Evaluating growth performance of F2 Nguni X angus cattle under the traditional feedlot and grow safe systems.
Mncina, Skhulile
Mncina, Skhulile
Citations
Altmetric:
Abstract
Growth performance is a characteristic of relevant economic importance in beef cattle production system. The primary objective of this study was to compare growth performance of F2 Nguni X Angus animals collected with the traditional feedlot and GrowSafe systems and to analyse animal behaviour in the GrowSafe system. Nighty eight (98) F2 Nguni X Angus animals were used for the study, where 48 animals were used under the traditional feedlot and 50 animals under the GrowSafe system. The animals were individually fed a feedlot diet for 90 days. Feed intake was measured daily, and animal weights were measured weekly in both systems. Under the GrowSafe system, feed intake was measured in real time. Traits analysed for both systems were daily feed intake (DFI), average daily gain (ADG), and feed conversion ratio (FCR). For the GrowSafe system, the behavioural traits were meal frequency (MF), eating rate (ER), meal size (MS), meal duration (MD), meal size per body weight (MPW) and per metabolic body weight (MPMW). The analyses for the GrowSafe system consisted of fitting day of feed, mealtime, and sex as fixed effects in Proc GLM of SAS (SAS, 2012). Feeding system of the animal affected growth performance, with animals in the GrowSafe performing more efficiently than those in the traditional feedlot. There were significant differences (P<0.05) between the GrowSafe and traditional feedlot feeding systems for all the traits analysed. The feedlot system had a higher (1.51 ± 0.05 kg) ADG than the GrowSafe system (1.30 ± 0.06 kg). The animals in the GrowSafe system however consumed more feed (8.99 ± 0.25 kg) than their traditional feedlot counterparts (7.92 ± 0.19 kg). Sex also significantly affected (P<0.05) all the traits included in the analysis. Females had 14 more meals than males; however, these females had 0.73 sec shorter MD and 0.08 g smaller MS compared to their male counterparts. Higher MF for animals in the GrowSafe system occurred 8:00AM and 18:00PM, and the highest for males and females were 7 900 and 12 194 visits, respectively. Eating rate followed a similar trend, with males and females recording respective highest values of 28.56 and 65.02 g/sec. During the same periods, MS and MD exhibited opposite trends with lowest values of 191.40 g and 57.52 sec, respectively for males observed. This may be attributed to the effects of heat stress; hence animals may eat more and spent more time eating when it is cooler at night. The respective lowest values for females were 135.16 g and 36.38 sec. The feeding behaviours of the GrowSafe animals may be used to design feeding strategies for feedlot animals.
Description
Submitted in the partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree, Master of Agricultural Science in the Department of Animal Sciences, Faculty of Science at the Tshwane University of Technology
Date
2023-02
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tshwane University of Technology
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
F2 nguni X angus cattle, Grow safe, Feeding behavior, Growth performance, Traditional feedlot