Ryegrass Swards Compared with Perennial Ryegrass Swards on the Performance and Carcass Quality of Grazing Beef

An experiment investigated whether the inclusion of chicory (Cichorium intybus) in swards grazed by beef steers altered their performance, carcass characteristics or parasitism when compared to steers grazing perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne). Triplicate 2-ha plots were established with a chicory/ryegrass mix or ryegrass control. Forty-eight Belgian Bluecross steers were used in the first grazing season and a core group (n = 36) were retained for finishing in the second grazing season. The experiment comprised of a standardisation and measurement period. During standardisation, steers grazed a ryegrass/white clover pasture as one group. Animals were allocated to treatment on the basis of liveweight, body condition and faecal egg counts (FEC) determined 7 days prior to the measurement period. The measurement period ran from 25 May until 28 September 2010 and 12 April until 11 October 2011in the first and second grazing year. Steers were weighed every 14 days at pasture or 28 days during housing. In the first grazing year, faecal samples were collected for FEC and parasite cultures. At the end of the first grazing year, individual blood samples were taken to determine O. ostertagi antibody and plasma pepsinogen levels. During winter, animals were housed as one group and fed silage. In the second grazing year, steers were slaughtered when deemed to reach fat class 3. Data on steer performance showed no differences in daily liveweight gain which averaged 1.04 kg/day. The conformation, fat grade and killing out proportion of beef steers grazing chicory/ryegrass or ryegrass were not found to differ. No differences in FEC, O. ostertagi antibody or plasma pepsinogen levels of beef steers grazing either chicory/ryegrass or ryegrass were observed. Overall, there were no detrimental effects of including chicory in swards grazed by beef cattle on their performance, carcass characteristics or helminth parasitism, when compared with steers grazing ryegrass. Citation: Marley CL, Fychan R, Davies JW, Scollan ND, Richardson RI, et al. (2014) Effects of Chicory/Perennial Ryegrass Swards Compared with Perennial Ryegrass Swards on the Performance and Carcass Quality of Grazing Beef Steers. PLoS ONE 9(1): e86259. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0086259 Editor: Marinus F.W. te Pas, Wageningen UR Livestock Research, Netherlands Received August 7, 2013; Accepted December 9, 2013; Published January 28, 2014 Copyright: 2014 Marley et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was funded by EBLEX (www.eblex.org.uk), with parasitology support and advice from Merial SAS, France (http://www.merial.com). Seed for the swards was donated by Germinal Holdings Ltd, UK. The funders had no role in data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors would like to state clearly that whilst two of the authors have an affiliation with the funding provided for this work (EBLEX and Merial), there are no commercial conflicts with this work. Andrew Forbes from Merial was involved in the study due to his substantial experience with cattle nematodes. Elizabeth Genever is affiliated with EBLEX, the organization for beef and lamb levy payers in England, who have an aim to conduct research that will be of relevance to the levy payers. The interpretation of the results was completely independent from any company’s opinion. This does not alter the authors’ adherence all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. * E-mail: cvm@aber.ac. uk