Making more meat

Tests involving feeding beef cattle may lead the way to rural revitalisation.

Dr Alan Lymbery, of Murdoch's Division of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, has been involved with the tests for the past four years.

The tests are being conducted to find ways of making cattle more efficiently produce better quality meat from the same amount of feed.

Dr Lymbery said that efficiency was important to farmers because of the large costs involved in raising cattle, including land costs, fertilisation and irrigation of pastures.

"It's a part people don't usually consider," he said, adding that beef producers were under pressure to produce a quality product to compete on the world market.

The feed efficiency tests have been conducted at Vasse Research Station near Busselton, and have used young bulls from stud breeders. The bulls are fed in pens, where the feed is measured and compared against the bulls' muscle development to find out which bulls produce meat most efficiently.

Stud breeders were targeted because their bulls were later distributed to other farmers for breeding.

Determining which bulls were more efficient allowed for better selective breeding, said Dr Lymbery.

The tests, however, have proven expensive — about $500 per bull.

And because bulls have been placed in individual pens, numbers are limited.

Dr Lymbery, formerly a research officer for Agriculture WA, has received $30,000 from the Cattle Industry Compensation Board to continue the tests using improved technology where feed can be measured in the field.

The money has been spent on three feed intake recorders that will allow a number of young bulls to be tested in the same pasture.

The system operates by identifying individual bulls from an ear tag which is scanned when a bull passes a feed gate.

The weight difference in the feeding trough is measured after eating to determine the amount consumed by the bull.

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