Calves growth infant of breed Nellore supplemented with chromium

Abstract

The present study evaluated the growth of nursling Nelore calves supplemented with chromium during creep feeding. The study was conducted using 131 Nelore calves with an average age of 60 days and average adjusted initial weight of 75 kg; considering that all calves were accompanied by their mothers. Therefore, the experimental groups were defined as T1: 35 males supplemented with chromium; T2: 34 males without chromium, T3: 30 females supplemented with chromium and T4: 32 females supplemented without chromium. The experimental period lasted from 60 days of age to 210 days (weaning), the animals were kept in two pickets of Panicum maximum cv. Mombasa provided with troughs for the creep feeding system, which permitted calves exclusive access to the concentrate formula based on 75% of TDN and 20% of crude protein, with 35% of soybean meal, 63% of corn and 2% of mineral nucleus containing 10 mg of chromium chelate for each kg of the product. The data were subjected to the analysis of variance, using the software R (R Development Core Team, 2013). In the evaluation of the live weight at 150 days of age, no significant difference was found in the use of chromium in males and females (regardless of sex). However, in the analysis between sexes, females’ live weights were lower than males’ live weight (p = 0.04), being 131.1 kg and 138.1 kg respectively. In the evaluation of live weight at 210 days there was no significant difference between males and females (p = 0.07), but there was a difference (p = 0.03) in the use of chrome in the evaluated treatments. So, it could be concluded that the creep feeding system with chrome chelate supplementation promoted an improvement in male and females calves’ growth for average daily weight gain and weaning weight, with a positive influence on the weight of cows.