For decades, we’ve appreciated the merits of coconut oil as a beneficial component of the fat portion of calf milk replacer (CMR). Now, you’ll find it in every bag of our CMR products.

All fat is not the same when it comes to calf nutrition. When we’re formulating CMR, our goal is to as closely mimic butterfat as possible. We want to reconstruct Mother Nature’s original fatty acid profile, minus the hefty price tag that would accompany competing with human food products for actual butterfat.

Coconut oil helps us do that. By blending it with lard and tallow, it fills in the medium-chain fatty acid content that those two ingredients lack. Together, they create a fat blend for the calf’s digestive system that closely matches mom’s, without wasting undigestible fat portions.

At Strauss Feeds, we’ve included coconut oil in the high-fat diets of veal calves for years. And now, the fat portion of all of our CMR products contains about 20% coconut oil, so its benefits can be shared with dairy calves as well.

How can we do that? Well, you might say we are control freaks. We now have the ability to produce our own fat blend, which allows us to control its quality and cost. This is possible thanks to a new, state-of-the-art spray dryer system at our Indiana headquarters. With the spray dryer, we can blend our own protein-encapsulated fat (PEF). Because we make it ourselves, we can manage the quality and consistency of every batch.

Think of PEF as thousands of very tiny “M&M” candies. Using the spray dryer, we blend whey and fat (including coconut oil), spin them together, and spray them at high speed. The whey protein forms a matrix around the fat to create protein-encapsulated particles, which add up to form a white powder that then is used as a key ingredient in our CMR blends.

We get excited about the nutritional chemistry this process affords. But one of the best features actually comes to the calf feeder, because it yields a product that is extremely easy to mix. Because coconut oil is solid at room temperature, like lard and tallow, it blends with them readily. An added emulsifier finishes the recipe.

The result: a consistent, high-quality, fat-protein blend that makes every batch of milk replacer a stable and reliable feed source for young calves. When mixed with water slightly above body temperature (110°F), just a few turns of a whisk create a liquid ration of ingredients that stay in suspension, so every calf gets a consistent meal at every feeding.

Typically, using coconut oil as a partial fat source would cost a little more. But by manufacturing our own PEF at Strauss, the process is nearly cost-neutral.

Using coconut oil in all of our products has been a long-term goal that now is reality. We’re thrilled to deliver this value-added feature of our CMR blends to those who deserve the best: our customers and the calves they raise.