NAVASOTA, Texas — Improving feed efficiency of a dairy herd provides opportunity for increased profitability.
“According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, feed costs represent 51% of the total costs on a dairy farm,” said Sara Westberry, researcher at STgenetics. “There is a huge opportunity to substantially reduce feed costs by increasing feed conversion efficiency of dairy animals.”
Selecting for animals that produce the same amount of milk on less feed is one solution for economic stability in the dairy industry, said Westberry during a webinar organized by the Dairy Calf and Heifer Association.
Dairymen have achieved improvements in feed conversion of their animals through advancements in management, grain processing techniques and genetic selection.
“A dairy cow in 2019 produced three times the amount of milk a cow produced in 1960,” said Jocelyn Johnson, researcher at STgenetics. “But there is not a threefold increase in the amount of feed the cow consumed.”
However, Johnson said, there is considerable variation of individual animals’ feed efficiency.
“We want to be able to identify individual animals that have superior feed conversion,” she said.
To evaluate animals, STgenetics is using residual feed intake.
“This is a measure for feed intake beyond what is needed to support the animal’s maintenance and performance requirements,” Johnson said. “And it’s independent of performance and body size, so we won’t simultaneously select for larger animals.”
Measures of intake and performance are required on an individual animal basis to determine residual feed intake.
“We estimate the expected feed intake based on their performance,” Johnson said. “We get the residual feed intake by actual feed intake minus the expected feed intake, which is predicted based on body size and performance.”
The company has a research facility that is run as a commercial dairy operation in Ohio. The heifer barn has 10 pens that are each equipped to measure feed intake on an individual animal basis.
“It has a 640-head capacity and we are collecting phenotypes for RFI and performance of growing heifers,” Johnson said.
“We are also collecting feed intake and RFI phenotypes on 400 lactating dairy cows,” she said. “We are collecting daily feed intake along with robotic milking information, including daily milk yields, milk visit information and milk components.”
The long term goal of STgenetics for the EcoFeed program is to encompass the feed conversion efficiency of an animal throughout its lifetime.
“EcoFeed is a feed conversion index based on phenotype and genomic information that we’ve collected on over 4,000 female progeny from the many different sires we tested,” Westberry said.
“The EcoFeed Index is a 100 base system, so for every five points above 100 that is equivalent to one pound less feed consumed per cow per day,” she said.
“Through our research we found high EcoFeed heifers consume about 24% less feed per day than low EcoFeed heifers, which translates to about 10.4 pounds of feed per day with no difference in final body weight or average daily gain,” Westberry said.
The heritability of EcoFeed is estimated at 0.21.
“That is similar to other production traits as milk yield, fat yield and protein yield,” Westberry said.
“We also provide the reliability of the EcoFeed score for females that are tested and currently our average reliability is 55%,” she said. “As we continue to grow the number of animals that are tested, our reliability will continue to improve.”
Dairymen who select for high EcoFeed animals should expect to save on feed costs.
For example, if a heifer has an EcoFeed Index of 105, it’s expected to consume one pound less of feed per day.
“With a feed cost of 10 cents per pound, she could save on average about $36.50,” Westberry said.
A heifer with an EcoFeed Index of 110 is expected to consume two pounds of feed less per day than its herdmates.
“With a feed cost of 10 cents per pound she could save us $73 per year,” Westberry said. “For a 1,000-cow dairy, a reduction in feed of two pounds per day per animal, translates into $73,000 of savings.”
For more information about EcoFeed, go to: www.stgen.com.
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September 26, 2020 at 01:16AM
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Improving feed efficiency reduces costs - Agri News
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