The expressiveness of meat forms of cattle depending on the content of adipose tissue under the skin and between the muscles

Abstract

The paper covers the peculiarities of the degree of meat shapes in the bulls of the Ukrainian meat breed, depending on the adipose tissue content under the skin and between the muscles. They were evaluated according to their productivity from 8 to 18, 21, and 23 months. Bulls with better development of meat shapes are characterized by fat deposition in the carcass and between the muscles earlier and more intensively. They have from 15.1 to 44.7% more fatty tissue in the carcass, including under the skin – from 3.8 to 44.1%. With a different degree of meat shapes, subcutaneous fat is deposited more than between muscles. The content of adipose tissue under the skin relative to its total amount in the body of animals tends to decrease by 6.5 points with age for a better degree of meat shapes, and on the contrary, to increase by 2.6 points for a worse degree. If the fat under the bull skin at 18 months in the best shapes is 72.1% of the fat in the carcass, and in the worst – 72.3%, then at 23 months, its amount decreases by 13.6 and 4.4 points, respectively. The fat between the muscles, on the contrary, increases from 27.9 and 27.7% by the same amounts, respectively. With a greater degree of meat shapes and subcutaneous fat thickness on the carcasses of 18-month-old bulls, intramuscular fat (marbling) content is lower by 75.0%. 18-month-old bulls with better-developed meat shapes have fat cuts off from the carcass by 15.2% more than animals with less developed shapes, 23 – by 11.3%. A large amount of produced waste in the body of animals in the best meat shape leads to excessive (from 0.9 to 14.5%) feed consumption (feed unit) for the increase in live weight. The subcutaneous fat content and the number of cuts off from 16 to 24 months positively correlate with the degree of meat shapes in bulls at 15 months and have correlation coefficients of 0.26 and 0.17, respectively.