The objetive in this experiment was to evaluate carcass and beef quantitative and qualitative characterstics from young bulls, slaughtered at 14-16 months of age and fed diets containing different concentrate levels. It was used sixteen Charolais- Nellore crossbreed non-castrated young bulls and fed diets containing 22; 40; 59 or 79% of concentrate. The animals were complete randomly distributed, with four replicates per diet. Initial age and body weight of the animals were 9.32 months and 192.44 kg, respectively. The animals were slaugthered at 400 kg of body weight in a packing plant, 54 km away from the feedlot. The diet offered was isoproteic and the roughage used was corn silage. The carcass physiological maturity decreased as the concentrate in diet increased. The hindquarter percentage, beef color, and texture increased linearly as the level of concentrate in diet increased. Increase in the concentrate levels in the diet does not affect the majority of carcass characterstics, although it improves meat visual aspect.
carcass yield; comercial cuts; marbling; muscle percentage; palatability
