title: Effect of nursing or mentoring by adult cows on physical activity, performance and meat quality of fattening beef calves kept on alpine pastures.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Compared with weaned calves, nursed calves benefit from access to milk as nutrient-dense feed and mentoring by their dams. Both may be decisive for growth under difficult conditions such as grazing on alpine pastures, where experience could play an essential role. These factors were investigated separately by comparing nursed calves with calves weaned at 3 months of age and grazing with or without a mentor cow (n = 8 calves).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Weaned calves with mentor cows spent less time lying and walked more than nursed calves. Irrespective of whether they had a mentor cow or not, the weaned calves grew slower than the nursed calves (357, 428 and 1324 g day-1respectively). This also adversely affected slaughter weight, dressing percentage, conformation and fat cover at slaughter. In general, mentoring had no effect. Meat quality did not differ whether weaned calves were mentored or not. Nursed calves were superior in intramuscular fat content, tenderness and water-holding capacity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The availability of milk appeared to be much more important to the calves under demanding grazing conditions than did mentoring. The differences in growth rate were accompanied by unexpectedly large differences in meat quality, showing that early weaning was not suitable for this system.© 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.
authors.affiliation: ETH Zurich, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Universitaetstrasse 2, CH-8092, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Isabelle Dm
authors.initials: ID
authors.lastname: Gangnat
authors.affiliation: Agroscope, Institute of Livestock Sciences (ILS), 1725 Posieux, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Pierre-Alain
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Dufey
authors.affiliation: Agroscope, Institute of Livestock Sciences (ILS), 1725 Posieux, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Silacci
authors.affiliation: Agroscope, Institute of Livestock Sciences (ILS), 1725 Posieux, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Jessika
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Messadene-Chelali
authors.affiliation: ETH Zurich, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Universitaetstrasse 2, CH-8092, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kreuzer
authors.affiliation: ETH Zurich, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Universitaetstrasse 2, CH-8092, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Joel
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Berard
mesh_terms: D000821:Animal Feed / Q000032:analysis*; D000818:Animals; D001835:Body Weight; D002417:Cattle / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism*; D005223:Fats / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008460:Meat / Q000032:analysis*; D006109:Poaceae / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D005223:Fats
keywords: alpine pasture; beef calves; growth; meat quality; mentor; milk