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Canadian Science Publishing, Canadian Journal of Animal Science, 1(104), p. 40-50, 2024

DOI: 10.1139/cjas-2023-0032

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Short-season high-moisture shelled corn, snaplage, or corn silage as a partial replacement for dry-rolled barley grain or barley silage in western Canadian beef cattle finishing diets

This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

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Abstract

The objective was to evaluate the replacement of barley-based ingredients with short-season high-moisture corn products on steer growth performance and carcass characteristics. Over 2 years, 320 beef steers (528 ± 36.2 kg initial body weight) were assigned to 32 pens (4 pens/treatment/year). Treatments were finishing diets that contained dry-rolled barley grain and barley silage (BGBS; control), barley grain and corn silage (BGCS), high-moisture shelled corn and barley grain with barley silage (HCBS), or snaplage (included as a silage and grain source) with barley grain (SNAP). Steers were fed for 99 days and 72 days in years 1 and 2, respectively. Steers fed BGCS did not differ ( P ≥ 0.13) from BGBS for dry matter intake, average daily gain, gain:feed, or carcass characteristics. Steers fed HCBS had greater ( P ≤ 0.05) hot carcass weight and dressing percentage than BGBS. A lesser ( P = 0.02) proportion of steers fed SNAP had severe liver abscesses than BGBS. We concluded that corn silage can replace barley silage, 50% replacement of barley grain with high-moisture shelled corn may improve hot carcass weight, and replacement of barley silage and some barley grain with snaplage decreases the proportion of cattle with severe liver abscesses at slaughter.