Automating feeding to improve dairy cow health

Dairy cows sometimes suffer negative energy balance because their rations are short of what they need for good health, but automating feeding systems could resolve that issue.

Patty Kedzierski, a PhD candidate in the Department of Animal Biosciences at the University of Guelph, is handling data collection and research for solutions under supervision by Dr. John Cant.

“Current dairy cattle feeding practices can cause a negative energy balance (NEB), resulting in adverse effects on the cow’s health and productivity,” she said. “Automated technologies could  . . . target the individual needs of each cow.”

Kedzierski said most farms feed their cattle a total mixed ration (TMR), meaning all cows are fed the same diet based on a cow representative of the top percentile of the herd. Cows have varying nutritional and metabolic needs, so feeding a TMR can result in a large proportion of the herd being over- or underfed.

“During early lactation, if the energy intake provided by the TMR is insufficient for milk synthesis, cows experience a negative energy balance,” she said. “Negative energy balance leaves cows more susceptible to disease and reduced productivity, which can be costly for milk producers.”

Data will be collected from various sensors, including a 3-D camera and an emission monitoring system. 

These automated technologies will measure daily dry matter intake, milk yield, body weight, body condition score and respiratory gas exchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane. 

Kedzierski anticipates that automated data collection may help to reduce negative energy balance during early lactation. She says implementing individualized feeding plans could help optimize productivity, lower feed costs, minimize nutrient excretion and curb disease.

“In the future, I hope to be able to integrate all of these technologies onto a singular platform,” she said. “Doing so would make it easier to implement individualized care practices on farm and would thus reduce NEB and its associated costs.”

New leadership team for Maple Leaf Foods

Maple Leaf Foods is shuffling the executive deck as it prepares for the departure of Michael McCain as president and chief executive officer and makes way for Curtis Frank to take those roles in the spring.

McCain will remain as executive chairman of the board.

Casey Richards, senior vice president of marketing, is promoted to the newly-created position of president and chief growth officer. Richards will assume accountability for the value-added prepared meats and poultry businesses under one combined organizational unit to drive profitable growth, Maple Leaf said in a news release.

Iain Stewart, senior vice president of operations and supply chain, is promoted to the newly-created role of chief supply chain officer. He will lead an effort to further refine the company's manufacturing strategy to leverage its expertise in operations, purchasing, supply chain and engineering into a sustainable competitive advantage, Maple Leaf said.

Adam Grogan, president of Maple Leaf's Greenleaf Foods subsidiary, is appointed president of alternative protein. Grogan will continue to lead the Greenleaf business and will add responsibility for commercializing and broadening the company's innovation and investment strategy in meat protein alternatives to deliver long-term financial and sustainability performance.

Jumoke Fagbemi

Jumoke Fagbemi will join Maple Leaf's senior leadership team in January as the new senior vice president for people.  She comes from Merck and since 2020 has been senior vice-president of human resources for Airbus.

Patrick Lutfy, vice president of marketing, is promoted to senior vice president of marketing, replacing Casey Richards.

Avian influenza in Lambton Shores

Highly-pathogenic avian influenza has been detected in a commercial poultry flock in Lambton Shores.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has established a quarantine zone and any vehicles involved in the poultry industry will require its permission to enter or leave the zone.

In Europe there are reports of devastation of wildlife birds felled by the highly-infectious disease, especially in Scotland.

The CFIA and poultry farmers are having difficulty containing the virus in an area of British Columbia with a concentration of poultry farms near Chilliwack and Agassiz.

Province intends to allow carbon sequestration

The Ontario government has served notice it intends to amend legislation to allow for carbon sequestration.

Projects are most likely to be located in rural areas.

The notice said we are proposing to amend the Oil, Gas and Salt Resources Act to remove the prohibition on carbon sequestration (i.e. the permanent storage of carbon dioxide in deep underground geologic formations). 

If approved, these changes would represent a first step towards enabling geologic carbon storage in the province, it said.

Global meat producers facing challenges, says Rabobank

Livestock and poultry farmers around the world will face high costs along the full supply chain, swings in consumption, and other areas of uncertainty such as elevated disease pressure and regulatory and market-driven changes next year, said Justin Sherrard, global strategist for animal protein at Rabobank.

As a result, margins will be squeezed as buyers push back on higher production costs. But opportunities still exist, although they will be more restricted, he said.

The overall trend for 2023 is for production growth to slow further, he said.

Slow growth is expected in China across all species groups, and ongoing growth is expected in Brazil and Southeast Asia. Oceania will experience slow growth, while North American and European production will decline.

 

Poultry is set to maintain its consistent growth pattern, beef production will decline slightly and pork will see a decline. 

In Europe production will come under pressure for all species, on disease risks, market and regulatory-driven changes, and reduced exports. Consumption is expected to hold steady, with poultry benefiting while pork and beef will decline slightly.

Plant proteins will have a year of consolidation. The recent stellar growth of plant-based products is on hold, and investors are shifting focus, Sherrard said.

Researcher offers a way to make more money from pork

Dr. Manuel Juarez has developed technology that enables meat packers to characterize pork cuts so they can be sold to the most profitable markets.

Juarez, who is a livestock phenomics scientist at the federal agriculture department’s research station at Lacombe, Alta., headed a multi-institutional team that worked on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc.

New technology tools will enable the classification of the primal pork cuts based on quality and end use characteristics, the team said.

Juarez said these technologies range from very low to very high tech but they all need to be applicable to commercial conditions, they have to be user friendly and they all need to have a minimum level of accuracy.

The approaches and the technologies are going to be different for the different defects or quality characteristics but the way we are developing all of these systems in general is quite similar, he said.

“We work with the packers. We identify what we are doing today in terms of classifying for these attributes. We discuss with them also how that can be enhanced, if there is value in doing so because in some cases classification may not be worth any change. 

“From there we come up with different concepts, with different prototypes, we test them at the research level to start with. We have our own abattoir and animals here at Lacombe so we start developing some of these prototypes and testing them on site,” he said.

“After that we bring in meat from commercial packers, we test the meat in our lab with these commercial primals.

“From there we start testing them in the actual commercial plants, either by us going to the plant or, during COVID-19, most likely sending the equipment to our collaborators and they can test it,” he said.

Calls made for OPP to probe Greenbelt dealings

A coalition of five indigenous communities, the Environmental Defence organization and Democracy Watch are calling for an Ontario Provincial Police investigation into whether developers gained advance knowledge of the government’s proposals to allow development on 15 parcels of land within the Greenbelt.

“It seems very likely that before any authorized public disclosure of the province's plans to remove these specific lands from the Greenbelt, some government official, government MPP (Member of Provincial Parliament) or employee leaked that information privately,” they said in a joint news release.

They said a breach of public trust warrants an OPP investigation.

“Removal of thousands of acres of legally protected farmland, forests and wetlands from the Greenbelt threatens us all,” said Tim Gray, executive director for Environmental Defence.

“A government doing so in a manner shrouded in secrecy that appears to benefit a select group of property owners, including recent purchasers, needs to be thoroughly investigated by the OPP,” he said.

"The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that it damages our democracy if a situation even appears to raise questions about the integrity of a government policy-making process, and that law enforcement must be strict and strong to prevent this damage, so given the Greenbelt policy change smells badly, the OPP must investigate," said Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch.

The five indigenous communities involved are the Huron-Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Chippewas and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.