Eye-balling and heart girth models for live weight estimation of highly admixed Sudani shorthorn zebu cattle for precise production and veterinary services

Alkhtib, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3381-0304, Almasri, O, Burton, E ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2784-6922 and Wamatu, J, 2021. Eye-balling and heart girth models for live weight estimation of highly admixed Sudani shorthorn zebu cattle for precise production and veterinary services. Jordan Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 16 (3), pp. 63-75. ISSN 1815-8625 (Forthcoming)

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Abstract

Cattle production is a key pillar of food security in Africa. Majority of African cattle is highly admixed with unknown breed composition. Accurate estimation of live weight (LW) of these cattle would improve precision of feeding, veterinary services and pricing resulting in an improvement in profitability. This study assessed estimating LW of admixed Sudani zebu cattle using eyeballing and heart girth (HG) models. Live weight and HG of 432 Baggara cattle, an admixed Sudani breed, was measured. Three models (a simple linear, a simple linear with box-cox transformed LW and a quadratic) were generated using 382 heads and validated using 50 heads. A published model (LW (kg) = 3.54*HG (cm) - 322.63) was validated using the data of this study. The error of LW estimation by a breeder and five cattlemen was recorded. All constructed models had high R2 (0.725 - 0.728). However, the 95th percentile of the prediction error of the constructed and published models was higher than 20%. The 95th percentile of LW estimation error of all participants was high (>20%). Accordingly, HG models and eyeballing are not suitable methods to determine LW of highly admixed zebu cattle for production, veterinary and marketing purposes as they are prone to high rate of error.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Jordan Journal of Agricultural Sciences
Creators:	Alkhtib, A., Almasri, O., Burton, E. and Wamatu, J.
Publisher:	Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, University of Jordan
Date:	3 March 2021
Volume:	16
Number:	3
ISSN:	1815-8625
Identifiers:	Number Type 1424355 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	15 Mar 2021 10:05
Last Modified:	28 Feb 2022 12:00
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/42509

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