Season affects energy input/output ratio in beef cattle production

Breeding Season Length Versus Calving Percentage in Beef Cattle Herds

Long breeding seasons result in long calving seasons. This results in calvings distributed through a range of environmental and nutritional conditions and a disparity in calf maturity at any planned weaning time. It also results in cows entering their period of maximal nutritional requirements over the same range of environmental conditions. Attempts to increase cow and calf productivity often ...

Beef-cattle production functions in forage utilization

Sheep and Beef Cattle Production Systems

Stephen T. Morris Institute Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Private Bag 11222, Palmerston North 4410, New Zealand ABSTRACT: The New Zealand climate favours pasture growth, and it is the key to sheep and beef cattle production as pasture provides over 95% of the diet of sheep and beef cattle. Production systems range from intensive sheep and beef cattle farms on th...

Fetal Programming: Implications for Beef Cattle Production

The concept of fetal programming, also known as developmental programming, was first hypothesized using human epidemiological data in which environmental stimulus in utero resulted in altered long term development, growth, and disease susceptibility in children from undernourished mothers during the Dutch famine (Barker et al., 1993). Recently, literature regarding the effects of fetal programm...

Eating beef: cattle, methane and food production.

A number of prominent people have advocated eating less meat or becoming a vegetarian to reduce global warming, because cattle produce the greenhouse gas methane. This raises a number of questions including: what will happen to the grasslands that much of the world's cattle currently graze; how will alternate protein be produced, and what will the greenhouse consequences of that production be? ...