make and then maintain high quality forages?

Zane Itle: 6:24

Yeah, so like like I said, we we utilize uh a custom chopper, and then we have bunks. So we have bunkers here at the home farm, and then we also rent a neighboring farm, only like it's probably not even a half a mile down the road that there are bunkers there too. So we always try to maximize the storage in those bunkers because we really prefer to put all of our forage or high moisture corn in the bunkers, it just works out a lot better for us, and then whatever we can't fit in those, we will use a truck bagger. So usually we're only truck bagging like the triticale and sometimes the halage. Usually it works out that we'll truck bag some of the triticale and first cutting halage. So we really we really went that route with a custom chopper just because, and that's and that's really why we used to do so many different little forages because we did our own chopping, so then it was easier to split the risk and do a little bit of everything, but then you're just always running around either drilling something or chopping something or mowing something. So then that's why we have gone more this route with mainly just triticale and corn silage, but we still do a good bit of grass to balance it out a little bit. I think that's mainly everything. Yeah, I would say that's about it.

Daniela Roland: 7:43

Okay, thank you. Before planting, what are some considerations you make when planning ahead?

Zane Itle: 7:49

Uh yeah, the biggest thing would be just inventories, see, see where we're at, where we're gonna run out at, and then um, and then if we gotta, you know, spray a little more hay down, kill a little more hay and put a little more corn out, or if we could get away with you know not needing as much corn. So that's that's probably the main difference, or if we know we're gonna be short on uh halage and a little more we need a little more forage, maybe we will decide to fertilize a cutting the following year with nitrogen, or we won't. So we make sure we definitely get four cuttings, if not five. And then sometimes we'll say, Hey, well, maybe we we shouldn't bail this for hay, even though we could, because we do put a little bit of grass hay in our lactating ration. Maybe we'll say, Hey, I'll know we need to forage, like we definitely should chop this, and then we don't know, we have we have enough flexibility that like we could still put out like fallouts or do some rotating around and do some sorghum to try to get some yieldage and tonnage back. So we we can do things like that, but uh that's pretty much the main thing.

Daniela Roland: 8:53

Okay, great, thank you. So, what are some tools you use to evaluate evaluate forage and feed quality?

Zane Itle: 8:59

The main thing would just be using our nutritionist, using Doug, going off of his samples and what and what he says and what what he thinks will do well. And then I guess uh I mean I guess the ultimate answer to that is the cows. The cows are gonna tell you uh whether you're feeding something good or bad. Yeah.

Daniela Roland: 9:19

Yeah, that's very true. And yes, they will. Yes. Um so then kind of adding on to that, so at at the feed bunk, how often uh it sounds like you work with a nutritionist pretty often, every other week or so. Is that right? He's out at your farm. So how often is he taking samples and then what do you do with those results?

Zane Itle: 9:37

Yeah, pretty much every time he's here, he's gonna at least sample something and at least double check sometimes our moistures. We can't we do do our own moistures on the farm, but it doesn't always hurt to have him send a sample off to Cumberland Valley and see what they also get. Uh yeah, whether it's individual forages or the TMRs, doing a TMR analysis or a shaker box and seeing exactly where we're and what we're mixing is what he's balancing for, and then that's also what the cow is eating. And then whenever we get those samples back, he emails to us, and then we always will save all those samples. We put them in a folder in a computer so that way we can use it for any past or future reference, compare different stuff. And then, as far as like what exactly we can do with all those results, too, we have a feeding software called Tap where it there's a there's a tablet in the tractor where I can, you know, whether we saw the moisture change ourselves and then cooked it down and adjusted it, or whether he saw that, or whether he wanted to change something in the feed software, we both can get on there and make changes and just communicate to it. And we can really keep an eye on our dry matter intakes through all that, and it's weighing out their fusel, it's doing all that so we can really keep a close eye on uh what the samples are telling us and everything.

Daniela Roland: 11:00

That's great. That's great that you're able to utilize that and be on top of everything. That's good. So, do you have different TMR mixes for your different groups? So, can you explain?

Zane Itle: 11:10

Yeah, so we have right now five different mixes. Uh, we have a mix that is specifically to the first lactation cows, and we also milk about 20 jerseys too. So they're in that group, they get their own mix. All the second plus lactation cows, they get their own mix. And then we have a dry cow mix. So even though it includes three different pens for the dry cows, it's an all it's an all uh same mix for the far-off close-ups, and then a calving pen group. And then uh the second plus lactation group, actually, their mix, their mix will get split, and we will feed that to um we'll just add on to the mix and we'll feed that to the heifers that are less than like nine, ten months of age. Uh, we have a heifer, we have a heifer mix in addition to that's everybody older than that, so older than 10 months and basically up to springers. And then we will do like a seasonal um beef mix. Like we'll choose to raise out so many beef through the winter that then come springtime, we can put them out on pasture and supplement them with a with a mix because we do have a large amount of pasture, so we do try to utilize that with some dairy crossbeds, crossbreeds that we'll raise out ourselves.

Daniela Roland: 12:22

That's really good. And that's good that you have that bit of diversification there too, to utilize that and in your land. So, what are your go-to resources for information on forages and nutrition?

Zane Itle: 12:33

Yeah, so like I said before, the the main one for that is really Doug. I mean, he's because it's it's his it's his occupation, it's what he's seeing every day. But I mean, there are a lot of different farmer groups on social media, whether it's Facebook or whatnot, that me and my brother and even some cousins are in that will see different things and be like, oh, this guy's doing this. Do you really think that that could work? Like, yeah, even though it's halfway across the country, I mean, maybe, maybe something like that would work here. So it's always cool seeing different things on there. And then, yeah, you still still read different papers or magazines like hordes or progressive dairymen that you'll read some different articles in and stuff like that. So we'll get some resources, some information for those resources like that.

Daniela Roland: 13:18

Yeah, and it's great to see what other farmers are doing and share ideas that way too. I think some of those farmer peer groups can always be great resources for each other. What advice would you give to someone looking to improve their feed or cropping systems?

Zane Itle: 13:31

Yeah, I think for us it's it's just sort of balance and risk. There's a lot of dairies and PA that can, you know, they get away with basically just doing all trip and corn and you know, just doing all that, just double crop it and that's it. And like that that that would scare the heck out of us doing something like that, just because the area we're in that you know, the people the people around it just refer to us as that we live on a mountain. And uh if you go if you go a little north of us, like you can't even get away with double cropping. And like some years, you know, some years the trip just doesn't do as well and it doesn't winter over as well. And uh so like we advise I would give is just you know, really just balance risk. You know, Mother Nature is always a always a gun battle. And um, and then anything else I would say is like just um it has really worked out for us to utilize custom guys for different things. You know, we'll use them for pumping some liquid manure, but then you know, we'll still scoop out the solids and we bed with sand, so we have to scoop out this the sand and whatnot, and um, yeah, and just and just you know, balance your risk and figure out kind of what what works and you know utilize your neighbors. I mean, every neighbors have different pieces of equipment that maybe you don't have. So I would I would say just you know start small with something. Don't try to go super crazy either on certain things.

Daniela Roland: 14:54

So do you have any take-home messages or advice, any other advice for our audience?

Zane Itle: 14:59

Yeah, I mean, I would just I would say just figure out what works for your your own farm, you know, try to figure out what your what your strengths and your weaknesses are, and then utilize that to help your your cropping, your nutritionist, your nutrition, and then ultimately your cows. I mean, like for us, like we made a decision to, you know, sell our corn plant or and sell our poult-ite chopper and go the custom route on things like that because we were just trying to maximize our own time and availability and um you know get better quality on those on those crops. Because like we, I don't know, like we we we hate holding steering wheels. Like we like we I it's really nice that uh you'll go all winter and not have to worry about any of that stuff, maybe you know, hauling some manure and whatnot. But then you're like, oh yeah, it'll be it'll be fun to get back into spring and chopping and being out in the fields, and after about a day or two driving truck, you're like, oh man, this sucks. I'd rather be in the barn walking around with the cows. So I mean, we we would rather much be the ones, you know, milking our cows and you know, processing and selling the milk. Um that you know, that works for us, but that doesn't, you know, the next farm, they may like that they have a lot of family involved and that they can, you know, you know, they can basically be their own custom crew, but that's not really where we want to be at. You know, there's there's there's a lot of irons in the fire, and sometimes you just have to know which ones are your biggest ones to focus on and um, you know, and try to go that route. So yeah, I would say that's probably my biggest, my biggest take-home.

Daniela Roland: 16:39

Sure. Thank you for sharing that. And I think that that makes a lot of sense too, especially if you're able to do what you want as far as focusing on the cows and rely on others to help you with that with everything else. Yeah. Well, thank you, Zane, for talking with us today. And thank you to all of our listeners. This wraps up our podcast series on dairy nutrition. So if you've missed any of our previous episodes, please go back and listen to those and check those out. Thank you for listening.