Comparación de dos sistemas de alimentación en etapa inicial de terneras en el cantón Chambo, provincia de Chimborazo.

Abstract

The Ecuadorian animal breeding sector is currently facing a difficult time and is looking after an upgrade towards competitiveness as international markets, given that local production costs are higher compared to closer countries. One of many alternatives is attending a sustainability program at milk production, to lessen production costs. There are several strategies that would allow an earlier puberty start with the cattle, to achieve sooner conception, the management of the animal replacement in a dairy production system constitutes at least 20% of its annual cost from direct investment. This research is focused on calves' raising at its initial stage, the objective of this research is to evaluate two initial feeding systems up to 56 days, relating them to productive and economic parameters. To evaluate these systems, up to 10 Holstein calves from Santa Catalina's farm located in Chimborazo's province will be used, divided into two separate treatments in which will be measured the following parameters of growth rate, weight gain, milk consumption and occurrence of characteristic diseases at this stage. As the result of this work, it was confirmed that the calves that received intensive treatment had better yields in comparison to those calves that received traditional treatment, whereas attending the traditional system' cost, it turned out to be cheaper in comparison to the intensive one, until day 56, furthermore it was developed an additional cost projection of milk consumption, up to day 120 in traditional calves, giving as a result that the intensive treatment had better results given that it proved to be cheaper until those days.