Abstract
Evaluation of dry matter intake, average daily gain and faecal nitrogen excretion predicted by the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System with different beef cattle breeds fed in China
Highlights
Feed is the highest cost input in beef cattle production
The model-predicted dry matter intake (DMI) for the cattle breeds were extremely close to the observed values, showing low mean biases and low root mean square prediction error (RMSPE) values (Table 5) obtained from these data, which reflects the high accuracy of the model predictions for most of the breeds
For variation of Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS) predicted minus observed DMI, the pro portion of deviation points lying within the range –0.4 to 0.4 kg · day–1 was extremely high (90.1%) (Figure 1B)
Summary
Poor estimation of nutrient supply and animal requirements leads to high waste production and environmental pollution. Livestock farm activities have been described as contributors to N environmental pollution, and cattle have the largest share in manure N production (Oenema, 2006). There are about sixty-nine breeds of yellow cattle and thirteen imported cattle breeds making up the more than 100 million head of beef cattle in China (Zheng et al, 1986; Li et al, 2009). The local breeds usually have some advantage such as roughage tolerance, high stress resistance, low maintenance requirements, and early puberty, their growth performance and dressing percentage are lower (Liu et al, 2006). To improve growth performance and meat quality, China has imported some high-producing cattle breeds such as Limousin and Simmental from other countries
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