Beef quality remains good with lower concentrate rations
Continental bred bulls can be slaughtered at weights up to 800kg live weight without detrimental affects on meat colour or quality. That was the finding of a trial, to evaluate the effect of forage:concentrate ratio and weight at slaughter on the meat quality of three-quarter or more continental breed bulls, recently completed at Hillsborough’s Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute.
“The current upward trend in cereal prices will have a negative impact on the economics of intensive beef finishing systems,” said Francis Lively, presenting his findings to delegates at this year’s British Society of Animal Science annual conference.
“Previous studies have shown that continental bulls can perform at a high level on diets that are relatively low in concentrates and predominantly based on grass silage. But we wanted to find out if such rations could impact on meat quality.”
A total of 260 continental bull calves – with three-quarter or more Charolais, Belgian Blue or Limousin breeding – were allocated to two dietary treatments balanced for breed, initial weight and age. The diets consisted of ad-lib concentrates supplemented with 1.2kgDM of silage or a total mixed ration containing grass silage and concentrates at a 50:50 ratio, on a DM basis.
Equal numbers of cattle, again balanced for breed, initial weight and age, were slaughtered and assessments of ultimate pH, sarcomere length, cooking loss, Warner Bratzler shear force and meat colour were undertaken on the longissimus dorsi muscle.
“And we found that slaughter weight had no significant effect on meat colour and there was a tendency for cooking loss to decline after seven days of ageing as slaughter weight increased,” said Mr Lively.
“Slaughter weight had no significant effect on meat quality as assessed by ultimate pH, sarcomere length or Warner Braztler shear force. Decreasing the forage:concentrate ratio decreased cooking loss assessed after seven days ageing, but had no other significant effect on meat quality or meat colour,” he added.
Presented to the British Society of Animal Science Annual Meeting, March 31 to April 2, 2008, Scarborough, UK. Paper no 51
Full details: Lively FO, Keady TWJ, Dawson LER, Moss BW, Kilpatrick DJ: “The effects of forage:concentrate ratio on meat quality of bulls slaughtered at a range of live weights.”
Summary (pdf)
PDF of Presentation_051lively
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