Nutritional effects 011 carcass quality

Carcass growth is made up primarily of fat and protein. As cattle approach mature weight, carcass gain makes up a higher percentage of total gain. This is why dressing percentage increases with days on feed. Although performance is typically reduced for long fed cattle, adjusting performance for dressing percent can give us an indication of the performance of carcass growth. Fat makes up a higher percentage of carcass gain with increasing maturity and days on feed. Energetically, fat is very expensive to produce and also helps explain the reduced performance with increasing days on feed. The correlation between dressing percent and carcass fat is high ( ~ ~ = . 9 3 ) . Dressing percentage increases more with concentrate than roughage diets. This is a reflection of the increased energy available for fat deposition.