Epigenetics and Grazing: How Management Changes Gene Expression in Livestock

0:00 Would you join me in welcoming Dr. Williams back up. I want to open up this morning. My grandmother about a month ago had her 98th birthday, and to celebrate, she went out and bought herself a brand-new Cadillac. And so her goal was she wanted to see if she could hit 98 miles per hour on her 98th birthday. So there in Mississippi, she got on 255 headed south and put the hammer down, so to speak. And wasn't alone if she saw blue lights in her rearview mirror, and that was a state highway patrolman behind her. And he pulled her over and he came to her window and he said, ma'am, I said I need to see your license and registration please. And so she handed her driver's license to him, registration, insurance card, all of that. But she's also a concealed weapons carry permit person, and so she handed him her permit for her weapons. And he said, well, ma'am, I see that you have a concealed carry permit. He said, do you have any weapons on you? And she said, well, I got a snubnose 38 in my purse. And he said, well, ma'am, do you have anything else, any other weapons in the car? She said, well, I got a 45 in my console here. And he said, okay, well, ma'am, I have to ask you again, any additional weapons in the vehicle? And she said, well, I have a nine-millimeter in the glove compartment. And he looked at her and he said, ma'am, just what are you afraid of? And she stared right back at him and said, not a dang thing.

1:55 Okay, so this morning I'm going to talk about epigenetics. Now that's a big word, but it has a big meaning and it has a very profound meaning on us. It's something that is very new in concept and very new in research, but yet at the same time, what we're finding is pretty staggering. And so really what we're going to be addressing this morning or what I'm going to call the unintended consequences of our actions. So let's start out by just simply defining. There we go. I had another presentation popping up. Let's define what epigenetics is.

3:01 Epigenetics is the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than the alteration of the genetic code itself. In other words, we might not necessarily be altering the DNA, but every gene—how many in here have had any kind of genetics courses? Okay, a handful. You know, every gene and pair of genes has degree of expression. In other words, just because you have pairs of genes that code for traits in your body, it doesn't mean that all of those traits are going to express themselves a hundred percent. You have degrees of expression, and environmental factors play a huge role in the degree of expression of the different genes and traits in our bodies and therefore in all living organisms.

4:16 Environmental factors, things like the way we manage our land, the way we manage our plants, the way we manage our soil, the way we manage our livestock, the diet that our livestock receives, even the diet that our plants receive, the climate, all of that can have profound effects on gene expression and therefore what we see being expressed genetically in our livestock and frankly in all the living organisms that we deal with. Let me give you some examples here. How many people have done artificial insemination or embryo transfer in here or had it performed? Okay, now my degrees, my formal training, and what I taught at the universities was genetics and reproductive physiology. So I taught those two different topics and also did quite a bit of research. So I have a lot of publications of research in those areas. Reproductively, I did an awful lot of research on all the different reproductive technologies and have a number of peer-reviewed publications in those areas, and that includes estrus synchronization for embryo for AI. I did all types of embryo transfer research, and we even had an ET Center at one time. So I've performed a lot of that. I did embryo splitting, in vitro fertilization, all of those types of things—collection and freezing of sperm, all of it, you name it, we did it.

6:04 But unintended consequences: cryopreservation itself of sperm and embryos can have epigenetic impacts, and not only those individuals that are born from that cryopreserved sperm or those frozen.

6:29 Embryos or manipulated embryos but also it can have transgenerational effects, unintended consequences. You know, through the years of doing a lot of work in reproductive technologies I started noticing issues that we were having in via vigor and viability of the offspring. At times we would see abnormally large offspring crop up. We would see a host of problems and at the time we never thought about epigenetic impact and what was occurring.

7:16 So what we have found through our research and there's a number of quite a large trench now of peer-reviewed articles, you're not going to see them in your traditional AG journals but they're in many other journals, we have found that things as simple as cryopreservation that we thought had no impact actually can damage DNA in sperm and in embryos. So we can create DNA damage, we can decrease sperm motility. We see an increased risk of epigenetic abnormalities in embryos again this can be transgenerational. So in other words it may not occur simply in the direct individuals that are born from that but it can also occur in the F2 and F3 generations. We can see epigenetic impacts that follow through multiple generations.

8:22 And here's the other thing that we found. You know, I'm huge on using line bred sires because of the pre potency that it allows me, the ability to have a higher degree of uniformity in my calf crops and the crops of other livestock species but what we have found from research is that inbred strains of livestock can have enhanced negative epigenetic impacts through cryopreservation of sperm and embryos. So again some unintended consequences that we never realized and even today I think most don't even have an idea. When they see an issue that that issue is really tracing back to epigenetics.

9:30 So we're seeing impacts on all farm species and I'm going to give you some examples in a little bit but that includes cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, poultry and what we're finding is that epigenetics provides molecular mechanisms of inheritance that are not solely dependent on DNA sequences. Okay, now for those of you that haven't had genetics, what that means is that epigenetics works through more than just what we have traditionally thought were the general inheritance mechanisms. So there's other things going on here beyond what we as geneticists thought were the typical inheritance patterns.

10:28 And so what we're seeing, how many people have heard of Mendelian genetics, Gregor Mendel? You know, that is genetics, that's sort of what we hang our hat on. He did a lot of work in peas and other things and so for generations we have built all our genetic knowledge on Mendelian genetics, Mendelian theory and concepts. But what we're finding is that through epigenetics we are having non-Mendelian inheritance patterns. In other words things that are totally contrary to what we have originally thought and believed.

11:11 Epigenetic changes underlie many normal developmental processes that we think about and in the process it creates abnormal developmental processes and it can lead to disease development. In other words we can have lowered immunity, disease resistance in all organisms.

11:42 So what creates epigenetic impacts and effects in our environment in all organisms? Well, environmental exposure to toxins, nutrients and infectious agents. So whenever we have environmental insults through any of those applications then we're potentially creating epigenetic impact directly on that generation of animals and plants and organisms and us or on offspring. So again those transgenerational effects. Exposure to toxins and nutritional changes absolutely affects future generations.

12:35 And if we take a look at many of the issues that we're experiencing in agriculture today and not just in animal agriculture but also in plant agriculture, epigenetic impacts are rampant through all of it and so many of the things that we're facing, many of the problems that we're trying to solve really trace back to original epigenetic impacts.

13:16 So as I said earlier, Mendelian genetic theories have guided much of our research over the last several decades and we just simply assume that specific phenotypes arose from DNA sequences but yet at the same time we have these non-Mendelian impacts that we're now.

13:39 Finding out impact phenotypes of our plants and animals and other organisms. So there's four main mechanisms by which epigenetics can alter gene expression. Again this is complicated and highly technical so I'm just going to go through this very quickly but then I'm going to talk about really what it means in terms of our bottom line. So the four main mechanisms are things like DNA methylation and bottom line on that folks is that that can have a profound impact in animals and in humans on kidney and liver function okay on kidney and liver function. So when we talk about DNA methylation that's how it can impact us. Histone modification, chromatin structure and non-coding RNA. That's the non-coding RNA is one of the ways that we're experiencing a lot of the non-Mendelian genetic impacts in our lifestyle. And again these four main impacts occur due to direct environmental insult at critical periods in the development of any organism.

14:58 So in other words if you have cows or pigs or sheep that are pregnant, hens that are laying eggs, environmental insults that impact them during that gestational period can have profound impacts, lifetime impacts on the ultimate performance, immunity and economic viability of our livestock. So just much like what we said yesterday when I talked about compounding and cascading effects and when Jonathan Lundgren talked about how every decision we make impacts our ecosystem in those insect populations, so does every decision we make impact the actual genetics of every living organism that we depend on and have to deal with.

16:11 And here's what research shows: epigenetic transgenerational. Again and that means simply that it can pass from one generation to another. Epigenetic transgenerational inheritance has been shown in plants, insects, worms, humans and so forth. So you know oftentimes we want to think about epigenetics in animals only or in humans but folks when we talk about the problems that we're experiencing in our row crops are produce crops, epigenetic influence okay, our decisions create epigenetic impacts in our plants that were growing, whether it's our forages, whether it's our corn, whether it's our soybeans, our cotton, whatever. It influences the insects that Jonathan was talking about yesterday that are so crucial. It influences the microbes that are in the soil because they all have DNA and they're all impacted by the same thing.

17:28 So far epigenetic impacts have been traced all the way to the F3 generation okay so we know it can at least go that far and persist that far. Pesticides are one of the things that has been shown to have a dramatic transgenerational epigenetic effect on animals and it affects their nervous system. It affects the reproductive and endocrine systems and it can even cause cancer in many of our animals. Now here's the deal, we typically know when we have cancer right? You know we feel bad, we go to the doctor, we're diagnosed, we know we have cancer. But in our animals they just die and how many of us actually have every animal that dies posted? Very few of us right? So we don't know what they really died from. But what we're finding now is that we're seeing increasing rates of cancer in our livestock again due to these epigenetic impacts.

18:44 Now we know that hybrid vigor, heterosis, has been shown to be critical in the breeding of domestic animals but now we also know that epigenetics plays a critical role in the expression of hybrid vigor in our livestock.

19:09 Now let me just go through a few examples of some of the issues that have been uncovered through research in epigenetics. So in cattle and again a lot of this is technical but I'm going to tell you what it impacts okay, so in cattle DNA methylation okay in the Alpha s1 casein promoter. That's associated with ability of those animals to properly lactate, the ability of those animals to properly lactate. This is absolutely transgenerational. So what we're finding is that when you have epigenetic interruptions in the ability to lactate, that those cows that are pregnant, then it not only impairs their ability to lactate but it also confers that epigenetic impact on the offspring that are then born to them and then the offspring that are then born to those daughters okay so it affects them at least three generations down.

20:17 Offspring syndrome is due to epigenetic impacts through reproductive technology manipulation and individual variation in response to lipopolysaccharides. What does this cause? This causes decreased immunity in our livestock, the occurrence, absorption, and metabolism of short chain fatty acids in the digestive tract. What does this negatively impact? Negatively impacts the ability of our livestock to perform from a nutritional standpoint to properly absorb and process and use nutrients.

21:06 What about pigs? Okay, here's several impactors in pigs from epigenetic impacts. Maternal dietary protein effects transcriptional regulation of myostatin, and basically what this means is that in the development of those pigs it impacts skeletal muscle mass deposition lifetime. Dietary sulfur ravine—and I always have a hard time pronouncing that word believe it or not—basically when you impact that it causes increased rates of cancer in livestock. And then when we talk about diet methyl donors and DNA methylation epigenetic impacts, this impacts the nutritional ability of those animals to properly absorb nutrients in their diet.

22:22 So we have multiple impacts in sheep such as periconceptional nutrition in early programming that can create future obesity issues or dietary adversity lifetime. Okay, we also see that the effect of maternal undernutrition impacts muscle development, muscle fiber development, and so forth in newborn lambs, and the effect of maternal dietary restriction during pregnancy can have a profound impact on lamb carcass characteristics.

22:54 In chickens, and boy have we manipulated chickens, haven't we? Okay, how many people have any experience with Cornish Cross chickens? That's an animal looking for a place to die. Okay, I mean, you want creatures with problems, Cornish Cross will deliver that for you. You know, they're a bird that you better darn well kill them by five to six weeks of age or they're going to completely break down on you. Completely. So you know what we're seeing is that our genetic manipulation in poultry has created enormous epigenetic effects for the negative. You know, right now one of the big things that they're facing in the commercial poultry sector is woody breast. Right? Well, guess what? Who created that? We did. That's our problem, not the bird's problem. We're the ones that created that issue in the birds.

24:03 So another issue we're seeing in chickens is insulin-like growth factor receptors. You know that, and again we see a lot of this in the Cornish, that impaired skeletal myogenesis, or basically muscle development. Transgenerational impacts on immunity, impaired embryogenesis. So again, decreased immunity to diseases. So a whole host of things, folks.

24:31 So what it boils down to us—what I talked about yesterday in lesson—you can look up this research, I left some references here and I'll provide many more if you want them. But here's the deal: that's a short list. What I gave you this morning is a very, very short list. The real list of epigenetic impacts is pages and pages long in all of these species that we have already identified. And the problem is, what do we not know yet? Okay, that's a real issue. Is we now know there's a whole bunch of stuff we don't know.

25:09 So again, as I talked about yesterday and as Jonathan Lundgren talked about yesterday, we've got to understand that everything we do has compounding and cascading effects. So epigenetics affects the health and fertility of our livestock. It affects milk component production, calf weaning weight, and lifetime health. It affects longevity and soundness. It affects their ability to withstand exposure to internal and external parasites. It affects their endocrine system functioning. So many of the things that you heard me reference yesterday that we have developed for prevention of a lot of ailments in our livestock that I now call band-aid approaches—many of those things, folks, have had unintended consequences. And I stand before you today guilty as charged. Okay, I was responsible for a lot of that in my research. So unintended consequences that I thought we were doing, that we're very good, that we're now finding out has.

26:28 Some consequences that are going to be generational and so we can get angry and we can get upset and we can say you know we can point fingers and blame this on the big companies we can blame Monsanto we can blame DuPont we can blame whoever and say they're the cause of this but yet at the same time every one of us and even individual homeowners you know suburban Heights and all of that have all applied chemicals and so forth so folks we're all to blame for the issues that we're facing today. We can't point fingers we have to point them back at ourselves so what we have to say is what are we going to do about it and I can assure you one thing billions and billions of dollars are at stake here and for a large agribusiness corporation to take responsibility is committing financial suicide right because then they can be looking at multibillion-dollar lawsuits that they're facing if they admit fault to anything so that's what we're facing so we have to look to ourselves to start addressing these problems.

27:52 So how do all of these epigenetic impacts affect what we do on a daily basis? Well they affect our soil microbes they affect the microbes that are in our livestock they affect the macro organisms that are out there such as earthworms insects dung beetles and so forth they affect our soil health characteristics so soil aggregation every physical characteristic of our soil is dependent on what it's dependent on the function of the microbes in the soil right so if we negatively impact the microbes in the soil then we can't help but negatively impact our soil physical characteristics. It negatively impacts the plants that we're trying to grow it impacts the wildlife and birds that are dependent on our lands and ultimately it impacts us.

28:50 So again what are some of the causes? Well all chemicals okay can have epigenetic impacts so whether we're talking about fertilizers pesticides herbicides fungicides you name it and it's going to impact again we have to remember it impacts everything all the way down to the microbial level. Yesterday we talked about how glyphosate significantly lowered mycorrhizal fungi populations and created epigenetic impacts in our mycorrhizal fungi. The supplements that we use to feed our livestock and even some of the pharmaceuticals can create epigenetic impacts and our reproductive technologies can create epigenetic impacts.

29:36 So what can we do? What are some real practical steps that we can take? First of all as we talked about yesterday we can start rebuilding complexity and diversity because here's the deal folks when we are highly dependent on monoculture agriculture then inherently we are also highly dependent on all of those chemicals and other inputs aren't we? We're highly dependent on those monoculture agriculture always leads to dependence on chemicals period can't get away from it. If we have monoculture pastures that leads to heightened supplementation of our livestock because monocultures always have a peak in a valley through the growing season you don't have any complexity and diversity out there to wash that out so plant species diversity and complexity has a profound impact on negating negative epigenetic impacts.

30:56 One of the ways that it does at us what I talked about yesterday because of their ability to produce secondary and tertiary chemical compounds that have the medicinal qualities the anthelmintic properties all of those types of things that we talked about. Building stronger soil microbial populations is another way to mitigate negative epigenetic impacts. Rebuilding our mineral and water cycles is crucial in helping us control those negative impacts of epigenetics that's why what we're seeing everywhere that we're implementing these types of practices when we're using adaptive grazing who we're using cover crops and livestock integration things improve they inherently get better all many of the issues that we thought were inherent in livestock or crop production start to go away they disappear. That's what we want that's where we want to be you know all of the issues that I used to think were inherent in raising cattle such as foot rot and pecan so on and so forth guess what we rarely have those issues anymore rarely.

32:26 Graze tall and all of that. And I have a lot of even veterinarians that will say that well, my goodness, you can't do that because those seed heads and all of that will scratch their eyes and they'll get pinkeye and so on and so forth. Folks, grazing tall plants that are mature doesn't cause pinkeye, okay? That's not the direct cause of pinkeye.

32:51 So many of these things go away when we start rebuilding our natural cycles. So our grazing and livestock management can play a huge role in the expression of genes, and many of the issues that we experience are actually the fault of our own management. And the problem is that we can't correct that until we admit it. As long as we're reliant on the band-aid approach, we will never admit our own fault and we'll never make those adjustments that we need to make. Better grazing practices result in better gene expression and better performance and transgenerational epigenetic effects of our livestock, okay?

33:39 So we're not only having the direct impact on the livestock that are out there right now, but we're having a positive impact on their offspring and their offspring's offspring. So our question is: do we manage for complexity or diversity, or do we manage for monocultures?

34:03 Let me give you some examples of compounding, cascading impacts that create positive epigenetic impacts, okay? It's a plant Brix. Now, Brix is just simply a measure of the dissolved solids in the sap or juice of a plant. You can measure these in grapes, you can measure it in watermelons and tomatoes and whatever. This has been used in the produce industry for decades and in the wine industry for decades. It's something that just more recently we've discovered that we can use in animal and row crop agriculture. But included in those plant solids are all the nutrients of the plant, okay? Such as sugars and minerals and proteins, lipids and pectins and so forth. And we measure those using refractometers, a simple instrument that we can take out into the field with us. I like to use the optical type in the field.

35:04 Just as simple as this. Now we can collect our plant leaf material. What I do is vigorously roll it around in my hand to break those cell walls to release that plant sap, put it in the reservoir of a garlic press or another press, squeeze out the plant sap onto the stage of the refractometer, hold it up to the sun, and inside that I-piece of that refractometer you'll see an internal scale that tells you the percent Brix. Remember yesterday I gave you an example of our Mississippi farm where we started with plant Brix of only two percent and in four years increased to 15 to 22 percent, okay? That creates positive epigenetic impacts on gene expression.

35:47 And here's why. What we have found through peer-reviewed research is that if we can enhance Brix in our plants, then we increase animal performance. We increase their gain potential. In dairy cattle, we increase their fluid milk and milk component production, and I've worked with enough dairies to be able to tell you quite definitively that if we can increase milk component production, that has a profound impact on offspring health, okay? But not only that, again, compounding, cascading effects. So high Brix implants also improves the plants themselves. It improves their drought resistance, it improves their freeze and frost tolerance, it improves their disease and pest resistance.

36:52 So compounding, cascading effects. But to take it deeper on those compounding effects: how do we increase Brix? What's one of the primary ways to increase Brix in our plants? Build soil microbial population. If you build the soil, it's the old Field of Dreams concept, folks. If you build it, they will come, okay? So if we build our soil microbial population, if we concentrate on that, Brix increased Brix is inherent. It will happen. You don't have to fold your feed. You don't have to do all of this other stuff, okay? Build microbes, Brix will be a result. Enhance Brix. The other thing that it does is our forages and crops will actually be more aromatic. They taste sweeter. It enhances their shelf life. So a number of really profound effects. And for those of you that are grazing cattle or other livestock, here's how profound it can be. Plants that have

38:05 An average Brix of 5 percent or less if I'm grazing stocker steers or finishing grass fats out there, if my plant Brix is 5 percent or less they can't gain any more than low ones—you know, one pound or a little better per head per day without additional supplementation. They just can't do it. But if I can build my average Brix to fifteen percent or higher in my forages, now I have feed lot quality gains on those cattle on a daily basis—high twos, low 3s. That's how we're able to get the type of gain that allows us to have very high percent choice and prime in our cattle on every load grazing high Brix forages.

38:58 But again, compounding cascading effects. So if they're grazing high Brix forages, that means we've got a very strong, vibrant microbial population in the soil. And if we have that and they're grazing the high Brix forages and we've got a complex, diverse plant population out there that they're grazing on, producing all these secondary and tertiary chemical compounds, then guess what's happening with my livestock? They're not only gaining better, but they're far healthier.

39:33 We're in an all-natural program so we can't use antibiotics. If we have to use them, our animals are kicked out of our program. We don't need them anymore. I haven't used an antibiotic in more than five years now. I don't even keep up with the newest derivation of antibiotics anymore because we haven't needed them.

40:00 So compounding cascading effects for the positive—that's what we're after. So in running our analysis, we ran our correlation coefficients and did a regression analysis. What we found was that for every 1% increase in Brix in our plants, that adds an additional 1/10 to 3 tenths of a pound average daily gain. So if you have 2, 3, 4 percent Brix plant pastures and I have the exact same forages as you but my forages are averaging 15 percent, your average daily gain is 1 pound today and my average daily gain is 2.8. Who's making money and who's losing money? That's very evident.

40:52 So when we look at this graphically, you can see that as we increase microbial population, increases the Brix, then we get a very solid increase in animal performance. But here's how rapidly we can have a positive impact on plant Brix. These are various trials that we conducted in different states that you see down on the bottom axis there. And what we did was we did split trials and we grazed half of the cattle conventionally and we grazed the other half using adaptive grazing on the same farms. So we just split the animals randomly and assigned them to either conventional grazing management or adaptive grazing management. And this is a single season. You can see that in every case, simply by compounding cascading—you can get sick of me saying that—the compounding cascading effects. In a single grazing season, just the impact of the adaptive grazing, we were able to significantly improve plant Brix on the same farms versus not improving it on the same farms with the pastures that were not adaptively grazed. That's pretty darn conclusive.

42:31 Why? When we measured the microbial population, guess what happened in nano grams per gram? The microbial population profile was significantly higher in the adaptive grazed versus the conventionally grazed on the same farms. So just that one simple change. Here's another thing that high Brix does for you—better deer.

42:56 Now you remember yesterday I told you that Mossy Oak had on that farm for a few years a head of us with planting food plots and they were doing real good to harvest 120 class deer—that was a big deer for them. Well, guess what? We're doing now we're routinely harvesting 175 plus class deer every year routinely. So a 120 is now small deer for harvesting there. The picture in the middle, that's a 175 class. The kid that killed it pictured there in the camo—we invited him in for hunt. His father had died about a month earlier. He'd never been deer hunting before in his life. First year he ever killed, within an hour of getting in the stand, the kid is ruined for life deer hunting. He'll never do that well again. But Mossy and—

48:56 is crusted over top and as we dug down into the soil what do you see, you know, heavily plated right, no aggregation whatsoever, crusted over, no life folks. When this guy gets a rain less than 2/10 of an inch, are gonna infiltrate and the rest is gonna pond and pool and then runoff. But yet that very same field we went to the wood line just a few feet away and here's what we found in the wood line. And luckily the wood line had trees, it was protected, the hat and cut the trees so they've, they hadn't plowed it, so just a few, literally a few feet away, dramatic difference in the soil.

49:39 So here in the wood line we see heavily aggregated soil, a lot of life. We found earthworms, all types of insects, you know, it was beautiful texture of the soil. Everything was beautiful, no plating, anything like that, just a few feet away. Now do you think that has epigenetic impacts? Absolutely, absolutely.

50:05 So one of the things about this farmer is that he started off doing cover crop integration just in the cool season in between warm season cash crop, corn and beans. But it's worked so well and his net profits per acre from the livestock grazing routes have been so good that he's decided to go to year-round grazing rotations on his entire farm. So now when we take a cash crop out, he goes in with a cool, warm, cool, year-long and then goes by, follows that with the next cash crop and that's being rotated around different portions of the farm. And this picture is him standing in one of the warm seasons that was just coming up.

51:00 The other thing that we're seeing is he in return of pollinator insects and beneficials. The other thing that we've looked at here is the use of 85 day corn to extend the grazing season and the benefits of the cover crop livestock integration. Now to buy that 85 day, nobody had ever heard of 85 day corn down our way, okay, in the south. And to buy that seed, he had to sign a waiver with the seed company. They were not gonna sell it to him. He had to sign a waiver that he wouldn't hold them liable if there was a crop failure. So we plant at 85 day corn, him, and this was the second year of doing that, in the, you know, the corn cover crop rotation. And here's the results. This was this year. The 85 day corn yields were right at the same yields as a 120 day plus corn that they traditionally been planting, dryland corn, 185 bushels per acre. And this is with relatively low rainfall. The winter stocker gains last winter averaged 2.8 pounds per day off the covers. And just for the winter grazing, just for the winter grazing alone, he netted—this is a net, not a gross—he netted $85 an acre. So that's over top of the cash crop that was pulled out prior, okay? And then on the year-round, excuse me, grazing rotations, last year he was netting $263 dollars an acre in those year-rounds.

52:36 Coffee County, Tennessee. With this guy, he has not yet integrated livestock. So, you know, with some people you got to take him step by step and that's fine. But he's been a long-term no-till farmer, alright? And he was talked into planting covers and then planting into those rolled down covers. So you can see over here on the left, that was the same variety, same species of corn planted two weeks earlier, just no-till but no cover. And on the right, planted two weeks later into a rolled down cover crop. And again, you can see in the bottom center picture that rolled down mat was about that deep, okay? And in the bottom center, you can see the corn readily coming up, you know, through that mulch. There was a definite, definitive from one side of the road to the other, a very definite soil temperature difference, which obviously is going to impact our microbial population. And you can see that as the years matured, a significant difference there.

53:50 So here's what they did. They planted an 8 C mix. It wasn't as aggressive as I would have liked, but still, I guess aggressive enough. You can see the principle of three that I talked about yesterday was followed. The that cover was rolled down and early May there was 20,000 pounds per acre of standing biomass that was rolled down. They planted using a roller on the front of the tractor followed by a John Deere cedar. This guy had a real fear of that biomass. He thought, boy, I'm gonna have a total failure here. But this is his own statement now. He says if we can get it on the ground we can plant in it.

54:29 Firmly believes that after planting he had less than five and a half inches of rain from planting until August, a couple with 55 plus days of 90 to 98 degree temperature. The cover crop field yielded 215 bushels per acre. The notes hill right across the road, 160. So a pretty profound impact.

55:01 Give you one more trial here. This is a trial we've been conducting in Illinois, and we started here with this farm on baseline date in the spring of 2014. Started planting complex covers into standing crops and adaptively grazed those covers, followed by a cash crop in 15, and did the same in the cool season and then followed by another cash crop in 16.

55:31 This is a thousand acres of corn, a thousand acre uninterrupted corn field, and this was in August in the dead of the summer, 96 degree ambient temperature air temperature, and everywhere we went in that thousand acres we were finding earthworm castings and science of earthworms. There wasn't a place that we went in that field that we did not find earthworms.

55:56 Here's some of the initial data. 2014, you can see the starting baseline data on pH, organic matter, CEC, PK, calcium, magnesium, all of that, and then in 2015 you can see the improvements that were made in a single season using covers and adaptive grazing.

56:14 If you look at yields, the 2014 would have been the baseline yield, 198 bushels per acre prior to doing anything. Then in 2015 on the treated acres where we use the covers and adaptive grazing, the average 214. On the control, 185. 2016, average 232 on the treated, 202 on the control. On top of that, his winter net grazing profits were an additional 36 dollars per acre net, so he generated extra revenue on top of all of that.

57:03 I want to end with this. If we make a decision to make a change in how we do things, we make those decisions because of incentive, right? We don't do anything unless we're incentivized, whether that's financial incentive, whether it's environmental incentive, whether it's family-oriented, whatever. We have to have incentive to make a change.

57:28 It's like a buddy of mine in Mississippi that absolutely loves to fish. So about a month ago he was out on the lake fishing and it was going very well. Fish were biting extremely well, so well that he ran out of bait, but he didn't want to go home. His wife had a whole long list of honeydos for him if he went home, so he wanted to stay out on the lake. So he started looking around for what he could use for bait and he saw the sole cottonmouth moccasin up on the bank of that lake with the frog in his mouth, and he thought, you know what, I can use that frog. So he eased the bow of his boat up over that snake, reached down, grabbed him behind the head, pulled him in the boat, yanked the frog out of his mouth, dropped the frog in the bait bucket. But then realized he was looking at a very angry snake and he didn't know how he was going to let that snake go without inviting him. But then he remembered the Jack Daniel's he always carried with fishing. So he reached out and grabbed that bottle of Jack Daniels. He poured something down that snake's gullet and before long, the snake's eyes rolled back in his head and his whole body went limp and he just tossed him out in the water. Well, he reached down in his bait bucket, grabbed the frog, baited his hook, commenced the fishing again, and it wasn't long before he felt a nudge in his foot. And he looked down and there was that old snake with two more frogs in his mouth.

58:49 Folks, I appreciate it. Keith, Brian, y'all are welcome to share my contact information on your web site, so if any of you need to get in touch with me, ask any questions, I'm always happy to share data and references and that type of thing. So it would be very happy to do that. In my writing for Grays in a couple of months, I am going to be starting a series of articles on epigenetics that'll be heavily referenced, so you can look for that to come out in Grays magazine as well. So thank you very much. Any you have time for any questions here?

59:35 Yes, absolutely. We create positive. There are just like compounding, cascading effects. They're both positive. They can be positive or negative epigenetic impacts can be positive or negative. So absolutely.

59:47 Correct, and yes when we correct that, that's actually what we're seeing here. When we correct a lot of these issues that we've caused by our prior management practices and applications and chemicals and so forth, is that we can create positive epigenetic impacts that are also transgenerational. In other words, things can get better and better.

1:00:15 Well, so far with cryopreservation in terms of the research that, and again you know I can only relate in terms of what research is already out there, but the we haven't seen positive impacts. We either see little impact or some kind of major impact. So in other words, cryopreservation itself is going to have potentially a negative impact. Now I'm not saying we need to quit using because I still use reproductive technologies. Now so I'm not saying we need to quit using those, but what I'm saying is we need to be very aware of the fact that we can have negative epigenetic impacts and sometimes some of the issues that we're facing that we think may be due to something else may be due to that cryopreservation. We don't know, but we do know there are some direct negative impacts from cryopreservation of sperm and embryos.

1:01:23 I got a question here they've got to text it in and then we'll take a couple others. The question is how much can or does Brix fluctuate throughout the day? I know you said it's higher in the afternoon, but then you kind of just give us a range of how that fluctuates throughout the day. Yeah, Brix can actually fluctuate 50-plus percent throughout the day and we've done a lot of measuring of plant Brix early morning versus early to mid-afternoon and for instance like in ryegrass things like that, early morning we could see plant Brix around 6:00 or 8:00 in what we call high Brix forages and by afternoon in that exact same plant that Brix can be bumping 15% by 12 to 15. So it can have a rather profound impact and so taking advantage of that is pretty crucial.

1:02:20 The average Brix when we measure forages for the first time and this is all over North America, the average Brix range in the average pasture is two to four percent. That's what we have found. So kind of a follow up to that, how effective would just taking Brix measurements be of the soil? Soil life, soil health, is that an effective way to look at soil health or there are a lot of other factors that go into that? Brix test as well. Well, there are other factors, you know such as the timing of the day and whether it's been a cloudy day or not or you know several cloudy days ahead of when you take the Brix. So but if you take your Brix measurements consistently in sunny days only followed by sunny days but take them consistently and at the same stage of growth of those forages and all of that, then yes, it's a very good way to start monitoring and tracking your success in building soil health, building your microbial population and all of that because again, high Brix is heavily correlated to higher soil microbial populations. So it's very very easy and cheap, very easy and cheap way.

1:03:35 I think we had a question back here and then we'll go over here. Okay, so I guess the first part was how do we gauge in stage matured end stage maturity, mid stage? Oh mid stage mature, okay, and then secondly how do we properly time our grazing? Okay, first of all, mid stage maturity, mean for us I look predominantly at the grasses. I pay far less attention engaging that at my forbs and legumes, okay, and I judge it predominantly on the grasses that are out there. And so if we have you know like cool season cocktails planted out there you're going to and you've got small grains, then you're going to gauge it on on their stage of maturity, but basically mid stage, it's when we're starting to see you know seed heads, your early seed head production on these plants. And so when I see somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 percent you know seed heads starting to form on these plants, then I'm right at mid stage maturity. And that, so that's what we're looking at now. The complexity and diversity is the primary way that we help control the ability of the livestock to balance their diets and perform when you have the monocultures and ear monocultures or or mixes that are just predominantly grasses only or small grains only, then you have a much

1:05:03 More difficult time controlling that. When I have those stories and I have stories of the taller grasses, then I have the forbs and I have the legumes, then my cattle, even if my grasses may get a little more mature, then I can rely on them being able to balance that out with the forbs and the legumes in the mix. But it also does depend. You have to be highly observant in your rotations and it may mean that at times you're going to have to sort of slow down your rotations or speed up your rotations.

1:05:49 So there may be times when you're going to strategically, instead of taking 50%, just to make sure you're still at that proper stage, you're only going to let them take 20 or 25% before you move them on. So you're going to move them forward a little more rapidly, but then you're going to be coming back much quicker as well. And the other thing you can do there is if you're using annual cover crop, you can either plant different mixes that will mature at different times or stagger the plantings of the same mix. Because if you have a large field, you don't want it all coming to that mid-stage maturity at the same time. So you can manipulate that with what you plant and when you plant it as well.

1:06:30 So go over here for one, my answer the first word I'm going to say is it depends. And the reason I say that is it depends entirely on how many moves you're trying to make in a day. So if I'm going ultra high stock density and I'm trying to go a half million to a million pounds a day, I'm doing that more for land improvements, rapid soil improvement, than I am for animal performance. And so at that point I'm less concerned about the bricks that they're consuming throughout the day and I'm much more concerned about the impact on my soil.

1:07:09 So I'm going to move them. I'm going to have to have twelve or so moves today to get that done. So I'm going to start first thing in the morning and move to dark to do that. But if I'm doing two, three, or four moves a day, then here's what we do. And we've actually done this not only ourselves, but with many of our clients that are grass finishing. And this has had a profound impact on their ability to be able to put a high degree of finish on their cattle over what they were doing earlier. A lot of these guys, if they were doing two, three, or four moves a day, they were starting that first move early in the morning, right, and then making staggered moves throughout the rest of the day.

1:07:52 So rather what we have found is that it's best to wait until about 11:00 or so in the morning to make that very first move. Don't make it early in the morning. And then stagger those next three or four moves throughout the rest of the afternoon until dusk. And in doing that, even though your moves are closer together, every time you move them into a new paddock, you're stimulating that eating behavior, right. And so they're still going to chow down. So they're still going to get the nutrition that they need. And we're finding that our overall performance, particularly gain performance, is far better than starting with the first move early in the morning.

1:08:34 Well, it's going to start going down as the sun starts sinking in the horizon. And because what happens is every 24-hour photoperiod, those carbohydrates and, of course, included in that are the simple sugars and all of that. But all of those carbohydrates are going to start migrating back towards the base of the plant and the root of the plant. And then when the sun comes up the next morning, photosynthetic activity kicks back in. Then that's going to create a pull of those carbohydrates up through the vascular system of the plant, back up to the leaves and blades. And they reach their peak up there on what you want your livestock grazing by that early to mid-afternoon.

1:09:23 So again, late afternoon they're dropping, but they're still higher than they're going to be in the morning. So you're still far better off doing the bulk of your grazing from near midday through dusk than you are starting an early morning and going into midday. And the other thing that we have to remember, if we start that grazing early in the morning and intend to go to midday, even if we make an afternoon move, by that time, if that afternoon move is your last move, that's when they're going to eat the least, right, because they've tanked up those earlier morning moves.

1:10:05 Okay, let's give Dr. Williams a hand. Again, that's all the time we have.