WHY FEED EFFICIENCY?

We feel that efficiency in all aspects of agriculture is going to be the key ingredient to success going forward. Cattle are no different. It has long been a trait that has been overlooked in the cattle industry. One of the factors being that it is so expensive to test for. At Byergo Angus we have made the decision that no matter the cost, we must collect this data for our customers. The commercial cowman cannot chance it, you just cannot buy bulls that haven’t been feed efficiency tested. As we look at feed efficiency there are buzzwords that just seem to cloud the goal of the rancher. We have looked at a couple different buzzwords in the industry, RFI and DMI. They are confusing and as we examined these calculations, we found that RFI too many times identifies non-doers while DMI EPD is skewed too much towards no performance.

Then we examined RADG (Residual Average Daily Gain) which looks at how an animal gains in comparison to the expected intake. We have found this to be the best EPD for Feed Efficiency at this point. With that said, we still wanted to do better. That’s why when we looked at all the data, we decided to not overthink the process. We asked, “What is efficiency to our customers?”

The answer became clear--FEED CONVERSION and COST OF GAIN. By looking at conversion we can still keep the dry matter intake in consideration while finding performance animals. Also, by doing this we are not picking a type and kind to be the most efficient but rather just following the data. SIMPLY PUT-THE

Animals That Convert The Best Are The Most

EFFICIENT! We have also seen in our cowherd that daughters of bulls that converted the best have been our longest lasting, fleshiest, most fertile cows.