Limited uptake for ultrasound in cattle management
Friday, December 5, 2014
More common south of the border, the use of ultrasound to guide selection or predict meat yield, grading and finishing date is not widespread in Ontario. But some producers remain fans
by JIM ALGIE
Some ultrasound users love it for beef cattle management. But the 2014 boom in cattle prices may actually have diminished demand for ultrasound among Ontario beef growers.
Guelph-based Beef Improvement Opportunities (BIO) (its legal name is Beef Improvements Ontario) employs the only two Ontario-based technicians certified by the Centralized Ultrasound Processing (CUP) laboratory, the Ames, Iowa, lab that pioneered ultrasound analysis commercially.
BIO tests between 350 and 500 animals annually, but "the number has been falling," technician Brittney Livingston says.
More common in cattle-producing regions of the United States, ultrasound for back fat, marbling and ribeye size in live cattle followed experiments by Kansas State University researcher John Brethour. The CUP website lists eight certified technicians for Canada: two each in Ontario and Quebec, three in Alberta, one in Saskatchewan. South Dakota has eight certified technicians; Nebraska, 10; Texas, 12.
"People either believe in it or they don't," says Livingston, a 2007 Guelph University Agricultural Science graduate. She can count Josh Wooddisse and his uncle, Richard, as believers.
The Wooddisses have used ultrasound in their 150-cow, purebred operation, Marywood Simmentals, since the technology became available in the mid-1990s. They add ultrasound to the annual weigh-off and testing for potential breeding stock, part of a firm commitment to measurement and data at Marywood. They have also used ultrasound to guide selection and boost ribeye measurements in their cattle from 12 to 20 square inches.
Chatham-area cattleman Mike Buis uses the technology differently. A BIO director, Buis has relied heavily on ultrasound since he switched 10 years ago from a conventional feedlot to a retail-oriented, 325-cow-calf finishing operation.
Buis's new strategy depends on a variety of meat quality and feed efficiency objectives. This year, Buis's finished cattle will all go directly to retail customers, either through a family-run retail store or a separate specialty butcher who buys directly. Live ultrasound at about 12 months of age helps predict meat yield, grading and the finishing date for each market animal.
"I thought I knew by looking when an animal was finished," Buis says. "Once I started using ultrasound, I came to realize really quickly that you can't tell from the outside what's going on under the hide."
Ultrasound is commonly used by veterinarians in other configurations for general health issues. Production programs depend on patented systems of the Kansas State Research Foundation to measure intramuscular fat and calculate days to maturity in livestock. Dr. Everett Hall, an Owen Sound-based veterinarian and Simmental breeder, says the relatively slow uptake on ultrasound for production has disappointed some advocates.
"Part of it is cost and also part of it is the bother of doing it," Hall says. "You also need a contemporary group to make it meaningful. Right now, when we can sell anything for a pretty high price, maybe people aren't as motivated."
The Wooddisses ran this year's group of 30 bulls and a few heifers through the chutes one mild morning in late October. Josh and three uncles worked smoothly together as one young bull after another rattled the crates.
Livingston shaved and oiled spots on each animal's back for the application of an ultrasound transponder. The system generates barely-audible sound waves and interprets echo data from variations in tissue thickness. Thirty animals were scanned, measured and weighed by noon just as the fog burned off.
The CUP website identifies 26 co-operating breed associations, including those for Canadian Angus, Charolais, Gelbvieh, Hereford, Limousin and Simmental cattle. It's a useful addition to expected progeny difference (EPDs) calculations, Canadian Angus breed development director Kajal Devani says.
"We recommend ultrasound scanning as an indicator trait of carcass quality so we can provide for our members who use EPDs for selection purposes," Devani says. Ultrasound use among Angus growers has doubled since 2003, Devani notes, referring to a total of 4,000 Angus scans last year.
Cost varies by travel distance, the efficiency of on-farm livestock handling systems and the complexity of requested reports. Buis spoke of costs as low as $10 per head while others estimate costs four times higher. Livingston was reluctant to quote costs without customer specifics.
The payoff comes in progress toward higher value carcasses, Josh Wooddisse says. "The huge difference is when you actually start to see the product hanging in the cooler and the numbers on lean meat yield. You can get anywhere between four and 10 per cent more meat." BF