Why is feed efficiency so important?
Cattle producers have a very good understanding of growth rate. Growth rate is a measurement of how fast an animal grows. However, it doesn’t consider the amount of feed required to achieve this gain.
Feed efficiency or Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) is the amount of feed required to gain one unit of gain. Optimizing feed efficiency is one of the best ways to cut your costs while improving the quality of your herd. Having the ability to use less feed per animal improves the profitability in production.
Residual Feed Intake (RFI) also known as Net Feed Intake (NFI) is the responsible way for seedstock producers to improve feed efficiency or feed conversion ratio within their own and their clients’ herds.
At Coota Park Blue-E we started testing bulls for feed efficiency in 1997 in our 48 individual pen facility. In 2016 we installed a new Vytelle Feeding System to automate the recording of daily intakes of our bulls.
In our Efficiency Testing Facility, we can test 80 head at a time. We are also open to testing outside cattle.
Rate of genetic change, using multi-trait selection and a comprehensive record keeping system, is expected to be around 1.0% per year compared with no selection for RFI. Given that we started selecting for this 25 years ago, this would translate in a 25% improvement in our herd’s RFI.
The relative change that Coota Park Blue-E have made overtime is proof.
Does the beef industry have a problem with emissions?
Methane (CH4) is the major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitted from ruminant production systems with CH4 from enteric fermentation accounting for 12% to 17% of GHG emissions. This methane is released into the atmosphere by the animal belching. Methane has an incredibly high refraction index (ability to redirect heat back down to the earth’s surface), some 270 time more than CO2, but only lasts for a tenth of the time in the atmosphere before it converts to CO2.
The breeding cows in the herd are responsible for almost 70% of the GHG emissions from any self-replacing herd.
It is well established that methane output is directly correlated to feed intake as seen in this graph.
The highest proportion of CH4 is associated with the cows, because the cows are consuming the largest proportion of the feed in a self-replacing beef production system.
Reducing cow herd CH4 emission is a necessity for improving the carbon footprint of our beef production systems.
The most practical and rapid mitigation procedure to reduce the per cow CH4 emission is through animal breeding and genetic selection for feed efficiency, as it is permanent and cumulative.
Furthermore, as the global population surpasses nine billion by 2050, competition for resources like land, water and grains will mean improving feed efficiency becomes even more urgent to meet the increasing demand for food and energy. Moreover, feeding more grain to the cows in the herd is not a sustainable practice and feeding additives and supplements (e.g., seaweed) on pasture is not yet practical.
Does feed efficiency lead to any other production losses?
A lot of discussion over the years has been centred around wether there are repercussions of including feed efficiency in our selection indexes. An enormous amount of research has been conducted to answer this question. Fat is talked about a lot as it appears to be the only trait that may be slightly correlated to feed efficiency.
In our experience, by applying some selection pressure for positive fat, we can easily manage this relationship. The ability of our Blue-E cattle to fatten, as well as the general fertility of our herd is exceptional. The performance of our herd year on year is proof that long term selection for improved feed efficiency has no adverse effects on production, as long as you use balanced, multi trait selection.
As research has shown, selection for low RFI breeding stock will have little to no effect on progeny growth, frame size, mature size or carcass characteristics.