Pre-and Post-Weaning Phenotypic Relationship Between Some N'dama Cattle Unear Measurements in the Tropics

Abstract

Data collected on 1438 male and 1492 female pure bred N'Dama calves calved between 1948 and 1961 at Fashola Stock farm were used to study the relationship between five N'Dama cattle linear measurements at pre and post Weaning ages. The measurements were Head to Shoulder (HDS); Shoulder to tail drop (STD); Height at withers (HTW); Heart girth (HGT) and Body length (BLT). All measurements had positive values which ranged from 0.2 - 91 except HTW and HDS which had a negative value (-02) in males at yearling age. There was a predominance of positive and highly significant relationship (P<0.01) between height measurement (HTW) and circumference measurement (HGT) which ranged from .04 - .76 with pre weaning measurements having higher values (.69 - .76) in both sexes. High and positive correlation values were also observed between length measurements (HDS, STD and BLT) which therefore shows that only one of such measurements is sufficient for length measurement Generally measurements taken at pre weaning had higher correlation values than those taken at post weaning.

Meat Yield Prediction of Cattle (Yakanaji) Slaughtered at the Abattoir Unit of University of Benin Teaching and Research Farm, Benin City, Nigeria

“…Sawanon et al (2011) reported the means heart girth and body length of 173.02cm and 136.49cm and, withers height of 124.86cm agreed with the results of the present study and shine circumference of 20.08cm which was lower than that recorded in the present study. Orheruata and Olutogun (1994) reported wide variations in the body measurement of N'dama cattle at different ages. This could have been if data collected were on age basis.…”

“…Use of body linear measurements offers advantages over subjective methods of judging cattle such as visual assessment and scoring (Essien and Adesope, 2003).Reports on body weight and linear body measurements had been documented and was found useful in quantifying body size and shape (Ibe and Ezekwe, 1994). Linear body measurements have been used to predict live weights in poultry (Chhabra et al, 1972;Monsi, 1992;Okon et al, 1997;Gueye et al, 1998), goat (Hassan and Ciroma, 1992;Ozoje and Herbert, 1987), sheep (Kandasamy and Gupta, 1983) and cattle (Orheruata and Olutogun, 1994). Body measurements are important data sources in terms of reflecting the breed standards (Riva et al, 2002) and are also important in giving information about the morphological structure and development ability of the animals.…”