With the continuous improvement of global breeding level and the continuous development and progress of breeding equipment, the amount of data generated by animal husbandry activities is also increasing. At the same time, the global climate environment is constantly changing, such as the intensification of the greenhouse effect and the occurrence of extreme weather, which have brought certain challenges to livestock farming. How to define data, collect data, and use data to improve animal resilience and welfare to cope with the impact of environmental change and improve the production performance of livestock is currently a hot topic in the livestock industry.
From May 21 to May 26, 2023, the editorial board of "Cattle Breeding" was invited to Toledo, Spain to participate in the 46th ICAR Conference, which was also the first time that Chinese journalists were invited to report.
Under the theme "Building Resilience: Transforming the Future of Diverse Livestock Systems", this edition was co-hosted by the International Commission on Animal Records (ICAR) and the Royal Spanish Society of Pureblood Breeding (RFEAGAS).
Wang Jingjun, deputy editor of "Raising Cattle"
The conference invited about 350 scientists, technicians, farm and government representatives from 35 countries (or regions) including the United States, Canada, Ireland, Spain and New Zealand to discuss hot topics such as effective use of livestock data, balanced breeding, climate improvement and other hot topics, display the latest relevant research results, and share advanced management concepts and technologies.
At the conference, Esperanza Orellana, Director of the Agricultural Market of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Francisco Martínez Arroyo, Minister of Agriculture/Water/Rural Development of the Castilla La Mancha Region, Spain, Agapito Portillo Sánchez, Deputy Minister of ICAR, Daniel Lefebvre, President of ICAR and José Luis Urquijo, President of RFEAGAS y Narváez addressed the conference separately.
Speech at the conference
Keynote Speech: Exploring the future of the industry together
The conference invited Pablo Bernardos, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of Spain, Nicholas Friggens, National Institute of Agriculture, Food and Environment of France, and Peter Amer of AbacusBio to give keynote speeches aimed at describing the current situation of the industry and analyzing industry issues.
Pablo introduced the distribution and importance of the Spanish livestock industry, the basic status quo of the industry, the socio-economic environment affecting the transformation of the industry, and the specific support regulations in Spain: the opportunities and challenges faced by Spain's diverse livestock production system and the future of the transformation.
In 2022, the output value of animal husbandry in Spain will be about 25.5 billion euros (about 194.6 billion yuan), accounting for 41% of the total agricultural output value, and the breeding scale and output value between various livestock breeds vary greatly, of which the output value of cattle accounts for about 16.3%, and the average yield of dairy cows is 7.3t.
The proportion of small-scale pastures of all breeds in Spain is decreasing year by year, and large-scale pastures are increasing year by year, mainly in response to the current situation of Spanish population concentration and the changes in demand brought about by future global population growth.
Spain's self-sufficiency rate for all types of livestock products is above 100%, of which the top three livestock breeds are pigs (214%), sheep (150.9%) and cattle (117%). As a result, Spain's livestock products are self-sufficient and need to be exported in the future to create value.
In the future, Spanish farms should carry out corresponding breeding activities based on the perspective of animal health, animal welfare and environmental impact, operate efficiently under the premise of complying with and using relevant Spanish regulations, establish a traceability system, and effectively transform and upgrade to meet the needs of potential consumers around the world.
Nicholas and Peter introduced the definition, importance and future potential of livestock resilience from the perspectives of research and industry, respectively, and believed that it is the goal and direction of future livestock breeding.
Resilience of domestic animals refers to their ability to cope with changes in their environment. In the future, livestock will encounter harsher, greater variability, and extreme conditions that are more prone to breeding, in addition to coping with fluctuations in raw material nutrients and pathogenic bacteria. If livestock can cope with these situations while still maintaining stable production performance to create considerable benefits, it will contribute to the sustainable development of the entire industry.
Taking dairy cows as an example, the current common breeding index only considers single traits such as production and health or simple combinations, while adaptability can comprehensively consider traits such as longevity and lifetime yield. At present, the development of digital intelligence in the dairy industry has made more and more data can be effectively used, and relevant model studies have proved that resilience is heritable and can improve cow lifetime efficiency, and the analysis results also show that the higher the proportion of nutrients allocated by cows in the herd stage (from birth to elimination) for body growth and body storage, the stronger the health and reproductive performance of cows, the better their longevity, and the higher the lifetime efficiency of cows. In the future, in livestock breeding, adaptive traits should be used to comprehensively consider the environment, nutrition, production and other conditions to promote its sustainable and efficient development.
Roundtable Forum: Accurate analysis of hot issues
At present, more and more data is generated in different production links in the pasture, and the use of data is becoming more and more frequent, and the use of data is not only for farm managers. Although a large amount of health, management and other data is collected by the rancher and then used for decision support, at the same time, more and more manufacturers will collect data from the rancher's equipment, process and analyze it by the algorithm of the company's server, and then provide the rancher's subsequent results.
Who should own the data and results involved in the above process, and how to define the ultimate ownership and use rights of data at different stages, is one of the hot topics in the European livestock industry. Representatives from different universities and companies had an in-depth discussion on this topical issue at the roundtable forum of this year's ICAR conference.
The experts first started from the definition and standardization of data, discussed what data should be collected and what type of data should be collected in this process, and do a good job of traceability in order to clarify the ownership issue. Subsequently, from the perspective of the company and the ranch, they discussed the work of the entire data utilization process, such as the collection of raw data, technology and algorithm development work, etc., different objects have different inputs and concerns, and should clarify their respective work positioning and goals, and reach a consensus, in order to better divide the use rights and promote the common progress of the industry.
Share achievements and promote communication and progress
Focusing on hot topics such as precision animal husbandry, sustainable animal husbandry, and germplasm resource utilization, this conference opened a total of 12 sub-venues, aiming to display the latest research progress in animal reproduction related fields, share research results, and exchange progress together.
Track 1: Motivation and Challenges for Implementing Data Logging with New Initiatives
Track 2: Research progress on monitoring animal welfare at the individual and group level
Track 3: Building Resilience to Climate Change: Coping Strategies
Track 4: Climate Change Mitigation Strategies
Session 5: Advances in Precision Livestock Technology and Data Utilization
Track 6: Advances and challenges in small ruminant recording and sampling techniques
Track 7: Recent advances in ICAR's use of mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIR).
Track 8: Resilience and agro-ecological transformation of small ruminants and camels
Track 9: Using Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID) Technology in the National Identification System
Track 10: Brian Wickham Youth Exchange Program: Dairy Cattle Crossbreeding, Sensors in Welfare Monitoring, MIR, Sustainability Trait
Session 11: Recent Advances in Genomic Assessment of New Traits
Session 12: Introduction to Breeding Associations and ICAR Quality Certification
Note: The editorial office of "Cattle Breeding" will also compile special reports for the wonderful reports of some venues, so stay tuned.
In addition, a total of 10 sponsors, 24 exhibitors and 5 major cooperation departments participated in and prepared for the conference and exhibition. At the exhibition, various enterprises exhibited the latest milk quality testing equipment, ear tags and identification equipment, farm intelligent port connection equipment, and the latest genomic detection technology of breeding concepts to promote exchanges and progress.
Deepen practice and develop the industry together
In addition to on-site academic exchanges, the conference also set up dairy testing laboratories and cattle farm tours in the Castilla La Mancha area in the south of Madrid, allowing participants to understand the process of milk production in Spain.
The dairy testing laboratory in the Castilla La Mancha area of Spain is equipped with advanced milk quality testing equipment, which can test 800,000 samples throughout the year, including goat milk, milk and other samples, including milk fat rate, milk protein rate, lactose, casein, somatic cell count, antibiotics and urea. In addition to milk samples from individual animals, the laboratory regularly collects samples of large cans of milk for testing to ensure the quality of the milk. A third-party test report will be issued for all test contents to ensure the credibility of the results.
Rosado Hontanilla Dairy Farm is a typical smart farm in Spain. The current farming model of the farm is intensive free-pen rearing, and the mattress material is sand.
The total number of cows currently in stock is 378, which is close to the average of 319 in the region. The farm has 3 barns, of which 239 lactating cattle are kept in 1 barn, and the remaining two barns are for calves as well as reserve cattle, dry milk and perinatal cattle.
The farm originally used a 2x10 fishbone milking parlor with four employees and an average output of 40kg/d. After being transformed into one base station and four milking stations in 2021, GEA's Automated Milking Robot System (AMS) can milk about 30-40 cows per hour, without the need for specific employees to be responsible for this task, allowing more time to complete other tasks, increasing the average output to 46kg/d, and improving the efficiency of farm staff and milk production.
In addition, while working, the milking robot will collect milk sample data in real time in accordance with the standards stipulated by ICAR, and generate reports according to the data results to achieve the role of timely warning.
At present, the dairy cattle in the farm are fed a unified diet, but AMS will accurately calculate the amount of supplementary feeding concentrate according to the physiological conditions such as milk production and lactation days of individual cattle and carry out supplementary feeding at the time of milking, so as to achieve the purpose of precise feeding and increase production.
Floor plan of the lactating barn
Milking robots
Editor's note: In previous years, affected by the epidemic, there were few exchange activities with foreign countries, and I could only understand the situation and research progress abroad through online or articles. This time I went abroad for a meeting and exchange, learned some new research content, and found that in fact, the research concepts in data mining and utilization, genetic selection and breeding at home and abroad are similar, and the research is in line with international standards.
In addition, foreign counterparts have also been paying more attention to China's situation and hope to establish more exchanges and cooperation with China. International exchanges are indeed very important, and new ideas and new ways of thinking can be injected in order to have physical and chemical reactions occur and promote the common progress of the industry and scientific research.
I myself have a good understanding of the dairy farming model in Ireland, which is mainly based on grazing models. But this trip to Spain made me understand that in Europe, some countries such as Spain and Italy will also adopt the intensive house feeding model, and the scale can reach hundreds. But they will pay more attention to intelligent and efficient breeding, automatic milking robot system has always been the equipment they advocate, and have also been developing a perfect farm data management system, handheld equipment to assist farm management. Whether this model is the future development direction of small and medium-sized pastures in China is also worth considering.
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Introduction to ICAR
The International Commission on Animal Records (ICAR) is an international non-governmental organization (INGO) that aims to provide an open and secure platform for livestock producers around the world to share, learn and interact. Through its range of activities, ICAR strives to promote livestock production globally, improving its sustainability and efficiency. Stay tuned for the 47th ICAR Conference in Bled, Slovenia, from 19 May to 24 May 2024.
Introduction to RFEAGAS
The Royal Spanish Society of Purebred Breeding (RFEAGAS) currently has 115 member organizations (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses and other species) covering 96% of purebred livestock in Spain, all officially recognized by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) or the Ministry of Agriculture of the Spanish Autonomous Communities. RFEAGAS also actively participates in the regular meetings of MAPA, which acts as an umbrella organization to represent, support and protect the interests of purebred livestock breeders in Spain before public institutions. RFEAGAS works with public institutions, universities, research centers, etc. for the conservation, breeding, management and sustainable use of Spanish livestock breeds. RFEAGAS also plays an important international role in Latin American countries, managing the General Secretariat of the Ibero-American Federation of Creole Breeds (FIRC).