12/05/05 Residual feed intake study

First off, what is residual feed intake? AHOLA "The different between predicted intake and actual intake at a set amount of gain." Jason Ahola of the University of Idaho is part of a research team funded by the Idaho Beef Council. Using calen gates at a facility in Moscow 36 calves from four different Angus sires are being tracked to see how efficiently they turn feed into marbled meat. AHOLA "So we weight out how much we feed them in the morning, and we weigh back the next morning how much they didn't eat and we determine how much they consumed in a day. But we don't have to have them in individual pens. They all can be in one pen. They only have access to a certain spot in the bunk." Ahola says the main object of this research is to find the most efficient feeding method for Idaho beef producers at the lowest cost. This daily research is two weeks old now, will last for a total of 70 days. AHOLA "And that's right at the end of the finishing period about June of next year we're going to harvest these animals, collect strip loins from them and do a bunch of analysis on the meat that we get from them to sort of compare how that may vary and how that may relate to efficiency." Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott