Late blowing in Swiss cheese, a result of unwanted gas production, is unacceptable to consumers and causes economic loss to manufacturers. Cheese processors have raised concerns that feeding dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) to cows leads to this defect, in part because of clostridial spores. We hypothesized that spores in DDGS would affect the quality of milk and baby Swiss cheese by promoting late-blowing defects. Thirty healthy multiparous and mid-lactation Holstein cows were fed total mixed ration containing DDGS (0, 10, and 20%; 10 cows per treatment group) by dietary dry matter in a 3×3 Latin square design. One complete milking from all cows within a treatment was collected and pooled for baby Swiss cheese, twice within each month of the 3-mo study. Additionally, individual milk samples from the 3 milkings of one day were collected weekly for proximate analysis. Incubation in reinforced clostridial medium-lactate medium tubes inoculated with milk, cheese, total mixed ration, or manure showed gas formation. Conversely, the DDGS used in our study did not contain gas-producing, spore-forming bacteria. Feeding 20% DDGS decreased milk fat percent and increased the solids nonfat, protein, and lactose percent of milk. After 60 d of ripening, baby Swiss cheese had typical propionic acid Swiss cheese aroma. Regardless of dietary treatment, pinholes, slits, splits, cracks, or a combination of these, were seen throughout most cheeses. Feeding of DDGS increased the amount of long-chain unsaturated fatty acids and decreased short-chain and most medium-chain fatty acids in the baby Swiss cheese. Although feeding cows diets with DDGS modified milk composition, and subsequently cheese composition, DDGS was not a source for gas-producing, spore-forming bacteria or for quality defects in Swiss cheese. Rather, the gas-producing, spore-forming bacteria likely originated from the environment or the cows themselves.

The lactational performance of 30 healthy multiparous Holstein dairy cows was tested when cows were fed 0, 10, and 20% dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) that contained 13.6% fat on a dry matter (DM) basis. Cows fed 10% DDGS on a DM basis experienced a reduction in milk fat percentage of 0.5 percentage points, but did not perform differently in other measures than did cows not fed DDGS. When cows were fed 20% DDGS on a DM basis, every common measure of feed utilization was impacted negatively.

Because residual antibiotics in dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) could lead to inadvertent feeding of antibiotics to animals, the objective of our study was to determine if a commercial DDGS contained antibiotics. The DDGS used in a feeding study, and milk from cows fed the DDGS, were below the detection limits for at least 17 antibiotics. Additionally, we evaluated if DDGS had any antimicrobial effect against Salmonella Typhimurium, Listeria innocua, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Staphylococcus aureus, Pediococcus acidilactici, Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bacillus licheniformis, Paenibacillus odorifer, Pseudomonas fluorescens, and Paenibacillus amylolyticus using the disk diffusion seeded agar overlay method. Neither the buffered nor nonbuffered water-soluble fractions of DDGS yielded clear zones around disks, indicating that the water-soluble DDGS fraction had no antimicrobial properties against any of the microorganisms tested. The absence of antibiotic residues in DDGS and milk samples in this study confirmed that this source of DDGS can be used as livestock feed without fear of inadvertent feeding of antibiotics.

Introduction 31 Materials and Methods 34 Results and Discussion 40 Conclusion 46 References 47