Short-season high-moisture shelled corn, snaplage, or corn silage as a partial replacement for dry-rolled barley grain or barley silage in western Canadian beef cattle finishing diets

The objective was to evaluate the replacement of barley-based ingredients with short-season high-moisture corn products on steer growth performance and carcass characteristics. Over 2 years, 320 beef steers (528 ± 36.2 kg initial body weight) were assigned to 32 pens (4 pens/treatment/year). Treatments were finishing diets that contained dry-rolled barley grain and barley silage (BGBS; control), barley grain and corn silage (BGCS), high-moisture shelled corn and barley grain with barley silage (HCBS), or snaplage (included as a silage and grain source) with barley grain (SNAP). Steers were fed for 99 days and 72 days in years 1 and 2, respectively. Steers fed BGCS did not differ ( P ≥ 0.13) from BGBS for dry matter intake, average daily gain, gain:feed, or carcass characteristics. Steers fed HCBS had greater ( P ≤ 0.05) hot carcass weight and dressing percentage than BGBS. A lesser ( P = 0.02) proportion of steers fed SNAP had severe liver abscesses than BGBS. We concluded that corn silage can replace barley silage, 50% replacement of barley grain with high-moisture shelled corn may improve hot carcass weight, and replacement of barley silage and some barley grain with snaplage decreases the proportion of cattle with severe liver abscesses at slaughter.