Abstract
Cattle weight development is highly correlated with some body measurements. Based on the relationship between morphometric measurements and body mass, our aim was to develop regression equations to estimate the body weight of Curraleiro Pé-Duro (CPD) cattle to be used in farms that lack access to weighting scales. Data from 1023 animals from four farms on withers height (WH), body length (BL), body score (BS), heart girth (HG), permanent teeth (PT), scrotal perimeter (SP), and live weight were used. The animals were classified into five categories depending on age and/or sex: newborns (NB), calves, weaned animals, cows, and bulls. The best models are GLM with Gamma, Gamma, inverse Gaussian, Gaussian, and Gamma distributions for NB, calves, weaned animals, cows, and bulls, respectively. Predictive modeling for bulls was the best performing overall, with a correlation of 0.97 between the estimated by the model and the obtained with a weighting scale. For NB, calves, weaned animals, and cows, the correlation (r) was 0.85, 0.90, 0.95, and 0.87, respectively. The evaluated models are adequate to be used as a technical solution to estimate weight in a cattle production system.
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Data availability
Data used available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8033125. Archive “date.xlsx.”
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the breeders João Batista Luzardo, José Dantas, Neto Soares, and Reginaldo Cavalcante.
Funding
This study is funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Brazil; FUESPI – Fundação Universidade Estadual do Piauí, UFPI - Universidade Federal do Piauí and ABCPD – Associação Brasileira de Criadores de Curraleiro Pé-Duro.
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MRS and JLRS conceived, planned and organized the data collections. MB refined the statistical analysis. CLA and GMCC has restructured the results and associated explanations. ASO and DLSS reviewed the findings and textual structure. MRS, FBB and LASS prepared the manuscript. All authors critically reviewed the manuscript and approved the final version.
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This research project was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Piauí (683/2021 CEUA-UFPI).
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Rocha-Silva, M., Britto, F.B., da Silva, D.L.S. et al. Prediction of body weight of Curraleiro Pé-Duro cattle based on morphometric measurements. Trop Anim Health Prod 56, 42 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-023-03884-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-023-03884-x