Dairy - Rumen pH

In ruminant nutrition, ideally you want to avoid rumen pH falling below 5.8 to avoid situations of sub-acute acidosis.  Maintaining ruminal pH above this level will increase digestion efficiency and performance.  Here are some other helpful tips.

• Feeding wet acidic forages to dairy cows can cause acidosis, laminitis and poor feed intake, resulting in fertility problems and lower milk yield and protein
• Valuable feeds, such as grains, can increase acid loading in the rumen; acidic feeds and brewer’s grains make things worse
• Feeding live yeast in these circumstances helps to remove lactic acid from the rumen, prevents lactic acid over production, stabilizes rumen pH and helps avoid acidosis
• Rumen specific live yeast feeding trials show higher dry matter intakes and improved feed efficiency; cows give more, better quality milk and optimize a productive diet
• Fresh forage at turnout contains many fast fermenting sugars; yeast ensures a smooth changeover from one diet to another, better energy use, protein use and more milk
• Feeding a rumen specific yeast such as SC 1077 has a positive impact on rumen pH