Effects of winter-feeding system on beef cow performance, ruminal fermentation, and system costs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The objective was to evaluate the effects of a winter-feeding system on (study 1) forage biomass and quality, DMI, beef cow performance, system costs, and (study 2) ruminal fermentation. In study 1, over 3 yr, 60 dry, pregnant Angus cows were stratified by BW (658.2 ± 15 kg) and randomly allocated to 1 of 3 replicated (n = 2) winter-feeding systems. Winter-feeding systems included (i) grazing standing whole-plant corn (STCOR; Zea mays L. ‘DKC 26-25’; 10.0% CP, 67.6% TDN); (ii) grazing swathed whole-plant barley (SWBAR; Hordeum vulgare L. ‘Ranger’; 11.5% CP, 60.5% TDN); and (iii) drylot feeding barley hay (DLHAY; Ranger; 10.3% CP, 54.2% TDN). In study 2 (yr 1 and yr 2), 9 ruminally cannulated beef heifers (529 ± 39 kg) cycled through the 3 winter systems in a replicated 3 × 3 Latin square design, with 21-d periods to evaluate the effects of system and day of forage allocation on ruminal fermentation. Forage utilization was greatest (P = 0.01) for the DLHAY (84.4 ± 5.9%), intermediate for SWBAR (63.9 ± 2.5%), and least for STCOR (51.1 ± 4.4%) system. Winter-feeding system did not differ (P = 0.21) for initial BW (665 ± 17 kg), final BW (679 ± 25 kg), initial (4.2 ± 0.94 mm) and final rib fat thickness (4.9 ± 0.86 mm), and BCS (P = 0.36; final BCS = 2.8 ± 0.10; BCS change = 0.07 ± 0.14; 5-point scale). Mean ruminal pH was greatest (P = 0.02) for DLHAY (6.59) compared with SWBAR and STCOR forages (6.42 and 6.44, respectively). The area (pH × min/d) and duration that pH was <5.8 (min/d) was greater (P = 0.02) for SWBAR (50.8 and 231.6, respectively) compared with DLHAY (4.9 and 53.6, respectively) but similar to STCOR forage (52 and 129.3, respectively). Ruminal pH increased (P = 0.01) from d 1 to 3 of forage allocation, and duration and area when pH was below 5.8 decreased (P = 0.03) from d 1 to 3 of forage allocation. These results suggest that grazing either standing corn or swathed barley during winter can reduce (P = 0.01) costs by 25 and 36%, respectively, with no negative effects on cow performance and minimal effects on ruminal fermentation compared with feeding cows barley hay in drylot.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| 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) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".