Carcass and meat characteristics of Charolais and 3/4 Charolais 1/4 Nellore cull heifers, finished in feedlot

The objective of this work was to study the quantitative and qualitative carcass and meat characteristics of Charolais (C) and 3/4 C 1/4 Nellore (N) cull heifers. Twenty-five culled heifers, three years old, were feedlot finished per 80 days period. No significant difference was observed for slaughter weight (473.6 vs. 468.8 kg), cold carcass weight (241.8 vs. 241.8 kg), dressing percentage (51.09 vs. 51.61%), fat thickness (4.13 vs. 4.78 mm), forequarter percentage (35.52 vs. 36.01%), sidecut percentage (15.03 vs. 15.42%), conformation (10.75 vs. 10.56 points) and carcass length (127.4 vs. 129.9 cm). The C heifers showed higher sawcut (49.45 vs. 48.57%) and arm perimeter (36.73 vs. 35.00 cm) than the 3/4 C 1/4 N heifers. No significant difference was observed for carcass composition, meat color (3.46 vs. 3.11 points), texture (3.67 vs. 3.33 points), marbling (6.40 vs. 5.00 points), tenderness (6.48 vs. 6.19 points), flavor (6.33 vs. 6.33 points) and WB-Shear value (5.99 vs. 6.24 kg). Meat juiciness was higher for C heifers (6.18 vs. 5.67 points). For heifers slaughtered at three years of age, no expressive differences for quantitative and qualitative carcass and meat aspects were observed between the two genotypes.