6/18/2009 8:41:00 AM Perspectives on beef cattle efficiency
Source: Angus Productions , Inc.
"Efficiency" was an underlying theme of presentations offered during the 2009 Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) symposium held in Sacramento, CA, in early May. Speakers talked about the challenge of higher production costs, the importance of matching cow type to the production environment and the potential advantages crossbreeding can bring to a commercial cow-calf operation. They talked about minimizing input costs, optimizing production output and how important production efficiency is to maximizing profit.
Asked to share his perspective, Harris Ranch Beef executive Mike Smith said today's economic environment demands that beef producers in every segment of production train their focus on improved efficiency.
"At the end of the day," Smith said, "if it doesn't make sense from a profit standpoint, why bother?"
In describing the integrated California-based company, Smith said Harris Ranch Beef sources cattle through an "alliance" of cow-calf producers. The company owns a 120,000-head feedlot and beef-processing facility where close to 850 head are harvested five days per week. Fresh, frozen and precooked product is marketed under multiple Harris Ranch Beef labels through foodservice, retail stores and direct to online customers.
Smith talked about how feed price volatility has affected feeding operations, noting a 40% shift in feed costs during 2008. Harris used about 350 tons of feed during the year, costing an average of $300 per ton of dry matter. But for every 0.3% shaved off the cost of feed, the company can pick up about $20 per animal harvested.
Consequently, the company is very interested in improving efficiency at every opportunity, including cattle feed efficiency.
"But we have to remember that we need the consumer. We need the consumer to want to buy our product," Smith stated, noting the importance of maintaining standards for product quality.
Questioned about whether crossbreeding has proved detrimental to company targets for carcass quality grade, Smith acknowledged that crossbreeding can have a slightly negative effect. Cattle supplying Harris Ranch Beef are expected to grade 80% Choice or better.
"But should we be trying to make all cattle alike? Should they all make Choice and Prime? No," Smith said. "Some consumers prefer Select beef. There are homes (markets) for various grades."
He advised producers to define a market - a target they can hit consistently and efficiently
A Rancher's Perspective
"The beef industry is a low-margin business, so we have to try to do everything right. Improving our efficiency makes that job a bit easier," said cattleman Chip Ramsey of Rex Ranch, Ashby, NE, during his presentation giving a rancher's perspective at the BIF conference.
"It makes a lot of sense to study efficiency. I can't necessarily make the market pay for me every day, but efficiency pays every day."
Ramsey said he is hopeful about the progress made in identifying genetic markers that can be used to select for efficiency traits.
"I believe we're going to make a difference and make improvements. But if you don't sincerely believe that, then you shouldn't try to use the data just because it's becoming available. It would be a waste of your resources if you aren't informed about what you're using and believe that it is going to work."
Ramsey cautioned that although he sees tremendous potential value in using genetic markers to select for efficiency, he thinks that we need good instructions on how to most appropriately use them.
He made the following comparison: Cattle producers using genetic markers without good instruction could be a bit like consumers trying to grill a round steak because they didn't have good cooking instructions. There's nothing wrong with the steak itself, but their cooking choice simply wasn't the best way to use it. Similarly, we need to make sure we have good instruction so we can use the emerging genetic data in the best possible way, he said.
RFI One Tool To Use
Texas A&M University professor Gordon Carstens focused his BIF remarks on a new tool available to help the industry with efficiency - that being Residual Feed Intake or RFI.
Carstens pointed out that profitability is simply a function of outputs and inputs. The beef industry has made great progress improving output traits, such as weaning weight and average daily gain, but very little progress has been made improving input traits, he said.
"As we have selected for larger, faster-growing cattle, we have also increased the maintenance requirements of the cows, so they eat more," Carstens said, noting that 70% of a cow's annual expense is due to feed, and 51% of that feed budget is consumed by cow maintenance needs.
But, he emphasized that residual feed intake (RFI) has emerged as a selection tool to improve that input efficiency. RFI is a measure of efficiency that quantifies variance in feed intake unrelated to level of production. An efficient animal would consume less feed than expected given its growth rate and is therefore said to have a low RFI.
"Unlike ratio-based efficiency traits (such as feed-to-gain ratios) that are influenced by growth and maturity patterns, RFI is phenotypically independent of the production traits used to compute expected intake," he explained. "This means that favorable selection for RFI will improve feed efficiency with minimal effects on growth or mature size."
There are notable differences between cows with low RFI values and those with high RFI values, and the variation has a biological basis.
"Previous studies have estimated that approximately one-third of the biological variation in RFI of growing calves could be explained by animal-to-animal differences in digestion, heat increment of feeding, composition of gain and activity," Carstens said, "and the remaining two-thirds was likely associated with cellular processes like ion pumping, protein turnover and mitochondrial function."
High-RFI animals have lower digestibility, so they have to eat more to get the same absorption of nutrients. High-RFI animals have also been found to spend more time eating each day. Animals with low RFI compared to those with high RFI also have a 21% difference in energy expenditure each day.
Carstens said that while our understanding of RFI in growing cattle has advanced, we have limited knowledge of the associations between RFI measured during the early postweaning phase and the biological efficiency of mature cows. Little is also known about the influence of selection for RFI on other economically relevant traits, such as reproduction. Thus, research on this topic is on-going.
This article is a collection of speaker summaries written for API's online coverage of the annual BIF symposium, contributing authors include Troy Smith and Meghan Richey. To see more summary articles from the event go to www.BIFConference.com and click on Newsroom.
