Nutrition and Production – the Scientist

Abstract

Reducing costs for unit output, be it per kg liveweight gain, per kg carcass gain or per kg saleable meat yield will be essential for the future of the UK beef industry. Traditionally emphasis has been placed on reducing feed costs per unit output and data from MLC’s Beefplan shows that between 65 – 82% of the variable cost of UK beef systems are accounted for by feed costs. However, with fixed costs being similar to total variable costs, it is also important to reduce the labour and machinery costs associated with the production of feed and feeding it. As far as nutrition/feeding of beef cattle is concerned, there are a number of areas where a reduction in costs can be achieved using existing knowledge but in other areas there are obvious gaps in knowledge which require further research. However, there appears to very little research into aspects of the nutrition/production of beef cattle going on, or being published, in the UK. (Only 8 out of a total of 228 papers presented at this conference are on nutrition/production of beef cattle.)