Abeles on cutting edge of bull testing technology

Owner and operator of the Green Springs Bull Test Station, Kent Abele stands in front of one of several GrowSafe feed bunks which electronically identifies each bull and measures, within 10 grams, the amount of feed in the bunk before, during and after the bull feeds. --Rusty Murry/Herald-Tribune

Kent Abele had no idea when he worked at the University of Missouri bull test facility during his college years that he would someday own and operate the second largest test station in the country. But that is exactly what this Vernon County native does. He -- along with his wife Kathy and son Cole -- runs the Green Springs Bull Test Center.

Green Springs began testing bulls in 1999 when the Abeles saw what they "thought then was a niche market," said Abele. We fed 56 bulls that first year "using a bucket and hand scales, because we had no idea if it would work or not," he said. Now, in its 10th year of testing bulls in Vernon County, Green Springs is on the cutting edge of bull testing technology.

Abele has seen most of the different systems and methods for testing bulls and had to travel quite a bit and talk to a lot of people before he ran into the system he now uses. Manufactured by an outfit in Canada, the GrowSafe system is advanced, high tech stuff. Using a radio frequency identification tag just like those used in the cattle industry for age and source identification and country of origin labeling, the GrowSafe system takes it one step further.

The feed bunks in the system have an antenna embedded in the rim which creates an electronic halo that identifies the bull that is using the bunk at each feeding. "It's similar to the system that Wal-Mart uses when they scan a price." When the bull puts his head in the bunk, the system begins to weigh the feed at the rate of eight times per second before the bull ever takes a bite. Accurate to within 10 grams, the system can measure how many pounds the bull eats and can even measure how much the animal takes per bite. Speaking of the whole system, Abele said, "It collects millions of data points per day."

Each bunk has its own data board for data gathering. The data is relayed by hard wire to a board which then transmits it wirelessly to the main computer in the barn and that machine, in turn, transmits it, via a secure link, to the University of Missouri where it is analyzed. The resulting information is known as Residual Feed Intake. In layman's terms, that means how many pounds of feed consumed to how many pounds of weight gained.

Cattle producers are looking for animals that eat 18 pounds per day and gain three pounds instead of eating 20 and gaining three. This equates to a substantial saving in feed costs if a stockman can produce a herd that makes the most of the feed it is given. Abele said, "we have learned from the last few years of working with RFI that those traits are inheritable, about 40 percent inheritable; and we know that we can select for low RFI without adversely affecting any other trait."

As the first test station in the country to use this system, the folks at Green Springs have also found that the animals that gain well aren't huge. That is also something cattlemen look for in a herd sire. Abele did say that there is no most efficient breed, "but we're finding bulls in every breed that are extremely efficient and bulls in every breed that are not.

However, Abele sees a change in that in the future. "Over time we will make progress; we will start to isolate bloodlines within breeds that are more efficient." The rising price of feed makes this very important knowledge for a beef producer to have. "The astute cow/calf man is demanding as much information on his breeding stock as he can get," Abele said. That kind of information gives the American stockman a bit of an edge. And even though the U.S. and Canada are well ahead of the rest of the world in high tech agriculture, "They're gonna catch up," said Abele.

Bull test stations in the past have had a bad reputation. Some of them would test a bull but by the time the animal was through the program, they were often fat or had some other health problem. Abele took that into account when he designed his operation. His goal never was "to be the largest bull test station, just the best." He made his pens large, about three and a half acres each. He made sure they are well drained. He also limits the number of bulls to each pen and keeps some cows nearby so the bulls get a workout checking on them. He said the modern test station is much different than the station of just thirty years ago.

Many of the breed associations are taking notice of the new test stations and the fact that there is a lot to be gained from having bulls tested. Green Springs conducts several different tests on the bulls and measures just about everything on them that you can measure. The mindset of the modern rancher is that you can't know too much about your stock. If they have their bulls tested at Green Springs, they will certainly get the information they want and need to produce a better herd of cattle. Abele said it best when he said, "The animals that come out of this test facility, you will know more about the bulls that come out of here than you will anywhere in the United States; that's any herd, anywhere, anybody!"