7-18 IAN Growing Cattle

Rod Hill a livestock physiologist in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, enlisted 33 experts at the University of Idaho and worldwide to cover the spectrum on the science of feed efficiency.  I’m David Sparks with the Ag information network and Dr. Hill wrote a book, “Feed Efficiency in the Beef Industry,”  which tries to offer valuable information to audiences ranging from cattle producers to animal scientists. Here is Dr. Hill:  “To give you a sense of what kind of variability that there is in feed efficiency, let’s talk about variations in humans. Some humans can eat a little and gained a lot of weight and others can be a lot and not gain anything or gain just a little bit. That is the kind of thing we are talking about here in cattle. Of window opportunity is very large here because there is lots of variation. Cattle grow much faster than humans, sometimes 2 pounds a day up to 4 pounds a day, so that would be a big deal if you were human. That is what we want for cattle, we want them to grow efficiently. But for 2 animals from the same kind of gene pool who are really closely related,  can be raised in the same management system, and look very similar, and those 2 animals growing at a similar rate and a similar size, the variation in their intake can be 35%. There is a big window of opportunity for us to exploit. What we are trying to do is try to understand what drives that variation and whether we can select for it. Undertake genetic selection.”