Our fall bulls and heifers started their feed efficiency test yesterday. Here Caleb is buzzing the bull’s Electronic Identification (EID) tag which sends a signal to the scale head to identify which animal is in the chute. (I don’t know that the technical term is buzzing… that’s just what we call it because when you push the button on the reader, it vibrates, or buzzes, in your hand.) You can also see his visual tag which corresponds to his EID tag. These numbers are stored on the scale head so I can download the file when we’re done. We keep a paper copy, too, it is used as a back-up.
When we start a group of cattle on their feed efficiency test, we weigh them two days in a row and take the average of those day. Then we will feed the cattle for 70 days, recording how much they eat each day, and weigh them off test. Again, we weigh two consecutive days when cattle come off test as well. I am so excited about the data we get from the feed efficiency test. I think it is some of the most interesting data we can get. If you care to learn more about it, feel free to click on the Werner Feed Efficiency tab.
Have a great day!