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University of Guelph beef research gets new life at Elora research station New barn holds 192 head of cattle in pens of 16 each and costs just under $1 million by DON STONEMAN While carpenters were hammering the last nails into one end of the new beef research barn at the Elora Research station last month, freshly weaned calves were getting comfortable in the other end. The new barn and related computers on the main campus, the University of Guelph is poised to get on with some serious research into the genetics of meat tenderness and production efficiency. Some creative financing was required. The provincial government paid 40 per cent of the cost of the barn and related equipment on campus through its Ontario Innovations Trust. The federal government paid a similar share through the New Opportunities Program of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. This fund is available to newly minted professors to help get on with research projects by funding new infrastructure. The Canadian Council For Animal Care oversees research and condemned the old beef research barn at the same time as a new animal science professor with an interest in beef cattle, Steve Miller, associate professor, beef cattle breeding and genetics, came to Guelph's animal and poultry science department in 1999. Miller says as well as equipment in the old barn being outdated, the slatted pens were no longer large enough to house larger, modern beef cattle. The Ontario Cattlemen's Association contributed $71,000 from safety net money. This money couldn't be earmarked for construction, stresses OCA research coordinator Chara Coulter. Instead, it was applied to engineering costs. Other funding included discounts from suppliers such as computer maker Compaq. The University of Guelph and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food contributed some additional money and the Ontario Realty Corporation is helping to cover part of the demolition costs of the old barn. The remainder of the old building is being used as a manure storage. The new barn, 72 X 312 feet, holds 192 head of cattle in pens of 16 each and cost just under $1 million. The Dutch feeding system cost half a million dollars and can measure the feed intake of each animal, and also records information on feeding behaviour, such as the time of feeding and the number of times feeding per day. Water intake is also monitored in some pens. Animals in the new barn are housed in larger pens and larger groups on a bedded manure pack. The main focus of the CFI project is meat quality and meat efficiency, Miller says. Some research that is continuing from old the facilities is genetic markers for meat tenderness. Typically it is hard to select for the average producer who doesn't have these tools to select for meat tenderness. Genetic markers allow for some selection in the farm. Feed efficiency is much the same; is an important trait but it is expensive to measure. An infrared camera can be used to measure heat production. He hopes to look for differences in feed efficiency and also for animal health. Sometimes cattle on a high energy diet get "hot feet" and are prone to lameness. Another project is the continued use of ultrasound to determine growth rates. This lets researchers choose cattle that can produce the same or more beef with the same or less feed. There is an environmental gain if the same amount of beef is produced with less feed eaten and less manure emitted. The animals are killed at the federally inspected abattoir on campus and that's where tenderness is studied. The results of years of research at the old barn is already stored in a database on campus. Consumers say they would eat more beef if they could be assured that the product they buy is tender, Miller says. The traditional way of doing this is through selection of sires and Miller will be doing this. However, he will also be using gene markers, scientists are looking for specific alleles, or genes that are indicators of specific traits of interest to breeders. An allele is any one of a number of alternative forms of the same gene occupying a given position on a chromosome. An example is the gene for blossom color in many species of flower - a single gene controls the color of the petals, but there may be several different versions of the gene. One version might result in red petals, while another might result in white petals. In beef cattle, Miller says one of the goals is to identify genetic factors such as the Leptin gene, which is also known as the "obese" gene. Leptin causes different levels of a circulating hormone to be present in an animal, Miller explains. In beef cattle, the Leptin factor makes cattle tend to fatten up sooner and is linked to appetite and also to efficient production of lean meat. BF © copyright 2005AgMedia Inc.. top back