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Investigación Agraria

On-line version ISSN 2305-0683

Abstract

PANIAGUA ALCARAZ, Pedro Luis; GONZALEZ CABANAS, Javier Feliciano; OCAMPOS OLMEDO, Diego Avilio  and  CEUPPENS QUINONES, Bernardo José. Productive performance, quality of the carcass and the meat of entire and castrated lambs fed in a creep-feeding system. Investig. Agrar. [online]. 2017, vol.19, n.1, pp.35-43. ISSN 2305-0683.  https://doi.org/10.18004/investig.agrar.2017.junio.35-43.

The present study was carried out to determine the productive performance, quality of the carcass and the meat of entire and castrated lambs fed on a Creep-Feeding system. The experimental work consisted of three parts: the productive performance evaluation phase was carried out on the farm Don Vicente located in the district of Valenzuela, Department of Cordillera, the evaluation of the carcass yield was carried out in a commercial refrigerator located in Luque, Central Department; and the evaluation of meat quality was developed in the meat laboratory of the Department of Animal Production, Faculty of Agrarian Sciences - National University of Asunción.Fieldwork began on September 26, 2013 and ended on January 13, 2014. Forty male Dorper × Santa Ines lambs have been studied, with 15 ± 3 days of age and weights of 11,288 ± 1,33 kg. The experimental design was completely random and had two treatments and 20 repetitions; each lamb was considered an experimental unit. The treatments were T1: Entire Lambs and T2: Castrated Lambs. The lambs were supplemented at the foot of the mother (Creep-Feeding). The evaluated variables were, productive performance measured at the beginning and then every 15 days constituting seven periods to determine Average Daily Gain (ADW) and Total Weight Gain (TWG); at the end of the study of productive behavior, the lambs were slaughtered and the hot carcass yield, cold shedding, marbling of the Longissimus dorsi muscle, dorsal fat thickness, cooking losses and tenderness were evaluated. The data were analyzed by comparison of means by Student's t-tests, adopting an error level of 5%. A regression analysis was also used to determine the growth trend of the animals. No statistically significant difference was observed for ADW, TWG, carcass yield, cooking loss and shear strength, between entire and castrated animals, although in the dorsal fat thickness there was a significant difference in favor of castrated lambs.

Keywords : Lambs; castration; Dorper; Santa Ines; Daily weight gain; carcass yield; meat quality; marbling; meat tenderness.

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