Getting rumen development right in the first weeks of life is one of the best investments any beef producer can make. The benefits continue throughout the animal’s lifetime, improving performance, efficiency and profitability.
Poor rumen development can have lasting repercussions for the profitability of beef calves. The good news is that careful management can avoid rumen damage and help produce more profitable, uniform beef animals. But a calf with poor rumen development early in life is likely to remain a challenge right through to finishing. Growth rates tend to be slower and feed efficiency suffers. So yoo does the bottom line.
If the rumen wall is underdeveloped or damaged, the animal is more likely to have problems throughout its lifespan – with a reduced capacity to absorb nutrients, reducing the animal’s growth potential or feed efficiency. Research shows that 40% of beef carcass weight is determined by growth during the first 12 weeks of life. After that, there is only so much that can be done to improve lifetime performance.
For that reason, optimising rumen development from an early age should be a priority. That means creating the right rumen environment so calves consume as much starter feed as possible. The rumen needs to remain anaerobic, with a pH above 6.2, to encourage fibre-digesting bacteria to establish successfully.
Health issues
How we manage the rumen early on affects how efficiently cattle convert feed into beef later in life. To get an animal finished in as reasonable a time frame as possible, they will be fed relatively high amounts of energy and starch.
If this diet is not introduced properly, this can reduce the pH, damaging the rumen papillae. Again, this reduces the surface area, reducing absorption capacity and therefore feed efficiency and growth. The time needed to transition between diets varies from farm to farm. It depends on forage-to-concentrate ratios, so I always recommend agreeing a suitable plan with your nutritionist.
Housing and management are equally important. Adequate water, sufficient feed space, good ventilation and sensible grouping all help maintain feed intake. Heat stress, overcrowding and disease all divert nutrients away from growth. These animals are being pushed to their maximum growth potential. To achieve that their environment must not put them under pressure in any other way.
If ventilation is inadequate or they have an infection, the animal will redirect nutrients to keeping cool or fighting infection. That’s going to impact growth. Grouping cattle by size also matters. It reduces bullying, helps smaller calves access feed and lowers the risk of bruising.
Digestible fibre
Studies have shown that adding a rumen-specific live yeast to the diet can improve average daily gain, reduce feed conversion ratios, produce more uniform cattle and help protect rumen papillae.
Lallemand beef trials using the live yeast Levucell SC, containing the yeast strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae CNCM I-1077, have shown average daily gains increase by around seven per cent while feed conversion ratios improve by three per cent.
Across the lifetime of the animal, this has delivered a return on investment of between three-to-one and seven-to-one. The whole idea is to optimise and balance the rumen microbiome by stabilising pH and increasing oxygen scavengers.
With the rumen being anaerobic, we need to take as much oxygen out as possible to get the beneficial bacteria in. One of the things Levucell SC is good at is boosting fibre digestibility, as it creates an environment that promotes an increase in the population of fibrolytic bacteria, which break fibres down.
Preventing damage
Trials have also demonstrated benefits during the finishing period. Using Levucell SC has been shown to reduce keratinisation, or hardening, of the rumen papillae by 50%.
This damage is commonly associated with sub-acute ruminal acidosis (SARA), which limits the animal’s ability to absorb volatile fatty acids and ultimately reduces both growth and feed efficiency. Using a rumen-specific live yeast around weaning has also been shown to increase starter intake, encouraging better rumen development. Trial work recorded a 43% reduction in variation in average daily gain, creating more uniform groups of cattle.
More uniform growth can also simplify grouping and allow more cattle to reach slaughter specification together, reducing the number of abattoir trips.
Dr Colin Byrne is ruminant technical and deployment manager for Lallemand Animal Nutrition.