Author
Listed:
- W. A. Lombard
- F. A. Maré
- H. Jordaan
Abstract
Approximately 75 per cent of South Africa’s beef is finished by feedlots. The profitability of the beef industry remains under pressure due to various external factors. Previous research has shown that many factors influence feedlot performance and profitability. It is, however, very difficult to judge an animal’s inherit feedlot performance before it enters the feedlot. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the animal traits of Santa Gertrudis bulls and the feedlot profitability of these bulls. Analysed traits included the sheath score, capacity score and build score as high scores for these traits are believed to be associated with better feedlot performance. The data for this study was collected from 48 Santa Gertrudis bull calves. The profitability of feeding cattle was expressed as the Total Margin (TM) and Feed Margin (FM). Given the nature of the dependant variables, Ordinary Least Squared regressions were used for the analyses with TM and FM as dependent variables. Results show that although both models were significant, the sheath score was the only individual trait that proved to be significantly correlated with both TM and FM. Sheath score proved to be negatively correlated with TM and FM while it was expected, through popular belief, to be positively correlated. This implies that animals with lower sheath scores, thus with sheaths closer to their bodies, perform better in the feedlot and may affect the TM and FM positively. The magnitude of this trait still remains under question and further research is required.
Suggested Citation
W. A. Lombard & F. A. Maré & H. Jordaan, 2018.
"The influence of animal traits on feedlot profitability of Santa Gertrudis cattle in South Africa,"
Agrekon, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(2), pages 101-107, April.
Handle:
RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:57:y:2018:i:2:p:101-107
DOI: 10.1080/03031853.2018.1477606
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:57:y:2018:i:2:p:101-107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ragr20 .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.