Effect of grass silage and concentrate based finishing strategies on cull dairy cow performance, carcass and meat quality characteristics

High-energy forage feeding diets and body condition on the finishing of cull dairy cows

“…Feeding treatments had no effect on DP values (Table 4). This agrees with other studies that reported no effect of varying diet concentrate level on DP of cull cows (Minchin et al, 2009). Differences in DP were associated with higher carcass conformation (Keane and Allen, 1998); however, no differences in DP between BCS group of animals were found in our study (Table 4).…”

“…Sawyer et al (2004) showed that different management feeding strategies in cull cows had a significant effect on ADG response. Minchin et al (2009) reported ADG of 1.15 kg/cow for cull cows offered grass silage and 9 kg concentrate/day for the entire fattening period. In our study (Table 3), the performance of the higher energy diet (maize silage and 3 kg/day of concentrate) showed 1.04 kg/day per cow of ADG.…”

“…Carcass traits and measurements Results of Minchin et al (2009) showed that carcass trait differences were non-existent irrespective of the diet offered, provided that finishing criteria were set up at given carcass conformation and fat scores, and cows were fed during the necessary time to meet these criteria. Similarly, carcass characteristics (HCW, CCW, FS, CS, CL, LL, LT, DP, CCI, LTLI, SF 12 , GR) were not affected by dietary treatments in the present study (Table 4), which agrees with Juniper et al (2006).…”

“…Some studies (Minchin et al, 2009) have shown that less intensive finishing treatments compared with more intensive treatments yielded similar overall performance and carcass characteristics; however, days to slaughter were different. In our study, animals under the PS treatment needed an average of 34 more days for reaching similar carcass characteristics than animals under the MS1C treatment, although this difference was not significant (Table 2).…”

“…Several studies have shown the advantages of increasing live and carcass weights of cull cows finished under highintensity feeding periods (Franco et al, 2009;Minchin et al, 2009). These beneficial effects have been widely studied for beef breeds (Cranwell et al, 1996;Sawyer et al, 2004), but scarcely for dairy cows breeds (Therkildsen et al, 2011).…”