Genetic Evaluation of Body Weight and Body Measurements in Madura Cattle at Weaning Age

Abstract

Body weight and body measurements at weaning age are important traits representing growth in beef cattle. This research was conducted at the Technical Unit of Madura Cattle and Forage for Animal Feed, Pamekasan, Madura, Indonesia. Eighty-six data points of performance of Madura cattle at weaning age, born in 2014-2019 were used to evaluate the performance and estimate the heritability for weaning weight (WW) and body measurement (chest girth (CG), body length (BL) and wither height (WH)) at weaning age. Weaning age was corrected to 205 days. Estimation of variance components was performed using restricted maximum likelihood applying genetic models of Genstat version 18. The mean of WW, CG, BL and WH for female were 83.82 +17.91 kg; 100.87 +7.80 cm; 87.66 +8.96 cm; and 93.04 +5.49 cm, respectively. The mean of WW, CG, BL and WH for male were 81.02 +20.52 kg; 100.12 +9.82 cm; 85.94 +9.54 cm; and 92.69 +7.46 cm, respectively. There were significant difference for WW, CG, BL and WH between year of calf birth. The number of sires used each year varied between 1 to 7 sires. The heritability values for WW, CG, BL and WH were 0.60, 0.43, 0.48 and 0.44, respectively.
 Keywords: body length, chest girth, heritability, weaning weight, wither height