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Dairy sees improvements using high oleic soybeans

A Wisconsin dairy farmer was so impressed by an experiment with high-oleic soybeans that he’s planting his own this year. 

Evan Schrauth runs Cloven View Holsteins in Fond du Lac county, where he’s planting Pioneer’s Plenish soybeans along with his corn because of the difference the high oleic soybean meal has made. “The actual seed is not any more expensive but the end product is, so we started feeding them last summer just to see how we liked it, and I liked it so much we kept paying the premium to feed them and we’re still on them.”

Schrauth says the change has done more than improve the milk components. “We saw a few pounds of milk, probably about point-four percent butterfat increase and about a point-25 percent protein increase, and the biggest thing, the body condition score on the cows stays a little more consistent and the cows are actually breeding back a little better.”

Schrauth says that gradual improvement in body condition scoring was noticed by the nutritionist. “He seen it on another herd that’s been doing it, and he went back and looked back at our records, and you can tell when we started feeding them (high oleic soybean meal) and about six weeks after, our conception rate went up.”

With the change, Schrauth is planning one more step. “I’ve got to set up a way to roast them and store them on farm now.”

Schrauth is milking 75 cows now, and will be up to 95 by this fall.