Replacement of corn with dried distillers’ grain with solubles to supplement steers grazing lucerne–orchard grass mix: performance, forage intake, methane emission, and carcass and meat characteristics

Context Supplementation of forage-fed cattle during backgrounding helps meet their requirements to growth. As by-products become available, investigating their impact on forage utilization, on animal performance, and on environment is needed. Aim We evaluated performance, forage intake, methane emission, and behavior of yearling steers on pasture, supplemented with cracked corn (CORN) or corn dried distillers’ grain with solubles (DDGS) and their subsequent effect on carcass and meat characteristics. Methods During 77 days of growing phase, 45 steers (354.5 ± 25.7 kg of bodyweight, BW) were blocked by BW and randomly allocated to one of the following three treatments: no supplemented (NSP) and supplemented at 0.8% BW with CORN or DDGS. Over the 217-day finishing phase, none of the steers was supplemented. Steers always grazed together an lucerne–orchard grass mix pasture. Data were evaluated as a complete block randomized design with three treatments. Key results Average intake of corn and DDGS was 2.6 and 2.5 kg DM/day respectively. At the end of growing phase, supplemented steers had a greater BW and a lower DM forage intake and feed conversion efficiency (P = 0.001) than did NSP steers, with significant differences in the average daily gain (CORN > DDGS > NSP). There was no difference between the NSP and DDGS groups in any methane emission variable. Graze, ruminate, and walk behaviors were more frequent for steers from NSP, CORN, and DDGS groups respectively. At finishing, final BW was higher for CORN than for NSP steers. The CORN group showed heavier cold carcass weight than did the NSP steers. Conclusions Supplementation of beef steers during growing phase in grazing systems enhanced performance and carcass weights, with corn over DDGS. Implications The results of the current study suggest that before replacing the corn supplementation by DDGS, producers need to consider the cost of supplementation against the potential improvement in animal performance.