PSIII-14 - The influence of dietary barley supplementation on American Wagyu feedlot performance.

Eighty-nine American Wagyu steers were used to evaluate the effects of dietary barley supplementation on feedlot performance. We hypothesized that barley supplementation would increase ADG compared to non-supplemented control animals. The experimental design was a randomized complete block design. Steers were blocked by initial body weight (BW) and randomly assigned within block to one of two treatments. Treatments consisted of: 1) Control (no supplemental barley) and 2) Control diet + 0.9 kg∙animal^-1∙d^-1 of supplemental barley. Steers were housed in feedlot pens (all pens contained n = 4 steers/pen with the exception of one Control pen that contained n=5 steers; 11 replicates/treatment; experimental unit = pen) and fed a traditional American Wagyu finishing diet (DM basis: 68.42% DM, 14.33% CP; TDN: 74.76%, NEg: 1.16 Mcal/kg, 5.25% EE) for 270d. The basal diet consisted of grass hay, corn silage, cracked corn grain, soybean meal, corn distillers grain, white salt, ground limestone, and olive byproduct. Diets were fed once daily in the morning and barely was top dressed to the appropriate pens, immediately after the basal diet was delivered. Steers were individually weighed on d -1 and 0, and approximately every 28 days throughout the 270d experiment. Data were analyzed using a mixed effects model (PROC MIXED, SAS) for a completely randomized block design. Initial pen BW was used as a covariate in the statistical analysis of all performance data and significance was determined at P ≤ 0.05. Initial and final BW, ADG, DMI, and feed:gain were similar across treatments. Therefore, under the conditions of this experiment, these data suggest that barley supplementation for 270d to American Wagyu cattle did not impact overall animal performance.