Reminiscing about the past, thinking about the future!

I had a call from a good mate that I use to work with when I was involved in research. He was a very good stockman, chief fixer and resource finder, and in his 70’s now. He was ringing to ask me about oesophageal fistulae! What’s a oesophageal fistula I hear you say! Well it’s a method of collecting food that an animal has chewed and swallowed. It is a surgical intervention which implants a port into the oesophagus (side of neck) and has a plug that can be removed and use to collect the swallowed material. These are used mainly to study feed intake and digestion characteristics.

Anyway, he couldn’t recall why this work was being done and for the life of him didn’t know why this had popped into his thoughts some 30-40 years later. For the record, I was not involved in the work when it was done and have not actually done anything with these kinds of fistulae. Anyway, we got into a discussion about why it was probably being done. Diet selection, feed intake rates, the amount of chewing and grinding of the plant or grain material were things we discussed.

We then jumped across to rumen fistulae, which is where essential a port is surgically implanted into the side of the animal to be able to access the rumen. You can literally unscrew the lid and put your hand in and extract rumen material! It was all a lot of reminiscing about all the hard work and not so nice jobs that had to be done, but also a reflection that we would do it all again just because we learnt so much and worked with great people.

The other reflection was that all this work, including the not so tasteful fistulae, faecal collections and endless harvesting of grass samples was all undertaken to improve our knowledge and models of how animals eat, digest, maintain, grow and reproduce. Although a lot of this foundation work was conducted during the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, it is still in use today. In the eighties and nineties, a lot of the work on the digestibility of forages and grains (fistula and collection of faeces) was to develop mathematical models and methods for rapid assessment of forages and grains for their feed value.

For decades, assessing the nutritive value of forages and grains relied heavily on wet chemistry techniques. These methods, while accurate, were labour intensive, time consuming, and required skilled technicians.

One of the most pivotal contributions was Peter Van Soest’s detergent fibre system, developed in the 1960s. He introduced the Neutral Detergent Fibre (NDF) and Acid Detergent Fibre (ADF) methods to quantify the fibrous components of plants, which strongly correlate with digestibility. This helped distinguish between cell wall components like cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, all critical to understanding forage quality.

To estimate digestibility, labs used in-vitro techniques (simulating rumen fermentation in the lab using rumen fluid) or in situ nylon bag techniques, where feed samples were placed in mesh bags and incubated in the rumen of live animals. These provided estimates of the digestibility of dry matter, crude protein, and the estimation of energy value.

Wet chemical methods also determined crude protein (via Kjeldahl or Dumas combustion methods), energy (via bomb calorimetry), ether extract, ash, and minerals. These methods formed the basis of feed analysis for decades, but turnaround times were considerably longer than current methods.

A notable development of this work was the use of Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIR) to determine the digestibility of feeds. NIR measures the way a sample reflects light in the near-infrared spectrum. Different organic molecules (like proteins, fibres, starches) absorb and reflect light differently, creating a spectral “fingerprint” for the sample. Initially developed for grain quality testing, NIR spread to forage analysis in the late 1980s and 1990s. NIR technology became popular because it could analyse multiple components (protein, fibre, moisture, etc.) from a single scan, with results in under a minute.

Once calibrated, NIR could process thousands of samples at a fraction of the cost of wet chemistry. NIR’s accuracy depends heavily on robust calibration datasets built from wet chemistry references, and it can struggle with novel or highly variable sample types. Modern feed labs typically use NIR as the primary method, backed by regular calibration against wet chemistry. Today, both methods are used, NIR handles routine work, while wet chemistry ensures precision and maintains calibration standards.

A lot of the development of the FeedTest service was conducted at the DPI in Hamilton, Victoria. I just happened to work here when FeedTest was at full operation, and it was an excellent resource for research projects where we could walk up the corridor and submit a sample and have it back within a couple of days! At that time, DPI was bustling with different beef, sheep, pasture, soils and farm systems research. The Lifetime Wool project, the underpinning research project that stimulated the development of the Lifetime Ewe Management training program, was in full swing at this time along with other lamb and beef projects.

Unfortunately for the sheep and lamb industry, 20 years later there is currently not much research activity in western Victoria. Most of work is confined to on-farm R&D which is undertaken by interstate organisations. This on-farm R&D has its benefits but is not without challenges in research quality and the scale required to achieve meaningful results. I think R&D is critical to underpin the continual improvement and development of the industry, but that could be a biased view given my history.

However, what is fact is that Victoria is a powerhouse in lamb production on the national scale. The Glenelg Hopkins Natural Resource Management Region (NRM) in the heart of Western Victoria is ranked number one for sheep number, probably the highest density of sheep in Australia given its relative land area. Victoria currently produces approximately 50% of national lamb production. Victoria, and in particular western Victoria, are large contributors to the national sheep production and to the Victorian economy.

So what is the future of research and development in Victoria? Does it matter if it is not done where the majority of production is undertaken? Is R&D actually needed to be undertaken by industry bodies and government agencies, or should this just be an activity of commercial companies that supply your products and services? Is R&D actually required at all? Let us know what you think.

Want to keep up to date with Thrive Agri Services activities?

Submit your details below.