12/20/05 Research on residual feed intake

American Rancher December 20, 2005 Research at the University of Idaho aims to give the cattle industry a better measure of feed efficiency that in the future may help producers select bulls for the feed efficiency of their calves just is they now select them for the ability of their offspring to marble. Scientists are focusing on residual feed intake. And what is that? Ahola: "The difference between predicted intake and actual intake at a set amount of gain." That's Jason Ahola part of the U of I's research team working in Moscow with 36 calves from four different Angus sires. They 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." The calves are being fed a high forage ration of alfalfa and corn silage for 70 days and then will be finished on high-concentrate feed. 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." The ultimate goal being to lower productions costs without affecting beef quality. I'm Bob Hoff.