Grant: Applied Research Tools and Instruments Grants

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"".