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艾伯塔省和萨斯喀彻温省的农村公立学院，拥有独特的、久负盛名的学生管理农场。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确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。学生管理农场使莱克兰学院有别于其他提供农业课程的机构，因为它允许学生在反映现代农业商业实践的模式的各个方面体验工作实践。这项建议要求NSERC支持购买14节点GrowSafe饲料摄入量系统，并配备增强型数据采集软件，以对牛和羊进行全面的剩余饲料摄入量(RFI)应用研究。饲料利用效率是畜牧业特别是牛羊养殖业日益关注的问题。饲料成本和饲料效率都是全球生产竞争力和可持续性面临的重大且日益严峻的挑战。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，从而能够更具成本效益地生产肉类和乳制品。根据GrowSafe文献，“这项技术可以识别出生长速度最快、摄食量最少、所需医疗量最少的动物，并产生最好的分级动物身体，从而能够选择表现稳定的动物。”

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".