Reduction of neutral detergent fiber levels in diets with high concentrate and its effects on intake and rumen pH in Nelore cattle

Abstract

The Beef cattle production is crossing by a lot of changes with the goal to increase the performance and also its profit. The Nutrition can play an important role in the success or unsuccess at feedlot. It is regarding the Nutrition may evoke one of the most important metabolic disease which will onset losses by performance. Acidosis. Therefore, there is an effort to carry out research with the objective to find the effects of Acidosis due to the reduction of roughage as its effects as well on Nelore Cattle that is the main breed in Brazil related to beef cattle production. The aim of this research will be to find the effects of ruminal acidosis and also its variability in Nelore cattle fed diets with decreases in roughage level. Thus, this research will be conducted by the Animal nutrition and Growth lab at ESALQ in the department of Animal Science, city of Piracicaba, State of São Paulo, Brazil. Moreover, the field trial will be carried out at Nutrigenomic Center that is conducted by the Animal nutrition and Growth Lab. There will be 40 Steers available in this trial, from Nelore Breed, non-castrated with a body weight near to 420 kilos. After the adaptation period (per 14 days, the steers will be fed through a diet with 50% of corn Silage on dry matter basis) thereafter the steers will receive hence reductions of roughage levels. There will be 5 treatments followed by: Treatment 1- 15% of NDF from forage source per 21 days. Treatment 2- 12 % of NDF from forage source per 21 days. Treatment 3- 9% of NDF from forage source per 21 days. Treatment 4- 6% of NDF from forage source per 21 days. Treatment 6- 3 % of NDF from forage source per 21 days. This research will take 120 days including adaptation period to be done. All steers will be exposed for the same diet at the same trial period. The Parameters which will be collected are: body weight gain, dry matter intake, dry matter intake frequency, time to intake the dry matter, feeding behavior, water Intake, water intake frequency, rumen pH, rumen Temperature and starch fecal. An electronic system will be used to measurement pH. All of the Statistics analyses will be run through the software SAS. (AU)