66 Australian decision support tools for prediction of ruminant performance: Current tools and potential applications

Abstract Australia is one of the largest beef and lamb producers in the world, with a wide diversity of grazing systems ranging from intensive, integrated crop-livestock systems in the temperate south to the extensive, low-input beef systems of the hot, arid rangelands of north and central Australia. To help understand and predict animal performance across these diverse production systems, Australian researchers have built decision support tools (DSTs) specifically for these grazing conditions. Some examples of DSTs designed for Australian ruminant production systems include the GRAZPLAN suite of software models, the Crop and Livestock Enterprise Model (CLEM), DairyMod, BreedCow, and the Drought and Supplementary Feeding Calculator (DAFSC), and many of these include a biophysical model based on the Australian ruminant feeding standards. Widely used for a range of industry and research applications, these tools are key to helping the livestock industry improve the environmental and economic sustainability of livestock production in the face of a changing climate. Historically DSTs have been used by producers to predict animal performance for a given feedbase, allowing for prediction of short-term (≤ 30 d) performance and optimizing supplemental feeding. Over time, the use of DSTs has shifted and expanded, and they are increasingly being used in tactical forecasting to help explore the impacts of different management strategies in response to variation in seasonal feed, climate, and rain forecasts. Because these tools can represent a wide range of temperate and tropical pasture species and animal genotypes, they can be used to explore the effects of using different breeds and species to respond to climate change, or to explore the effects of genetic selection within herds. Tools that use a systems approach to modelling, such as GRAZPLAN, CLEM, and Breedcow, can also be used to help producers navigate sustainability credentialling, compare the effects of management strategies on environmental sustainability and economic sustainability, as well as to explore the broader impacts of on-farm management decisions in terms of sustainability and efficiency at the regional or food system level. While these tools were developed for Australian production systems, many of these have international parallels, such as beef and sheep grazing systems in the semi-arid rangeland of the western USA and central Queensland and New South Wales; sheep grazing in the Mediterranean rangelands of California and the southern coast of Western Australia; and the temperate pasture-based diary regions of Tasmania, New Zealand, and Ireland. Because of these similarities, the ability of these models to flexibly represent diverse production systems gives them strong potential for use by industry and research at a broader scale by international audiences.