EVALUATION OF THE FEED EFFICIENCY OF BEEF CATTLE IN FEEDLOT BASED ON RESIDUAL FEED INTAKE AND BLOOD PARAMETERS
Beef cattle, feedlot, feed efficiency, blood parameters
The experimental project will be carried out in a commercial property, in the municipality of Joaçaba - SC, where the monitoring of beef cattle will be carried out in feedlot, with the objective of evaluating food efficiency, based on parameters of residual feed intake (RFI), efficiency the use of starch and blood parameters. 14 non-neutered, weaned beef cattle housed in individual stalls will be evaluated in the same environmental conditions. The amount of food supplied as well as its leftovers will be monitored. Weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion, dietary starch quantification, fecal starch quantification and blood parameters (blood count and albumin) will be evaluated. The animals will go through a period of 21 days of adaptation to diet and environment and then will be evaluated for two periods of 21 days each. Statistical analysis of the data will be performed and the existence or non-existence of a correlation between the food efficiency found through the RFI with the efficiency of the starch use and the blood parameters will be verified.