Austrian agriculture is committed to holistic, sustainable, and animal-ethical management. This requires a joint evaluation of milk production and fattening. This also implies the evaluation of (Holstein) bull calves from our dairy farms. The evaluation considers animal performance under different feed conditions, as well as economic viability (e.g., Holstein calves are considerably cheaper than Simmental calves), efficiency, and environmental impact at different levels of measurement (not only per individual animal, but also per area or per nutrient unit).

Due to pests such as the corn rootworm and monoculture crop rotations, alternatives to corn silage are currently being sought. Austria has a grassland share of over 55%. The partial replacement of corn silage with grass silage could also be a possibility in bull fattening.

This project tests the hypothesis that certain dairy-type cattle breeds are well-suited for grassland-based fattening systems due to their feed intake capacity, physiological maturity, and fat deposition. The aim of this project is therefore to investigate whether efficient fattening (economic viability, environmental impact, etc.) of dairy-type bulls is possible.

Consumers are becoming increasingly sensitive to product quality as well as process quality, i.e., the way agricultural food is produced. The aim of this project is to raise awareness of this among all stakeholders (advisory, breeding, and marketing organizations, farmers, consumers, and retailers). Dairy-bred cattle are also said to have better meat quality than Simmental cattle, which this project will investigate.

A bull fattening trial will be conducted with Fleckvieh and 3 Holstein genotypes (Holstein conventional breeding, Holstein from New Zealand, Holstein from lifetime performance lines) with 2 basic feed rations (corn silage or corn silage and grass silage) at average concentrate feed quantities for bull fattening.