peer reviewed ; In order to measure Animal performance and, carcass and meat characteristics of Belgian Blue double-muscled culled females, a fattening trial was carried out on a total of 78 animals. Fifteen females were slaughtered at the beginning of the trial and 63 were fattened on a maize silage based diet. The initial average live weight was 571.2kg. The total fattening gain was 91.1 kg for a period of 91.4 days. At slaughter, the warm carcass weight was 405.9kg and the killing-out proportion 63.3%. The carcasses were characterised by a high proportion of muscles (67.6%) and rather low proportions of adipose tissue (18.2%) and bones (14.2%). The muscle and adipose tissue accretions were 36.0 and 28.2 kg. Meat was lean as indicated by high protein content (88.5%) and low fat content (6.6%) in dry matter. A high proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids was also found (6.8 mol %).