Beef Cattle Selection and Management for Adaptation to Drought – Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Community

Objectives

Characterize the role of water intake on beef cattle performance traits that impact producer profitability and consumer acceptability
Better understand how genetics and microbial populations in the gut impact water use in beef cattle
Develop beef cattle selection and management tools that address conservation of water resources and adaptation to climate change

Approach

Characterize water restriction in cattle, including animal behavior, health implications, and thermal stress
Use genomic technologies to better understand the role of genetics in water intake and adaptability to limited and low-quality water resources
Characterize the gut (rumen and fecal) microbiome via metagenomic sequencing before and during water restriction
Compare performance, feed efficiency, carcass quality, health, and environmental impact of low vs. high water intake in beef cattle
Expand the Cattle Comfort Advisor (Fig 1) into a national management tool, develop a decision support tool to predict cattle water demand
Assess consumer attitudes about beef sustainability and climate change
Develop online educational modules that address consumer misconceptions about beef sustainability and teach producers about the new tools developed in this proposal

Figure 1: Example of the Mesonet Cattle Comfort Advisor index for beef cattle in Oklahoma

Future Impact

This project will yield practical tools and solutions allowing US beef producers to adapt to limited water resources caused by climate change
Beef producers will be better equipped to make decisions facilitating the management of water resources, reduce the incidence of thermal stress in cattle, and mitigate the effects of climate change
Decision support tools for water use will be developed and widely disseminated, which will result in increased water management opportunities for beef producers
Consumer knowledge about sustainable beef production and the effects of climate change on beef production practices will be enhanced
Producers will become more educated on consumers’ acceptance of production practices that mitigate climate change and enhance beef sustainability

Authors

M.M. Rolf^*, M.S. Calvo-Lorenzo^*, S.E. Place^*, C. Richards^*, U. DeSilva^*, R. Mateescu^#, C. Krehbiel^*, D. VanOverbeke^*, A. Sutherland^§, and D.L. Step^*

^*Oklahoma State University, ^#University of Florida, ^§Oklahoma Mesonet

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2014-67004-21624 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.