Evaluation of Growth Performance of Grade-2 Brahman Crossbred Progeny in a Farmers’ Participatory Beef Breeding Program

Abstract

The study was carried out to compare the growth performance of grade-2 Brahman crossbreds to other available cattle genotypes in Bangladesh. Growth traits were birth weight, weight at 3-, 6-, 9-, 12-month of age and average daily weight gain from birth to 12-month of age. The birth, weight at 3-, 6-, 9- and 12-month were 19.87±0.06, 52.01±0.49, 85.03±0.62, 127.12±0.81 and 171.19±1.20 kg, respectively. The average daily weight gain of calves was 426.00±4.99 g. Area and sex had significant effect (p<0.01) on the birth weight, body weight at 3-, 6-, 9- and 12-month of age and average daily weight gain of Brahman calves. Growth performance results on indigenous, Red Chittagong, Pabna, and crosses of Holstein-Frisian, Jersey, Sahiwal and Sindhi cattle were also collected from published literatures, which were compared with 25% Brahman cross calves. Birth weight (19.87±0.87 kg) and yearling or 12-month weight (171.19±17.9 kg) was highest in Brahman cross calves, whereas birth weight (14.81±2.50 kg) was lowest in indigenous calves and yearling weight (92.28±1.73 kg) was in lowest in Sahiwal cross calves. Average daily weight gain was highest (426.00±4.99 g) in Brahman and lowest (146.78±91.96 g) in Indigenous calves. Thus, it may be concluded that growth performance of Brahman cross calves was better than other existing cattle genotypes of Bangladesh. However, further study with large number of samples at different management systems would help to draw a final conclusion. J. of Sci. and Tech. Res. 3(1): 85-94, 2021