Technology to shorten Feed Efficiency Trials to 49 days
The Vytelle SENSE™ system features In-Pen Weighing Positions which measure individual animal body weight and growth continuously. The technology can be used in feed efficiency trials to collect daily weights from individual animals – up to 450 weights a day. Adding this technology to feed efficiency trials shortens the trial length from 70 to 49 days by providing individual animal growth curves. Results from the MacNeil et al. (2021) study indicate that In-Pen Weighing Positions can be used to confidently calculate ADG in a shortened test period of 50 days.
The benefits for individual animals management are vast; a few being, increased accuracy of individual animal weights, labor optimization, and improved animal well-being by significantly reducing stress related to weighing animals compared to traditional chutes. At an operation level, a 50-day test period will increase the number of trials run each year, therefore, increasing the total number of animals evaluated. Evaluating a larger number of animals is likely to reduce the test cost per head and is likely to result in greater power of a test for the hypothesis of interest (MacNeil et al. 2021).
Using advanced technology such as Vytelle’s In-Pen Weighing Positions in feed efficiency trials allow for shortened 49-day RFI trials. Producers are further supported with standardized procedures ensuring quality data collection from In-Pen Weighing Positions and are assured only quality data sets are included in feed efficiency and ADG analyses.