Rathdowney Blondes have established a small feed test station in a feedlot approximately 5km from our stud. In conjunction with Warren Drynan of Glenapp, we applied for and were successful with an establishment grant from Landcare Australia and Woolworths. The first stage of the project involved identifying and purchasing the necessary equipment, and then laying a concrete slab and building a shed to house it in to protect it from the weather. To see the photo gallery, click here. Click on our videos page to see youtube videos of the test station.

The aim of the station is to test beef cattle for Net Feed Efficiency (NFE), also known as Residual Feed Intake (RFI). It is commonly called feed conversion ratio, which is the amount of feed consumed per kg of liveweight gain. Cattle are confined to small pens and fed a controlled ration over an approximate 100 day period. They are weighed weekly and consumption is calculated daily. At the conclusion of the trial it is simple to work out the Feed conversion ratio (FCR) by dividing the amount of feed consumed by total liveweight gain under trial. Net Feed Efficiency also takes into account of the animals liveweight gain in relation to its body weight.

The Feed station was registered with the Performance Beef Breeders Assocaition (PBBA) who have some minimum standards which must be adhered to when testing cattle, especially if the resulting data is to be used for breedplan analysis.

Three pens have been built which will enable us to record approximately 30-35 head at once. Data is logged to disk each day and a separate program saves each days data file separately. We purchased a new desktop computer to run the system, and installed a number of serial/rs232 ports on it to connect to the scales and RFID reader. We could not find a competitively priced UPS (uninterruptable power supply), so we built our own using advice found online. You can find an article dedicated to the homemade UPS here, or keep reading below for more details. (or click on our video page for a link to a youtube video of ours)

Due to the unique nature of the project we have had to modify available products as we did not have the funds to purchase ready made gear. The feed bins were purchased from Polyworldand then modified by putting a single folded piece of sheet metal into the bins and reinforcing the sides with some 60mmx2mm flat.  We needed to use a poly bin so that the RFID reader worked better without interference from too much metal. We chose the bin from Polyworld due to its price and it was the closest product we could find that matched our needs, even thought they built it with a different use in mind (PolyTrolley PT12, normally comes with wheels and shelves for materials handling). The feed bins also have some folded metal in the bottom to pushed the feed from the sides, as it was unlikely the cattle would ever eat all of the feed from the bin. This is just to keep the feed fresher.  

Harrington Systems Electronicswas chosen as the RFID supplier. This was due to their ability to provide an excellent product at an acceptable cost, with great during and after sales support that you sometimes wouldn't get with a larger company. There is an RFID reader installed in each feed bin to read animals as they consume feed. The reader is protected from reading animals that are standing close to the bin but not eating.

Australasia Scales is the supplier and installer of the load beams and indicators. We have used a load beam/ indicator combination with an accuracy of 20 grams to get excellent data for future analysis. The indicators are connected to the computer which records the change in weights of the feed bin.

Beaudesert Gates and Steel (07 55411777) did the sheet metal work for the feed bins and the welding of the bin platform. I drilled the holes for the load beams in the required location before letting them weld it up.

The computer we are using is a DellVostro 220, which seems to be an excellent computer. We installed a PCI express/4 port serial card internally, and then used a usb/serial cable, and pre-installed com port for the remaining serial connections. The computer has a 160GB hard drive, 3MB RAM, and a 2.70Ghz dual core processor. We felt we needed processing power rather than storage capacity as there is a lot going on all at once.

The computer is housed in an old fridge to protect it further from the weather. There is a DIY cable gland made from inner tube to let the cables into it, and a 240V, 80mm extraction fan (from Jaycar) to take out the hot air. The computer is protected from dust by a large 20x25cm filter on the outside of the fridge, as well as internal filtration (such as when door of fridge is open). The doors of the fridge can be locked and the fridge is secured to prevent it tipping over. One shelf has been modified to be a retractable keyboard tray. The monitor and fan are connected to 240V mains power, so that in the event of a power outage, they do not draw from the UPS battery pack.

The UPS is 2 x 12V car batteries connected in parallel (positive/positive). The batteries are Century N70ZZ, which are RC140, 80Ah, 660CCA batteries. The batteries are charged by a Projecta 35A battery charger, and the system is powered by a 600W Projecta Modified sine wave inverter. I estimate that the system should be able to run, in the event of power failure,  3 x indicators, 3 x RFID readers and the desktop computer for at least 6-8 hours. In mid April, I turned off the battery charger to test system longevity. I had one NLIS reader on to log the time every second . The monitor was turned off, but the air extraction fan was on. The charger was turned off at 11:52 am, and the last data logged was at 03:46 am the next morning, almost 16 hours later. In the normal operating environment, there would be 3 x scales and another 2 readers connected to this system, but they draw a miniscule amount of power.

Auto electrical work on the cable ends to make permanent connections was by Rathdowney Motors 07 55441164. They are able to supply the inverter and battery charger at a competive price.

In April 2010, a mob of 10 friesian heifers was put in the pens for approximately 2 weeks to generate trial data for further processing. It also allowed us to fine tune the data recording methods, and ensure accurate data logging. We have since installed a small shield for the NLIS readers, and panelling to slow down the entry and exit of animals from the feeding area. In early June 2010, cattle were introduced again to test the modifications.

The first intake of cattle was done on 30th June 2010. The trial started with a weigh-in for the cattle on 21st July, after a 21 day introductory period. A field day will be held on 16th September,  2010, at 9:30 am, when the animals have been on feed and we have some interesting data to present.  To register your interest, please send us an email or give us a call, you can find our details on the contact us page. The first trial is expected to finish in early October 2010.

Our first feed trial is complete and the results are in. Efficiencies ranged from 3.62:1 to 8.5:1 and all animals gained in excess of 2kg/day, with the best at 3.09kg/day. The animals were fed for 77 days during the test. The following table has all of the data summarised, plus the carcase scans I had done on my own cattle.stabndout performance is D35, who is second for FCR and first for weight gain overall. I am using him over my heifers this season. HME2 was first for efficiency, and there is more than 10% difference between first and second which is a remarkable achievement. An important note is that there is as much difference in herds as there is between breeds. In both instances, the worst for feed efficiency is about 50% worse than the best animal from the same herd. The least efficient Blonde was also the fattest, which is not surprising.

These results confirm that Blondes are one of the most efficient beef catle breeds for feed efficiency. With feed effiency having a heritability of about 0.42, it is one of the most highly heritable traits that you can easily breed into your herd, by using bulls of known performance.