March 24, 2008

 

US beef industry underscores need for feed efficiency

 

 

The escalating cost of feeding cattle can be hugely attributed to feed, John  Dhuyvetter, area livestock specialist at North Dakota State University said.

 

The pricier cost of feeding cattle has prompted producers to look for ways to improve the efficiency of the animals consuming expensive feed.

 

Dhuyvetter said that the high demand and price for corn and other commodities is raising finishing costs and devaluing feeder cattle. It is also impacting land use decisions, which puts inflationary pressure on pasture and forage costs.

 

Feed storage, processing, additives and delivery that minimize waste and maximize utilization are critical to improving efficiency, Dhuyvetter emphasized.

 

Furthermore, large economic impacts are seen possible through genetic improvements that make cattle more metabolically efficient in their use of feed. Research has identified heritable differences in cattle for feed efficiency.

 

Feed yards routinely have tracked pen feed conversion (pounds of feed consumed per pound of gain) as a key economic benchmark.

 

However, feed intake soon may be a bigger factor in animal genetics. Some advancing technologies for measuring individual animal feed intake and expressing feed efficiency are moving the industry toward being able to select cattle that eat less while gaining the same, Dhuyvetter said.

 

This type of technology includes feed bunks with load-cell scales that continually weigh a feed tub accessed by one animal at a time.

 

The tub has a reader to identify the animal by radio frequency ear tag and computerize the data accumulation to track what an individual animal eats while in the pen on the feeding trial.

 

Using the feed intake information to calculate a residual feed intake (RFI) identifies metabolic efficiency differences among animals independently of average daily gain and body size.

 

RFI is defined as the difference between what an animal actually consumed and what was expected based on its growth and maintenance.

 

Testing groups of yearling bulls identifies animals with a negative RFI, which means they consumed less than expected for performance achieved, as well as positive RFI bulls, which consumed more feed than expected.

 

This information can be utilized in the selection of bulls expected to sire calves with lower finishing feed costs and daughters with lower feed maintenance requirements, Dhuyvetter added.

 

The research team notes that the economic potential from widespread improvement in feed efficiency is huge for the US cattle industry as the measurement, evaluation and application of improving feed efficiency are rightly receiving a lot of industry and academic attention.