H2020 Feed-a-Gene Project: Adapting feed, animal, and feeding techniques to improve the efficiency and sustainability of monogastric livestock production systems.

Precision Agriculture for Feed Efficiency Monogastric livestock, such as poultry, pigs, and rabbits, require highly nutritious feed and compete with humans for food. Furthermore, their inefficient use of nutrients has negative environmental effects. Researchers have developed precision agriculture methods that utilize locally produced feed and genetic selection. The highly nutritious feed given to monogastric livestock can be used as human food, meaning they compete with humans for the same type of food. Furthermore, the nutrients that monogastric livestock, such as pigs, poultry, and rabbits, do not retain in their meat and eggs have a negative environmental impact.

The EU-funded Feed-a-Gene project aimed to increase the efficiency of monogastric cattle breeding by using locally produced feed and genetic selection to breed leaner, more robust animals. The project aimed to transform the European monogastric cattle market through precision farming techniques. Alternative feed for cattle “Alternative feed resources can be used to reduce competition between humans and monogastric cattle, but these resources are often of lower nutritional quality than grains and soybean meal,” says Jaap van Milgen, coordinator of the Feed-a-Gene project. The team set out to identify and improve alternative feed resources, such as European-grown soybeans, protein-rich green biomass, and rapeseed meal.

After identifying these less nutritious alternatives, the next step was to identify genetic traits in cattle that would help them “improve their performance in a lower-quality environment,” van Milgen says. “If we want to feed these animals alternative feeds, we will need to assess whether animals that performed better in a good nutritional environment also perform better with poorer and more variable feed ingredients,” van Milgen explains. Feed-a-Gene researchers developed precision cattle feeding techniques to tailor feed quality and quantity to the needs of each animal or group of animals.

They found that this precision feeding technique increased nutrient use efficiency, as the animals retained more and therefore excreted less. “This on-demand feeding offers several advantages, as it accounts for variation between individual animals and variation that will occur over time,” van Milgen adds. Finding Value in Variation The Feed-a-Gene team identified bioindicators of efficiency and robustness in individual animals by collecting information from saliva, urine, feces, and blood. The researchers also recorded feed intake and body weight, observed each animal’s behavior, and used mathematical and statistical models of biological processes to interpret the data.

The research team observed variation in the animals' efficiency as they recorded these different traits. "Rather than seeing variation as a nuisance, we should see the value in variation and diversity, and I think this is an important finding that Feed-a-Gene contributed to," van Milgen observes. Variation as a Decisive Factor The Feed-a-Gene team discovered the importance of observing, predicting, and controlling variation in alternative feeds and the genetic diversity of livestock. The researchers developed precision feeding and breeding techniques that van Milgen says will mark a turning point in the future of animal husbandry.