To convert tough forages and complex carbohydrates in a TMR into milk and meat, a dairy cow must first deconstruct them into smaller building blocks she can use. However, she cannot do this alone. The destructive work is carried out by the vast microbial community in her rumen. Through fermentation, these microbes break down plant fibers into volatile fatty acids (VFAs) — the primary energy currency that fuels the cow and her calf. But not all fermentation is equal. The compo

Most prior work on native rumen microbial supplements has focused on Holsteins. However, the four microbial strains in Galaxis Frontier were originally identified because they’re consistently more abundant in highly efficient and productive dairy cows, regardless of breed, region, or management system.   In a recently published controlled trial with a randomized block design, Valldecabres and colleagues tested Galaxis Frontier in early-lactation Jersey cows on a California da

In 2024, research out of the University of Florida (Nehme Marinho et al. (2024)) showed that rumen-native microbes help cows make more milk (+3-4 lbs. ECM), more efficiently (+0.04-0.08 pts ECM/DMI). But how? The latest research from the University of Florida, recently published by Journal of Dairy Science,  builds on this original Holstein cow dataset and dives into the changes in rumen genetics, rumen fermentation metabolites, host metabolic markers, and total tract digesti