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

莱克兰学院是一所服务于阿尔伯塔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、饲养和遗传评估项目以及精准农业研究方面有着悠久的历史。该农场使学生能够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。学生管理的农场设置莱克兰学院除了其他机构提供农业计划，因为它允许学生体验工作动手在反映现代农业商业实践的模式的各个方面。该提案要求NSERC支持购买具有增强型数据采集软件的14节点GrowSafe采食量系统，以进行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，特别是牛羊生产商日益关注的问题。饲料成本和饲料效率是对全球竞争力和生产可持续性的一个日益严峻的挑战。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%和50-70%。为什么这很重要？测量个体动物RFI使生产者能够选择性地进行育种，以提高饲料效率，从而实现更具成本效益的肉类和乳制品生产。根据GrowSafe的文献，“这项技术可以识别出生长速度最快、吃的饲料最少、需要的医疗最少的动物，并产生最好的分级胴体，从而能够选择表现一致的动物”。

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".