Dataset Information

Effect of Post-Grazing Sward Height, Sire Genotype and Indoor Finishing Diet on Steer Intake, Growth and Production in Grass-Based Suckler Weanling-to-Beef Systems.

ABSTRACT: This study evaluated the effects of post-grazing sward height (PGSH, 4 or 6 cm) on herbage production, its nutritive value, dry matter (DM) intake, grazing behaviour and growth of early- (EM) and late-maturing (LM) breed suckler steers (n = 72), and the subsequent effect of indoor finishing diet (grass silage + 3.8 kg concentrate DM/head daily (SC), or grass silage only (SO)) on performance and carcass traits. Animals rotationally grazed pasture for 196 days, followed by indoor finishing for 119 days. At pasture, daily live-weight gain (LWG) was 0.10 kg greater for PGSH-6 than PGSH-4, resulting in a tendency for carcass weight to be 11 kg heavier. Although EM had a 0.10 kg greater daily LWG at pasture than LM, carcass weight did not differ between the genotypes. There was a genotype × PGSH interaction for carcass fat score, whereby there was no difference between EM-4 (8.83, 15-point scale) and EM-6 (8.17), but LM-6 (7.28) was greater than LM-4 (6.33). Although concentrate supplementation during indoor finishing increased carcass weight (+37 kg) and fat score (1.75 units), the majority of steers (83% of EM and 78% of LM) achieved a commercially-acceptable carcass fat score (6.78) at slaughter in the grass-forage-only system.

SUBMITTER: Doyle PR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8470167 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Effect of Post-Grazing Sward Height, Sire Genotype and Indoor Finishing Diet on Steer Intake, Growth and Production in Grass-Based Suckler Weanling-to-Beef Systems.

Doyle Peter R PR McGee Mark M Moloney Aidan P AP Kelly Alan K AK O'Riordan Edward G EG

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI 20210907 9

This study evaluated the effects of post-grazing sward height (PGSH, 4 or 6 cm) on herbage production, its nutritive value, dry matter (DM) intake, grazing behaviour and growth of early- (EM) and late-maturing (LM) breed suckler steers (<i>n</i> = 72), and the subsequent effect of indoor finishing diet (grass silage + 3.8 kg concentrate DM/head daily (SC), or grass silage only (SO)) on performance and carcass traits. Animals rotationally grazed pasture for 196 days, followed by indoor finishing ...[more]

PMID: 34573588

Similar Datasets

Project description:Extensively grazed semi-natural grasslands contribute to a wide range of ecosystem services, including the preservation of biodiversity and provision of livestock feed. Depending on the grazing intensity, cattle are set in motion to fulfill their nutritional needs. In this way, they influence the vegetation composition, while at the same time the foraging behavior is affected by the vegetation. A better understanding of the relationship between grazing intensity and animal behavior is an essential component for strategies to improve the value of semi-natural grasslands and for gaining insights for the development of smart farming technologies. The long-term cattle grazing experiment "FORBIOBEN" with its replicated three paddock-scale (1 ha) grazing intensities [moderate (M), lenient (L), very lenient (VL)] was used to investigate the movement behavior of suckler cows during four grazing periods between 2017 and 2020. For this, pregnant suckler cows (Fleckvieh) were equipped with Vectronics GPS Plus (VECTRONIC Aerospace GmbH, Berlin) collars, which recorded the position of the animals at defined time intervals. The main outcomes were that with an increase in the grazing intensity, the herbage on offer declined and, consequently the herbage allowance. However, the spatial heterogeneity of the herbage on offer decreased with increasing grazing intensity (M < VL) which means that the amount of available herbage was lower but more evenly distributed under moderate grazing. Further, there was a tendency that the moderate grazing intensity was associated with the highest effort of walking compared to lenient and very lenient grazing in three out of four grazing periods. We found a strong (p < 0.001) negative correlation among walking distance vs. herbage variability across all treatments × periods. Consequently, the grazing intensity itself was not a good predictor of walking distances which were mainly a result of the available herbage, its distribution or heterogeneity. Future smart farming livestock management systems will, therefore, likely require interfaces with the grassland growth rates and heterogeneity benchmarks if decisions based on livestock movement should be reliable.

Project description:The role of beef in human diets has been questioned over the last few decades, due largely to its typically high mass-based carbon footprint. However, recent advancements in sustainability literature challenge this paradigm based on the new theory that climate impacts of food commodities should be measured relative to their overall nutritional value rather than their nominal mass. This shift has opened a new opportunity for the global beef industry, and especially for pasture-based systems that can avoid food-feed competition for land and other resources, as beef is a nutritionally dense food. Nonetheless, the sector's true capability to supply a wide range of nutrients for humans, consistently across multiple systems under multiple weather patterns, has not been well-documented. Using whole-system datasets from the North Wyke Farm Platform in the South West of England, we investigated the nutritional value of beef produced from the three most common pasture systems in temperate regions: permanent pasture (PP), grass and white clover (GWC) and a short-term monoculture grass ley (MG). Beef produced from these three pasture systems was analysed for key nutrients (fatty acids, minerals and vitamin E) over three production cycles (2015-2017) to determine potential differences between systems. Fatty acid, mineral and vitamin E profiles of the pasture and silage fed to each group were also assessed, with subtle differences between pastures reported. For beef, subtle differences were also observed between systems, with GWC having higher omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) concentrations than PP and MG. However, the overall nutritional quality of beef was found to be largely comparable across all systems, suggesting that temperate pasture-based beef can be classified as a single commodity in future sustainability assessments, regardless of specific sward types. A 100 g serving of temperate pasture-based beef was found to be a high source (>20% recommended daily intake: RDI) of protein, monounsaturated fatty acids, saturated fatty acids, vitamins - B2, B3, B12 and minerals - Fe, P, Zn; a good source (10-19% RDI) of vitamin - B6 and mineral - K; and a complementary source (5-9% RDI) of omega-3 PUFA, vitamin - B9 and minerals - Cu, Mg, Se. The nutritional value of a food item should be used in defining its environmental cost (e.g. carbon footprint) to make fair comparisons across different food groups (e.g. protein sources). Here, we showed that pasture-based beef had a nutrient indexed carbon footprint of between 0.19 and 0.23 Kg CO2-eq/1% RDI of key nutrients.

Dataset Information

Effect of Post-Grazing Sward Height, Sire Genotype and Indoor Finishing Diet on Steer Intake, Growth and Production in Grass-Based Suckler Weanling-to-Beef Systems.

Publications

Effect of Post-Grazing Sward Height, Sire Genotype and Indoor Finishing Diet on Steer Intake, Growth and Production in Grass-Based Suckler Weanling-to-Beef Systems.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets