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Effect of nursing or mentoring by adult cows on physical activity, performance and meat quality of fattening beef calves kept on alpine pastures
Author(s) -
Gangnat Isabelle DM,
Dufey PierreAlain,
Silacci Paolo,
MessadeneChelali Jessika,
Kreuzer Michael,
Berard Joel
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of the science of food and agriculture
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1097-0010
pISSN - 0022-5142
DOI - 10.1002/jsfa.8101
Subject(s) - weaning , grazing , zoology , biology , intramuscular fat , tenderness , beef cattle , agronomy
BACKGROUND Compared with weaned calves, nursed calves benefit from access to milk as nutrient‐dense feed and mentoring by their dams. Both may be decisive for growth under difficult conditions such as grazing on alpine pastures, where experience could play an essential role. These factors were investigated separately by comparing nursed calves with calves weaned at 3 months of age and grazing with or without a mentor cow ( n = 8 calves). RESULTS Weaned calves with mentor cows spent less time lying and walked more than nursed calves. Irrespective of whether they had a mentor cow or not, the weaned calves grew slower than the nursed calves (357, 428 and 1324 g day −1 respectively). This also adversely affected slaughter weight, dressing percentage, conformation and fat cover at slaughter. In general, mentoring had no effect. Meat quality did not differ whether weaned calves were mentored or not. Nursed calves were superior in intramuscular fat content, tenderness and water‐holding capacity. CONCLUSION The availability of milk appeared to be much more important to the calves under demanding grazing conditions than did mentoring. The differences in growth rate were accompanied by unexpectedly large differences in meat quality, showing that early weaning was not suitable for this system.© 2016 Society of Chemical Industry