Effectiveness of cottonseed cake fibre included in the diet of Nellore steers finished in confinement

ABSTRACT

It was aimed to evaluate the use of cottonseed cake (CSC) as a source of physically effective neutral detergent fibre (peNDF) to replace corn silage (CS) in diet of feedlot-finished cattle. The design used was completely randomised, with 2 treatments (30% CSC and 30% CS) and 12 replications. There was interaction between fibre source and nutrient in the material retained in the Penn State Particle Separator. The highest concentrations (P = 0.0001) of peNDF and the in vitro digestibility of peNDF (DpeNDF) were for CSC. There was a higher (p < 0.05) dry matter intake (DMI) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) intake (NDFI) by the animals on the CSC diet. The CSC-fed steers showed higher (P = 0.0001) final body weight (BW) and total weight gain. The steers fed CSC showed a longer (P = 0.0001) feeding time, feed efficiency, and lower rumination time (P = 0.0001) and rumination efficiency (P = 0.0001). There were positive correlations between the variables: rumination time × intake, rumination time × NDFI and peNDF × DpeNDF. It was observed that there was a negative correlation between the variables: rumination time × peNDF, rumination time × DpeNDF, NDFI × peNDF, and NDFI × DpeNDF. Cottonseed cake is an alternative source of peNDF for feedlot beef cattle.

KEYWORDS:

• Ingestive behaviour
• co-product
• forage-free diet
• physically effective fibre
• roughage

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

We would like to thank the Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Fundacao de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento do Ensino Ciencia e Tecnologia do Estado de Mato Grosso do Sul – FUNDECT, and the Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (Financing Code 001).