Optimum extent of barley grain processing and barley silage proportion in feedlot cattle diets: Growth, feed efficiency, and fecal characteristics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Koenig, K. M. and Beauchemin, K. A. 2011. Optimum extent of barley grain processing and barley silage proportion in feedlot cattle diets: Growth, feed efficiency and fecal characteristics. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 91: 411-422. A study was conducted to evaluate the effects of forage proportion and extent of processing of barley grain on growth, intake, feed conversion efficiency, and fecal characteristics of feedlot cattle. Crossbred steers (120; 407±31 kg) were housed individually and assigned to 10 diets (n=12): two degrees of temper rolling of barley grain [processing index (PI) of 82% (standard) or 87% (coarse)] were combined with five levels of barley silage [3, 6, 9, 12, and 15% of dietary dry matter (DM)]. The PI was determined as the weight of grain after processing expressed as a percentage of the weight before processing. Cattle were slaughtered after 104-109 d on feed, at a final weight of 576 kg, SEM = 5.1. There were very few interactions between grain processing and silage proportion for the variables measured. Grain processing had no effect (P>0.05) on average daily gain (1.59 kg d-1, SEM = 0.057) or final weight. Feeding PI-87% barley tended to increase dry matter intake (DMI) over the experiment (7.63 vs. 7.34 kg d-1, SEM = 0.123, P=0.10) compared with feeding PI-82% barley. Higher DMI of cattle fed PI-87% barley corresponded to lower estimated starch digestibility, as a result of increased appearance of whole kernels and grain fragments in feces. Consequently, gain:feed ratio tended (0.210 vs. 0.219, SEM = 0.0035, P=0.06) to decrease by 4% with PI-87% versus PI-82% barley. Similarly, silage proportion had no effect on gain but DMI increased (P=0.05) linearly from 7.19 to 7.75 kg d-1 (SEM = 0.194) with increasing proportion of silage. Consequently, gain:feed ratio decreased linearly from 0.225 to 0.202 (SEM = 0.0056) with increasing silage proportion. Optimum proportion of barley silage to maximize feed conversion efficiency was 3 to 6% of DM. Decreasing the extent of barley processing or increasing the silage proportion may reduce the risk of acidosis, but feed conversion efficiency is lowered. Formulating diets to reduce the incidence of digestive disorders may decrease the cost of mortalities and treatment of sick animals, thereby improving animal health and welfare, but these costs are unlikely to offset the increased cost of gain in commercial feedlots.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".