BODY COMPOSITION INFLUENCES NET FEED INTAKE IN TERMINAL SIRE RAMS

摘要

Net feed intake (NFI) is commonly used to identify animals that are more efficient at converting feed into weight gain, however, little work has evaluated the potential to use NFI in the Australian sheep industry. Net feed intake is moderately heritable (Francois et al. 2002) and negatively correlated with lean carcass (Knott et al. 2003). Body composition might have a regulatory role in influencing efficiency (Perry et al. 1997). We hypothesised that variation in the efficiency of energy utilisation in growing sheep, and therefore NFI, may be explained by differences in body composition.