The meat yield of holstein bulls fattened as baby beef

This  work  evaluated  the  fattening  of  Holstein  bulls  to  300  kg  live  weight  (baby-beef). The trial included 27 Holstein bulls after finishing milk nutrition at an average live weight of 85.51  kg.  The  bulls  were  fed  water  and  a  granulated  feed  mixture  ad  libitum  (crude protein – 197.92 g.kg-1, fat – 26.10 g.kg-1, ME – 13.12 MJ.kg-1) and lucerne hay at a ratio of up to 25% of the total feeding dose to ensure a sufficiency of structural fibre. At the end of fattening at the age of 245 days, the animals achieved an average of 278.41 kg live weight with 4.49 kg average daily intake of mixture. An average daily gain of 1.124 kg was achieved during fattening. The feed conversion of granulated feed mixture was 3.39 kg. A detailed dissection of 6 animals was performed to obtain carcass value parameters. According to the SEUROP classification of carcasses according to conformation and fatness five carcasses were assigned to the R2 class and one to the U2 class. The cooling loss was 0.76%. The hot carcass weight was 154 kg, with a dressing percentage of 51.56%. The valuable cuts carcass was 38.88% and the proportion of fat in the carcass was 4.7%. The study confirmed that the prolongation of fattening increases the fat content in the meat (1.567 g.100g-1) and consequently increases the energy value (448.015 kJ.100g-1). We can say from the investigation of fatty acids in the intramuscular fat of musculus longissimus thoracis et lumborum that the largest proportion of monounsaturated fatty acids was accounted for by oleic acid (44.93%), followed by the saturated fatty acid palmitic acid (24.44%) and stearic acid (16.46%). The highest proportion of essential fatty acids was accounted for by linoleic acid (8.3%). “Baby-beef” fattening is a suitable alternative for the use of bulls of dairy breeds to achieve extremely good carcass parameters.