Skip to main content
ARS Home » Plains Area » Bushland, Texas » Conservation and Production Research Laboratory » Livestock Nutrient Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #390147
Research Project: Strategies to Manage Feed Nutrients, Reduce Gas Emissions, and Promote Soil Health for Beef and Dairy Cattle Production Systems of the Southern Great Plains

Location: Livestock Nutrient Management Research

Title: Production systems and nutrition

Author
item BECK, PAUL - Oklahoma State University
item Beck, Matthew - Matt
item APPLE, JASON - Texas A&M University

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/14/2022
Publication Date: 10/23/2023
Citation: Beck, P.A., Beck, M.R., Apple, J.K. 2023. Production systems and nutrition. In: Dikeman, M., editor. Encyclopedia of Meat Science. 3rd edition. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. p. 629-639.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-323-85125-1.00029-6

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Meat quality, and therefore eating experience, is a driver of product acceptability, demand, and willingness to pay by meat consumers. Meat quality deals with chemical and physical characteristics of meat, influencing taste, texture, juiciness, shelf-life, and product safety. The ruminant production, links producer decisions and end-product meat quality. These decisions influence meat quality beginning before the animal is conceived, carries on through in utero experiences, occurs during the animal’s early life, and finally during the growing and finishing phases of the animal’s production cycle. Prior to producing a calf, producers select breeds which hopefully fit within their environmental and economic constraints. Further, before the animal is born, the producer decides the offspring’s dam nutrition, which alters the offspring’s productivity in gestation. During early life, periods of undernutrition may cause compensatory growth; however, the animals will not fully catch up to where they would have been without that period of undernutrition, plus carcass weight, yield and quality grades may be reduced. Alternatively, additional inputs, such as providing creep feed to calves, may influence carcass quality; however, these results appear to be context dependent (i.e., basal forage diet, type of creep feed provided, etc.). During the growing and finishing phase, diet and specific production setting can greatly influence meat quality. Further, the use of growth promoting technology may increase yield grade and subsequently reduce quality grade of the carcass, but not to a degree where the use of growth promotants are non-economical. Ultimately, management decisions beginning even before the animal is conceived and throughout their productive life can have large impacts on the meat quality of ruminant animals.