A new study shows that cattle emissions in the Nordics can be reduced by approximately 20% by 2050 by investing in feed efficiency. To support this, VikingGenetics is installing the CFIT system in more dairy farms and investing in the Saved Feed Index.
But what opportunities does this bring to you as a farmer? How does having access to more feed efficiency data benefit you financially and environmentally?
To learn how to breed more feed-efficient, future-friendly cows, we invited two experts on feed efficiency and sustainable farming into the studio.
Guests:
Coralia Manzanilla-Pech, Pd.D. in Animal Breeding & Genetics, Assistant Professor at Aarhus University
Jan Lassen, Ph.D. in Agronomy and Crop Science, Senior Project Manager at VikingGenetics
Host:
Hielke Wiersma
A new study shows that cattle emissions in the Nordics can be reduced by approximately 20% by 2050 by investing in feed efficiency. To support this, VikingGenetics is installing the CFIT system in more dairy farms and investing in the Saved Feed Index.
But what opportunities does this bring to you as a farmer? How does having access to more feed efficiency data benefit you financially and environmentally?
To learn how to breed more feed-efficient, future-friendly cows, we invited two experts on feed efficiency and sustainable farming into the studio.
Guests:
Coralia Manzanilla-Pech, Pd.D. in Animal Breeding & Genetics, Assistant Professor at Aarhus University
Jan Lassen, Ph.D. in Agronomy and Crop Science, Senior Project Manager at VikingGenetics
Host:
Hielke Wiersma
A new study shows that cattle emissions in the Nordics can be reduced by approximately 20% by 2050 by investing in feed efficiency. VikingGenetics is installing the CFIT system in more dairy farms and investing in the saved feed index. But what opportunities will this acceleration bring to you as a farmer? How does having access to more feed efficiency data benefit you financially and environmentally? To learn how to breed for more feed efficient and future-friendly cows, we're joined by two experts in the studio, Jan Lassen, Ph.D. senior project manager at VikingGenetics, and Coralia Manzanilla-Pech, Ph.D., and assistant professor at Aarhus University's Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics. This is the BreedCast produced by VikingGenetics. I'm your host. Hielke Wiersma. Hello and welcome to both of you. Jan and Coralia. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Coralia, you're originally from Mexico. You have a Ph.D. in animal breeding and genetics from the Netherlands. And now you're working as an assistant professor at the University of Aarhus. So you've seen lots of different things in cattle breeding in different countries. What can you tell us is the most different here in the Nordic countries compared to what you've seen elsewhere? Well, I, I think that Denmark has been a pioneer in the measurement of new phenotypes related with the use of large scale of sniffers, for example, to measure methane. But also now with the developing of the CFIT system that allows to record individual feed intake and also body weight in commercial farms. So what stands out the most, do you think? I think it is the vision that they have as a country say, what we can do better? And also, I think it has also something to do maybe with welfare, like the concern of the farmers because they should be treated well and everything. But also how we can do better in the future in terms of selecting for more efficient cows or reduce costs. But that vision is leading something technological that in this case is the CFIT system, and that will help us to improve a lot how to select for more efficient cows. And you're the main author of this latest study of the CFIT system. And we'll get back to that later in the episode. But just tell us the key elements of your findings there. The key elements is like now we can come up with estimates along the lactation for feed efficiency that before it was not possible and now we can also predict how they will be the future lactation when in the past we were just only based on research farms and this short period of time in first lactation mainly or second lactation, but never in further lactation. And now we have this big amount of data that we can use to improve our predictions. Jan, it's great to have you back. You've been on the show before and let's start by discussing VikingGenetics’ latest press release. The company has announced that it will be accelerating its investment in the cattle feed efficiency system, what we call the CFIT system, with the goal of having a feed intake of more than 30,000 cows by 2025. Let's say for new listeners, give us a summary of what the CFIT system and the Saved Feed index is. Yes, Thank you, Hielke. So, the CFIT system, that is a system that has been developed in VikingGenetics with collaborators for the last seven years or so. And the system is a 3D based camera system that solves one of the mystery things that has been in dairy cattle breeding and that is that we haven't had individual measures of feed intake and that is now available through the CFIT system in commercial farms around Denmark for first and then later to new countries also. The system is 3D camera based and we use the technologies in the 3D camera system to take pictures of the back of the cows together with their eartag reading. And then we can use that information to refind the cows while they're eating. And we can also use the changes in the shape of the feed to quantify how much feed they're eating. And we record that 24 hours a day. We combine that also with a predicted weight from the 3D camera, so we can say based on an image, we can say how much a cow is weighing. And those are two of the key elements in making the saved feed index. The saved feed index is an index that is giving bulls breeding values on how well their offspring performs for efficiency. Efficiency, that is based on two traits. One is maintenance. If you are a big cow, then you need more feed to maintain your body size. If you're a small cow, vice versa. That's one part of it. And that is based on weight information. It's based on conformation scoring and it's also based on some tape measurements of the girth of cows. And then the second part, that is the metabolic efficiency. So that is information. How good are you as a cow to transfer energy in the feed that you eat into products so as milk, fetus, but also slaughter weight. And there the CFIT information is essential to have a high reliability on that trait and combine those two information into the saved feed index. So just briefly, how is this different from other systems? In many ways, most other countries that produce efficiency indices, they do it based on scale measurements. So that is scale below some feed that then is recorded also 24 hours a day. But it's often not always, but very often based on research farm data. So that means that it's on farms where you do research, where you have different trials. That is not necessarily 1 to 1 comparable to what you do in a commercial setting. The CFIT system, that is a setting that is set up in commercial farms where the farmers do not change a single thing. From the day before he had the CFIT system to the day after he had the CFIT system. So it's very, very comparable to what is happening in many, many farms around Denmark but also around the world. And we do have another - a whole episode on the CFIT and the Saved Feed index. And for listeners, if you want to dive into that, I'll encourage you to do so. So a previous episode on that. Jan, why is this so important for farmers around the world? For several reasons. The two main reasons, I think the first is the biggest variable cost that you have as a farmer that is feed. So if you can improve feed efficiency, if you can reduce the amount of feed that a cow is eating and produce the same amount of milk, then you will have a better economy that is transferred directly to your economy and that is the main reason. Then the second reason is that we are talking into the climate, the climate friendly cow. There is a huge demand on reducing the climate footprint of milk production and also slaughter cows and beef production today. And there we know that feed intake is linearly related to methane emissions. So if we can reduce the amount of feed that a cow is eating per liter of milk that it is producing, then everything else being equal, we will also improve the climate footprint of whatever meat you eat or milk you drink. So now we're aiming by 2025 to have four times even more than four times as many cows recorded by the CFIT system. What opportunities does this acceleration bring? It's, again, several things, but the main thing is that the reliability will increase of the index that is produced for feed efficiency. That is the top one. But second of all, we make more data available to do other things also. We know feed intake is critical for everything. It’s also critical for behavior. It's critical for health, it's critical for behavior in the stable between the cows, the whole dynamics of a herd. So with all these herds and so much data, we will be much better equipped to do new research and get even more out of the data that we are collecting. What could that be? That could, for instance, be feeding behavior for the farmers that have the system. We might also be able to do... This is just... Now we are talking about the birds on the roof. But it could be something like feeding behavior. Could we do genetic evaluation for feeding behavior? Could we say that if you use this bull here, then it might be that the offspring will be more ready to go to the feeding table and eat and be strong and powerful, whereas others, they would be more reluctant to eat as the last cow in the group. So things like that could be something that... It's not something that we do and it's not something we can do today, but it's something that with all this data here, it brings those opportunities to the table. We've revisited CFIT and the Saved Feed index. And how the project benefits from this acceleration. Now, I'd like to know more about all the data that we'll be able to collect. The CFIT currently collects data from 7000 cows, but with the acceleration, the numbers is bumped up to 30,000 cows within a few years, in 2025. This means 1.3 million daily intake records. Jan, in what types of farms will you be carrying out this project? In very variable farms, I would say. But when that is said, also in farms that look somewhat alike. It's often farms where we have farmers that are interested in data. Because if you're part of a project like this, then you need to be a “yes” person. You need to be able to see the opportunities in the system. And that is something that has been critical for us when we have selected the farmers we have been at. Then we have some practical things that need to be okay also. The CFIT system works best if there's not direct sunlight on the feed and on the cows. So, we cannot measure grazing cows, for instance. We can measure cows that are indoor all year round, and with the feeding table down the middle of the barn. But that's more some practical things. But it has been very much focused on the farmer himself or herself. And that is the key that we have some good farmers that participate. How did the CFIT farms perform compared to those that don't use it? They get some new numbers available that you don't have if you don't have the CFIT system. So, you can use that for daily management. And if you can use it for daily management, it also means that the data quality that you put into the breeding value estimation that comes from this farm gets better. So, if the farmer sees opportunities in doing management based decisions based on the CFIT, then it also gets higher quality. Coralia, what type of results can you draw from such large numbers? Well, as researchers, we always need a large amount of data to estimate acurate genetic parameters, but also breeding values. And with more data, we will have a better reliability for those breeding values. But this is also like a unique opportunity where we can measure a large amount of data on different commercial farms, also different breeds. But the most important is that is continuously and that will give us more information on what is happening through the lactation, but also in different and further lactations that we couldn't have without the CFIT system. What could the potential be there then in different parts of the lactation? Yeah. Then usually the breeding values are estimated based only on part of the lactation or can be just on first lactation or just on a small period of time. But we have the information on the other lactations, and through the lactation we can predict better those breeding values along the lactation and also for those different breeds. It's a strength from the CFIT system also that we do monitor the cows and the feed intake 24 hours a day and we do it in full lactations and we do it across all lactations. And that is something that I believe is a true strength and that transfers into our breeding value estimation as well, because what we actually want to do that is to improve feed intake, especially in early lactation. Early lactation that is where you have all the problems with your cow. It's where it gets sick. It where it gets mastitis, it's where you find out they do not reproduce again. And many of these things they’re related to poor feed intake in early lactation, if you have a bad start of lactation, you will not be able to perform the rest of lactation. And that is that is critical for our system. It's been a focus area from the beginning. That was that we could measure full lactations. And I guess also there's probably a difference in efficiency in different parts of lactation or at different lactations. What are your thoughts on that? Yes, totally. We have seen that, for example, traits like feed efficiency, it varies a lot along the lactation. For example, in first lactation it is different than in middle and late lactation. And if we don't have that information, we cannot select for the entire lactation - we are selecting only for a part of the lactation. But if we have all this information together, we can improve what will to breed for the animals that they are good through the entire lactation. And that's pretty unique, isn't it, that we... And that's what you're saying, Jan, that we have the whole lactation, which isn't the case in other systems. Or how’s that? Yes, it is. But of course it makes it difficult and... We don't just lie down because it's difficult. Then we try to solve it because I think it is really where the money can be made. That is to improve feed intake in early lactation. When you are from 50 days in milk, to 150 days in milk, well, things are fine. A cow can produce that and hardly get any diseases or anything else. But it is in early lactation where we really have to change something. So, VikingGenetics is the only company that has the saved feed index on other breeds than the Holstein. So we have on the Jerseys and on the Reds as well. How is there a difference between those breeds and what could that be, Jan? There are slight differences in the variation of the index. So the variation of the index is a little bit smaller for the Jersey than it is for the larger breeds. And when you say variation. So that is how many kilos do you actually have in an index of 110 compared to an index of 100. Then how many kilos do you actually gain by using a 110 index bull? But that's also due to the fact that the Jersey cows and the Jersey breed is a little bit smaller, I think. So, it should also transfer in one or another way to that. Then right now there is a difference in how the three breeds they weigh the saved feed index in the Total Merit index in the Nordic scale. But that's more a political decision where the Holsteins have chosen to have a smaller weight than the Red and the Red have also chosen to have a little bit smaller weight than the Jersey on the index in the total merit index. So there is difference between breeds. Is that something that you've come across as well, Coralia? Well, I think there is still a lot of research to do on that area because it will be possible now with the CFIT that we have all the information on those three breeds. But I think one important thing is not maybe what breed to choose, but it's how to make that breed more efficient or within the breed how to make the animals that you are using the best of it. To select for the more efficient animals. Jan? And just to add on what Coralia is saying, what we see from the CFIT data is that there's probably more variation between herds within breed than there is between breeds. And again, it also depends on how you set up efficiency, because if efficiency is how many kilos of energy corrected milk can you make from a kilo of dry matter, then that might be in favor of the Jersey cow. But if you then look into how cows are able to transfer feed into slaughter weight, then the larger breed might have an advantage. So, in overall, I think it's hard to distinguish if there is a better breed than the other when it solely comes to efficiency. So the increase of the... Or the investment of adding these lots of cows to the CFIT system, how does that create value for the farmers out there? It's... Mainly through a higher reliability. So, if we had no information then you would not be able to say that a bull had other things than 100 in the index if 100 is the scale and the mean but with information, then you're willing to take a higher risk. Then you're willing to say that some bulls have 105 and others have 95. If you have even more information, then you also willing to say, well, this bull is actually really good. So he has 120 in index and others, they are really bad. They have 80 in index. And when we do this investment here, then we get more information and then we are willing to take a higher- not risk, perhaps the wrong word to use - but we get higher quality. That means that there's more value in each breeding value that gets available for the farmer. So now we've spoken from the data point of view. Let's discuss the saved feed index and how that can help the farmers breed more future-friendly cows by breeding for the feed efficiency and reduced emissions. Coralia, you're the main author of this new CFIT study. Can you try to put the numbers in context for us? Yeah, well, by just selecting or using feed efficiency in the breeding goal, you are already selecting for cows are they are low emitting in terms of methane. And that is due to the correlation between feed efficiency and methane is quite high- it can be 0.7. That means that if you are selecting in one way for more efficient cows, you are already selecting for cows that are also producing less methane in comparison with the others. So when you say there's a correlation of 0.7 between those two, try and explain that for me. I'm a simple farmer. Yeah, that means that if we are going into if the correlation will be one that will be the same trait, that means that it is exactly the same, but that means that a cows that will be in the top of being efficient. They are also likely to be producing less methane. 70% or something that those cows they will be also methane efficient cows. So how do we apply this data towards breeding for reduced emissions? Yeah of course we in the future the idea is that we will include also methane in the breeding goal. But until that happens, then we need to use feed efficiency as a proxy for methane emissions in this case. And in that way we can reduce up to... I think it was 3.2 millions of tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. Just wondering, you know, how does this connect to genomic testing, Jan? Any thoughts on that? Yeah, well, if you use genomic testing, then on the newborn calf, you will get a breeding value for the saved feed index and you can use that in whatever way you want to. It creates value for the newborn calf. So if it has a high index and if you have used a good saved feed bull on a good saved feed cow, then the index on the newborn calf with a genomic test should also both be high, but also relatively reliable because you take the genomic test. So that should create value for the farmers to have more efficient offspring in the next generation. Coralia, any thoughts on that? Yeah, as Jan mentioned, the important is that we have it as soon as the calf is born, we don't need to wait for any testing or anything, then we have immediately a knowledge of how that calf will be in terms of efficiency, but also in the future on terms of methane emissions. My thinking would be that one of the difficult things is to effectively balance the breeding between feed efficiency and reduced emissions while, you know, on the other hand maintain profit and production. What are your thoughts on that? Well, in the total merit is already accounting for production and is the main driver. And then the other ones like feed efficiency and in the future methane, they are also used to complement in that. That means that if we select for feed efficiency and methane reduction at the same time that we are also putting some emphasis on milk production, then we can achieve that. We can achieve to have efficient cows without losing the gain on milk production or genetic gain on milk production. So basically it's the same as with fertility, which is maybe easier to understand that higher production reduces the ability to reproduce. Yes. And if you talk about profit and feed efficiency, that also comes 1 to 1. I think if you can get more efficient cows, you should also have more profit on your farm. And then I think also... As it looks now, at least a win-win situation because improving feed efficiency should also lead to less methane emission. So it should come along. If you select for more efficient animals, you should also have a lower methane production, both in methane production, but also in methane per kilo of milk or per kilo of intake of whatever or however you present the data. Coralia? Yes, it has been proved that cows that are more efficient in terms of milk production or that are high in milk production, they are also better in terms of methane divided by kilogram of meat production. That's because is this dilution effect that is like... There's just one cow that is producing these large amounts of milk. Maybe it will be the same that two small cows. They are producing that amount of milk, but they are producing much more methane because they are two animals. So what are the future developments of this Jan? What are we going to do for the future to expand this feed efficiency in the data that we have? In many ways, there's a lot of scientists that have good ideas on what we can use our data for, and we listen to those and pick those that are the most interesting. We also have ideas ourselves on what we could do. And then also one thing that is very, very important that is we also have the farmers who have CFIT system. They also get ideas when they see the data that we have, when they think about how the whole technology is set up, then they all say, oh, could you then use it for this and that? And I think we have a lot of things there that is interesting for the future and again, a bird on the roof that is something like management for the farmer. If we could make some sort of a index on how feed is taken away on the feeding table, then you might be able to find those animals that tend to sort in the feeding compared to those that are eating the ration as it is. Again, it might be kind of semi futuristic when we say this, but I think that could be valid and that if you those that are digging in and sorting in the feed I don't think the farmers want those in the future. So if we can find those both on a management level, on those that have the CFIT system but also transfer it into a unique evaluation, I think that will create value. Coralia, any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think there are so many possibilities. From the point of view of the farmer, but also in terms of research. As researchers, we like to control all the environment and with the cameras you can have a lot of data that you can put in the model for better predictions. And also, for example, could be like the time between the cow eats and then the time when they go to milk. And then we can take that into account for our methane emissions and have better predictions. But there are also other options, like rumen content sampling, as you mentioned, and it could be a study of the microbiota and a lot of how to transmit transcriptomic or methylation information or such things to see how traits correlate to investigate what is happening in the animal. What we are seeing in the records or in the phenotypes. So we don't run out of work these first two days. Not yet. Not yet, no. Thanks for joining the BreedCast today. We've looked at the CFIT system and how it collects feed efficiency data, the benefits of breeding for feed efficiency and how this will result in more future-friendly cows that emit less methane. If you'd like to learn more, please visit our website VikingGenetics.com. Thank you, Jan Lassen and thank you Coralia Manzanilla-Pech for sharing these valuable insights with us. Thanks to everybody out there for listening. If you have an idea for a topic in the world of cattle breeding that you'd like us to focus on, please visit BreedCast.com or message us on our VikingGenetics Facebook page. My name is Hielke Wiersma. Please join me for the next BreedCast episode where we're joined by Walter Liebregts and Peter Larson to discuss the effect that new nitrogen emission regulations are having on farmers in the Netherlands. We look at how smaller breeds and crossbreds can be a solution to adapt and how this could influence the future of cattle breeding around the world.