Numerous university and field studies have demonstrated that rumen-protected choline helps the liver process energy more effectively, and it also keeps the liver healthier by helping reduce fat accumulation. Those benefits help cows gain long-term improvements in energy status, ultimately leading to improved health, improved fertility and improved milk production. Balchem offers ReaShure® Rumen-protected choline to make it easy for nutritionists and feed manufacturers to provide producers with the benefits of choline in their cows’ diets.

Encapsulated Choline Benefits:

• Encapsulation helps protect choline from the rumen environment, getting the choline to the small intestine, where it can be absorbed by the cow. Even large doses of unprotected
choline have little effect on the level of absorbable choline due to almost complete
destruction of unprotected choline in the rumen.

• Choline helps the liver manage fat mobilization and glucose production. By helping the liver process energy more effectively, fat accumulation in the liver is reduced.

• Choline helps the cow manage her energy status, which improves management of the energy demand of early lactation.

How Choline Improves Health and Productivity

Liver health plays a key role in the success of the transition period, which in turn impacts milk yield and fertility. All cows are energy deficient at calving and must mobilize fat to make up for a glucose deficiency. Even a small accumulation of fat can decrease the livers metabolic functions and impact overall energy metabolism in early lactation. Fatty liver occurs when the liver is overwhelmed by large quantities of non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) that are mobilized due to decreased feed intake and altered endocrine function associated with parturition. As NEFA levels exceed the capacity of the liver to either oxidize them for energy or export them, they are converted to triglycerides (TAG) and stored in the liver. Fat accumulation in the liver, in turn, inhibits liver function and leads to reduced glucose production. Research has shown that feeding rumen-protected choline can increase the rate of glucose production in the liver of transition cows and produce greater than a 2.5-fold increase in the rate at which accumulated fat is subsequently removed from the liver.

Health and Productivity Benefits of Encapsulated Choline:

• Massive amounts of rumen unprotected choline in the diet deliver very little choline to the small intestine for absorption by the cow. Balchem encapsulation provides rumen protection that is critical in providing choline to the cow.

• ReaShure Rumen-protected choline supplementation increases the rate of glucose production in liver of transition cows by 12 to 36 percent vs. control, measured as conversion of propionate to glucose in liver samples obtained from cows during the transition period.

• Energy-related diseases are significantly reduced in cows fed rumen-protected choline compared to cows that are not. Additionally, cows fed ReaShure rumen-protected choline required less treatment to recover from clinical ketosis.

• Cows fed rumen-protected choline demonstrated a significant reduction in retained placenta, diarrhea, ketosis and displaced abomasums compared to cows in the control group.

• ReaShure Rumen-protected choline has been demonstrated to improve milk yield by an
average of 5.7 pounds per cow per day, as well as fat corrected milk and energy corrected
milk yield through 80 days in milk.

• ReaShure Rumen-protected choline has been demonstrated to significantly improve first-service conception rates in herds throughout the U.S. compared to control groups.