Different Grass Availabilities of Tropical Pasture on Performances and Carcasses of Lambs

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the best green-leaf offerings of Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu for pasture-finished lambs receiving protein-energy supplementation at the rate of 1.6% of their body weights (BW). The animals were assigned into four treatments, which consisted of varied green-leaf offerings, namely, 105, 90, 75, or 60 g of dry matter/kg of body weight (BW). Sixty-eight contemporary Texel × mixed-breed lambs with an average initial BW of 22.6 kg were used over two years of experiment. The experiment was set up in a completely randomized design, the data were evaluated by analysis of variance and the means were compared by Tukey's test at the 0.05 significance level. There was no significant effect of year neither interaction of year with green-leaf offer. There were significant effects of leaf offer on dry matter intake (DMI) with behavior of positively linear (p<0.05). There were significant effects of green-leaf offer on final BW and average daily gain, and lambs receiving of 75 g/kg green-leaf offer showed the highest ADG (179 g/d). There were no significant differences in the carcass, meat, and primal cuts between the groups of lambs receiving different herbage offerings. There were significant effects of leaf offer on slaughter weight, hot carcass weight, and subcutaneous fat thickness. Lambs receiving of 75 g/kg leaf offer showed the highest SFT (5.8 mm). Slaughter weight and hot carcass weight averaged 41.52 kg and 20.07 kg, respectively. We recommend the treatment with leaves offer of 75 g/kg BW of Marandu pasture for the finishing of lambs supplemented at 1.6% of BW.

Carcass characteristics, meat quality and composition of lambs finished in cultivated pastures

“…The non-alteration of the physico-chemical characteristics of the meat was a consequence of the little variation in the chemical composition of the cultivars. The pH values of the meat were within the range considered ideal for the correct establishment and resolution of rigor mortis and were close to those reported in other studies with beef sheep (Fernandes et al, 2013;Heimbach et al, 2020). Changes in pH was generally associated with some type of pre-slaughter stress (Li et al, 2014), with little influence from the diet to which the animal is subjected (Fernandes et al, 2013;Santos et al, 2020;Heimbach et al, 2020).…”

Agronomic performance of Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu cultivated in clayey and sandy soil submitted to water and nutritional management

“…Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu), it is observed that it exhibits good primary production indexes, vitality, seed production capacity, ability to make small and large ruminants present the maximum production potential, due to the supply of forage in adequate proportion and good nutritional value (GERMANO et al, 2018;EUCLIDES et al, 2019;GURGEL et al, 2020;HEIMBACH et al, 2020).…”