Performance of beef steers grazing Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu and receiving different supplementation strategies during the rainy and dry seasons

The objective of this study was to evaluate weight gain of beef steers grazing Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu and receiving one out of three different supplementation strategies during the rainy season of 2003 and the dry and rainy seasons of 2004. Twenty-four crossbreed steers averaging 230 kg of initial body weight were assigned to one of the following supplementation strategies: daily supplementation (DS), supplementation in alternated days (AD), or supplementation from Monday to Friday (MF) in a completely randomized design (8 replicates/treatment). Animals were individually weighted with no fasting every 28 days. There were no differences in weight gain among the different supplementation strategies averaging 0.76, 0.74, and 0.71 kg/day during the rainy season of 2003 0.61, 0.62, and 0.57 kg/day during the dry season of 2004; and 0.57, 0.54, and 0.51 kg/day during the rainy season of 2004, respectively, for DS, AD and MF treatments. It can be concluded that reducing supplementation frequency may decrease feeding and labor costs with no negative impact on animal performance.