PREDICTING BODY WEIGHT AND LONGISSIMUS MUSCLE AREA USING BODY MEASUREMENTS IN SUBTROPICAL GOAT KIDS

Thirty subtropical goat kids were used to predict live body weight (BW) and longissimus muscle area (LMA) using body measurements with the help of ultrasound scanning. Body measurements included body length (BL), heart girth (HG), withers height, rump height and paunch girth, in addition to body condition score measurements. Correlation coefficients between both BW and LMA, with the different measurements, were calculated. Simple and multiple regression analyses were used to calculate the prediction equations. All body measurements studied were significantly correlated with each of BW (r = 0.52 – 0.91) and LMA (r = 0.50 – 0.89). Both HG (r = 0.91) and BL (r = 0.90) presented the highest correlations with BW of kids, while the measurements of BW, BL and HG presented the highest correlations (r = 0.87 – 0.89) with LMA. Live BW of kids was accurately and significantly (p <0.001) predicted by the measurements of HG and BL with R 2 = 0.88. While BW, BL and HG were significantly (p < 0.001) used to predict LMA with R 2 = 0.83. Therefore, in the field, it is available to assess live body weight and longissimus muscle area of growing kids by using body measurements.