Feed Efficency from the Boss

For all you Angus people out there I bet you think that your Angus are pretty feed efficient and I’m not going to deny it they do a pretty good job of not eating too much and gaining pretty good. But here something you don’t think is true Gelbvieh are more feed efficient than Angus and I know your stunned right now, but let me explain. For my third article I am used an article in the May 2009 Gelbvieh World about one producers story of feed efficiency. I think that this article really puts into perspective that Gelbvieh is the best cattle breed because the test that was conducted was not only conducted on Gelbvieh, but on Angus, Balancer and is now being conducted on Maintainer and Lim-flex heifers.
Steve Munger is the man who conducted the experiment. He manages the Eagle Pass Ranch in South Dakota. In 2006 when he attended the Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) convention he became interested in feed efficiency when they had sessions about residual feed intake and feed efficiency. Munger used the Grow Safe feeding system that measures individual feed intake. It consists of 15 Grow Safe nodes that are 40 ft. by 80 ft. and 8 to 10 head of cattle eat per node. The nodes are contained in a three sided building. When one of the cattle eat the data of how much they eat and of what of the ration was consumed it is sent wirelessly to a dedicated computer in the farm office. To ensure that if there is ever a computer crash the data is saved to an external hard drive every 10 minutes. The first tests were done in November 2007 with a group of bulls. After the bulls they did it to the replacement heifers and then steers that were later slaughtered and carcass tested. To this point Eagle Pass Ranch has completed the Residual Feed Intake (RFI) on 93 Angus cattle, 140 Gelbvieh cattle, and 293 Balancer cattle. A RFI takes 70 days to complete. The test animals are weighed when they come into the ranch. The beginning weight is sent to the University of Missouri with the feed intake data to be processed. They use Maximum R2 accuracy indicator value .70 and Eagle Pass has been seeing results of .65 to .68.
Two of the bulls tested in the first round one of RFI was a Gelbvieh, EGL Northern wind, and the other was an Angus bull, GAR Integrity. Both bulls were A.I. sires. Northern wind tested below zero 71.1 % and Integrity tested above zero 58.4 %. That is a $20.75 feed efficiency advantage for Northern Wind progeny so it is more expensive to feed the Angus sire. So this article Seals the envelope, puts the final nail in the coffin for the Angus being better than Gelbvieh. With this final article showing that Gelbvieh is more feed efficient and the best cattle breed.