Estimativa de peso vivo por meio de medidas corporais de suínos de raças nativas

Abstract

The objective of this experiment was to find correlation values between the body measurements for the weight measurement of the animals, since this will facilitate a measurement of the weight gain of the animals for the producers who do not have access to a scale. The experiment was conducted in the swine sector of the Animal Science Department of UFRPE. Eighteen male castrated animals of the Piau breed, with average initial weight of 100 kg, were housed in individual bays. The weighing and measurements were performed every fortnight, the data were submitted to Pearson test: thoracic perimeter (TP), body length (BL), head length (HL), neck length (NL), and a sum of the thoracic perimeter and body lenght (TP+BL). It was found strong and positive correlations with body length and thoracic perimeter with body weight (0.72 and 0.74), the head length presented moderate and positive (0.65) correlation, followed by neck length that showed weak correlation (0.31) with body weight. When it was used the sum of two measurements it was found a stronger correlation with body weight (0.93), indicating that this way is more efficient to predict the animals body weight than one measure alone (TP or BL)