Table 1. Body weight, dietary composition, and chemical analysis of diets in Japanese Black beef cattle during the Early, Middle, and Late fattening stages.

Items	Stage1			SEM
	Early	Middle	Late
Body weight (kg)	439.1a	561.8b	712.4c	12.6
Daily intake amount2 (kg)
Concentrate3	6.0a	7.6b	6.1a	0.32
Rice straw	2.1a	1.1b	1.0b	0.13
Nutrient adequacy rate4 (%)
DM5	88.7a	96.1a	75.4b	3.48
TDN6	91.2a	102.4a	74.2b	3.85
NDF7	43.9a	36.8b	31.5c	0.54

^a,b,cMean within a row, different superscripts significantly differ (P < 0.05)

¹The age of cattle in the Early, Middle, and Late stages were 14, 21, and 29 months, respectively.

²Organic matter basis

³The concentrate diet composed of barely, steam-flaked corn, wheat bran, and soybean meal and contains 71.2% total digestible nutrient (TDN) and 15.7% crude protein (CP), 72.2% TDN and 13.9% CP, and 72.8% TDN and 12.0% CP during the Early, Middle, and Late stage, respectively.

⁴Nutrient adequacy rate was based on the nutrient requirement of Japanese Feeding Standard for Beef Cattle [13], with an expected daily weight gain of 0.8, 0.65, and 0.7 kg during the Early, Middle, and Late stages, respectively.

⁵DM = dry matter

⁶TDN = total digestible nutrients

⁷NDF = neutral detergent fiber.