Feed intake and efficiency across differing diets
14 October 2020
Last update: 20/10/20 14:32
The animal Article of the Month for November is “The repeatability of feed intake and feed efficiency in beef cattle offered high-concentrate, grass silage and pasture-based diets” by B. Lahart et al.
Throughout the world, feed intake and feed efficiency in beef cattle is generally derived indoors on high-concentrate diets. Within temperate regions of north-western Europe such as Ireland, however, the majority of a growing beef animal’s lifetime dietary intake comes from grazed grass and grass silage. The objective of the current study was to assess the repeatability of both feed intake and feed efficiency across three dietary test periods comprising; grass silage plus concentrates, grazed grass and a high-concentrate diet.
The results demonstrate that associations for feed intake and residual feed intake between grass silage-based and grazing or high-concentrate diets were moderate-to-weak; however, the traits were not correlated between grazed pasture and high-concentrate. Furthermore, the animals genetic merit for feed intake were not associated with their phenotypic performance for feed intake at pasture. Therefore evaluating feed intake and efficiency indoors on high concentrate diets may not be optimised for pasture based beef production systems.
The current study was also the first to evaluate the relationship between ingestive behaviour at pasture and its association with feed intake and efficiency in growing beef cattle. Traits relating to feeding and rumination frequency as well as biting intensity were all associated with feed intake and efficiency.
The current results question the current practise of performance testing cattle on diets that are not representative to what they spend the majority of their life’s consuming. However, further research is required in this important area.
The animal Article of the Month for November “The repeatability of feed intake and feed efficiency in beef cattle offered high-concentrate, grass silage and pasture-based diets” is free for a month.
Authors: B. Lahart , R. Prendiville, F. Buckley, E. Kennedy, S. B. Conroy, T. M. Boland and M. McGee
The animal Article of the Month is selected by the Editor-in-Chief and is freely available for one month. View the recent selections
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