After years of planning and construction, the new Vytelle barn at the Umstead Beef Unit in Butner has reached an important milestone. The first research project to utilize the barn is officially underway, meaning the barn now has cattle in it for the first time.
The cows were moved into the barn in late April. That moment marks the beginning of a new chapter for the station, and it highlights a broader push by the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to modernize research and bring advanced technology to its field operations.
Visually, the barn is more of an open-air shelter structure with a high metal roof, steel beams and corral areas leading to water and feeding troughs or “bunks,” with a central concrete working space. At the heart of the barn is a Vytelle system designed to track how efficiently cattle convert feed into weight gain, which is a key factor in the future of livestock production.
“The whole design of this Vytelle barn is to measure animals’ feed intake and then their weight gain,” said Thomas Cobb, the station’s superintendent. “Basically what we’re ultimately looking at is feed efficiency data — how much feed did it take to put “X” amount of pounds on this animal and who did it the most efficiently. That’s the name of the game.”
How the system works
The Vytelle system uses electronic ear tags and sensors built into feed bunks and water stations to monitor each animal individually.
“When an animal walks up [to the feed bunk] and sticks their head in, it has an electronic ear tag that measures what animal it is and how much feed is being taken out,” explained Cobb. “So as that animal is consuming feed, [the system recognizes which] animal it is, this is how much they’re eating; this is how many times it’s been to the bunk today — all this sort of stuff.
“The water system is very similar as well, except the water has the capability to weigh the animal. So Vytelle’s getting constant weigh data on the animals as well as feed-intake data.”
All of the data collection is automatic or “passive” as NCDA&CS Research Stations Division director Teresa Lambert said. Antennas transmit the data wirelessly to a central hub, which is a small on-site office inside a military surplus shipping crate.
“We don’t have people out here with pencil and paper. The computers are collecting data 24 hours a day in real time,” Lambert said.
That real-time, continuous data gives researchers a much clearer and more accurate picture of how animals perform.
Beside the Vytelle barn, the new site also includes a modern cattle handling shelter — called the “working facility” — designed with both safety and efficiency in mind. Modernized gates are designed to lead cows from the barn to the shelter, keeping them in line and safely corralled.
“This is what you have to have to do any sort of physical work with the cows,” Cobb said. “If you need to give treatments or vaccines, you’ve got to have a place to safely handle them.”
“From an employee safety standpoint, it doesn’t get better than this,” Lambert added.
Why efficiency matters
Feed is the single largest cost in livestock production, and not all animals convert feed into weight gain equally. Identifying those differences is critical, especially as agricultural resources become more limited.
“So when you think about finding animals that are more feed efficient, it’s because we’re starting to see the effects of fewer resources being allocated to farming, like fewer acres being devoted to agricultural production. So you’ve got to find those animals that can convert pounds of feed to pounds of meat more efficiently.”
Water efficiency is also part of the equation. While shortages of water aren’t common in the southeastern United States, it is a problem in other areas. So, finding animals that are more water-efficient is also extremely important when it comes to feeding a growing population.
Just as important is identifying animals that are not efficient.
“I think one of the most important things that we’re looking at initially is finding these animals that are inefficient,” Lambert said.
Lambert also mentioned that the challenges of beef cattle efficiency research have put beef behind industries like poultry and pork. Those industries have long relied on this type of data, and the beef industry is still catching up.
“The pork industry and the poultry industry, they figured this out decades ago,” Lambert said. “So if you feed a chicken today in a commercial situation, they know exactly how many pounds of feed it takes to convert to a pound of gain. They figured it out a long time ago. Cattle folks [are] starting to see the importance of it now.”
Better data with less labor and less stress on animals
Before systems like Vytelle, collecting feed efficiency data was a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Historically, research staff had to measure how much feed was given, what was left behind and calculate what was consumed. Records were often written by hand because taking laptops or tablets into the barn proved impractical. Then the figures had to be entered into a computer spreadsheet and analyzed, Cobb said.
Now all of that is being done automatically. So the technology helps address labor challenges by allowing the station to use people in a different, more efficient way.
The system also improves animal welfare and research accuracy.
“Anytime that you have to bring those animals in and weigh them there’s a stress, and when stress levels are elevated, cortisol levels are elevated. The animals actually lose weight,” Lambert said. “So you’re not getting a true picture of how much the animals are gaining when you’ve got to bring them into the load cells every 28 days and get a physical weight.”
With automated weighing and monitoring, researchers get weights every day without having to handle the animals constantly, which provides a much more accurate picture.
Accelerating and broadening research
The system also makes it possible to do shorter research projects, which could ultimately mean more research. In the past, feed trials might run 90 to 100 days to get accurate data across a larger span of time. When animals go into the Vytelle setup like at the Umstead station, researchers can run a trial in about 60 days — a two-week warm-up to ensure valid data collection, followed by a 45 day trial.
That shorter timeline means more animals can be evaluated and more data can be collected, which can accelerate research progress. It also allows researchers to explore new questions that were previously difficult to answer.
“We can now look at things we haven’t been able to answer before — like how cows perform after their first lactation while they’re still growing, getting new teeth, raising a calf and trying to get pregnant again,” Lambert said.
The system also expands how much genetic evaluation researchers can do. Since a single bull can father an entire herd, previously those bulls got a lot of evaluation, but that’s ultimately just half of the genetic field.
“I don’t know that we’ve evaluated females nearly as hard as we have the male animals in the past, said Tracy Taylor, operations manager for the NCDA&CS Research Stations Division. “But these systems, instead of just looking at all the male animals, you can look at male and female and really tighten up those genetics.”
The advantage of multiple locations
Umstead is one of four research stations across North Carolina equipped with Vytelle systems, alongside locations in Waynesville (Mountain Research Station), Laurel Springs (Upper Mountain Research Station) and Reidsville (Upper Piedmont Research Station). The station in Reidsville had the system before the division committed in 2022 to adding the system at the other three locations. The Umstead barn is the largest facility and the last one to go into use.
Having multiple sites provides a significant advantage.
“You’ve got a lot of different geographical factors — climate, weather and everything else,” Cobb said. “So you’re giving the research platform more factors to study.”
Those differences allow researchers to evaluate how animals perform under varying environmental conditions, making the data more valuable to producers across the state and beyond.
The Umstead facility represents a major investment and a true ground-up project. Unlike other stations, the site required significant preparation before construction could begin.
Work on the barn began in 2022, with equipment shipped from Colorado and installed during the winter of 2024–25. Additional infrastructure such as concrete work, fencing and handling facilities followed.
Now fully operational, the barn is now home to a research project run by a graduate student studying under NC State University’s Dr. Dan Poole.
“He’s been utilizing the [less technological] gates that are at [the NC State] Butner [Beef Cattle Field Laboratory]. So having this platform is really going to change what he can do simply because it takes so much longer over there than it’s going to take here. He can have a lot more projects,” Lambert said.
Part of a larger push toward modern agriculture
The Vytelle system is just one example of how NCDA&CS is updating its research stations with modern tools and technology.
“We’ve made a real effort to bring our research stations up to date,” Lambert said. “From iPads we use to collect data, to precision agriculture and drones, to smart irrigation and systems like this Vytelle barn, we’re using technology to better support farmers.
“Our goal is to make our farmers more profitable, efficient and sustainable. We do that by trying all of these new technologies out today. It’s okay if we make a mistake, as long as we can all learn from it, because then the farmers don’t have to make those same mistakes, which is very costly.”
Ultimately, the goal of the investment goes beyond the research station.
“This gives producers an opportunity to make more informed decisions and be more profitable on fewer acres,” Lambert said.