By Lara Fominoff - @LaraFominoff on Twitter

New legume varieties, seeding practices, could be keys to prevent deadly cattle bloat

Apr 2, 2018 | 8:49 AM

LETHBRIDGE – A Lethbridge scientist and his team are hoping improved marketing for new varieties of the sainfoin legume, along with specific seeding practices, can help save cattle farmers billions of dollars in the future.

Dr. Surya Acharya is a forage plant breeder at the Lethbridge Research Centre. Over the last 10 years or so, he has bred the legume so that it can not only grow well alongside alfalfa and can help prevent cattle bloat, but it will also grow for several years at a time.

Cattle farmers grow alfalfa in their pastures because it is highly nutritious and cattle love to eat it. However, growing any other legumes alongside alfalfa to cut down on cattle bloat in the past has proven extremely difficult. The alfalfa can cause toxic soil conditions for other plants around it, among other issues.

The problem with cattle solely eating alfalfa while they’re grazing, says Acharya, is that the animals can gorge on it, quickly causing the potentially deadly bloating condition. The animal can not release the gas by burping or becoming flatulent.

“It is the rapid digestion of the protein in the rumen when they’re eating alfalfa. They gorge on it when they’re hungry and that rapid digestion of the protein in the rumen releases gases, and that makes a frothy substance. And that substance keeps on increasing as more and more protein is digested and the animal swells up.

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“It puts stress on their lungs, so they can’t breathe anymore. So, because of that, unless they’re relieved of that pressure, they will die… it happens very quickly. It can happen in half an hour to 45 minutes.”

The condition, he says, can cost Alberta cattle farmers billions of dollars a year.

“The normal treatment for that is to puncture their stomach so that everything comes out.”

But even if the animal doesn’t die, Acharya says it’s an enormous stress on it.

“It reduces their intake. And in the animal’s system, intake can be directly related to their productivity. The more they eat, the more they produce. So, if they’re not eating for a while they’re not producing as much as they would otherwise,” he explains.

Other ways to prevent the condition include adding chemicals to their water so that the animals have some of it in their stomach to prevent the bloating. However, that only works if cattle drink water from their troughs, not from puddles, sloughs or other areas.

A pump can also be inserted into the cattle to relieve pressure, but that can be burped or coughed out.

The other way to prevent the condition is to add sainfoin to alfalfa fields for the cattle to eat.

The challenge to Acharya and his team was to successfully grow sainfoin with alfalfa in real grazing situations, to prevent bloat and to make sure animal performance (gain) was exactly the same. The team was successful.

The team next had to see if they could rejuvenate pastures that once contained old varieties of sainfoin, but had become alfalfa only, with the new sainfoin varieties.

The varieties of sainfoin were used along with another legume called cicer milkvetch. Several types of seeding equipment were also used.

The findings in Lethbridge showed that seeding of new sainfoin types into established alfalfa pasture could improve the productivity of the existing pasture, while also preventing bloat in grazing cattle. Seeding with the new varieties and the alfalfa was done in alternate rows.

The seeding practices could also be applicable to areas other than those in southern Alberta, throughout the U.S. and even in South America and Europe, if new varieties of sainfoin are developed, according to Acharya.

“We have done it for western Canada. Those same varieties may or may not be good for other areas. Like even the northern part of Alberta, I think we may have to develop a different variety that may be more adaptable for those conditions.”

Acharya is humble about his team’s discoveries and the international recognition they are now receiving.

“I only changed small things. But nobody else was doing it. Because when I joined here as an alfalfa breeder, I was told Monsanto was working on bloat-free alfalfa. We don’t have the resources like Monsanto has. So, I waited. Nothing was coming. After 10 years of my work here. Nothing was coming. After 12, 13 years I didn’t see anything coming. Then I thought, maybe we’ll take a different approach, not to make alfalfa bloat free, but to find something that would grow with alfalfa to make the pasture bloat free.

“That’s when I started working, trying to find out what is different in sainfoin? Why are the old varieties not being utilised? Then I thought if I change sainfoin to the level that it can grow with alfalfa, survive and grow for four or five years, then we have something. Low and behold we were successful.”

Two varieties of sainfoin have now been released. The first release did not go as well as hoped because the company did not follow recommendations according to Acharya, and ended up trying to sell sainfoin seed as a mixed forage.

The second variety was released a short time later, and his hope now is that the company that has bought it, follows their recommendations. It is now working on producing more seed for market, which should happen sometime in 2019.