Location: Food Systems Research Unit
Project Number: 8090-10700-001-006-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2025
End Date: May 31, 2030
Objective:
The purpose of this agreement is to characterize the livestock productivity, meat quality, and nutrient use efficiency associated with “beef on dairy” systems. “Beef on dairy” refers to a system of production in which dairy cows are bred with genetics from beef breeds of cattle to produce cross-bred calves that can be finished for beef. By offsetting the number of beef cows needed to supply calves for market and by cross breeding to improve the calves’ performance as beef animals, this system has the potential to increase the efficiency of beef production and improve nutrient use efficiency. However, it is an emerging production system in which productivity, meat quality, and nutrient use efficiency have not yet been determined. The goal of this project is to assess the performance of beef-on-dairy systems by studying animals on commercial operations in the Northeastern U.S. The project seeks to answer the following questions:
• What is the feed conversion efficiency of the system?
• What is the nutrient use efficiency, from calf to market weight?
• What is the yield of edible product from each system per unit of feed intake?
The project will address these questions at the farm scale and the individual animal scale. It will examine how animal performance is affected by sire selection and cattle breed.
Approach:
Animals will be randomly assigned per treatment (either sire or breed) into one of six pens for the duration of the trial. Animals will begin the trial at approximately 6-months of age through slaughter at approximately 27 months of age (21-months total per trial).
Animals will all undergo genetic testing to ensure sire parentage.
Animal weights will be attained by fasting them overnight and running them through a chute mounted digital scale on a fortnightly basis. The digital scale will record weights associated with each animal’s individual radio frequency identification (RFID) ear tag.
Individual feed intake monitoring will be conducted using an automated system wherein upon entering the feed bunk-monitor, an RFID reader will identify each animal by a corresponding ear tag and a scaled feed-bin will determine when, how much, and for how long each animal ate per second over the course of the whole study.
Animals in each pen will have access to an automated gaseous exchange chamber with baited feed pellets to entice it’s use – the chamber will recognize each animal using an RFID reader and will monitor parts per million of methane and carbon dioxide emissions during the duration of the period when each animal is feeding in the device. The gaseous exchange chamber will be rotated among the six pens on a 5-day rotation (such that the monitor will cycle through all pens monthly). Data from the gaseous exchange chamber will be used to estimate nutrient use efficiency.
Animal carcass characteristics will be quantified by trained USDA personnel at a local cattle processing facility. Carcass data will include animal ID, harvest date, packing plant name and location, carcass ID, hot carcass weight, marbling score, carcass maturity, fat thickness, ribeye area, percent pelvic, heart and kidney fat, yield grade, and quality grade.
Data will be analyzed to evaluate treatment effects over time. We also plan to evaluate relationships between variables of interest; for example, the relationships between weight gain, feed intake, and nutrient use efficiency could inform tradeoffs between each treatment that are relevant the production system both in terms of environmental and financial sustainability.