Leachman Cattle’s challenge: To accurately and reliably measure cattle feed intake so they could help their customers select for future feed efficiency in their herds.
How Vytelle helped: With 300 Vytelle SENSE bunks installed across two locations, Leachman can now confidently gather reliable, robust data they need to help their customers make informed breeding decisions.
About Leachman Cattle:
Based in Meridan, WY, Leachman Cattle has been in the beef breeding stock business for three generations, dating back to the mid-1930s. They sell primarily to High Plains ranchers, while also marketing semen into dairy cows throughout North America — and increasingly throughout the world.
The Problem
As Leachman Cattle puts it, “We focus on cows that work, and steers that pay.” But to help their customers make the best possible breeding decisions and produce the most profitable animals, the company needed quality data.
Leachman evaluates three different phases of the production chain to assess profitability: $Profit™, $Ranch™, and $Feeder.
“We want to look at the animals that drive the most marginal profit back to the owners of those cattle,” said CEO Lee Leachman. “So we try to find the traits driving value and weight them in our indexes according to how much value they’re driving.”
Increasingly, feed efficiency has become a critical trait that Leachman is selecting for. This is especially important for their beef-on-dairy business, where cattle are fed for longer periods and feed costs accumulate rapidly.
The challenge with selecting for feed efficiency lies in obtaining accurate data. Leachman had previously built and installed their own bunks to measure feed intake. However, these weren’t reliable, with frequent issues affecting radio signals. Additionally, building and maintaining this equipment wasn’t the best use of the Leachman team’s time and expertise.
“It’s not our wheelhouse or what we want to spend our time doing,” Leachman said. “We just want to get good data.”
The DIY approach to feed intake measurement wasn’t scalable — Leachman needed a better solution.
The Solution
Leachman installed 300 Vytelle SENSE bunks across two locations. This proprietary individual animal data capture system records feed intake and in-pen weight measurements to help identify elite-performing animals that express economically and environmentally important traits. These low-contact devices also minimize stress to the animals.
The Results
Thanks to the partnership with Vytelle SENSE technology, Leachman Cattle has been able to:
Improve customer data, decision-making, and profitability: With sensing technology they can rely on, the Leachman team now has confidence in the data they gather.
When customers have access to accurate, robust data, they can make more informed decisions. Armed with Vytelle SENSE data about their animals’ feed intake, cattle owners can more effectively prioritize feed efficiency in their breeding decisions — which also leads to significant cost savings.
“When you first look at this data, you’re shocked at the differences between the best and worst animals on feed conversion,” Leachman said. “Then as you start to track parents and their progeny, you see how heritable it is and how repeatable it is. Putting that feed efficiency into selection in animals has real efficacy. It’s significant financially and makes a difference.”
Even a single-point difference in feed efficiency can translate to thousands of dollars saved in feed costs for a pen of cattle.
Offer customers the ability to breed the “LeBron James” of cattle: With accurate feed intake data, cattle owners can have the best of both worlds: high-performing animals with strong visual and functional traits that are also efficient with their feed intake.
“I’ve been surprised at how good we can make the feed efficiency and still have a really good cow,” Leachman said. “That’s pretty amazing. People ask, ‘what’s that like?’ I say, ‘It’s like LeBron James. He can be the guard, the forward, or the center and plays all those positions pretty well.”
Improve average feed efficiency and push the industry forward: Most in the cattle industry expect a roughly 6:1 feed efficiency rate. However, that can increase to the upper 6s or low 7s as animals get heavier.
But those averages don’t have to be permanent — especially when cattle owners take a data-driven approach to feed efficiency, accurately measure intake, and select for this trait in future breeding decisions.
One of Leachman’s customers achieved a remarkable 5.8:1 rate. The cattle entered a commercial feedlot at an average weight of 969 pounds and were fed for 150 days, reaching a finishing weight of 1,600 pounds. According to Leachman, he believes these ratios could go even lower over the next couple of decades. But to drive that evolution, the industry needs technology like Vytelle SENSE to effectively measure feed intake.
“If you don’t put pressure on this trait, it’s going to get worse,” Leachman said. “The trick is finding these cattle that make the most of what they eat. The only way to figure that out is you’ve got to measure it. … We’ve already made the cattle grow faster, we’ve made them pretty big with pretty high marbling. Now we need to make them more feed efficient. It’s incumbent upon us in the industry to change the average and make it better.”
