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Texas Agriculture Archive

March 19, 2004

Cow Pie? No, Gold Mine!
Nutrition lab takes guesswork out of supplemental feeding...

When consultant Cliff Carter speaks, ranchers listen—especially when he is pointing out costly mistakes in cattle feeding.

There's no magic involved, but the approach is unique. Part of Carter's work includes traveling to clients' ranches and gathering fecal samples from cow herds. As it turns out, what some might think is an ordinary cow pie actually is a gold mine of information.

That's in part because of the work performed by the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station's Grazingland Animal Nutrition Laboratory. The lab is the only one of its kind in the nation, using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) to analyze fecal samples submitted by ranchers to determine diet quality.

Ranchers receive an analysis in the mail showing nutritional deficiencies and recommended feeding options.

"One ranch I know saved $9,000 on their feed bill because they didn't need the feed," says Carter, whose Carter Ranch Consulting works with cattle operators of 1,000 head or more in Victoria, Goliad and Refugio.

The lab, housed on the Texas A&M University campus, began offering its services in 1994. It analyzes fecal samples, not just from cattle but also from animals such as goats, white-tailed deer and bison. It processes more than 8,000 samples per year. Not only is the lab helping ranchers determine their animals' dietary needs, it's also helping ranchers preserve and protect rangeland by tailoring grazing management strategies.

"I was on a ranch recently where rains had made the grass look good, but they were concerned with a heifer herd," Carter says. "To be absolutely certain these cattle were getting everything they needed, we went ahead and took a sample."

The lab report indicated that the forage was adequate in volume, but that quality, while still within limits, had dropped from previous samples.

"We decided to leave them on that pasture for one more week, then move them to a new pasture," Carter says. "The new pasture had been burned in the summer, and the volume and quality of the grass was high."

Gene Sollock, a cattle producer in Iola, uses the lab's services to help him with his rotational grazing system. When he inherited the family land years ago, it had been severely farmed and overgrazed. Thanks to the information he receives from the lab, he can better manage his pastures.

"You can look and guess, but you don't know until you see the results from the lab test," Sollock says. "[With the report,] you see exactly what that animal is utilizing." The Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy works in much the same way that the eye perceives color and is based on the amount of light reflected or absorbed by a substance.

Each organic bond vibrates at a unique frequency along the NIR band. Machines project NIR light into the fecal sample, measuring what bounces back or passes through, to determine the relative chemical makeup in the material.

The data generated is then entered into NUTBAL Pro, a software program that calculates the quality of an animal's diet, including projected daily weight gain/loss. Ultimately, the program helps determine the most cost-effective feeding regimen while evaluating the amount of fecal nitrogen and phosphorus returned to the soil.

Dr. Jerry Stuth, Kelleher Professor in Texas A&M's rangeland and ecology and management department, developed the nutritional monitoring program. For a $25 fee, producers can receive data "that can help them provide a more consistent supplemental feeding program to their livestock," says Doug Tolleson, lab director.

Producers typically receive results within 48 hours. The data report might indicate a loss of milking potential or a protein deficiency. The producer would then want to feed cottonseed cake or another protein source to get the animal back into a positive nutritional balance.

Carter says in one instance a ranch was starting to feed in the traditional fall pattern, but discovered it didn't have to after submitting a fecal sample.

"That went on into December [without having to feed]," he says. And in another instance, a ranch wasn't feeding enough.

"Nearly all of the ranchers I've worked with who use the lab have felt like they have saved quite a bit of money," Carter says.

There are many advantages to taking part in the services the lab has to offer. The most obvious one is that the data revealed from the fecal sample takes the guesswork out of feeding the supplements based on forage availability.

"Depending on a producer's goal, they can take a fecal sample and tell what that herd's diet and nutritional status is," Tolleson says. "We tell them when their pasture is high quality and when it's not. You can use this service as a yardstick."

For more information, consult this Web site: http://cnrit.tamu.edu/ganlab/.