Assessment of Commercial Fattening Practices and Fattening Performance of Beef Cattle in Selected Districts of East Shoa Zone

The study was conducted in Adama, Lome and Adami-Tulu district of East Shoa Zone of Oromia Regional State to assess commercial fattening practices, to evaluate performance of commercial fattening and to evaluate chemical composition of mixed ration at different feeding phase of fattening from selected feedlot .The questionnaire based formal survey was conducted using semi structured questioners by interviewing a total of 45feedlot operators purposively selected from the three districts and both quantitative and qualitative data on beef cattle fattening systems were obtained. For the monitoring work nine farms among those used for interview were selected for the purpose of monitoring animals’ performance under different stage (phases) during fattening period. Eight Animals from each farm were purposively selected from the farms based on age, initial body weight and body condition. The study revealed that the major criteria for selecting animals to purchase for feedlot fattening includes breed type, physical appearance and/or frame size, age, health and initial price body condition, coat color, horn size are the top priority. The feed resources used by commercial cattle fattening include crop residues and agro-industrial by products. The average crude protein contents (CP) of the different rations was not different (P>0.05) among the scale of fattening or phase of feeding, but numerically higher amount of CP content was recorded for rations prepared by large (19.09±0.97%) as compared to medium (17.92±0.97%) and small (16.33±0.97%) scale commercial cattle fattening and for the initial phase (19.06±0.97%) as compared to medium (17.32±0.97%) and final (16.96±0.97%) stage of feeding. The average NDF and ADL% was significantly higher (P