Order of Loading of Ingredients and Mixing Time on the Quality of the Diet in Bovine’s Feedlot

The aim of this research was to evaluate the homogeneity of total diet, through the order of loading of the ingredients in wagon mixer and the mixing time of the diet used in a commercial feedlot of cattle. The treatments corresponded to two loading orders and two mixing times, being,: treatment 1 - initiated with forage loading with 5 minutes mixing (FOR5); treatment 2 - initiated with forage loading with 4 minutes mixing (FOR4); treatment 3 - initiated with loading of concentrate with 5 minutes mixing (CON5) and treatment 4 - initiated with concentrate loading with 4 minutes mixing (CON4. The statistical model used was the completely randomized design in factorial scheme 2x2, with four repetitions. Ten diet samples from the trough line were collected after each treatment, being dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP), ether extract (EE) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) the variables of interest analyzed by portable NIR. A second analysis was performed to evaluate if there was an effect of the sample collection order on the nutrient concentration studied. The results showed that for DM, CP and NDF, there was no evidence of differences in the variability between treatments. For EE, a significant effect was observed in FOR5 and CON5 for the loading time factor. For the effect of the order of sampling on the composition of the diet, there were no indications of changes in the composition of the analyzed variables along the trough lines. Considering the results obtained, it was observed that for the treatments FOR5 and CON5 there was a better mix for the variable EE.