Livestock production-efficiency research at Lakeland College received a makeover with upgrades to the existing GrowSafe: Feed Intake (GFI) technology and two four-position GrowSafe Beef (GSB) units.

The new equipment and upgrades will improve Lakeland's beef research activities and testing services for clients.

Identifying animals that are feed efficient has economic and environmental benefits. Feed-efficient animals consume less feed for similar maintenance and body gain levels as their contemporaries and have less carbon footprint.

Profiling animals for Residual Feed Intake (RFI), that is the feed-efficiency measure of choice, requires two major activities. The first activity is measuring individual actual feed intake and the second is measuring periodic individual body weight used to calculate growth rate.

The GFI and GSB systems provide telemetric options that improve intake and body gain data collection. Both systems will support applied research activities in feed efficiency profiling and supplementation research.

The GFI units were upgraded from the 6000 to the 8000 technology. The new 8000 version has advanced features and functionalities, including improved power management, longer range connectivity and less interference from external factors. The automatic noise detection capability will improve system connectivity and communication, troubleshooting and overall performance with improved data quality.

The improvement in data quality is also associated with the transition from analog to digital measurements, longer wireless radio connectivity and real-time self-electronic diagnosis. This maximizes the amount of data collected during feeding trials by reducing the number of lost days (during trials) due to system glitches, poor data quality or integrity.

While most producers may be familiar with the GFI system that measures individual feed intake of each animal, the GSB is new. The GSB is a technology that continuously measures the partial bodyweight of any cattle that visit the water trough to drink. The partial front quarter body weights are measured every second, for the duration the animal spends drinking.

This means that researchers can collect several data points on body weight and gain for each animal daily. It complements the GFI system because it supplies additional data required for calculating growth or feed efficiency traits such as average daily gain, feed conversion ratio or RFI.

Conventionally calculating these traits requires running each animal through the chute or weighing cage several times within the test period. For example, a traditional 10-week test period to measure RFI requires each animal to have gone through the chute at least eight times, two consecutive times at the onset and two consecutive times at the end of the test. These routines may introduce some stress on the animals in addition to increased costs associated with labor resources or repair and maintenance of handling facilities.

With the GSB, the multiple daily partial bodyweight measurements significantly reduce the number of times each animal is handled for full body weight measurement.

More importantly, it reduces the number of days required to calculate RFI from 70 days to 50 days, which significantly reduces the cost of testing individual animals.

Because the GSB provides an estimate of the average daily gain of each animal, it serves as a production and health monitoring tool. For production, the producer can assess growth rate and make more accurate marketing decisions. On the other hand, the system can help the producer in early detection of sick animals.

Apart from growth and health information, the system will also give us additional information on other behaviors of each animal such as the drinking visits.

A new interesting feature of the GSB is a spraying device that automatically marks a sick animal with a special spray paint so that the animal can be identified quickly and treated. This reduces losses associated with significant body weight decline or mortalities when sick animals are not treated early.

These upgrades on the GFI system and the installation of GSB units will also enhance the training offered to students, enhance animal welfare and improve the overall efficiency of services provided to other research centres, breed associations and livestock producers.