Beef cattle growth performance in response to incremental levels of dietary desmanthus

Beef steers were fed incremental levels of desmanthus forage to augment Rhodes grass diet to examine the effect on liveweight, body condition score, rumen metabolites and plasma metabolites measured at varying time points. Desmanthus was harvested daily, chopped and mixed with Rhodes grass hay before feeding. Lucerne was added to the diets containing 0, 15% or 30% desmanthus to ensure that crude protein was similar to that in the 45% desmanthus diet. Steers were weighed fortnightly or monthly and body condition score recorded monthly. Blood and rumen fluid samples were collected at the start middle and end of the experimental period.
Software/equipment used to create/collect the data: Automatic weighing scale (Gallagher 65 Scanlon Drive, Epping, Victoria 3076, Australia) Tub grinder (Roto Grind model 760, Burrows Enterprises, LLC, Greeley, CO, USA) Christy and Norris grinder (Christy Turner Ltd, Suffolk, England) Unity Spectrastar 2500X rotating top window system (Unity Scientific, Milford, MA, USA) Portable pH meter (Aqua-pH, TPS Pty Ltd, Brendale, QLD, Australia) Gas chromatography (Shimadzu Corporation, Kyoto, Japan) AU480 chemistry analyzer (Beckman Coulter, Inc. California, USA)
Software/equipment used to manipulate/analyse the data: SAS software version 9.4 (SAS Institute, Cary, North Carolina, USA)