AgBioResearch

This story is part of a series highlighting the impact of MSU AgBioResearch’s work with Michigan agriculture and natural resources told through our stakeholders' perspectives. Through partnerships with the State of Michigan and industries, MSU AgBioResearch is finding solutions to some of the timeliest problems facing our state. To view the entire series, visit agbioresearch.msu.edu.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Since its inception nearly a decade ago, the Michigan Alliance for Animal Agriculture (M-AAA) has bridged a powerful connection between Michigan animal ag industries and Michigan State University faculty, creating pathways industries can use to communicate research needs and granting opportunities faculty can take advantage of to deliver results.

Formed by Michigan’s animal ag and allied industries, MSU’s colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Veterinary Medicine, MSU AgBioResearch, MSU Extension and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, M-AAA has helped ag industries — such as Michigan dairy — grow and strengthen through MSU research and outreach, according to Sheila Burkhardt, chief corporate affairs officer of the Michigan Milk Producers Association (MMPA).

“Through the creation of M-AAA, it has really deepened the partnership among the dairy industry, ag industry and research arm of MSU,” Burkhardt said. “Part of the M-AAA criteria in putting research requests out there is dependent on what the industry wants. I would say that’s a huge highlight of where research used to be to where it is now. It’s been a big change because of M-AAA in getting the highlights and topics that we’d like to see from the industry perspective addressed in research.”

For one research topic, in particular, results recently shared by MSU have left many within Michigan dairy over the past year to say, “Holy cow!”

Dr. Adam Lock, a professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and interim chair of the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, has long focused his research on the role of dietary fatty acids in dairy cow performance and sustainability. Since 2021, he’s used funding from M-AAA, MMPA and the United Soybean Board to study if soybeans with high amounts of oleic acid could increase yields of milk fat and protein when fed to dairy cows — a result that would increase production (and paychecks) for dairy farmers.

After years of data collection and analysis, not only did results support the theory that high oleic soybeans can increase milk production when fed to cows, but they also showed promise that dairy producers could decrease their feeding cost when planting the soybeans themselves — so much so that Michigan seed suppliers ran out of the soybean seed last year due to demand, Dr. Lock said.

Additional studies have demonstrated how roasting the soybeans before feeding them can provide even greater benefits for milk production.

“High oleic soybeans offer a rare win-win: they improve milk components and reduce feed cost, while also supporting local crop production. That’s the kind of integrated impact we strive for in our research,” Dr. Lock said. “Continued support for applied research like this is essential. It’s how we turn promising ideas into real-world solutions for Michigan farmers.”

No one has seen the impacts these soybeans have had more than those feeding them to cows, growing them or providing consultation on and selling them.  

As a former doctoral student in Dr. Lock’s Dairy Lipids Nutrition Program and Laboratory who focused her research on oleic acid, Dr. Alycia Bales now provides animal nutrition technical support for Caledonia Farmers Elevator, a farmer-owned co-op that specializes in feed, grain, livestock nutrition and crop production and management, among other specialties. Charlie Kunisch, another MSU alumnus, is a dairy and beef cattle specialist with Vita Plus, an employee-owned company offering the latest in livestock technology, nutrition and management information.

Both Dr. Bales and Kunisch work closely with Michigan producers to guide them through decisions influencing how they operate their farms, including what to feed livestock. Working with his farm’s nutritionist, Brian Preston, who today manages his family’s fourth-generation 1,000-cow dairy farm in Quincy, Michigan — Preston Dairy — connected with Drs. Lock and Bales in 2023 to learn more about the potential benefits of feeding cows high oleic soybeans. In hearing them present their research on a topic that until then had been minimally studied in Michigan, Preston and his family decided to grow and utilize the soybeans in their operation, and the results they’ve seen have excited them.

Hear from Dr. Bales, Kunisch and Preston in the Q&A below on how high oleic soybeans are galvanizing the dairy industry and how MSU research has played a role in their success.

When were you first introduced to high oleic soybeans, and what were your thoughts on them being used as a feed source?

• Bales: I was introduced to them in 2021. I was in the middle of designing a few studies to send in for an M-AAA grant, and a nutritionist whom Dr. Lock has a good relationship with mentioned that one of his customers fed them on their farm. So, he brought up the idea of getting a hold of some of these soybeans and seeing what it would look like if we fed them. That was my first initial introduction, and then we wrote up the grant with the beans included and received it. That’s when all my research started.

• Kunisch: Vita Plus has worked with high oleic soybeans for several years. I’ve worked with Vita Plus for seven years, and about five years ago, a co-worker of mine was working with a farm that was growing, roasting and processing them on farm. I toured the farm a few times and saw the roasting setup, so I had that experience within the company. Vita Plus as a company has been very interested in them as a way for farmers to utilize more homegrown feed, and we’ve communicated and worked a lot with Dr. Lock regarding how to feed them and what the opportunities are to incorporate them into dairy rations. His research and lab have been very useful, and I would say because of that, within the last two years — last year, especially — there’s been an increased interest in high oleic beans. 
  
  
• Preston: We’ve traditionally fed either soybean or canola meal along with palmitic and oleic fats from expensive sources in Malaysia and across the world. It was a lot of transportation and very expensive. The first time I heard about Plenish soybeans (a variety of high oleic soybeans) was from fellow dairyman Tim Hood. He was on his third year of roasting and feeding the beans when we talked in 2023. I talked with our nutritionist after, and he put me in touch with Drs. Lock and Bales who told me about what they were seeing and some of the potential benefits. There were just a handful of people who had fed them at the time, but with Dr. Lock and my nutritionist’s encouragement, we thought it was worth it — even if it was just going to displace some of the transportation cost of the soybean meal. We ordered the seeds in fall 2023 and planted them in 2024. Our first crop was successful. I think we averaged 53 bushels per acre — very acceptable. And in November 2024, we started roasting the soybeans. We found another dairyman exiting the industry who had a used roaster for sale. So, we were able to give that a try for a minimal investment, and we saw tremendous results.

In terms of milk production, what were expectations like before high oleic soybeans were introduced to a cattle’s diet compared to after?

• Bales: Before the addition of high oleic soybeans, there was a bit of skepticism that they would work as well as what we saw in my research trials. Of the few producers who took the leap, some went all in and fed them at higher levels (5-8 pounds per head), whereas others fed them at lower levels (2-4 pounds per head). Those feeding at lower levels may not have seen a great production boost but were seeing some reduction in diet cost. Now that there have been several producers who have found great success with these beans, the demand is up. Inclusion rates of the soybeans are now heavily driven by supply and price. Producers who were able to grow them last year are either conserving their supply to get them through to harvest — thus, feeding at a lower rate — or are continuing to feed at levels between 5-10 pounds per head and will purchase more once they run out. The purchase price can be off-putting and may not come out as a cost saving in some diets, but we still have producers who are OK with the price because they love their milk production and income-over-feed cost. So, for the most part, when we have those higher inclusion rates, we've always seen some type of production bump, either in fluid milk, milk components or both. 
  
  
• Kunisch: I think that’s farm dependent and dependent on the amount of beans being fed. Obviously, when we’re bringing high oleic beans into a diet, protein and fat are being brought into the ration. With this form of fat, we can push higher levels of dietary fat without concern for butterfat suppression. From what I’ve seen, those tiptoeing into it and feeding 2-4 pounds of the soybeans aren’t likely to see as big of a response. It’s never going to be a cookie-cutter scenario, though, where you walk into a farm and say, “This is how much you need to feed.” But as you start getting into 5 pounds or more, you’re changing those diets enough that you’re typically expecting a few more pounds of milk and 0.1%-0.2% more of butterfat. And with 8 pounds or more, you’re generally going to see milk and milk components come up. Again, these responses are very dependent on what the current nutrition program looks like and need to be discussed with a farm’s nutritionist. 
  
  
• Preston: The only thing we knew is what Dr. Lock had seen with his research trials, and they hadn’t been replicated many times yet, but he was seeing a significant increase in butterfat percentage. We thought we might be able to get three tenths to maybe go from 4% butterfat to 4.3%-4.4%. The way it turned out, we had raised our percentage before including the beans, so we were able to go from 4.4% to 4.8% after including them. Dairy producers are paid on butterfat and protein pounds. There’s also price of milk per hundredweight, but we’re really selling fat and protein, so when we’re able to increase the percentage and hold the same pounds of milk, that’s a big win for us.

What other impacts have you seen within the dairy, soybean and feed industries as high oleic soybeans have become more popular?

• Bales: For those who’ve been able to grow them and use them themselves, there’s been a shift of having more homegrown products on site instead of purchasing off-site products. We’ve seen a great reduction in overall diet cost and great improvements on income over feed cost for these producers. For those who are purchasing them at this moment, we’ve either seen a very slight reduction in diet cost, a neutral diet cost or a slight increase in diet cost. However, their income over feed cost is still better, even if their diet cost went up. So, on the dairy side, we’ve been seeing great results, but these beans could also help some of the soybean producers who are able to plant them and get a premium for them. The dairy farmer will pay that premium to get those beans, but the soybean producer is getting that premium, so that in theory should be helping Michigan agriculture overall. 
  
  
• Kunisch: Improving income over feed cost is a big talking point, as is interest in farms being able to grow more of their own product. Commodity markets can be volatile. What happens overseas can impact soy and canola markets overnight, so there’s been interest for quite a few years on how producers can grow more of their own feedstuff to reduce purchased feed cost. This can really help to mitigate price variations and bring some stability into diet costs when trying to run profit projections. 
  
  
• Preston: The first thing we noticed when we started feeding the soybeans was that our feed bill went down as we were no longer buying soybean meal, expensive palmitic fats and bypass lysine, and that was huge. Our inputs went down substantially at the same time our income was going up. We were able to hold the same pounds of milk produced while we increased our butterfat percentage. It wound up being a well over $1-per-head-per-day change. And on a dairy farm, we’ll try something to get maybe 5-6 cents more per cow per day. We operate on tight margins like every other business, and when you can do $1-$1.20 more per cow per day, that’s an unheard-of change. That’s a once-in-a-generation change. Financially, these beans have had a huge impact to our business, and I think they’ve had some other ancillary benefits too, such as better crop rotations and overall health benefits to our cows.

What has the enthusiasm for these soybeans been like, and how have industries responded to their boom?

• Kunisch: On the dairy side, there’s been increased interest with more producers planting their own beans or working out contracts with neighboring crop growers who might grow some high oleic beans instead of conventional beans. Producers might know somebody who’s feeding them or have heard Dr. Lock talk about them, so there’s without a doubt an increased interest in them. Nobody wants to miss out on a new opportunity. And on the crop side, there are some rather remote areas in Michigan. We’re surrounded by lakes, so in some of these northern Michigan areas, farmers growing corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops need to ship them a long way to get them to an elevator. So, with high oleic beans, there’s this appealing aspect of them going to a local neighboring farm which would potentially allow growers to avoid having to pay for trucking, drying and shrink. 
  
  
• Preston: You can’t go to a dairy meeting right now without people talking about who’s on the beans and who’s not on the beans. There’s tremendous enthusiasm across the dairy industry because of the economic value that these high oleic beans bring. There are some farms across Michigan that have put in large roasting facilities so they can do custom roasting, and other farms like ours have put in smaller scale roasting systems to meet our own needs. I think the enthusiasm from the dairy industry is spilling into the crop industry too. Our farm doesn’t have enough acres to grow all the soybeans we need, so we’ve contracted with neighboring farmers, and they’ve started growing the soybeans and will either use an intermediary or we’ll purchase them ourselves. We understand that we’re going to pay a premium above the local market for these unique identity-preserved beans.

How has MSU research contributed toward this topic, and what would you say to others about continued investment for MSU research?

• Bales: By already having a producer who was feeding them, that got the ball rolling for us. We had multiple conversations with this producer throughout the trial, and it was one of those things that through the grapevine, other people started hearing what we were doing with this trial. I then presented preliminary data from my first trial in spring 2023 at the Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference. From there, that sparked a lot of interest among producers who listened in on my presentation. And because this was an M-AAA grant, MMPA got involved and asked for us to do an additional research trial. So, there was a lot of talk about the research but not much implementation yet because seed wasn’t readily available. By spring 2024, we had run our third and fourth trials, and I presented three different abstracts at the American Dairy Science Association’s annual conference, and that’s when we got more interest from nutrition companies and other professors. It was also at this time my company acquired a good chunk of these beans because they weren’t being used in the oil industry, and that’s when things really took off — us having the availability of the beans and having producers willing to try them.
  
  To the second part of the question, I would say that the research done at MSU in the past, present and future is all very applicable to today’s dairy producers. There’ll always be super basic research, but there’ll also be super applicable research. I just want people to know that the professors are very good about hearing what dairy producers want. If there’s a need out there, they’re going to take that into consideration when doing their research. They will try their best to make sure that whatever they’re doing will further the current dairy industry — not just in Michigan, but hopefully nationwide. Putting an investment into MSU research means putting an investment into the dairy industry itself. 
  
  
• Preston: We would have never tried this without the encouragement and research done at Michigan State. Other universities are doing it as well, but Michigan State is clearly the hotbed of the research program for these high oleic soybeans across the whole country right now. What’s going on at Michigan State is revolutionizing the dairy industry, bringing a lot of economic value to farms and making us more sustainable because we’re growing these sought-after fats here locally. This is exactly the mission of a land-grant university: to research, find new and emerging technologies and bring them to food producers across our state.

Michigan State University AgBioResearch scientists discover dynamic solutions for food systems and the environment. More than 300 MSU faculty conduct leading-edge research on a variety of topics, from health and agriculture to natural resources. Originally formed in 1888 as the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, MSU AgBioResearch oversees numerous on-campus research facilities, as well as 15 outlying centers throughout Michigan. To learn more, visit agbioresearch.msu.edu.