By: Cliff Ocker
In March, The Dairy Authority joined the Rock River Laboratory family as an associate lab. Rock River Laboratory is known for analysis built on accuracy, innovation, and customer service - founded on years of experience and service. And we are excited to extend this opportunity for growth to the customers of The Dairy Authority.
A little background
Our Rock River Laboratory team partners with customers to serve the living and growing needs of the agriculture community. Supported by an unwavering customer service team, we've spent over 40 years equipping this industry with the tools and answers needed to make decisions for successful outcomes.
This family business includes a team that brings scientific and agricultural knowledge and experience to the table, which we consider a valuable combination. Since our beginnings in 1976, Rock River Laboratory has made our customers the focus. Progress for the benefit of the industry and those we serve guides our business's decisions and actions. Keeping this in mind, we've continued to build, test and offer products and services that revolve around the end-user: our customers.
Next Level Nutrition
Rock River Laboratory offers a number of unique values and tools to help better characterize feedstuffs in particular. Whether you are looking to evaluate hybrids or predict animal performance from a particular feed, additional information is always helpful.
Total Tract NDF Digestibility (TTNDFD) is one such unique value. TTNDFD is a single number that can be used across feed types to better predict animal performance based on fiber digestibility. TTNDFD encompases four different NDF Digestibility time points in its calculation, telling the whole story of how a forage will feed, versus a single time point to evaluate or predict animal performance. This value is part of our NIR package offerings.
Starch digestibility has been used now for a few years to predict what percentage of the starch the animals will utilize. While many use a 7-hour time point to evaluate a feedstuff, Rock River Laboratory provides 0, 3, 7, 16, and 24-hour starch digestibility values to help determine rumen versus total tract starch digestibility.
Programs to sample more frequently are also available - offering the ability to track, and more quickly respond to, forage or commodity changes - ultimately increasing profitability.
Feed hygiene or feed cleanliness has been a growing area of concern for many nutritionists, and Rock River Laboratory’s extensive expertise leads this sector with in-house mycotoxin packages and 3 to 5 day turnaround times. Feeds with suspect molds and yeast, Clostridia and Enterobacteria, and other anti-nutritional factors can also be analyzed for presence or identification.
Unique means to summarize and review data is a key advantage to working with Rock River Laboratory and our associate laboratories. This opportunity for new information, combined with the technical support provided by our sales and customer service team to help interpret data or discuss what analysis makes sense, can help drive success for your business.
Learn more about how Rock River Laboratory can help your team in our introduction webinar, here: https://bit.ly/DairyAuthorityIntro. Have questions? Feel free to contact me, Cliff Ocker:
