Test duration for water intake, ADG, and DMI in beef cattle1

Abstract

Water is an essential nutrient, but the effect it has on performance generally receives little attention. There are few systems and guidelines for collection of water intake (WI) phenotypes in beef cattle, which makes large-scale research on WI a challenge. The Beef Improvement Federation has established guidelines for feed intake (FI) and ADG tests, but no guidelines exist for WI. The goal of this study was to determine the test duration necessary for collection of accurate WI phenotypes. To facilitate this goal, individual daily WI and FI records were collected on 578 crossbred steers for a total of 70 d using an Insentec system at the Oklahoma State University Willard Sparks Beef Research Unit. Steers were fed in five groups and were individually weighed every 14 d. Within each group, steers were blocked by BW (low and high) and randomly assigned to one of four pens containing approximately 30 steers per pen. Each pen provided 103.0 m2 of shade and included an Insentec system containing six feed bunks and one water bunk. Steers were fed a constant diet across groups and DMI was calculated using the average of weekly percent DM within group. Average FI and WI for each animal were computed for increasingly large test durations (7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, and 70 d), and ADG was calculated using a regression formed from BW taken every 14 d (0, 14, 28, 42, 56, and 70 d). Intervals for all traits were computed starting from both the beginning (day 0) and the end of the testing period (day 70). Pearson and Spearman correlations were computed for phenotypes from each shortened test period and for the full 70-d test. Minimum test duration was determined when the Pearson correlations were greater than 0.95 for each trait. Our results indicated that minimum test duration for WI, DMI, and ADG were 35, 42, and 70 d, respectively. No comparable studies exist for WI; however, our results for FI and ADG are consistent with those in the literature. Although further testing in other populations of cattle and areas of the country should take place, our results suggest that WI phenotypes can be collected concurrently with DMI, without extending test duration, even if following procedures for decoupled intake and gain tests.

Effects of Feeding and Drinking Behavior on Performance and Carcass Traits in Beef Cattle

“…The RWI was positively correlated with ADG in Caracu males, and similar results have been reported by Ahlberg et al [ 31 ] in which an increase in feed intake also increased the WI in Angus cattle. Brew et al [ 3 ] also found an association between WI and animal performance in several beef cattle breeds and crosses, in which animals that consumed more water had a higher body weight.…”

Evaluation of partial body weight for predicting body weight and average daily gain in growing beef cattle

“…Many previous studies which attempted to determine the required minimum length of the test period (e.g., Wang et al, 2006 ; Culbertson et al, 2015 ; Ahlberg et al, 2018 ) for determining ADG made use of the part-whole correlation that has an asymptotic value of 1.0 as the length of the shortened test period approached the length of the full test period. This approach will invariably find that a shorter test period will explain nearly all of the variation in the full-length test.…”

273. Genomic evaluation for two-way crossbred performance in cattle

“…One potential reason could be that ADG in this study was calculated in a shorter time period compared to previous studies. Furthermore, Ahlberg et al (2018) pointed out that during different periods, the correlations for each shortened test duration was different. In addition, the smaller dataset could also be another possible reason.…”