Finishing beef cattle on wholecrop silage had no comparable effect on meat quality
Take Home Message: Compared with grass silage, there is no effect of legume/cereal whole crop silages that include lupins or vetch on the fatty acid composition of beef or measures of its meat quality.
Offering finishing beef cattle legume/cereal wholecrop silages had no effect on fatty acid composition or meat quality when compared with meat from cattle finished on a grass silage-based ration.
These were the findings of a study, carried out by scientists at Belfast’s Queen’s University and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, to assess the effect of offering lupins/triticale, vetch/barley and grass silage to continental beef finishing cattle on meat quality and fatty acid (FA) composition.
With increasing consumer awareness of meat quality and the relationship between dietary fat and the incidence of diseases, such as coronary heart disease, some research has already been undertaken to manipulate fatty acid (FA) profiles in beef. “And cattle rations have been shown to influence FA composition of meat,” Peter Kennedy, from Queen’s University, told delegates at this year’s British Society of Animal Science annual conference.
“Meat from finishing cattle offered red clover (legume) silage, for example, in comparison to grass silage had significantly increased polyunsaturated FA (PUFA) concentrations.”
Trial work involved 80 continental cross steers, which were allocated to one of 10 dietary treatments. The five forage diets offered included grass silage, lupins/triticale silage and vetch/barley silage offered either as the sole forage or in combination to grass silage at a ratio of 70:30, on a dry matter basis, legume/cereal wholecrop: grass silage. The forages were offered ad lib and supplemented with either 2kg or 5kg of concentrates/head/day.
Instrumental meat quality (ultimate pH, cooking loss, Warner Braztler shear force, and meat colour) and FA analysis were undertaken on the muscle taken from the fore-rib joint seven days post mortem.
“We found no significant silage type by concentrate level interactions for FA composition or instrumental meat quality,” said Mr Kennedy. “The forage offered had no effect on saturated FA, monounsaturated FA omega 3, omega 6, and PUFA levels.
“Vetch/barley:grass silage and lupins/triticale produced a higher omega 3 and 6 ratio than grass silage and lupins/triticale:grass silage. But increasing concentrate supplementation from 2kg to 5kg/head/day had no significant effect on FA levels.
“And forage type had no effect on instrumental meat quality after seven days of maturing,” he added.
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