It is well-known that features of animal nest architecture can be explained by fitness benefits gained by the offspring housed within. Here we focus on the little-tested suggestion that the fitness costs associated with building and maintaining a nest should additionally account for aspects of its architecture. Burying beetles prepare an edible nest for their young from a small vertebrate carca...

Body weights of finishing pigs can be variable within a finishing barn near the time of slaughter; therefore, it is common to market pigs over a period of time. This allows lighter pigs more time to gain BW and approach a desired end point. Use of immunological castration late in life to control boar taint, as an alternative to physical castration early in life, increases cutting yields of fini...

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of different energy intake on physical and chemical composition in body fractions, growth performance and meat characteristics of finishing barrows and gilts. A total of twenty six crossbred (Landrace× Yorkshire) consisting of 16 barrows and 13 gilts were used in this study. The animals were allocated by sex to two treatments to form a 2×2 fac...

An experiment was conducted to examine the effect of the nursery feeding program on subsequent growth performance, carcass quality, meat quality, and physical and chemical body composition of growing-finishing pigs. Four dietary treatments were used in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments based on diet complexity (Complex vs. Simple) and in-feed antibiotics (2,730 [+AB] vs. 0 [-AB] mg of...

The goal of this research was to develop empirical equations to predict chemical and physical compositions of the carcass and the body using the composition of the 9th- to 11th-rib section (rib(9-11)) and other measurements. A database (n = 246) from 6 studies was developed and comprised 37 bulls (BU), 115 steers (STR), and 94 heifers (HF), of which 132 were Nellore (NEL), 76 were NEL × Angus c...

Four experiments were conducted to determine the effects of electrical stunning and decapitation on bird activity as well as carcass and meat quality. In Experiment 1, broilers were subjected to one of four stunning and killing methods: no stun and neck cut, stun and neck cut, no stun and decapitation, and stun and decapitation. Birds were scored for severity of physical activity on a scale of ...

The experiment involved 68 heifers obtained from Polish Black-and-White Lowland dams (with no more than 50 % Holstein Friesian blood) sired by Limousin bulls. The study was arranged to determine the slaughter and carcass traits, chemical composition and physical properties of musculus longissimus lumborum (MLL) as related to the level of marbling, and to examine the correlation between some of ...