Growth and Blood Parameters of Weaned Crossbred Beef Calves Fed Forage Kale (Brassica oleracea spp. acephala)

Table 2

Blood thyroid hormones (T₃, triiodothyronine, and T₄, thyroxine) and hepatic enzymes (AST, aspartate aminotransferase; GGT, gamma-glutamyl transferase, and GLDH, glutamate dehydrogenase) at the beginning and the end of the experiment for calves fed a control hay diet with 1 kg of barley daily (Control), a 50% kale/50% haylage based diet (Kale), a management intensive grazing (Pasture), or a grass haylage based diet (Haylage).

Period of the experiment	Treatment	T3	T4	T3/T4	AST	GGT	GLDH
		nmol L^−1			UI L^−1
Beginning	Control	1.63	72.19	0.0218	78.0	17.1	21.3
	Kale	1.41	66.35	0.0208	71.0	16.2	18.3
	Pasture	1.55	75.88	0.0228	66.0	16.9	16.7
	Haylage	1.79	72.57	0.0252	79.3	20.8	36.3
End	Control	1.58^b	80.11	0.0198^b	83.9^a	17.1	28.1
	Kale	2.33^a*	78.45	0.0309^a*	74.9^ab	15.8	15.7
	Pasture	1.49^b	65.33	0.0230^ab	67.3^ab	18.4	23.3
	Haylage	1.72^b	71.94	0.0247^ab	55.9^b	18.4	18.4
SEM		0.10	5.43	0.002	5.5	1.3	5.9
Source of variation		value
Treatment		0.008	0.8	0.02	0.05	0.3	0.3
Period		0.003	0.3	0.04	0.4	0.8	0.6
Treatment × Period		<0.001	0.007	<0.001	0.04	0.8	0.02

 ^abValues within the same column with different superscripts differ ().
^*Significantly different from calves at the beginning of the experiment ().