Abstract:
Diethystilbestrol (DES) has been shown to be a growth stimulant for fattening beef cattle (2, 9) and is now widely used in the beef industry. Livestock men are warned against feeding DES to animals kept for breeding purposes due to the undesirable effects on the reproductive tract and mammary gland observed in various studies (3, 4, 5, 6, 7) when DES was either injected or implanted in cattle. Only a small amount of data actually exists concerning the effect of feeding low levels of DES to either beef or dairy heifers. Reuber (11) reported an increase in the growth rate of beef heifers when levels of 10 and 20 mg of DES were fed daily without an impairment of their reproductive performance. When implanting 24mg pellets of DES in beef heifers, Williams and Baker (15) obtained a small increase in the growth rate without lowering the reproductive performance.
Keywords:
dairy heifers, diethylstilbestrol
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