Our overall objective is to enhance the efficiency, quality and consistency of our clients beef production. FHMS incorporates the results of its studies into computerized economic models, to assess the cost-benefits of the technology and products in question. This allows us to provide clients with definitive information on the use of our research results.

Live Testing Our research is conducted under commercial conditions in all sectors of the beef industry, including pastures, cow/calf operations, backgrounders, feedlots and processors. Discovering Innovative Applications We at FHMS often find innovative uses for the products and technologies we study. For example, while a drug may be known to have a prescribed effect in a laboratory test, the pharmaceutical company might not know all of the real-life circumstances in which the drug could be useful. FHMS can evaluate drugs in different situations, with different types of cattle, and a new drug may also be made part of a larger treatment program. Ground-breaking Research Here are some of our more important research results:

• Identification and documentation of Histophilus somni (formerly Haemophilus somnus) as a major cause of feedlot disease
• Establishment of the case definition for undifferentiated fever/bovine respiratory disease (UF/BRD) and determining the economic impact of the disease in feedlot production
• Development of prophylactic and therapeutic regimes for the control of UF/BRD
• Definition of innovative low-dose, delayed administration and implant stacking avoidance strategies to optimize the use of hormonal growth implants
• Determination of the cost-effectiveness of parasite control programs
• Definition of feeding strategies for western Canada based on commercial feedlot field trial data, rather than theoretical National Research Council calculations
• Definition of the role of bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) virus in feedlot disease and developing data-based strategies to control the effects of BVD virus in feedlot production

  Research-driven Innovation  

• Development and introduction of a chute-side, computerized, individual animal data recording system for day-to-day feedlot operation
• Use of applied epidemiology to control disease in day-to-day feedlot operations and to establish an ongoing animal health database for surveillance, monitoring, and benchmarking of animal health
• Use of economic modeling and data-based decision making for all decisions that affect feedlot production
• Development of a commercial feedlot replicated-pen field trial model capable of withstanding peer-reviewed scientific scrutiny, to generate relevant data to feed into our data-based decision making and economic modeling processes
• Application of digital imaging techniques for clinical and postmortem findings, to allow for internal quality control between veterinarians, expansion of the distant site feedlot production consulting model, and educational purposes
• Development of marketing opportunities for slaughter animals that enable producers to adopt specific production strategies to optimize targeted carcass characteristics

  FHMS Animal Care Committee The FHMS ACC will be responsible for ensuring ethical animal research and teaching use within the spirit of the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) guidelines and provincial legislation and will evaluate the care and welfare aspects of all proposed animal research and teaching use by FHMS.