Effects of shade or sprinklers on growth performance and physiological parameters of beef cattle finished in feedlot condition under heat stress: systematic review and meta-analyses.
Cattle, heat waves, shade, sprinkler, average daily gain.
The heat stress resulting from summer is a major challenge for farmers and the beef cattle industry, which comes in large losses annually to the sector. Therefore, the aim of this study is to use the systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the influence of different strategies of heat mitigation on the growth performance and physiological parameters of beef cattle. A systematic review is being carried out, seeking randomized studies with beef cattle finished in feedlot condition under heat stress. The search strategy was developed to identify studies that evaluate the population (beef cattle), intervention (shade, soil sprinkle, animal sprinkle) and response (dry matter intake, average daily gain, feed intake, feed conversion, feed efficiency and physiological parameters, such as respiration rate and panting. The data sources accepted were original scientific articles, without year restriction and in Portuguese and English. The search was carried out in August 2020 on three electronic databases: Scopus (Elsevier), MEDLINE/PubMed and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) and 3.813 references were found. These references have been uploaded into the Endnote reference Endnote, in order to delete duplicated references. After the removal of duplicates, 2.401 articles remained. In these, an inclusion and exclusion test was carried out, by reading the title, keywords and summary, which resulted in the inclusion of 64 references so far. With this meta-analysis, results are expected to consolidate that heat mitigation strategies improve the growth performance and physiological parameters of feedlot cattle finished in feedlot under heat stress.