Effects of Pasture Quality and Feeding Management on Carcass Quality in Lambs

Current research aimed to evaluate the effects of pasture quality and feeding management on carcass quality in fattening lambs in pasture based finishing systems. Turcana lambs and F1 German Blackheaded x Turcana cross-breds were used in 8 experimental groups, on two divergent production systems, conventional versus organic, respectively. On each type of pasture, two sub-variants were included, with and without concentrate feeding. Under conventional system, commercial yield of the carcasses ranged from 54.8±0.37 to 52.6±0.28 %, with both genotype and concentrates feeding influencing significantly (p≤0.05) the carcass yields. Under organic production, concentrates allowance did not influenced (p>0.05) the carcass yields of the lambs within the genotypes, being registered significant (p≤0.05) differences between the two genotypes. It was concluded that both pasture quality and concentrates allowance have a strong influence in lambs finished conventionally, and that under organic production the genotype is the main factor to influence carcass yields.