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GAN Lab Background In The Beginning The Grazingland Animal Nutrition Lab under the Rangeland Ecology and Management Department of Texas A&M University began solely as a research-based operation to study animal nutrition and monitor grazing behavior. The Ranching Systems Group at Texas A&M University began in 1988 addressing the animal nutritional monitoring issue using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) that allowed predictions of dietary crude protein (%CP) and digestible organic matter (%DOM) on a dry matter basis as well as fecal phosphorus and nitrogen. After several years of research, the practical application of NIRS/fecal monitoring became increasingly evident , so the group decided to make this service available to the public. In addition, Dr. Jerry Stuth, GAN Lab Director, has incorporated a nutritional balance profile (NUTBAL Pro) software program. Since 1994, the GAN Lab's primary mission has been to provide the livestock industry with a rapid assessment method for dietary crude protein and digestible organic matter via fecal analysis. Currently, the GAN Lab performs nutritional profiling on livestock such as cattle, goats, and sheep and on wildlife such as bison, elk and deer. These methods are in use throughout the U.S. and the world. Analysts stress that livestock producers are facing a market environment that requires greater attention to production costs. Supplements and stored forages represent a major expenditure in livestock production. Greater cost efficiency can be gained through strategic feeding programs involving "feeding smart...not more of less, necessarily." The NIRS/NUTBAL Pro system is a tool for producers, managers, and consultants to make informed feeding and grazing decisions. Our challenge...to provide the livestock and wildlife industry with means to monitor nutrient concentration in the animal's diet, determine if current diet is sufficient to meet performance goals, and provide this information in a timely manner.
THE PROCESS The NIRS process involves exposing a dried, ground fecal sample to light energy. The intensity of reflectance is measured across several hundred wavelengths in the near infrared band. Reflectance is influenced by number and type of chemical bonds in the feces. Primary wavelengths in prediction equations appear to be associated with the fiber, alkane and microbial fractions of the feces. Known diet samples were matched with feces of intact cows grazing a wide variety of forages. These diet:fecal pairs were used to develop a reference data set to build prediction or calibration equations. Fecal equation diet quality predictions were then validated against herds with known diet qualities. Equations developed to date appear to be highly reliable across a broad spectrum of forage types. The GAN Lab team view their prediction equations and the NUTBAL Pro software as works-in-progress. They strive to improve rangeland nutritional monitoring capabilities by incorporating additional diet:fecal pairs and the latest research regarding grazing animals. This attitude has lead to research into new application of NIRS and to an array of ongoing validation studies.
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