OBSERVATIONS ON THE UTILIZATION OF GRASS GRAZED BY YOUNG BEEF CATTLE WITH AND WITHOUT BARLEY SUPPLEMENTATION

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A field trial was carried out in which 3 groups of cattle were grazed on a paddock system with and without supplementary barley. The cattle were 6 months old when turned out to grass and were each fed 4 lb/day of barley for one week to prevent any adverse effect from an abrupt change of diet. The trial began on 14 May and continued until 8 October. The mean liveweight gain obtained on the unsupplemented grass was only 0·97 lb/day up to 20 August and owing to the poor growth of the animals a supplement of 4 lb barley/head/day was then introduced. The daily liveweight gain for the remainder of the trial was 1·94 lb. When a supplement of 4 lb barley was provided throughout the trial the mean daily liveweight gain was 1·61 lb. When barley was fed ad lib. intake averaged 12·3 lb/head/day throughout the trial and the mean daily gain was 2·45 lb.Indoor digestibility and nitrogen retention trials were carried out. The starch equivalents of diets on the three treatments were 63·7, 68·3 and 69·5, respectively. The respective mean daily intakes of dry matter were 11·2, 11·9 and 11·8 lb, and the mean daily retentions of N were 35·0, 35·8 and 33·6g. These results indicate that although the grass was of good nutritive value the poor performance of the animals on grass alone was mainly due to their inability to graze sufficient grass.