Publications by authors named "Dustin Pendell"

The burden of animal disease is widespread globally and is especially severe for developing countries dependent on livestock production. Ethiopia has the largest livestock population in Africa and the second-largest human population on the continent. Ethiopia is one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa; however, much of the population still lives in extreme poverty, and most households depend on agriculture.

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Objective: To evaluate a predictive model's ability to determine cattle mortality following first and second treatment for bovine respiratory disease and to understand the differences in net returns comparing predictive models to the status quo.

Methods: 2 boosted decision tree models were constructed, 1 using data known at first treatment and 1 with data known at second treatment. Then, the economic impact of each outcome (true positive, true negative, false positive, and false negative) was estimated using various market values to determine the net return per head of using the predictive model to determine which animals should be culled at treatment.

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Metaphylactic antibiotic use in feeder cattle is a common practice to control respiratory disease. Antimicrobial stewardship is important to ensure continued efficacy and to protect animal welfare. The objective of this study is to identify characteristics of cohorts of cattle that had not received metaphylaxis that would have benefited economically from the use of metaphylaxis.

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The objective of this research was to evaluate the effects of two implant programs and differing days-on-feed (DOF) on net returns of beef feedlot heifers using sensitivity analyses of key economic factors. Crossbred beef heifers [ = 10,583; initial weight 315 kg (± 20.1 SD)] were enrolled across three trials (one Kansas, two Texas feedlot trials).

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The National Beef Quality Audit () has been conducted regularly since 1991 to assess and benchmark quality in the U.S. beef industry, with the most recent iteration conducted in 2022.

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Understanding the global economic importance of farmed animals to society is essential as a baseline for decision making about future food systems. We estimated the annual global economic (market) value of live animals and primary production outputs, e.g.

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Animal diseases in production and subsistence environments have the potential to negatively affect consumers, producers, and economies as a whole. A growing global demand for animal sourced food requires safe and efficient production systems. Understanding the burden of animal disease and the distribution of burden throughout a value chain informs policy that promotes safe consumption and efficient markets, as well as providing more effective pathways for investment.

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A stochastic, individual animal systems simulation model describing U.S. beef cow-calf production was developed and parameterized to match typical U.

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Beef is a good source of several vitamins and minerals but data on the net contribution to the human diet is lacking. The objective was to quantify the net nutrient contribution of the beef supply chain to provide vitamins and minerals to the human diet. Beef cattle production parameters for the beef supply chain were as described by Baber et al.

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Animal husbandry decisions for feedlot cattle may be based on economic or financial impacts reported from livestock research trials comparing interventions such as health practices or performance technologies. Despite the importance of economic assessments to production management decisions, there are no consensus guidelines for their methods or reporting. Thus, we hypothesized that methods and reporting of economic assessments in the scientific literature are inconsistent.

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The objective of this study was to determine the impact of beef production systems utilizing additive combinations of growth promotant technologies on animal and carcass performance and environmental outcomes. Crossbred steer calves ( =120) were stratified by birth date, birth weight, and dam age and assigned randomly to one of four treatments: 1) no technology (NT; control), 2) antibiotic treated (ANT; NT plus therapeutic antibiotics and monensin and tylosin), 3) implant treated (IMP; ANT plus a series of 3 implants, and 4) beta-agonist treated (BA; IMP plus ractopamine-HCl for the last 30 d prior to harvest). Weaned steers were fed in confinement (dry lot) and finished in an individual feeding system to collect performance data.

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Foreign animal diseases can cause severe and lasting economic impacts to producers, directly and indirectly. Understanding producer investment cost structures can provide industry and policy makers better tools to encourage biosecurity adoption. Consistent with the literature, many factors can contribute to an individual operator's decision to invest in biosecurity based on individual characteristics, perception of disease likelihood, or expected losses associated with a disease event.

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Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is a common endemic disease among North American feedlot cattle. BRD can lead to significant economic losses for individual beef cattle feedlot producers through mortality and morbidity. With promising new management and technology research that could reduce BRD prevalence, this study evaluates the potential impacts of a reduction of BRD in the US beef cattle feedlot sector.

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This study evaluates the economic consequences of hypothetical foot-and-mouth disease releases from the future National Bio and Agro Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Using an economic framework that estimates the impacts to agricultural firms and consumers, quantifies costs to non-agricultural activities in the epidemiologically impacted region, and assesses costs of response to the government, we find the distribution of economic impacts to be very significant. Furthermore, agricultural firms and consumers bear most of the impacts followed by the government and the regional non-agricultural firms.

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This study examined the economic potential of no-tillage versus conventional tillage to sequester soil carbon by using two rates of commercial N fertilizer or beef cattle manure for continuous corn (Zea mays L.) production. Yields, input rates, field operations, and prices from an experiment were used to simulate a distribution of net returns for eight production systems.

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