Avaliação biométrica do terço posterior de bovinos de raça alentejana: resultados preliminares

• Autor(a) principal: Palma, R.
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Vicente, António, Espadinha, P., Carolino, Nuno
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.15/2367
• topic: Beef cattle; Alentejano cattle; Biometry; Morphological evaluation

The biometric evaluation is an evaluation method that aims to know the size of the animals from the measurement of several biometric elements. This type of evaluation should be associated with linear evaluation to understand which animals have desirable characteristics related to growth and muscular development. The aim of this study was to perform a biometric evaluation of the backpart of Alentejana cattle portuguese breed; the specific objectives were to perform measurements of various elements of the animal, like thoracic perimeter, body length, width and length of the rump. This work has been carried out so far in several farms affiliated with the breeders association (Associação dos Criadores de Bovinos da Raça Alentejana), based in Herdade da Coutada Real in Assumar, Monforte, between April and June 2017. 134 animals were measured during this period but a wider database was used, with information from 1342 animals from the breeder´s association, with measurements and presenting global reference values: the height at the withers (1,34±0,60m in females and 1,50±0,02m in males), the body length (1,617±0,900m in females and 1,77±0,02m in males), the thoracic perimeter (2,057±0,900m in females and 2,373±0,046m in males), the rump length (0,558±0,430m in females and 0,626±0,009m in males), the outside rump width (0,557±0,004m in females and 0,734±0,059m in males) and the hip-femural width (0,492±0,060m in females and 0,548±0,014m in males). From the results obtained we concluded that there was a positive evolution over the years, related to the animal’s size and conformation and we noticed a great homogeneity between animals, which is justified by values of standard deviation (between 0.030 and 0.207) and coefficient of variation low (between 5.8% and 14%). This type of evaluation is still rarely used by breeder’s associations, but there is expected that their use will help them in the selection and breeding of animals, when associated with other selection methods, like linear evaluation.