The effect of feeding a dried yeast culture on the performance of beef cattle finishing on a grass silage based ration

Extract

There is increasing consumer resistance to feeding antibiotic performance enhancers to beef cattle which has created interest in the use of yeast cultures as an alternative. Yeast cultures such as Diamond V ‘XP’ (Rumenco) are produced by growing selected yeast strains (on a semi-solid medium under stressed conditions) which are then dried. Yeast cultures are now used in a considerable number of North American beef feed lots. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of feeding ‘XP’ Yeast to finishing beef cattle on a typical UK grass silage-based diet.