No impact (P>0.15) on body weight gain, gain to feed ratio, hot carcass weight, carcass yield and carcass grading of steers was observed during the finishing phase.
It is important to notice that diarrhea also influenced carcass grading, causing additional economic loss.
Somewhat different approaches and assumptions among the European colleagues from Denmark, France, Hungaria, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Spain and United Kingdom led to different solutions for carcass grading, and especially formulas for the prediction of the lean meat percentage, which is or should be the basis for the payment of producers (Szabó and Babinszky, 2009).
As muscle tissue has a higher US attenuation than fat tissue, US technology is widely used in farm animal performance testing (Stouffer, 2004; Pathak et al., 2011; Ayuso et al., 2013), obesity diagnostics (Barbero et al., 2013), body condition scoring (Schröder and Staufenbiel, 2006) or for carcass grading (Branscheid et al., 2011).
Long-bodied cattle tend to have lower quality carcass grades and are later maturing.
All carcasses graded P + (European class 13) and lower were grouped as insufficient carcass quality and analyzed as such.
They also recorded a higher carcass quality grade.
Hot carcass weight, quality grade, and yield grade were not affected by treatment, and cattle fed restricted corn silage had a lower (P<0.05) dressing percentage.
