Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is talking with Donnell Brown, a past president of the National FFA Organization and rancher at the R.A. Brown Ranch out of Throckmorton, Texas. The two men discussed technological advancements aiding the cattle industry today.
“It doesn’t matter what industry we are in, there is a huge amount of information,” Brown pointed out. “The key is how do we process the information? How do we turn that data into metrics we can use to make more knowledgeable decisions? When we have knowledge, we can use it to create wisdom.”
He touted AI technology for helping process big numbers for producers to create workable summaries that help make decisions. On the R.A. Brown Ranch, 1,000 animals per year are tested for feed efficiency. Although there are only 16 different feed bunks, the cattle are on them 24/7.
“That captures over half a billion weights every year,” he said. “That is way too much for me to analyze as a cowboy in West Texas, so having someone that can compile that information and turn it into decision-making tools, where I can select cattle that do more with less, that is a great definition for sustainability.”
He explained how the half a billion feed efficiency data points can be plugged into a $profit database, which turns the information into Expected Progeny Differences, better known as EPDs. “So, I have one number that I can look at and determine that this one is going to be more efficient than that one,” he said. “It’s right along with calving ease, birth weight, weaning weight, yearling weight, and marbling; these other traits that I can look at and say, ‘Alright, which ones are going to make me the most profitable?’”
He pointed out how $profit and $ranch can assess multiple traits to summarize performance and cost. He described $beef and $combined, used by the American Angus Association, as all-purpose indexes, and $maternal as a maternal index useful when keeping replacement females. “It’s neat,” he said. “We’ve always had a lot of information, but we have more now than ever before, and it will never move this slow again.”
He shared the mantra at R.A. Brown Ranch: “Cows that stay and steers that pay.”
“That is that multi-trait excellence that Dr. Randall Spare talked about – the cattle that do all things well,” Brown shared. “We’ve got to be strategic when we’re doing that because if we just select for one or two traits, we can leave some really critical traits out that impact commercial cow calf producers.”
He noted how selecting for growth has become such a popular option that cows are growing larger than their environments can sustain without additional feed supplementation.
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