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Production of Meat Animals(95412)

Topic 7: Feeding growing and finishing beef cattle

Dr Jihad AbdallahDepartment of Animal Production

An-najah National University

Main source of material for this lecture:

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• Animals that are being grown for beef are referred to as calves up until the age of about 6-9 months, a process known as rearing. Thereafter they are known as stores (stokers)- animals that are suitable for finishing

• Rearing and finishing can be done under a number of differing feeding strategies. These can range from extensive grassland systems through to those based on a higher plane of nutrition where the stock consume more concentrate (eg barley) and less bulk feed (grass or silage).

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• High levels of grass quality and quantity must be maintained for as long as possible to take ‘easy fleshed’ cattle through to finish.

• Bigger framed cattle struggle to achieve a good finish on pasture alone in summer and autumn.

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• Grower rations are mainly forage-based (silage, whole crop, straw and combinations of these).

• These can be supplemented at least once a day with dry or moist feeds to add energy, protein, minerals and vitamins.

• Rations can be formulated with a wide range of home-grown and bought-in feeds. The most likely scenario for a winter ration would be grass silage plus a blend.

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• It is important that silage is palatable and consistent quality, it also helps if it contains reasonable levels of protein.

• Generally, only whole crop legume silages can be fed without protein supplementation.

• The formulation and quantity of supplement depends on silage analysis and intake. Adding straw slows down the rate of passage of silage and promotes cud chewing.

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Bulls – changing directly fromrearing to finishing

• Bulls around 200kg live weight can move from the rearing ration straight to the finishing ration.

• However, they can be on the finishing ration for 10 months and can become hard to finish. It is best to introduce a slightly higher energy and more palatable ‘2nd stage finisher’ ration for the last 60 to 80 days to give them a boost.

• Suckler bred or beef cross bulls from the dairy herd weighing over 200kg live weight will respond best to finishing rations formulated with protein levels of approximately 15% crude protein (CP).

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Fat color• Some markets require carcasses with white fat

(mainly bulls for export). • Fat color comes from fat soluble pigments in plants.

These range from very strong pigments in carrots, fairly strong pigments in Lucerne and normal pigments in grass.

• Some pigment color is lost in the silage making process so grass silage will not color fat as much as grazed grass. Also pigments accumulate in fat over time so with older animals it is harder to achieve white fat.

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Optimizing nutrient balance

• The most important macro nutrients to consider for beef cattle nutrition are energy (mainly from carbohydrates) and protein.

• These nutrients can be present in feeds in different forms that make them available to the animal at different rates.

• A balanced release of soluble carbohydrate and rumen degradable protein is required to fuel fermentation in the rumen and optimize cattle performance.

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• Very indigestible forms of fiber such as low D-value hay, silage or cereal straw need to have some rapidly fermentable carbohydrate and rapidly available nitrogen fed along side them to ‘kick start’ the rumen fermentation.

• Too much rapidly fermentable material and the rumen empties too quickly for the fiber to break down and large quantities of undigested fiber will come through in the faeces.

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11 MJ ME/kg DM, 15% CP in DM

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11 MJ ME/kg DM, 15% CP in DM

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