Effect of a high crude protein content diet during energy restriction and re-alimentation on animal performance, skeletal growth and metabolism of bone tissue in two genotypes of cattle

Tiago A C C Silva; Simon P Quigley; Lisa J Kidd; Stephen T Anderson; Stuart R McLennan; Dennis P Poppi

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0247718

Effect of a high crude protein content diet during energy restriction and re-alimentation on animal performance, skeletal growth and metabolism of bone tissue in two genotypes of cattle

PLoS One. 2021 Feb 25;16(2):e0247718. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247718. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Tiago A C C Silva^{1

2}, Simon P Quigley², Lisa J Kidd³, Stephen T Anderson⁴, Stuart R McLennan⁵, Dennis P Poppi²

Affiliations

¹ School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale, Australia.
² School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, Gatton, Australia.
³ School of Veterinary Science, The University of Queensland, Gatton, Australia.
⁴ School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.
⁵ Centre for Animal Science, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, Dutton Park, Australia.

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of diet crude protein (CP) content and metabolisable energy (ME) intake on skeletal growth and associated parameters of growing steers prior to and during compensatory growth in weight and catch-up growth in skeletal elongation. The experiment was a factorial design with two cattle genotypes [Brahman crossbred (BX, 178 ± 6 kg) and Holstein-Friesian (HF, 230 ± 34 kg)] and three nutritional treatments; high CP content and high ME intake (HCP-HME), high CP content and low ME intake (HCP-LME) and low CP content and low ME intake (LCP-LME) with the ME intake of HCP-LME matched to that of LCP-LME. Nutritional treatments were imposed over a 103 d period (Phase 1), and after this, all steers were offered ad libitum access to the HCP-HME nutritional treatment for 100 d (Phase 2). Steers fed the high CP content treatment with a low ME intake, showed higher hip height gain (P = 0.04), larger terminal hypertrophic chondrocytes (P = 0.02) and a higher concentration of total triiodothyronine in plasma (P = 0.01) than steers with the same ME intake of the low CP content treatment. In addition, the low CP treatment resulted in significant decreases in bone volume (P = 0.03), bone surface area (P = 0.03) and the concentration of bone-specific alkaline phosphatase in plasma (P < 0.001) compared to steers fed the HCP-HME treatment. A significant interaction between genotype and nutritional treatment existed for the concentration of thyroxine (T4) in plasma where HF steers fed LCP-LME had a lower T4 concentration in plasma (P = 0.05) than BX steers. All steers with a restricted ME intake during Phase 1 demonstrated compensatory growth during Phase 2. However, HF steers fed the LCP treatment during Phase 1 showed a tendency (P = 0.07) for a greater LWG during Phase 2 without any increase in dry matter intake. Results observed at the growth plate and hip height growth suggest that catch-up growth in cattle may also be explained by the growth plate senescence hypothesis. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, the results demonstrate that greater CP intake during ME restriction does not increase compensatory gain in cattle during re-alimentation.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animal Feed*
Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena*
Animals
Bone Development
Bone and Bones / metabolism*
Cattle
Diet, High-Protein / veterinary*
Dietary Proteins / administration & dosage*
Energy Intake*
Energy Metabolism
Genotype
Male

Substances

Dietary Proteins

Grants and funding

This study was funded by Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) and the first author received financial support from Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.