Technological advancements have helped to make production faster and more efficient in every industry. The cattle industry is no different, and significant advancements have helped to make raising, growing, and feeding cattle faster, easier, and more efficient. Let’s take a look at the top technologies that have revolutionized the cattle feed industry, and brought us to where we are today.
The Top Technology Revolutionizing the Cattle Feed Industry
Automated Microingredient Mixers
Microingredients play an important role in cattle feed. Many cattle feed microingredients are, by themselves, revolutionary technologies in the cattle industry, including antibiotics to keep infections at bay, additives to help cattle grow more quickly, and even ingredients to reduce greenhouse gas production. We’ll discuss the importance and advantages of these in more detail later in the post.
To make sure that these microingredients make it into cattle feed uniformly and effectively, they have to be mixed. While hand-mixing is an option, there’s no guarantee that it will result in the accurate dosage or uniform mixing. Automated microingredient mixers for cattle is one of the revolutionary technologies in the cattle industry. Since a microingredient mixer no longer requires an exclusive contract with a drug supplier, cattle operations of varying sizes can enjoy benefits of accurate, efficient mixing, while also choosing the ideal microingredient suppliers.
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RFID Cattle Tags
With the first recorded use in 1799, livestock ear tags are hardly a revolutionary technology. However, these identifying tags are continually developing. Modern RFID livestock tags can provide much more information than location tracking or identification alone. Electronically-read RFID tags no longer have to be read manually by workers, making the process much faster and more accurate. These tags can also store much more information, including data on the animal’s health, production, breeding, and more. This technology is helpful for making operations more efficient, but it also may be critical in stopping the spread of zoonotic diseases in a globalized world.
Antibiotics for Cattle
Like ear tags, antibiotics are not a new technology, but this important innovation is continually advancing. Since antibiotics became widely known in the early 1900’s, they’ve become increasingly important. Some of the recent advances in antibiotics for cattle have revolutionized the cattle industry, and helped cattle operation managers maintain their animals’ health better than ever.
The use of ionophores in cattle feed is one of these advancements. Ionophores have been critical in fighting the parasitic disease coccidiosis. Coccidiosis in cattle spreads quickly and can destroy an animal’s health fast. These are just one of the many antibiotic additives that have helped to prevent loss to disease, particularly in large herds held in small spaces.
Though these advancements have helped cattle operations prevent illness and expensive losses in cattle herds, these technologies may have costs as well. The use of antibiotics in healthy animals to prophylactically prevent illness has caused many pathogens to adapt more quickly, and become resistant to antibiotics.
Reducing Carbon Emissions
Beef’s contributions to climate change and ecological destruction have become more widely known in recent years. With cattle farmland leading the causes of deforestation, requiring 20 times more resources and producing 20 times more emissions than comparable plant proteins, this big problem requires big solutions. In addition, 40% of consumers are trying plant-based alternatives to meat products, causing many cattle industry leaders to look for ways to reduce beef’s impact on the environment.
Feed additives are one such solution. Cattle diets and digestive systems produce methane gas, which has 28 times the impact compared to carbon dioxide emissions of the same mass. Adding probiotics, yeast cultures and other ingredients to cattle feed can help to reduce methane gas emissions. Other additives can also improve feed efficiency, causing the cattle to grow faster while requiring fewer resources.
These are not the only strategies reducing the ecological impact of cattle farming. Sites using carbon sequestration management strategies on grazing lands, including rotational grazing schemes, soil compost use, reforestation, and the use of carbon sequestering forage plants all contributed to a 46% reduction in net emissions in a global study of 292 cattle farms.
These and other solutions are revolutionizing cattle management around the world, and helping to make the future of cattle farming possible. With the world population expected to grow to 10 billion by the year 2050, and fewer and fewer land and water resources available, technology will be critical for the future of the cattle industry, and the future of food production.
