Feed intake and efficiency are economically important traits because feed is the greatest variable cost in beef production. Feed efficiency can be measured as residual feed intake (RFI), which is the difference between actual DMI of an animal and the expected DMI based on its BW and growth rate. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) is the inverse of gross feed efficiency and is the ratio of DMI to ADG. ...

The beef industry in the United States is developing programs to minimize excess fat produced, increase consistency of product and to identify and reward individual owners for superior performance in the feedlot. In the U.S., Strategic Alliances between cow-calf, feedlot and packer segments of the industry are being developed to accomplish this goal. Integrated production and marketing systems ...

This study was conducted to determine the optimum test duration and the effect of missing data on accuracy of measuring feed efficiency and its 4 related traits ADG, DMI, feed conversion ratio, and residual feed intake in beef cattle using data from 456 steers with 5,397 weekly averaged feed intakes and BW repeated measurements taken over 91 d. Data were collected using the GrowSafe System at t...

Two hundred eighty nursery pigs (initially 30.9 lb) were used in a 21-d growth assay to determine the energy value of ground corn germ relative to corn oil in nursery diets. Increasing dietary corn oil linearly decreased average daily feed intake and improved feed efficiency. However, pigs fed diets containing ground corn germ meal had similar gain and feed efficiency as those fed the corn-soyb...

Compensatory growth is an integral part ofNew Zealand beef production systems (Nicol and Kitessa, 1997) with restricted winter nutrition followed by good spring and summer feeding enabling a better fit with seasonal pasture production. Purchasers of store cattle (including feedlotters) often prefer animals with a previous history of perturbed growth because they believe they can benefit from hi...

Since the feed cost is a major determinant of profitability in poultry industry, how to improve feed efficiency through genetic selection is an intriguing subject for breeders and producers. As a more suitable indicator assessing feed efficiency, residual feed intake (RFI) is defined as the difference between observed and expected feed intake based on maintenance and growth. However, the geneti...

Background and Objectives: Red beet juice, a potential source of valuable nutrients, is widely used as a colorant in food industries. In recent years, to avoid reduction of nutritional values of the red beet during concentration by thermal processing, an osmotic distillation (OD) technique has been suggested. Therefore, the major aim of the present study was to investigate effects of the flow r...

and Implications Estrus activity in virgin heifers tends to affect the outcome in measurements observed during performance and feed utilization tests. Prior to any testing it is prudent to identify those females that have shown estrus activity consistently and those which have not, then evaluate animals for feed efficiency grouped by stage of sexual maturity. Introduction Feed efficiency measur...

Two experiments were conducted to study the role of feed intake and feed efficiency in Cu-stimulated growth of weanling pigs. In Exp. 1, 42 pigs were randomly assigned into three treatments: 1) control: ad libitum access to a corn-soybean meal-dried whey basal diet; 2) ad libitum/Cu: ad libitum access to the basal diet supplemented with 215 ppm of Cu; or 3) pair-fed/Cu: pair-fed the Cu-suppleme...

Feed intake and feed efficiency are economically important traits in beef cattle because feed is the greatest variable cost in production. Feed efficiency can be measured as feed conversion ratio (FCR, intake per unit gain) or residual feed intake (RFI, measured as DMI corrected for BW and growth rate, and sometimes a measure of body composition, usually carcass fatness, RFI(bf)). The goal of t...