Guelph (Rural Roots Canada) – A researcher at the University of Guelph has taken an in-depth look at the impact of feeding processed low-quality forage to cattle in an effort to find the effect it has on animal performance, feeding behaviour, and enteric methane emissions.
Madeline McLennan, is studying beef nutrition and physiology under the guidance of Dr. Katie Wood at the University of Guelph in the Department of Animal Biosciences with a focus on beef nutrition and physiology.
Her most recent work is on the impact of low-quality forages.
“Our study was looking at the processing of low-quality forages and its potential impact on animal efficiency and enteric methane emissions,” says McLennan.
“We were looking at low-quality forages that are often used as a cost-saving strategy, and how can we maybe find management practices that are able to help improve that performance and, in turn, also create a sustainable opportunity for those management practices as well.”
She says they have seen trends in the preliminary findings.
“The animals that were fed a processed straw diet, they did have increases in their actual condition, so their body condition score, as well as we looked at ultrasound of their rib fat.”
They found that the actual fat deposition increased in those animals as well.
READ MORE: Feed Testing: Know your forage before feeding it to livestock
Whereas they saw that the unprocessed straw group lost some of that condition, which allowed them to conclude that they weren’t getting that same energy from that diet.
McLennan says they also found the animals were a bit picky in what they ate.
“We also saw, in terms of feeding behaviour, that the unprocessed straw-fed group, they were actually sorting against those of the larger particles, as well as sorting for those smaller and medium-sized particles. So again, maybe not eating or consuming that ration that we’re formulating on paper.”
She says they also saw increased dry matter intake, so they ate about 1.43 kilograms per day more when they had a processed straw diet.
McLennan presented her research at the Canadian Beef Industry Conference this past summer as part of its student research poster competition.
Her research can be found by clicking here.
