Yucca extract help Blood Urea Nitrogen levels in Cows

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with having too high of blood urea nitrogen in their beef cattle. I know that dairy cattlemen check for milk urea nitrogen and try to keep it at a certain level, etc. I have been researching this issue because we have such lush pasture in the spring that is full of red and white clover. The high BUN levels are said to cause early abortions in cows. It has been difficult to get things bred for January and Febuary but they all seem to catch about the time the clover dies down or gets more course. Any experience with this? Have you heard of a product called Micro Aid that is a feed adittive that could lower BUN or MUN?

My cousin works for the company and they are very good. If you need some info i can get you his number. He is in Kentucky.

This would be borderline Nitrate Poisoning. This is a very real problem, and if not managed properly it will deffinately cause some abortions, especially early on.

Nitrates in moderate to high levels turn to "Nitrites" in the blood stream. Nitrites tie up the hemoglobin in the blood and of high enough, will not only start to see abortions, but you will also start losing animals directly. I have been to places where they are forced to feed some borderline feed stuffs which are high in Nitrates. If mixed properly and are not sorted in the bunks, they seem to get along OK. But if something goes wrong, or it rains before the bunks get emptied out, there goes the farm in one night.

A general rule of thunb around here is that whatever you feed needs to average below 700 PPM to be safe for pregnant cows, and stay under 1000 PPM as fed to be a reasonable risk for death loss.

Check around and do you research, there is alot to learn when it comes to Nitrates, and of course , all rapidly growing legumes are fairly high in Nitrates, as they also produce thier own Nitrogen as well as what is in the soil. In your case the RED clover will be your big culprit.

Best of luck --  you may need a little!

Terry

Cowboy, are you referring to the clover as causing the nitrate poisoning or are you referring to the yucca extract product? The levels I am talking about are closer to 50-100ppm and inserting it into the water with a liquid form.

Sorry, yes I was talking about the clover Legumes, not the Yucca product you had mentioned.

50-100 PPM would notmake any significant difference in the overall Nitrate problem, but adding several hundreds surely would.

Good topic, REAL problems!

Good luck pard --

Terry

Cowboy is exactly right.  In our part of the world it is caused by too much fertilizer during periods when there is not enough rain and then you get a rain.  There are some feeds that will not pick it up, but there are those you need to run from when they are stressed with heat and drought. 

I lost my best heifer a few years back from it.  We had fertilized the wheat and it was warm in the fall and got a big rain.  The blood will turn a chocolate color. 

I saw my neighor's cows falling like flies one day after he put out a bale of haygrazer.  Another fellow near Hutchinson, KS burned over 500 round bales of haygrazer in the early 80's due to nitrate levels being too high.  Sometimes you can wait until 3 weeks after frost and cut it and the level will be acceptable.  But if you cut it and lay it down waiting on a frost it will not lower the levels of nitrate.  Also, our drinking water is high in nitrates, so pregnant women and infants cannot drink it without danger.

Good subject.

I used to live in Chino, California which at the time was the number one dairy producing county (San Bernardino) in the world (back in the 80's). Upjohn was trying to beat out Merrick for getting a rBST product on the market, and we had over 500 head of dairy cattle in the study we were working. The plan was to follow out the cows in 5 lactation's, and breed the resulting heifers and keeping them in the study. After the 2nd lactation cycle, we had to cancel the study because we had a high abortion rate from the high nitrites/nitrates in the water table. We had cows giving 100 pounds of milk in a milking (we milked twice a day), but none of them would breed back. The goal of the study was to end up with a certain percentage of cows that made it though the 5 lactations, but when we could not get enough to stick by the second lactation, we had to quit. Upjohn blamed it on the nitrates level, and I tend to agree since within 5 years all of the dairies moved out of state into New Mexico and Arizona where the water quality was better.