Technical Note: Assessment of a Novel Method to Measure Water Intake in Beef Cattle and Its Application to Determining Dry Matter Intake

Improving the efficiency, economic viability, and environmental sustainability of beef cattle production requires tools to identify resource-efficient animals. Validated tools to measure, monitor, and verify individual feed and water intake are needed. Here, we verify the validity of the Vytelle In-Pen Weighing Position to passively collect daily full body weights and assess the use of an integrated flow meter with a commercial waterer as a tool to measure daily water intake. This study involved 103 bulls (40 Charolais and 63 Angus) and 54 heifers (25 Charolais and 29 Angus). These animals were fed in a facility with feed intake nodes, In-Pen Weighing, and metered waterers. Body weights collected on the chute scale and total water usage measured by a residential water meter were used to evaluate body weight and water intake measured at the In-Pen Weighing Positions. We confirmed that In-Pen Weighing is highly correlated to chute weighing (Spearman's correlation coefficient, ρ = 0.99, <i>p</i> < 0.0001). We observed high correlation of total water use measured at the In-Pen Weighing units with the facility's total water use (ρ = 0.9999, <i>p</i> < 0.0001). This validates the accuracy of the in-pen water meters, but not the precision of applying water consumption to individual animals. The use of such passive monitoring equipment has the potential to help improve the sustainability of animal agriculture.