Enhancing Lakehead College's capacity for residual feed intake applied research on cattle and sheep

增强湖首学院牛羊剩余采食量应用研究能力

• 批准号: 411134-2010
• 负责人: Mathison, Melvin
• 金额: $ 9.17万
• 依托单位: Lakeland College
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Applied Research Tools and Instruments Grants
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2010-01-01 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=472893
• 关键词: Enhancing; Lakehead; College; capacity; residual

Lakeland College, a rural public college serving Alberta and Saskatchewan, hosts the unique and well-established Student Managed Farm. The farm has a long history of activity in crop variety and crop life science product field trials, animal health, feeding and genetic evaluation projects, and precision agriculture research. The farm enables students to gain valuable leadership, management and production experience with guidance from instructors and farm staff. The Student Managed Farm sets Lakeland College apart from other institutions offering agricultural programs as it allows students to experience working hands-on in all aspects of a model that reflects modern agricultural business practices. This proposal requests NSERC support to purchase a 14-node GrowSafe Feed Intake System with enhanced data acquisition software to undertake comprehensive residual feed intake (RFI) applied research on both cattle and sheep. The efficiency of feed utilization is a growing concern for the livestock industry, especially beef and sheep producers. Both feed costs and feed efficiency represent a major and growing challenge to the global competitiveness and sustainability of production. Feed costs alone are estimated to be between 60-65% and 50-70% of the total cost of beef and sheep production, respectively. Why is this important? Measuring individual animal RFI enables producers to selectively breed for increased feed efficiency, thereby enabling more cost effective production of meat and dairy products. According to GrowSafe literature, "this technology identifies animals that grow as quickly as possible, eat the least amount of feed, require the least amount of medical treatment, and produce the best grading carcass, enabling selection for animals that perform consistently".

莱克兰学院是一所服务于阿尔伯塔省和萨斯喀彻温省的农村公立学院，拥有独特而完善的学生管理农场。该农场在作物品种和作物生命科学产品田间试验、动物健康、饲养和遗传评价项目以及精准农业研究方面有着悠久的历史。该农场使学生在教师和农场工作人员的指导下获得宝贵的领导、管理和生产经验。学生管理农场将莱克兰学院与其他提供农业项目的机构区分开来，因为它允许学生在反映现代农业商业实践的模型的各个方面体验动手工作。该提案要求NSERC支持购买一个14节点的GrowSafe采食量系统，该系统具有增强型数据采集软件，用于牛和羊的综合剩余采食量（RFI）应用研究。饲料利用效率是畜牧业日益关注的问题，特别是牛肉和绵羊生产商。饲料成本和饲料效率对全球生产的竞争力和可持续性构成了日益严峻的挑战。据估计，仅饲料成本就分别占牛肉和绵羊生产总成本的60-65%至50-70%。为什么这很重要？测量单个动物的RFI使生产者能够有选择地繁殖以提高饲料效率，从而使肉类和乳制品的生产更具成本效益。根据GrowSafe的文献，“这项技术可以识别出尽可能快地生长、吃最少饲料、需要最少医疗的动物，并产生最佳分级的胴体，从而可以选择表现稳定的动物。”