The effect of the Texel muscling trait on carcass weight is reflected in increased weight of all carcass areas, with no effect of the Texel muscling quantitative trait locus (TM-QTL) on weight distribution.
The effects of the TM-QTL on meat quality traits for the semimembranosus muscle in purebred Texel lamb were negligible in a trail where lamb had been aged for seven or more days.
Under good grazing conditions, grazed grass is superior to high quality grass silage for finishing hill lambs during the autumn/winter.
Spine characteristics differ between sheep breeds, indicating that there could be a genetic basis for variation
Finishing lambs on chicory resulted in heavier carcases with better killing-out percentages and conformation scores, without detrimental effects on overall sensory meat eating quality.
Dietary Zn supplements for ruminants have traditionally been inorganic salts, such as zinc oxide (ZnO) or zinc sulphate (ZnSO4)
Supplementing dairy cow diets with milled rapeseed resulted in a significant decrease in milk fat saturated fatty acid concentration, which was persistent for 70 days.
Adopting a delayed concentrate build-up strategy in early lactation improved forage intake and had no detrimental effect on production performance.
Trails in Northern Ireland have shown that concentrate allocation strategy had no effect on cow performance and that a simple ‘flat-rate’ concentrate feeding strategy is as effective as a more complex ‘feed-to-yield’ strategy.
Feeding milled rapeseed as a lipid and protein supplement for lactating dairy cows reduced methane production per day, per unit of dry matter intake and per unit of milk yield.
