Abstract
The objective of this study was to determine the effects of restricted feeding strategies on performance of growing and finishing dairy bulls. The feeding experiment comprised in total 32 Finnish Ayrshire bulls with an initial mean live weight (LW) of 122 kg and age of 114 days. Feeding treatments were silage ad libitum and daily barley allowance of 93 g kg-1 LW0.60 (A); restricted feeding (R) at 0.80 × A; increasing feeding (I) similar to R until LW of 430 kg and thereafter similar to A; and decreasing feeding (D) similar to A until LW of 430 kg and thereafter similar to R. Restricted feeding strategies decreased daily dry matter intake and LW gain and increased the time to reach the target carcass weight (300 kg). Bulls on I exhibited compensatory growth. There were no significant differences in feed efficiency between the treatments. The present experiment indicates that silage intake ad libitum and supplemented with concentrate resulted in most effective beef production.
Highlights
Economic profitability is one of the principal challenges in beef production and it is important to assess innovative production methods to improve it
The grass silage used was of average nutritional quality
It is in line with the meta-analysis of the feeding experiments by Huuskonen and Huhtanen (2015), who found that energy intake was clearly the most important variable affecting Live weight gain (LWG) of growing cattle whereas the results showed only marginal effects of protein supply on growth
Summary
Economic profitability is one of the principal challenges in beef production and it is important to assess innovative production methods to improve it. In some experiments, restricted feed intake either during the growing period (Knoblich et al 1997; Trial 1, Rossi et al 2001; Trial 1) or growing and finishing period (Hicks et al 1990; Trial 1, Murphy and Loerch 1994; Trial 2) has improved feed efficiency. Suggested reasons for this are increased diet digestibility, reduced feed waste and animal activity and decreased size of visceral organs, which reduce energy requirement for maintenance (Hicks et al 1990)
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