Things I learned in Saskatoon

Just when I thought I knew it all, (or is it that I didn’t want to learn anymore) I spent a day at the Saskatchewan Beef and Forage Symposium in Saskatoon, this week, and got a bad case of information overload.

I was only able to catch 13 of the 17 presentations during the day, but here are some of the highlights. (Many of the presenters were students at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) working on their Masters degrees – so young and yet so smart.

• Alison Ward is working on a project to see if genetic testing might one day help identify cattle who could benefit from Vitamin A supplements to improve carcass marbling. Vitamin A does affect marbling and some cattle may have a genetic disposition to better handle vitamin A than others. If genetic testing can identify those cattle, supplements could be used to improve carcass quality. 
• Dyan Pratt, selected a glamorous project where she is collecting the liquid from rotting carcasses to get a chemical analysis. The whole point of this is, if there is ever a major disease outbreak and large numbers of cattle have to be euthanized and buried, she wanted to evaluate the impact of this liquid or leachate on soil and groundwater. It appears the leachate would be very high in ammonium sulphate, phosphorus, chloride and other compounds, so proper citing of these disposal grounds and even SRM disposal is important to protect the environment.
• Brooke Aitken, of Eyebrow Saskatchewan and a student at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (photo at right)  is trying to determine if there is a way to identify overly aggressive cattle in a beef herd.Some goofy heifers just make poor mothers, and of course other aggressive females, at calving, injure and kill ranchers every year. Some limited surveys she has done shows that 70 percent of producers report having ‘dangerous’ cows, and 70 percent of those producers have been injured by cattle. Surprisingly only 50 percent of injured ranchers say they culled overly aggressive cattle. (Maybe Brooke should be evaluating the 50 percent of producers who don't cull crazy cows). 
• Alin Gannon, at U of S, is looking at the potential of using the bran from wheat used in ethanol production as a feed source for feeder cattle.  Research results are preliminary, but it appears the high fibre bran can replace barley in a feed ration and still produce good gains.
• John McKinnon, who is way to old to pass as a student, is currently Saskatchewan Beef Industry Chair in the Department of Animal and Poultry Science at the University of Saskatchewan. He has, for several years, been evaluating the use of Dry Distillers Grain (DDG) from ethanol production as a livestock feed source. While a lot of the DDG used in Canada comes from corn ethanol plants in the U.S., as much as 500,000 tonnes of wheat DDG is produced in Canada. Looking at DDG used in backgrounding rations,  McKinnon’s research shows wheat DDG can be a very cost effective ingredient for backgrounding, however he notes it is high in nitrogen and phosphorus, so any surplus nutrients end up in manure making it a challenge to properly manage manure application so it doesn’t overload the environment.

More reports later.

-30-