Cow Herd Efficiency
Evaluating the Feed Efficiency and End-Product Quality Relationship in the Progeny of Red Angus Sires Divergent for Maintenance Energy EPD: A Project Overview
Abstract:
A major goal of beef cattle producers is to produce animals that maximize profit by improving quality while minimizing input costs. Residual feed intake (RFI), a measure of feed efficiency, is moderately heritable and believed to be unrelated to other performance traits. While it has the potential to generate economic benefits for a producer in the long run, RFI has not been widely adopted in the U.S., primarily because it is expensive to measure and can be complicated to explain to producers.
Recently, the University of Idaho and the Red Angus Association of America (RAAA) developed a collaborative, integrated research and outreach project funded by the USDA, National Research Initiative that addresses the relationships between RFI and end-product quality in the progeny of Red Angus sires divergent for maintenance energy expected progeny difference (ME EPD). The studies will also begin to characterize some of the underlying biological drivers of variation in RFI.
Another facet of the project is to understand the level of producer awareness of this new concept in feed efficiency and to actively engage with the beef cattle community via the extension network and through demonstrations, field days and interaction with producer-led organizations to communicate knowledge of and information about RFI.
The RAAA, established in 1954, was the first performance registry for beef cattle. In 2004, RAAA included efficiency in its genetic evaluation program, focusing to lower cow maintenance costs through the development of the ME EPD. The ME EPD provides an estimation of energy requirements needed to maintain/sustain body condition score in the mature daughters of a sire. Because variation in maintenance requirements underpins perhaps up to 40% of the variation in RFI, an important component of this research is to understand the relationship between these indicators of efficiency. In addition, these studies have important implications in understanding the drivers of overall cow herd efficiency.
Data collected from progeny of up to 12 Red Angus bulls divergent for ME EPD over three cohorts (2008 to 2012) will provide a clearer understanding of these complex relationships.
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