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Gut fill in cattle: effect of pasture quality on fasting losses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2010

A. V. Goodchild
A. V. Goodchild
Affiliation:
Livestock Production Research Institute, Private Bag, Mpwapwa, Tanzania
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Abstract

An abrupt fall in live weight of grazing cattle occurs at the beginning of the growing season in the seasonally dry tropics. In an experiment with grazing crossbred bulls in central Tanzania designed to monitor changes in gut fill, 16 were slaughtered in the dry season and 14 in the early wet season. Bulls were measured and weighed before, and weighed after, a 20-h fast and then slaughtered. Gut fill was measured and empty body weight (EBW) calculated.

During fasting, the ratio gut fill/EBW fell from 0·291 to 0·217 in the dry season and from 0·207 to 0·119 in the wet season. Heart girth/EBW1/3 was 0·2577 and 0·2567 m/kg1/3 in the dry and wet seasons respectively.

It was concluded that live weight before or after fasting is seriously affected by season and can give biased predictions of EBW change. On the other hand, heart girth is little affected by season and can be used to monitor relative increases or decreases of EBW within animals.

Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Production , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , June 1985 , pp. 455 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © British Society of Animal Science 1985

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