AMTS Happenings
It is time to open your calendars to save the date for all the up-coming AMTS happenings. Coming up fast, we have scheduled an informative live-cast webinar with Tom, a season of The Nutritionist Webinars, and details on the last feedbank update.
Feed Pricing Tool and Optimizing Webinar
It is a huge understatement to say much in the world is changing and the outlook for so many things is beyond unpredictable. In response to the volatility in prices as a result of the the war in Ukraine, we are offering a live-cast webinar on Wednesday, March 15 at 10:00 am EST. Tom will be demonstrating some of the tools in AMTS.Farm that can help nutritionists assess for feed values and optimize diets to best manage the changes in feed costs and milk pricing. He will specifically demonstrate the Feed Pricing Analysis tool and put some diets through the Advanced Optimizer. We will host this through Zoom and have a live event on our Facebook page. Lynn and I will be monitoring questions in both platforms. We will make a departure from our usual platform of questions at the end to try to make the presentation as interactive as possible. We will record the whole shebang, so you can review back to our YouTube channel if you miss it.
The Nutritionist Returns
All our The Nutritionist webinars this year will focus in the areas of emissions and sustainability for the industry in consideration of discussions and commitments at the 2021 UN Climate Summit and continuing climate change. We will be kicking off our six webinar series with Mike VanAmburgh in April (by-products and upcycling), Elliot Block (sustainable palm oil), Frank Mitloehner (the true story of emissions and animal agriculture), Jude Capper and Sara Place (talking points for industry to use with the average consumer), Joe McFadden (what can we expect from the new climate-controlled respiration chambers, and some of the research he is doing on hydroponic fodder), and Tom Tylutki (modeling diets to move forward with better climate effects and CNCPS emissions reports). The webinars will be offered at 9:00 am and 6:00 pm on April 14, May 12, June 9, July 14, August 11, and September 8.
Feedbank Update
There is an update to some feeds in the AMTS Commercial Feedbank. Previously, we did a blog that showed the various ways to download Feedbank updates–and why you should. These updates are a result of our specialty feed suppliers webpage and input form. We had a post about it in January. Going forward, we will be having planned feedbank releases twice yearly. There are 14 updated or new feeds in the AMTS Commercial Feedbank. They are:
| Amplisource Edge | GLC OptiMag (Mg and Ca) |
| Amplisource Max | InstaPro Dry ExPress Soymeal |
| Certillus | InstaPro Dry Extruded Corn |
| GLC AgriSol 100 (Ca and S) | NexPro |
| GLC BaseMin 262 (Ca and Mg) | NutriQuest Assist+ |
| GLC BaseMin 264 (Ca and Mg) | OneTrak |
| GLC BaseMin 266 (Ca and Mg) | Rumensin 90.7 gm per lb |
Downloading Feedbanks
After the feedbank has been released, you will get a notification that there has been an update to the Commercial Feed Library and asking if you would like to download. Click Yes. If you, in your frenzy to just get into the program, click right past that notification, you can use a different method to download the feedbanks. This method also helps on the times you may need to download an AMTS Feedbank (or the Manual or a language resource file). We sometime get support calls where users have a message saying they have a corrupted feedbank and need to know what to do. When working in the program, you can download any of the feedbanks as well as a number of other AMTS files through the Tools menu on the ribbon bar. The embedded video below shows how that feature works. The video below shows how to download the current AMTS Feedbank from the program.
Update Farm feeds
When we have updates to feedbanks, especially where the changes are to feeds you may already have on the farm, you will want to make sure you have the most current version of the feed in your farm feedbank. You can either select the Reconcile function in the Feeds Screen or through Settings, you can configure your program to remind you on farm opening that you have some feeds that have updated versions. Below is a short video that walks you through the process.
Industry Meetings, Trainings, and Help
It looks like we are heading back out on the road for meetings. Lynn and I will be at Central Plains Dairy Expo at the end of March and at Tri-State in April, we would be very happy to meet with you and review any questions you might have about the program. We have a complete series of training videos to help you work the program found, through links on our video page and directly on our YouTube channel. As always, contact us at support with any questions you have.