Dried sugar beet pulp as a high energy feed for beef cattle

Digestibility trials with 8 lots of pelleted dried sugar beet pulp, carried out with wethers, demonstrated that dried sugar beet pulp is a highly digestible energy source for ruminants. From the digestion coefficients obtained, and a value number of 95, the starch equivalent of the dry matter of dried sugar beet pulp was calculated to be 73.3, while the net energy expressed in EF_r was 619 EF_r per kg dry matter. This is about 90% of the net energy content of barley containing 4% crude fibre in the dry matter.Beef production trials were carried out with 702 young bulls fed on complete dry rations based on dried sugar beet pulp. Two categories of animals were used: 322 baby-beef bulls (intensive system) slaughtered at 13 months of age at an average live-weight of 480 kg; and 380 young bulls coming from pasture (semi-intensive system) at about 250 kg live-weight, and fattened indoors up to at least 550 kg live-weight. With each category, three different rations have been studied. These contained respectively, 50, 60 or 70% pelleted dried sugar beet pulp; the remainder of the rations consisted of respectively 50, 40 or 30% concentrates. The diets were fed ad libitum; straw and water were always available. The three complete dry rations proved to be equally successful for intensive beef production. The carcass quality was good for all animals. The average daily gain obtained with the baby-beef bulls for the three rations respectively was 1 207 g, 1 274 g and 1 172 g; for the second category of bulls the mean growth rates were generally slightly higher: 1 281 g, 1 309 g and 1 357 g.The feed efficiency was higher with the younger animals: the baby-beef bulls (live-weight interval: 150–480 kg) consumed about 2.5 kg protein supplement and 3.5 kg dried sugar beet pulp per kg live-weight gain; while the intake per kg live-weight gain with the bulls of the second category (live-weight interval: 250–560 kg) amounted approximately to 2.75 kg protein supplement and 4 kg dried sugar beet pulp. Within each category of bulls, the feed cost per kg live-weight gain decreased with increasing amounts of dried sugar beet pulp in the rations.