To get the best bang for your buck, dairy rations are built for precision. Unfortunately, one of the most expensive components in the diet is often the least predictable.
Protein sources like blood meal and other byproducts can vary significantly from load to load, creating hidden risk in the ration. That variability limits performance or requires nutritionists to build in safety margins that can drive up feed costs. In a market where margins are tight, controlling protein variability isn’t just a nutritional decision, it’s an economical one.
Enter Excelene™. As the flagship brand of custom bypass protein blends from Papillon, Excelene is specifically designed to deliver consistent, targeted metabolizable protein and amino acids to dairy cows. In addition to several standard Excelene formulations, Papillon specializes in custom blends tailored to a specific farm, nutritionist or feed mill’s goals.
At their core, Excelene custom protein blends are simple. They are mixes of different ingredients designed to deliver specific levels of rumen undegradable protein (RUP) and amino acids to the cow. Excelene blends consist primarily of high-quality animal rendered protein ingredients such as blood meal, pork meat and bone meal, and hydrolyzed feather meal. Some blends can also include rumen-protected amino acids or plant protein ingredients depending on the product goals.
Quality you can always count on
One of the key things that sets all Excelene blends apart is the quality control behind them. Commodity byproduct protein ingredients like blood meal are notoriously variable from supplier to supplier — even load to load — and can’t be evaluated just by looking at the product. This variability makes it difficult to balance a ration that takes full advantage of the metabolizable protein provided by the ingredient without fear of over- or under-feeding nutrients.
Unlike commodity byproducts, Papillon puts Excelene blends through a very stringent quality control program, supported by over 20 years of supplier data and over 4,000 samples analyzed annually. Papillon maintains standards for the dry matter, crude protein, RUP and digestibility for all ingredient categories and finished products. Every load of incoming ingredients used in Excelene blends, as well as each load of finished Excelene product, is tested against these standards. Additionally, blending together several high-quality ingredients further helps reduce the variability of the overall blend. The result is that Excelene blends are consistent load after load, removing the uncertainty for feed manufacturers, individual nutritionists and producers alike.
Blending for the herd’s specific needs
Custom Excelene blends provide an additional layer of value by drawing on Papillon’s decades of experience with amino acid nutrition and protein blending to provide products that uniquely fit the needs of a specific dairy or nutritionist. Blood meal is high in lysine and histidine, both important amino acids, but by blending with complimentary ingredients, Papillon is able to deliver other important amino acids in the same package.
For example, with recent emphasis on driving milk protein, blends can be targeted to include rumen-protected AA and branch chain amino acids to support improved milk protein percent and yield. If intake or space in the ration is a concern, blends can be densified to provide more metabolizable protein per pound; all while paying attention to cost. Often, these custom blends are delivered directly to the farm, allowing for additional flexibility when it comes to targeting fresh or high-producing cows with an increased rate to provide the nutrients necessary to support their higher levels of production without unnecessary expense.
Quality leads to consistency. And consistency leads to efficiency. No matter what the goals of the dairy or nutritionist are, Excelene blends can help achieve them through consistency and strategic formulation.
