Cal Poly Bull Test Sees Improvements in Feed Efficiency with Recent 2023 Sale

By Lauren McEwen

Escuela Ranch, Cal Poly’s 5,000-acre bucolic rangeland north of campus is the site of a tried-and-true program unique to the university, the Cal Poly Bull Test.

The enduring program is proven by 67 consecutive years of service, hundreds of student participants and thousands of bulls sold to ranchers across the country. Now, with a new feeding system in hand thanks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Capacity Building grant, the Bull Test is adding a contemporary element to its longtime program.

Each year in April, beef producers bring their select bull calves to the unit, where 120 animals are placed in the care of students and program director Assistant Professor Zach McFarlane. In his sixth year of teaching at Cal Poly, McFarlane brings a fresh perspective and reignited purpose to the program. 

“The Bull Test is a program centered around service,” McFarlane said. “The local ranching community sets aside their money and time to specifically come and support our bull sale, so we strive to give back to the beef community through this enterprise.”

Having obtained $750,000 from a Capacity Building Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, McFarlane and his students are seeing the first fruits from the funds, now in the form of advanced feeding mechanisms which have a multifaceted approach. According to the USDA, the Capacity Building Grant aims to develop infrastructure to carry out agricultural research, enhance faculty engagement and increase the quality of graduates entering the agriculture industry, among other opportunities.

The new wireless feed system, called SmartFeed, provides a detailed analysis of a bull’s daily consumption, measuring the change in weight of feed and noting how often a bull comes to the trough. All this data is updated every second, uploaded to the cloud and is entirely sustained by solar power and exclusive internet routers to run the system. As a bonus, the solar panels serve a dual purpose of providing energy to the new system and providing shade to the bulls in otherwise barren landscape.

“Not only are our students capable of learning more about the feed intake importance for nutritional needs, but they're able to catch health issues sooner, making the initial symptoms clearer as to what might be going on,” said student nutrition manager third-year agricultural science major Ashley Crabtree. “I have been able to expand my own experience from the Bull Test and C-Lock bins into using that new-found knowledge on health issues to better the Cal Poly herd and catch issues sooner than they would've been.”

By October, the bulls are sold to local and national prospects at the longstanding annual sale. The team of students and staff saw a measurable positive impact that the SmartFeed bins had on the program. “The feed efficiency was a huge draw for buyers to the sale,” McFarlane said. 

He said that there is high pressure to produce feed-efficient animals. A bull that has a genetic characteristic to consume less feed and water and put on more weight is desirable, especially as resources for beef producers becomes restricted. It boosts profitability while also increasing the sustainability of the industry. A bull will transfer 50 percent of its characteristics to offspring, which will have a “profound impact” on the future of a herd, said McFarlane, making the efficacy of the new feed system an integral part of the Bull Test.

The Smart Feed system is manufactured by a company called C-Lock Inc., which also produces other similar “smart” products such as water troughs and methane burners. The feed system is easy to clean, move and transfer from one location to another if necessary, and is much lighter, compared to the traditional cement troughs.

McFarlane shared that not all was smooth sailing when it came to acquiring the new feed system. The beef facilities had to adapt to the new technology, which required additional infrastructure, like installing Wi-Fi that the feeders could exclusively connect to. Also, with the abundance of information the students receive from the data being recorded to the cloud, there is a danger of overwhelming stakeholders with too much data. Students then sift through the data to provide relevant information to beef producers regarding bull health and feed efficiency.

The desire to improve the service, such as marketing to a broader audience and out of state interests is prevalent, as Cal Poly’s legacy has impacted producers across the country. The local community is a particularly large stakeholder with education and research regarding beef production, but more funding is needed to improve the facilities and caliber of the annual Bull Test sale to meet the needs of producers.

“Understanding the challenges that beef producers face and how they differ depending on where producers operate is at the core of the Cal Poly Bull Test,” McFarlane said. The grant funding is ensuring that the program advances the quality of care and production of bulls through research, outreach to the community and educating beef producers.
 

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