[00:00.00]From VOA Learning English, 
[00:02.37]this is the Agriculture Report in Special English.
[00:06.32]Animal feed is the biggest cost for most cattle producers. 
[00:11.73]In the United States, the cost of hay, 
[00:14.79]grains and other feed has risen sharply because of a drought. 
[00:20.54]At the same time, wildfires this year burned 
[00:25.39]more than a million hectares of North American rangeland.
[00:29.85]Jack Field raises cattle in the northwestern state of Washington. 
[00:35.20]To save money, he made plans to truck his small herd of cows 
[00:41.71]three hundred kilometers to feed on crop stubble. 
[00:45.80]Crop stubble is what remains after crops have been harvested.
[00:50.87]Moving his cattle from farm to farm costs money and time. 
[00:56.52]But he says if he can avoid feeding them hay, he can still make a profit.
[01:03.02]Tim DelCurto is a beef scientist at Oregon State University. 
[01:08.92]He is working with ranchers and feedlot owners 
[01:13.38]to help them find lower cost ways to feed cattle. 
[01:17.93]He says cattle can eat things like grass-seed straw and distillers grains. 
[01:26.38]These grains are left over from ethanol fuel production.
[01:31.58]He says cattle can also eat cannery waste 
[01:36.03]and items rejected by vegetable processors -- 
[01:39.98]like misshapen green beans, carrots, even French fries.
[01:45.47]"Now I think one of the unique attributes of beef cattle -- 
[01:49.68]and sheep would fit this, too -- is that they can virtually digest anything."
[01:53.88]The rising cost of feed has led agricultural research universities 
[01:59.64]to give greater attention to what experts call "feed efficiency." 
[02:05.09]The University of Idaho has a cattle barn 
[02:09.39]where sensors measure exactly how much food each cow eats.
[02:14.94]Professor Rod Hill says just because animals are growing at the same rate 
[02:21.24]does not mean they eat the same amount of food. 
[02:25.30]In fact the difference in how efficiently their bodies convert feed into meat, 
[02:32.11]fat, bone and hide might be surprising.
[02:36.85]"These animals are -- for your eye and mine -- 
[02:40.07]they look quite homogenous. But the variation in intake 
[02:44.82]for animals growing at the same rate is of the order of thirty-five percent."
[02:49.76]This is a case where humans and animals have something in common.
[02:54.77]"You know, we talk to people who say, 
[02:57.17]'All I have to do is, is, is look at the candy store and, and I put on three pounds.' 
[03:01.52]And so we don't actually quantify it so precisely in humans, 
[03:06.17]we know in humans that some people can eat a little 
[03:09.37]and they can put on quite a bit of weight 
[03:11.43]and some people can eat a lot and hardly put on any weight. 
[03:13.93]So it's a biological phenomenon."
[03:16.33]Rod Hill says ranchers can use selective breeding 
[03:21.18]to get the same growth with less feed. 
[03:24.08]But he says not to focus too much on one thing, like reducing fat.
[03:30.92]"Less-efficient animals are slightly fatter, 
[03:34.16]and more-efficient animals are slightly leaner. 
[03:36.76]So we wouldn't want to just go after efficiency 
[03:39.31]and then forget about the body composition. 
[03:41.86]So, we wouldn't want animals to become too lean, 
[03:44.77]so that might reduce marbling in the product, 
[03:47.51]especially in the quality cuts where the profit is."