Lynsey McAnally (00:02):

Angus At Work, a podcast for the profit-minded cattleman. Brought to you by the Angus Beef Bulletin, we have news and information on health, nutrition, marketing, genetics, and management. So let's get to work, shall we?

Hello and welcome back to Angus At Work. Maybe you’re listening from an area that’s been struggling through a drought spell, or maybe you are thankful for the rain, but wishing Mother Nature would spread the storms out just a smidge. Regardless of where our listeners are located and the weather conditions back at home, one thing all producers can agree on is that efficient cows make tough times easier and times of plenty even better. But how can we as producers select for more efficient females and build a more self-sufficient herd? Research is helping shed some light on feed efficiency and how cattlemen can put pressure on their herd to perform.

I'm Lynsey McAnally, and on today’s episode, you’ll hear more from Miranda Reiman and our guest, David Lalman, a professor and extension beef cattle specialist at Oklahoma State University, regarding research being conducted to help build a better cow. So, let's dive in!

Miranda Reiman (01:25):

Welcome to the Angus At Work podcast. I'm your host, Miranda Reiman, and today I'm here with David Lalman, who is an extension beef cattle specialist at Oklahoma State University. Thanks for joining us today!

David Lalman (01:36):

Well, I'm glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Miranda Reiman (01:39):

So we are at the Beef Improvement Federation Symposium. We’re in Tennessee, and you were on the main stage. Why don’t you just recap a little bit about what your main message was there in that presentation?

David Lalman (01:50):

Sure. So the overall theme has been building a better cow, and that’s the work that we’ve been focused on at Oklahoma State now for several years and have kind of expanded our research capability to do that kind of work. Over the last few years, we’ve been able to generate some - hopefully - meaningful information. That’s kind of what we shared: how we’re trying to find cows that are more efficient in terms of the amount of feed that they consume relative to calf weaning weight or milk production, total beef in their lifetime, that kind of thing.

Miranda Reiman (02:32):

Talk a little bit about why that’s such difficult research to get at.

David Lalman (02:35):

That is a very true statement. It’s a challenge. There for maybe 25 to 30 years now, the industry has done a good job of measuring feed intake and, therefore, feed efficiency. We’ve obviously been able to measure weight gain for a long time, but measuring feed intake is an important part of that feed efficiency equation. And, you know, we had companies that invented and distributed equipment to do that about 25 to 30 years ago, and they have really expanded the use of those and so on. But that equipment was designed for a kind of processed mixed diet, because there’s very limited bunk space in those systems, right? They’re each like a, I don’t know, a 2 ft. by 2 ft. square or something like that is the size of the bunk. And one animal is supposed to eat out of that bunk at a time. Well, for a cow making her living on a diet, that’s generally different than something that’s like corn silage or maybe 50% roughage and 50% concentrate.

Well, corn silage by itself is 50% concentrate. If you think about, well eared corn silage is about half corn grain in dry-matter weight. So a lot of those diets that have tested feed efficiency are just higher-quality diets, and they're processed. So thinking about putting the diet that the cow consumes in that little tiny bunk, it's not going to work. And what we discovered really quickly was that you put hay in a bunk like that and the cow just reaches down there and trying to find the good pieces, they root it out and they shove it out into the feed alley. And so it's a real challenge. And then the other problem is forage is not very dense, and so you can only put a few pounds in there at a time. And so you can't run very many cows per feeder, per feed intake unit I should say, rather than feeder. And/or you have to feed 3, 4, 5 times a day because you can put such a small amount of the weight in that feeder. So that's one reason why it's really a challenge to get to an efficient cow where a cow makes her living. And that is with moderate to low-quality forage and especially unprocessed forage — long-stem, like a cow grazes out in the pasture. We'd rather be doing this work in the pasture,

Miranda Reiman (05:18):

Right?

David Lalman (05:19):

That's the holy grail, if you will, but we just don't have the technology yet. Over all these years, we've still not developed a way to do that. Yes, you can use some marker techniques to measure intake and pasture, but when you do that, you radically modify the animal's behavior because you have to get them in and take fecal samples or dose the marker multiple times a day. So those are some of the reasons why it's really a challenge.

One more thing I'll mention. When we're doing this forage intake work with cows, those graduate students work hard and not only do they feed - we try to feed twice a day in our system - but we also have to clean those feeders out about once a week.

Miranda Reiman (06:07):

Nobody wants that job, do they?

David Lalman (06:09):

Oh my gosh. We all gather up and we all share in that effort because it's hard work. If we all dive in, we can get it done pretty quick, but those cows sort through that hay, and if you have moderate to lower-quality hay, you'd be surprised what we've found in those bales. Old cowboy boots, sticks, maybe a hammer or something every now and then, but so we have to clean that out and start with a fresh batch of hay about once a week. And so yeah, it's a lot of work.

Miranda Reiman (06:40):

Sure. So it's been hard work to get after, but yet it's an important measure.

David Lalman (06:44):

Yeah.

Miranda Reiman (06:44):

Tell me about some of that work that you've done and what you've found.

David Lalman (06:48):

Well, really some cool stuff. So first of all, every contemporary group we've tested, I'd tell you that I would say on average we find between cows that consume between let's say about 20 pounds of hay. Now this is, now, remember, this test is being conducted in heifers, in gestating cows and in lactating cows with hay and mineral. Okay? That's their diet. They're not getting a high-concentrate diet. We're trying to do this work there where that cow makes her living. Range of intake in each contemporary group from about 20 to around 40 pounds — wide range in intake. We do find that as you would expect on average, bigger cows eat more feed. I mean, that's going to be obvious to everyone, but we also find that, as you can imagine, there's some small cows that eat a lot, and there's some big cows that don't really eat that much. And we have found some rockstar cows that produce a lot of milk, wean a big calf, and consuming hay gain weight, but don't eat very much. Now, how much better could it get than that? And we found a few of those, so that's really cool. And then obviously we find just about the opposite of that — cows that are losing weight, don't produce much milk, don't wean a very big calf and are eating a lot, right? Yeah. And so I mean, there are those extremes in each group we test.

Miranda Reiman (08:31):

There's a lot of geneticists here at this conference. I mean, that's really the holy grail of findings because you want to find both the ones that are the low performers and the high performers, but that really suggests that we have some opportunity to change.

David Lalman (08:45):

Absolutely. That variation is the key because that gives you room to select for improvement.

Miranda Reiman (08:53):

And in the same way that we've been able to select over time for maybe low birth weight, but heavier weaning weight, you can kind of start to uncouple those two things not being tied together as much.

David Lalman (09:02):

Yes, absolutely. And the heritability of feed intake, and we don't know for sure that the heritability of hay intake is as strong as the heritability of mixed-diet intake, but at least we're starting with a heritability in that mixed diet. Well published data that's pretty strong. 

Miranda Reiman (09:25):

Sure. One thing that I wrote down was, and I'm going to paraphrase you here just a little bit, but was the fact that maybe it's not always. I think in our brains as producers, sometimes we think that biggest cow is probably the least efficient, but you talked about how, depending on what they have for maintenance energy, they could just have a lot of energy left over to them, put to the kind of gas of getting bigger and those kinds of things. Would you say that you've been able to challenge some maybe long-held thought processes, maybe even that you had yourself?

David Lalman (09:56):

Yeah. Yes, we have. So the longstanding philosophy, so you mentioned maintenance energy requirement, and that is a big chunk of what it takes to maintain a cow. Well, it is just a big part of it, and there's huge variation from cow to cow in that maintenance requirement, and that's important to know.

So, yes, we did a very intense project where we looked at challenging the longstanding, I guess, knowledge on that topic. And for many years, the National Academy of Sciences has published data and indicated in print in that book, the Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle book that generally speaking, more growth, more genetic potential for growth, more genetic potential for milk output is associated with increasing maintenance energy requirements. So if you keep selecting in that direction, which we are in terms of growth, I don't know that we are so much in milk, but we are selecting for more growth because economics say we should do that. Because of the postweaning phase of the industry needs that. But the standard was that you're going to increase maintenance energy requirement, especially, well, I mean particularly pertaining to the cow herd.

So we did this study where we measured that, and what we discovered was exactly the opposite. Now, I think a lot of the old work was done from breed to breed, so there wasn't as much work done within a breed. Well, in our case, these were all Angus cows, and so in our case, within this set of Angus cows, what we found was that cows that had more milk production or in a limited energy diet were able to gain weight and produce more milk at the same time, which is a good thing. They actually had lower maintenance requirements. They didn't have higher maintenance requirement, they had a lower maintenance requirements. So it appeared to us in our study that cows that had lower maintenance had more energy left over for the productive purposes. And so, yes, will definitely challenge that longstanding idea, but hey, we got it published so the reviewers were willing to accept it. So that's great.

Miranda Reiman (12:36):

That's the neat thing about research though, isn't it? Over time you learn new things and discover things that can be helpful. One of the very take-home messages that I thought was - again, to paraphrase - to rethink your stocking rates. Or maybe you need to rethink how you think about nutrition in front of your cows, because they're probably different than they were 30 years ago. I think your example was if you were selecting for cattle when you were 25 and you're now 55, explain how they've probably changed.

David Lalman (13:08):

So if you just look at the hard data published in federally-inspected carcass weights - and there's a good data set on cow carcass weights - those carcass weights have increased at a rate of 7.3. No, I'm sorry. If we take those carcass weights and we adjust them to a live weight basis using yield that you generally see in a cow, and that's how we approach this, and so we adjusted those weights to a live weight basis. The trend since 1978 has been an increase in cow weight using that dataset of 7.3 pounds per year of live cow weight in 10 years, if the trend doesn't change, our cows on average will be 73 pounds heavier. And if you had been in the industry for 30 years during that trend, your cows should have increased by over 200 pounds. Your cow weight, if you only selected for industry average growth, which is highly connected to mature cow weight. Okay.

Miranda Reiman (14:26):

And you could have been selecting with intense pressure on growth if you retained ownership or

David Lalman (14:31):

Various, maybe your cows weigh 400 lb. more, right, if you had not implemented some strategy to control mature cow weight. And, of course, now we have that way to do that with the mature cow weight EPD.

Miranda Reiman (14:46):

Sure, yeah. Before it was just phenotypes and it's awful hard to eyeball year to year. It's kind of that frog and boiling water or something, isn't it? 

David Lalman (14:55):

Exactly. But yeah, so, Miranda, yeah, I think the point was that unless you have implemented some, well, very, very strict control for mature cow weight, your cows are probably getting bigger.

Miranda Reiman (15:14):

And then that translates into, I think I wrote down something like you might've had to 13%. You should have had a 13% reduction in stocking rate if you haven't increased your forage base.

David Lalman (15:26):

Yes. A 13% reduction in stocking rate in that 30-year career, if you had only selected for average growth or mature cow weight would result in putting the same grazing pressure on the same land base. Yeah.

Miranda Reiman (15:45):

Sometimes at the American Angus Association people wonder if our growth EPDs are working, we have different times when they say, well, you see the size of the calves going to market. But, honestly, you talked a little bit about how the groceries that you put in front of those calves matters to how they can express that genetic potential. Maybe talk about that just a little bit?

David Lalman (16:07):

Sure. So we've seen several indications where the ranch environment might actually be limiting the expression of that genetic potential. These EPDs are working, there's no question about it, but there's probably cases, in fact, we've demonstrated cases where maybe the genetics have sort of outpaced the production potential of the ranching operation. So for example, in numerous data sets, we find that there are in, well, there are places where weaning weights stopped increasing at the ranch level back in about 2005, 2006, and they've just kind of been stable since then. But you take those cattle to the feed yard and you take the lid off the environment. That's my way of saying you feed free choice, really high energy diet as much as they want for 150 to 225 days. That's taking the lid off the environment and those calves just explode. But yeah, there's quite a few cases where if you sell your calves at weaning, you need to be tracking your weaning weight trend over time and see, you might've been buying bulls with genetic potential for higher weaning weight or yearly weight growth or carcass weight, but if that weaning weight at home is not increasing, really underlines the importance of developing a connection to whether it be retained ownership or whether it be some collaboration with another entity that will be willing to pay you for those superior post winning characteristics.

Miranda Reiman (17:53):

You talked a little bit about what some of the best ways to maybe monitor that or make changes on your own operation and shared a story about a friend of yours. You want to share that on air that had had differing opinions versus the data that he was able to collect on the size of his cow or the size of his cows and his cow herd.

David Lalman (18:15):

Well, we see that quite a bit. Yeah. So when I lived in Missouri, it seemed like all of my Missouri friends thought their cows weighed 1100 pounds, and if they weigh 'em, they were more like 1250. Today, it seems like everybody thinks their cows weigh 1200, and if they weigh 'em, they're closer to 1350 to maybe even 1400. I noticed just last week that the most recent data from the Cow Herd Appraisal performance Program in North Dakota, their average cow weight is now just a little over 1400, and those are commercial cows. Sure.

Miranda Reiman (18:51):

So it's important to maybe look at that data as a producer if you're trying to manage some of these things like stocking rates or thinking about how to make your coward more efficient. You just got to know.

David Lalman (19:00):

Right. Well, and at the end of the day, if we're talking about the beef production system in our operation today, our cows weigh right about 1,175 pounds. Believe me, at the university, we weigh them a lot, but depending on how we graze the calves once they're weaned and how long we graze them, we can make between 1,460 to 1500 lb. finished animals all day long with an 1,175 pound cow. Because of both the genetic potential and the technology that the industry has adopted in the post weaning phase A production, we don't need big cows to make really big carcasses.

Miranda Reiman (19:45):

That's probably a great take home point really in this whole thing, is that you can manage performance of post weaning performance and manage your cow costs, moderate mature cow size, and keep your cow costs down, but yet still take, I mean, we have the tools to do that. Now, 25 to 30 years ago, we didn't have those tools, but now you can kind of have the best of both worlds.

Miranda Reiman (20:09):

We always end on a question with the beef industry is really a people business and there's enough bad news in the world. Tell me some good news, whether it is something personal or professional. Just give me some good news today.

David Lalman (20:20):

Well, I mean, what keeps me going and really exciting and fun is these good young people that I get to work with. And I mean that's really puts us skipping my step every day. And there's some really good young people out there. Our industry is going to be in good shape in the future, and just very fortunate to get to work with those young folks.

Miranda Reiman (20:43):

It's the season of summer interns around the American Angus Association offices, and I would say a big old amen to that.

David Lalman (20:49):

Yeah, that's fun. 

Miranda Reiman (20:51):

It is. The futures in good hands.

David Lalman (20:53):

Yeah, they're enthusiastic. For sure. Well,

Miranda Reiman (20:56):

Thank you for taking the time to visit with me today and to share what you've learned!

David Lalman (20:59):

Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me, Miranda.

Lynsey McAnally (21:08):

Listeners, for more information on making Angus work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and the Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. You can subscribe to both publications here. Email us your questions or comments, and we would appreciate it if you would leave us a review on Apple Podcast and share this episode with any other profit-minded cattlemen. Thanks for listening, this has been Angus At Work!