How feed efficiency impacts sustainability in feedlots
If cattle are behaving exactly as expected for normal healthy animals and they're reaching their genetic potential for growth, then the feedlot has achieved the epitome of sustainability from an animal input perspective.
By Dr. Steve Lerner
Feed efficiency is a beautiful barometer of just how well beef cattle are utilizing nutrients for growth. Documenting feed efficiency (or feed-to-gain ratios) over time, while accounting for seasonal variation, can provide producers with evidence of best practices, or can suggest changes that need to be made to improve feed efficiency and, subsequently, profit margins. Recently, producers have been looking at feed efficiency data to indicate another measure of success: sustainability.
Sustainability as an end goal
Although it can have many meanings, sustainability is generally considered to be a measure of an operation’s carbon footprint, with carbon neutrality being the ultimate goal. Contributing factors include:
Regenerative ag practices
Responsible sourcing
Innovation
Circularity
In short, producers can take a variety of approaches toward increased sustainability, which correlates with normal, healthy cattle. The greater percentage of normal, healthy individuals in any population, the more likely it is that an operation will achieve economic success and stability, as well.
Why sustainability matters
Today's consumers want to purchase products from environmentally responsible entities, and that demand is driving a focus on sustainability all the way up the chain.
For example, packing plants are showing a preference for buying from responsible cattle producers who have established science-based sustainability targets. By doing so, packers and food processors demonstrate to the public that they have not only embraced sustainability practices within their own facilities, but also that they are doing business with sustainable suppliers.
How does feed efficiency contribute to sustainability?
Along with average daily gain, feed efficiency is the most commonly accepted measurement of success or failure in a feedlot. With feed being the biggest single input in an operation, achieving the highest possible feed-to-gain ratio has an exponential effect on margins.
But improved feed efficiency also has the benefit of increased sustainability from an environmental standpoint. The more nutrients – namely carbon, hydrogen and oxygen – that the animal can keep in its body in the form of accumulated protein or fat, the less of it goes back out in the environment as methane or nitrogen gas. As such, efficiency of feed conversion is the single most relatable metric to sustainability in terms of:
Carbon footprint of the operation
Water utilization of the operation
Reduced use of resources needed to produce feed
Contribution to the sustainability objectives of upstream buyer/processing plant
Protect feed efficiency to preserve sustainability
While feedlot sustainability begins with responsible sourcing of feedstuffs, efficiently converting nutrients to animal weight requires good veterinary care. The proper mix of feedstuffs with the correct additives, including living, effective probiotics, will help achieve this.
Probiotics work in an animal to improve digestion of nutrients out of the feed, to improve the absorptive capacity of the digestive system of the animal to take and internalize those nutrients. They will also interact with the animal's immune system to support its general well-being and will impact the barrier function of the gut to keep things that are moving through the animal from leaving the digestive tract and moving into the animal, which can cause infection.
If cattle are burning calories to fight disease or respond to stress, their feed efficiency is diminished. But if they are behaving exactly as you'd expect normal healthy animals to behave – and they're reaching their genetic potential for growth– then the feedlot has achieved the epitome of sustainability from an animal input perspective.
Dr. Steve Lerner is Senior Scientific & Business Advisor, North America, Chr. Hansen Animal & Plant Health and Nutrition