Day 7: North Dakota State University part 2: by Sarah

 To continue our tour of the North Dakota State University, we went to their cattle research facility. The cattle research facility was made in 2011 and cost 3.3 million dollars to build, 80% of the cost state sponsored. The cattle research facility is used to carry out all kinds of studies which include; grazing studies , nutritional studies, behavioral studies, carcass data and so much more. 

  

The facility we went to most closely represents  a feed lot operation, most studies there are centered around nutrition. They mix their own feed in house and grain and corn that goes into feed is grown on campus. The facility is used to collect precise data so there are many features that help make this possible, like the feed trough. The feed trough works with RFID tags that will be scanned when the cattle put their head in the feed trough, if it is their food it will let them eat if not they will put their head in a different one to eat in. This allows them to have multiple diets in the same pen. Because they are in the same pen their environment doesn't change but they have different diets so it targets a change in nutrition and tracks the impacts. The cattle diet consisted of 95 percent grain and 5 percent forage to feed maximum calories to push them to market. This showed them the benefits of draw backs of a heavy grain diet. While we were there they were testing the difference's in whole corn and dry cracked corn. Another test I found fascinating was when they tested the methane that cattle gave off and they found that cattle with a higher grain diet or cattle in a feed lot produced significantly less methane then grazing cattle or cattle with more forage. 

 

The facility is made in order to reduce stress when working on cattle they have a number of additions like nonslip flooring and a hydraulic squeeze chute. They use the squeeze chute to collect blood samples, check pregnant cows, and collect semen. All of this can give important data for breeding and market production practices. They move their cattle calmly and quietly to reduce stress. The cattle research facility is certainly very impressive and I look forward to seeing the information they can continue to collect through their studies.