Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T00:41:40.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The effect of diet and covering fully slatted concrete floors with rubber strips on the intake, performance and cleanliness of dairy-origin bulls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2019

D. E. Lowe ,
F. O. Lively  and
A. W. Gordon
D. E. Lowe*
Affiliation:
Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, Large Park, Hillsborough BT26 6DR, Northern Ireland
F. O. Lively
Affiliation:
Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, Large Park, Hillsborough BT26 6DR, Northern Ireland
A. W. Gordon
Affiliation:
Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, 18a Newforge Lane, Belfast BT9 5PX, Northern Ireland
*
†E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Fully slatted concrete floors are prevalent in beef cattle housing. However, concerns have been raised about welfare of cattle accommodated on slats. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of diet and floor type on the intake, performance and cleanliness of dairy-origin bulls from a mean age of 8 months to slaughter at 15.5 months old. Forty-eight bulls, which had a mean initial live weight of 212 kg (SD = 23.7), were allocated one of four treatments which consisted of two floors and two diets, arranged in a 2×2 factorial design. The floors evaluated were a fully slatted concrete floor and a fully slatted concrete floor covered with rubber; while the diets offered were either a high concentrate diet or a grass silage-based diet supplemented with concentrates. Over the entire experimental period, floor type had no significant effect on intake. Interestingly, however, when bulls were offered concentrates ad libitum, those accommodated on rubber covered slats consumed more concentrates than those accommodated on concrete slats. No effect of floor type on intake was noted when bulls were offered the grass silage supplemented with concentrate diet. There were no significant interactions between floor and diet on animal performance. Animals accommodated on rubber covered slats had a significantly better performance than those accommodated on concrete slats, as assessed by live weight at slaughter and live weight gain/day (P < 0.01) and estimated carcass gain/day (P < 0.05). The diet offered had no significant effect on animal performance. Bulls accommodated on rubber covered slats were significantly cleaner than those accommodated on concrete slats on day 97 (P < 0.001), but there was no significant effect of floor type when measured at other time points in the experiment. It is concluded from this study that diet has an important role to play in assessing bulls’ responses in performance to the effect of covering concrete slatted floors with rubber. Bulls offered a high concentrate diet had a higher concentrate intake, higher performance but a similar feed conversion ratio (FCR) when accommodated on rubber covered slats compared to those accommodated on fully concrete slatted floors. Animals offered this intensive diet were less efficient (as measured by a higher FCR) than those offered a supplemented grass silage-based diet.

Keywords

floor typeslatsgrowthbeef cattledirtiness
Type
Research Article
Information
animal , Volume 13 , Issue 9 , September 2019 , pp. 2092 - 2100
Copyright
© The Animal Consortium 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Absmanner, E, Rouha-Mulleder, C, Scharl, T, Leisch, F and Troxler, J 2009. Effects of different housing systems on the behaviour of beef bulls - an on-farm assessment on Austrian farms. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 118, 12–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brscic, M, Gottardo, F, Tessitore, E, Guzzo, L, Ricci, R and Cozzi, G 2015a. Assessment of welfare of finishing beef cattle kept on different types of floor after short- or long-term housing. Animal 9, 1053–1058.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brscic, M, Ricci, R, Prevedello, P, Lonardi, C, De Nardi, R, Contiero, B, Gottardo, F and Cozzi, G 2015b. Synthetic rubber surface as an alternative to concrete to improve welfare and performance of finishing beef cattle reared on fully slatted flooring. Animal 9, 1386–1392.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cozzi, G, Tessitore, E, Contiero, B, Ricci, R, Gottardo, F and Brscic, M 2013. Alternative solutions to the concrete fully-slatted floor for the housing of finishing beef cattle: effects on growth performance, health of the locomotor system and behaviour. Veterinary Journal 197, 211–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dawson, LER 2012. The effect of inclusion of lupins/triticale whole crop silage in the diet of winter finishing beef cattle on their performance and meat quality at two levels of concentrates. Animal Feed Science and Technology 171, 75–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earley, B, McDonnell, B and O’Riordan, EG 2015. Effect of floor type on the performance, physiological and behavioural responses of finishing beef steers. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 57, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Earley, B, McNamara, JD, Jerrams, SJ and O’Riordan, EG 2017. Effect of concrete slats, three mat types and out-wintering pads on performance and welfare of finishing beef steers. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 59, 1–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
EC 2006. Council Regulation (EC) No. 1183/2006 of 24 July 2006 concerning the community of scale for the classification of carcasses of adult bovine animals. Official Journal of the European Union L214, 1–6.Google Scholar
Graunke, KL, Telezhenko, E, Hessle, A, Bergsten, C and Loberg, JM 2011. Does rubber flooring improve welfare and production in growing bulls in fully slatted floor pens? Animal Welfare 20, 173–183.Google Scholar
Herva, T, Virtala, AM, Huuskonen, A, Saatkamp, HW and Peltoniemi, O 2009. On-farm welfare and estimated daily carcass gain of slaughtered bulls. Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica 59, 104–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keady, TWJ and Kilpatrick, DJ 2006. The effect of forage:concentrate ratio on the performance of bulls slaughtered at a range of liveweights. In Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Science, 27–29 March, York, UK, p. 50.Google Scholar
Keane, MP, McGee, M, O’Riordan, EG, Kelly, AK and Earley, B 2015. Effect of floor type on hoof lesions, dirt scores, immune response and production of beef bulls. Livestock Science 180, 220–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, MP, McGee, M, O’Riordan, EG, Kelly, AK and Earley, B 2018. Effect of floor type on performance, lying time and dirt scores of finishing beef cattle: a meta-analysis. Livestock Science 212, 57–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livestock and Meat Commission for Northern Ireland 2014. The product standard and rules of the Northern Ireland beef and lamb quality assurance scheme. Retrieved on 4 September 2017 from https://www.lmcni.com › FQAS Product Standard and Rules.Google Scholar
Lowe, DE, Lively, FO and Gordon, AW 2018. The effect of floor type and diet on the performance and locomotion scores of housed finishing dairy-origin bulls. Advances in Animal Biosciences 9, 125.Google Scholar
Lowe, DE, Steen, RWJ and Beattie, VE 2001a. Preferences of housed finishing beef cattle for different floor types. Animal Welfare 10, 395–404.Google Scholar
Lowe, DE, Steen, RWJ, Beattie, VE and Moss, BW 2000. The effect of the floor type in winter housing on the behaviour of finishing beef cattle. Irish Journal of Agricultural and Food Research 39, 481.Google Scholar
Lowe, DE, Steen, RWJ, Beattie, VE and Moss, BW 2001b. The effects of floor type systems on the performance, cleanliness, carcass composition and meat quality of housed finishing beef cattle. Livestock Production Science 69, 33–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McEvoy, JM, Doherty, AM, Finnerty, M, Sheridan, JJ, McGuire, L, Blair, IS, McDowell, DA and Harrington, D 2000. The relationship between hide cleanliness and bacterial numbers on beef carcasses at a commercial abattoir. Letters in Applied Microbiology 30, 390–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, B, Swan, B and Prendivile, R 2016. Dairy calf-to-beed production: a real alternative. In Beef 2018 ‘Profitable Technologies’, 5 July, Teasgasc, Grange, Co. Meath, Ireland, pp. 96–99.Google Scholar
Murphy, VS, Lowe, DE, Lively, FO and Gordon, AW 2018. The effect of floor type on the performance, cleanliness, carcass characteristics and meat quality of dairy origin bulls. Animal 12, 1102–1110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Park, RS, Agnew, RE, Gordon, FJ and Steen, RWJ 1998. The use of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) on undried samples of grass silage to predict chemical composition and digestibility parameters. Animal Feed Science and Technology 72, 155–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, DC, Steen, RWJ, Moore, CA and Moss, BW 2000. Effects of the ratio of silage to concentrates in the diet on the performance and carcass composition of continental bulls. Animal Science 70, 171–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, RW, Harding, SA, Murray, DA, Soutar, DM, Baird, DB, Glaser, AI, Channing, IC, Welham, SJ, Gilmour, AR, Thompson, R and Webster, R 2015. The guide to GenStat Release 12, part 2: statistics. VSN International, Hemel Hempstead, UK.Google Scholar
Purcell, PJ, Law, RA, Gordon, AW, McGettrick, SA and Ferris, CP 2016. Effect of concentrate feeding method on the performance of dairy cows in early to mid lactation. Journal of Dairy Science 99, 2811–2824.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) 2010. RSPCA welfare standards for beef cattle. Retrieved on 18 May 2018 from http://science.rspca.org.uk/sciencegroup/farmanimals/standards/beefcattle.Google Scholar
Scott, GB and Kelly, M 1989. Cattle cleanliness in different housing systems. Farm Building Progress 95, 21–24.Google Scholar