Compensation Ability of Bulls of Simmental Breed

Abstract

The peculiarities of compensatory growth and the influence of intensive rearing on the meat productivity of lagging young Simmental breeds and the ways of rational use of genetic possibilities of the animals of the studied groups for increasing the production of high-quality beef and increasing the profitability of the branch have been revealed. It was established experimentally that increasing the level of nutritiousness of diets of experimental bulls allows increasing their live weight up to 523.4-473.9 kg with using 8.25-9.33 fodder units per 1 kg of growth. An increase in the level of feeding of experimental bulls by 10-25% improved the meat indicators. For example, bulls of Group II at the age of 18 months surpassed their peers by 2.7-47.4 kg on preslaughter weight, by 0.7-30.3 kg on carcass weight and by 2.4-8.3 kg on slaughter weight. The slaughter yield was 55.6% in the control group I; 55.8% in group II and 55.2% in group III. The study of the compensatory growth of steers has shown that steers of groups II and III yielded 16% and 35.3% of the live weight of the control group, respectively, when put to experiment. An increase in the nutritive value of the diet of bulls of group II by 10-15% made it possible to decrease the lag during the following breeding periods and by the age of 15 months to fully liquidate the lag and to yield by 1.2% (6.1 kg) at the end of the experiment. Group III bulls, despite increasing the intensity of feeding by 20-25%, were unable to completely cover the lag in live weight until the end of the experiment, but reduced it to 9.1% (43.4 kg). At the age of 18 months the yield of flesh in the carcasses of animals of all groups increased, namely in bulls of group I - 11,7%, in animals of group II - 13,1%, in group III - 13,5% compared to the age of 7 months. At that age, group II steers were 1.0 kg ahead of group I steers and 13.7 kg ahead of group III steers.