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Feed Efficiency Program Invites Producers

16th May 2025

Feed Efficiency Program Invites Producers

Pelican Rise director Chris Meade invites producers to his Beeac property on Tuesday, May 20 where he and son Paul will demonstrate the effectiveness of their newly developed feed efficiency facility.

The program measures the feed conversion capabilities of animals that is acquired through genetics by selecting breeding stock that have the highest levels of feed conversion that results in speeding up the progression of the herd.

Chris has found the typical range of feed conversion can be as low as five kilograms of food, to one kilogram of weight gain up to eight kilograms of food to one kilogram of weight gain.

“When an animal is down the paddock we actually don’t know how much they eat to put that on that weight,” Chris said.

All feed troughs have got scales underneath them and the feed is weighed in the bin whilst an animal’s NLIS tag is scanned and recorded when it eats. When the animal leaves the bin, the weight of the feed is deducted and recorded against the animal.

Animals in the trial have no other access to feed making it a highly controlled environment with eight feed bins in the pen and only one animal being able to access a bin at any one time.

Chris is also learning other behavioural factors such as what time of the day the animals eat and drink as well as when they sleep which helps improve the efficiency of his operation.

The trial runs for approximately 70 days and includes an induction period where the animals are introduced to the feeding system and the bins are open so more animals can feed at once. On approximately day ten the trial commences and the bins are closed down and this runs for 49 days before a wind down period at the conclusion of the trial.

The first trial Chris conducted involved a line of Limousin bulls where the high performers were equal to some of the best in the world.

“We had some right up at the absolute peak of the range and the other ones at the lower end, we then culled those out and said well, we don’t want to pass these onto somebody that’s not going to get the feed conversion out of their offspring,” Chris said.

This year Chris will introduce his heifers into the program, with one pen currently in the last week of the trial. At the conclusion of the program, the data will be analysed over a week and Chris and the analysts will select a mark that is considered acceptable, high performance and above average and retain those animals for future breeding and sale.

“We’ve been doing it for a bit over a year and we certainly did see results in our Limousin bulls but it’s probably one or two years away when we will see greater results, when our animals calve and when our customers’ animals calve and those calves start to grow quicker and producers have less animals on the lower end performance wise,” Chris said.

Farmers and stock agents are invited to inspect the facility at 1660 Colac-Ballarat Road, Beeac on Tuesday, May 20 at 10am.

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