Peculiarities of copper accumulation in the bristles of pigs of different breeds

Abstract

The results of assessing the copper content in the bristles of pigs of Landrace, Kemerovo and Early maturing meat breeds are presented. The study was carried out on clinically healthy six-month-old animals in the farms of Novosibirsk and Kemerovo regions and Altai Territory. The conditions for keeping animals were standard with typical feeding. Elemental analysis of pig bristle samples was carried out by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry. The data was processed using Microsoft Office Excel and Statistica 8 (StatSoft Inc., USA), including nonparametric methods. A decreasing ranged series was established according to the level of copper in the hair of pigs for Landrace → Kemerovo → Early maturing meat breeds. As a ratio, it is represented as 5.1 : 4.5 : 1. Copper in the bristles of Landrace, Kemerovo and Early maturing meat breeds amounted to 44.0, 39.0 and 8.7 mg/kg, respectively. The accumulation of copper recorded in the bristles of Landrace and Kemerovo pig breeds was 5.6 and 4.5 times higher than that of Early maturing meat breed (p ˂ 0.001). The Early maturing meat and Kemerovo breeds were characterized with the homogeneity of indicators; they had the smallest interquartile range and the ratio of the extreme variants. The study using Kruskal-Wallis criterion established that the breed affects the accumulation of copper in the bristles of pigs. Differences were registered in pairs: Early maturing meat – Kemerovo and Early maturing meat – Landrace breeds (p ˂ 0.001). The most similar results of studying animals based on cluster analysis were found between Kemerovo and Landrace breeds. Early maturing meat breed is relatively resistant to copper accumulation in the bristles. The data obtained can be tentatively taken as a physiological norm for the accumulation of copper in the bristles of pigs of various breeds zoned in Western Siberia.