VOA慢速英语:Improving 'Feed Efficiency' in Cattle

Animal feed is the biggest cost for most cattle producers. In the United States, the cost of hay, grains and other feed has risen sharply because of a drought. At the same time, wildfires this year burned more than a million hectares of North American rangeland.
对于大多数养牛者来说，动物饲料的成本最高。在美国，干草、谷物和其他饲料的成本因干旱骤增。同时，今年的野火烧毁了北美100多万公顷的牧场。

Jack Field raises cattle in the northwestern state of Washington. To save money, he made plans to truck his small herd of cows three hundred kilometers to feed on crop stubble. Crop stubble is what remains after crops have been harvested.
杰克•菲尔德在西北部的华盛顿州牧牛，为了省钱，他计划将小群牛运到300公里之外去吃秸秆残茬。秸秆残茬就是作物收获后的残留。

Moving his cattle from farm to farm costs money and time. But he says if he can avoid feeding them hay, he can still make a profit.
从农场之间运输牛群要费时费钱，但他说，如果能不用喂养干草，还能挣得一笔。

Tim DelCurto is a beef scientist at Oregon State University. He is working with ranchers and feedlot owners to help them find lower cost ways to feed cattle. He says cattle can eat things like grass-seed straw and distillers grains. These grains are left over from ethanol fuel production.
Tim DelCurto是美国俄勒冈州的一名牛肉科学家，他与牧场和饲养者合作，帮助他们寻找低成本养牛的办法。他说像草籽稻草和酒精粕都可以喂牛，它们是制作乙醇燃料的余料。

He says cattle can also eat cannery waste and items rejected by vegetable processors -- like misshapen green beans, carrots, even French fries.
他说，牛还可以吃罐头厂废料和种菜者的废料，比如畸形绿豆、胡萝卜，甚至炸土豆片。

"Now I think one of the unique attributes of beef cattle -- and sheep would fit this, too -- is that they can virtually digest anything."
“我认为菜牛的一个与众不同的特点就是什么都可以消化掉，羊也是如此。”

The rising cost of feed has led agricultural research universities to give greater attention to what experts call "feed efficiency." The University of Idaho has a cattle barn where sensors measure exactly how much food each cow eats.
养牛成本的增加使得农业研究大学更加关注专家所谓的“饲养效率”。爱达荷大学有个牛谷仓，感应器可以精确测量牛可以吃多少食物。

Professor Rod Hill says just because animals are growing at the same rate does not mean they eat the same amount of food. In fact the difference in how efficiently their bodies convert feed into meat, fat, bone and hide might be surprising.
罗德•希尔教授说，长得同样快的动物未必吃的量相同。事实上，不同动物将食物转化为肉、脂肪、谷歌和兽皮速度的差异令人吃惊。

"These animals are -- for your eye and mine -- they look quite homogenous. But the variation in intake for animals growing at the same rate is of the order of thirty-five percent."
“从你我的角度来看，这些动物看起来并无差别。但在成长速度相同的前提下，不同动物摄取食物的差异可高达35%。”

This is a case where humans and animals have something in common.
人类和动物有相同的一点：

"You know, we talk to people who say, 'All I have to do is, is, is look at the candy store and, and I put on three pounds.' We don't actually quantify it so precisely in humans, but we know in humans that some people can eat a little and they can put on quite a bit of weight and some people can eat a lot and hardly put on any weight. So it's a biological phenomenon."
“要知道，有人会说，‘我只是看着糖果店就增重了3磅。’衡量人就没有这么精确，我们知道对人类来说，有的人吃得很少就可以增重很多，而有的人吃很多却不怎么增肥。这是个生物现象。”

 Rod Hill says ranchers can use selective breeding to get the same growth with less feed. But he says not to focus too much on one thing, like reducing fat.
罗德•希尔说，饲养者用选种培育的方法，通过用较少的食物来获得同样的收获。但他说，不必在减少脂肪上多下功夫。

 "Less-efficient animals are slightly fatter, and more-efficient animals are slightly leaner. So we wouldn't want to just go after efficiency and then forget about the body composition. So, we wouldn't want animals to become too lean, so that might reduce marbling in the product, especially in the quality cuts where the profit is."
“长得慢的动物会较肥，长得快的动物会较瘦。所以不要仅仅追求效率而忽略率身体结构。所以，我们不希望动物长得太瘦，这样会减少肉上的脂肪纹路，尤其对利润丰厚的切割质量而言。”