All of the places we visited offered jogged some interesting thoughts in my head, but one that stood out was the visit to Jindalee Feedlot, owned by Teys Australia which is a joint venture between Teys Brothers (an Aussie company) and Cargill. You can find their site here. As a ruminant nutrition grad student, I guess it doesn't take rocket surgery to understand why this is true.
Cattle feeding is different then what we all would think. Because the Australian consumer prefers a leaner ribeye than ourselves, cattle are fed for a much shorter time. Most cattle are on feed for less than 100 days - quite different then American feedyards that can see calf-fed cattle in the yard for, at times, 200 days.
Probably even more contrasting is the fact that they use steam flaked wheat and milo to our steam flaked corn. You see, corn is not readily grown down under, so they use the products that are most readily available to them - and it makes sense. Normally, those grains aren't digested as completely, and it hurts feed efficiency. I asked the feedlot manager about his feed efficiency - and I was very surprised. He said they get a feed:gain of about 5.5:1. That's extremely similar to what we get with corn, and I know it has something to do with steam flaking the grain, but even with that said they are doing extremely well.....without mentioning the over 3.0 ADG they average across the yard.
The feedlot industry in Australia is definitely in a pickle. Their cost of gain runs at about $1 AUD (Australian dollars).....that equates to roughly $2 US. That is extremely expensive, considering with even our high cost of feedstuffs, feedyards are still only seeing about a $1 cost of gain. It all factors into the reason they feed cattle for such a short amount of time. Even though Australian cattle are extremely cheap to buy out of a salebarn, or sourced from a producer, the cost of gain kills them. If they fed them for any longer, they'd all be broke!
I think American feedyards can take a page of the Australians book though. We have grown so accustomed (an almost brain-washed) to using corn in our diets. And there is no question that corn does the trick and is the best cereal grain we can afford to feed. Having said that, I do think there is a place for grains like wheat and milo in American feedlot diets - especially in KS, where we grow a bunch of it! If they can get comparable feed:gains, then why not in my mind. I'm not feedlot operator, but even if some other grains were infused into diets, we may be able to lower our cost of gain, and make everyone a little more profitable.
I sure do miss the Aussie life. They frown upon "crackin a cold one" at lunch here in the states.
Stay classy
