Recipient Organization
UNIV OF CONNECTICUT
438 WHITNEY RD EXTENSION UNIT 1133
STORRS,CT 06269
Performing Department
Animal Science
Non Technical Summary
Management practices, environmental conditions, genetic background, and sex can affect how efficiently livestock use nutrients for growth. Improving the efficiency of livestock by increasing or maintaining animal growth using the same or less feed is important because it allows producers to generate more end-product (generally, meat) per animal and can improve animal health. The automated feeding system requested in this proposal will enable us to calculate how efficiently animals (primarily sheep) grow in response to environmental and management changes. Further, we will be able to identify genetic traits that may predict how efficiently an animal grows. We anticipate that these data will provide guidance for future management and breeding recommendations to increase animal efficiency and improve animal health.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
60%
Applied
40%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
Our long-term goals are to identify how poor maternal nutrition and environmental effects alter offspring growth and metabolism, and to mitigate the demonstrated negative effects. To achieve these goals, the overall objectives of this proposal are to determine the persistence of changes in feed efficiency in offspring as a result of poor maternal nutrition (both over- and restricted-feeding) in multiple generations; determine the effectiveness of a post-natal probiotic supplement in improving feed efficiency; and to develop models to predict breeding values for feed efficiency in young animals and identify genomic regions underlying such traits.The automated feeding system requested in this application will enable us to answer critical questions of how maternal diet impacts offspring metabolism from a whole body perspective. Further, performance test data from lambs combined with genotypes will allow us to develop genetic evaluations using multiple traits and complex models to study environmental and maternal effects.
Project Methods
To accomplish our goals, we will purchase an automated feeding system that will allow accurate calculation of feed intake from a large number of animals. Importantly, this can be done in a flock setting, better mimicking production settings and avoiding any impact of individual housing. Further, this reduces the risk of human error in weighing and providing feed for animals on trial. The feeding system will also allow for improved data collection includingfrequency of feed intakeand feed intake behaviors. Animals will be housed in a flock setting and RFID tags will be used to allow the animal access to the amount of grain specified by the research project. Feed efficiency will be caculated based on daily feed intake and weight gain over aperiod of 77 days.