Performance of grazing suckling beef calves receiving concentrate supplementation with different energy sources

The supply of concentrated supplements to grazing animals aims to maximize animal performance, once supplements can supply the deficiencies of forage. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of grazing suckling beef calves receiving concentrate supplementation with different energy sources. Thirty four Nellore calves (12 males and 22 females) were subjected to creep-feeding, with an average weight 108?3.9 kg and age of four months in the period from March to June, 2013. The animals, were housed in 20 ha area with grass Urochloa decumbens, accompanied by their mothers. The concentrate supplements have 20% crude protein consisting of soybean meal, mineral mixture, molasses and the following energy sources: corn (C); corn + sorghum (C+S); corn + sorghum + wheat bran (C+S+WB),supplied in an amount of 0.5% of body weight. In the control treatment (MM) was supplied mineral mixture ad libitum. The animals were subjected to 15 days of adaptation and 112 days of experimental evaluation. For performance evaluation, the animals were weighed at the beginning and end of the experiment after a fasting period of 14 hours. Data were submitted to an analysis of variance according to a randomized block design with four treatments and two blocks (gender of animals), adopted the initial body weight as a covariate. Means were compared by the Fisher's least significant difference test at 5%. There was no effect on the treatment block. Supplemented animals had higher (P<0.05) average daily gain (ADG) that animals MM treatment. The animals supplemented with C (0.617a), C+S (0.655a) and C+S+WB (0.621a) gained on average 120g/day more than the beasts of the MM treatment (0.511b). The highest ADG have influenced the final weight of the animals (P<0.05). Animals supplemented with the treatments: C (169.7a), C+S (173.9a) and C+S+WB (170.1a), were weaned 13.2 kg heavier than the beasts of the MM treatment (158.0b). Supplementation improves the performance of beef calves grazing.