BACKGROUND Obesity and emaciation in horses have major detrimental effects on health and morbidity, reproductive failure, work performance or carcass quality. Scoring is a current management tool used to assess and monitor equine body condition due to its simplicity and low cost. However, accurate assessment of obesity remains a challenge, even though a number of approaches have been tested, pa...

An exhaustive review of estimates of heritability (h) for a broad spectrum of beef production traits published in the scientific literature from 1945 to 1991 was conducted by Koots et al. (1994), but their review did not include other important carcass traits (e.g., kidney, pelvic, and heart fat percentage, yield grade, fat weight) and due to the purpose of their study, individual estimates of ...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the genetic response for a divergent selection experiment on intramuscular fat (IMF) content and to estimate the correlated response in carcass and meat quality traits. Data from two generation of selection were used in this study. The base population was composed of 13 males and 83 females. High (H) and Low (L) lines had 8 males and approximately 40 ...

The effect of a commercial organic acid (OA) product on BW loss (BWL) during feed withdrawal and transportation, carcass yield, and meat quality was evaluated in broiler chickens. Two experiments were conducted in Brazil. Commercial houses were paired as control groups receiving regular water and treated groups receiving OA in the water. Treated birds had a reduction in BWL of 37 g in experimen...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of 28 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in 10 candidate genes previously shown to be associated with quality traits in pigs and cattle. The data set comprised 28 traits recorded on a commercial population of 536 Aberdeen Angus-cross beef cattle. Among the traits, 20 were carcass and sirloin quality related, one mechanical measure of tenderne...

This study aimed at characterising 606 crossbred pigs of three commercially available breed types in terms of their carcass and meat quality. Breed G and H were German Large White (LW)×German Landrace (LR) sows sired with Pietrain (PI) boars, i.e. PI×(LW×LR). Breed S was 25% Duroc (DU), i.e. PI×(DU×LR). Most of the parameters were affected by breed and/or date of slaughter. The meat of crossbre...

Two studies were conducted with refined glycerin (97.7 and 97.5% glycerin for studies I and II, respectively) to determine ME content and effects on growth performance and carcass and pork quality measures of finishing pigs. An energy balance study using 24 barrows (21.5 ± 0.6 kg initial BW) determined the apparent ME content of glycerin using a generalized randomized block design with 2 dietar...

the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of zilpaterol hydrochloride on the growth performance, carcass quality and blood parameters with128 male quails at 26 days of age were divided into four treatments which each treatment consists of four replicates of 8 birds. the birds received daily 0, 0.2, 0.225, or 0.25 mg/kg of live weight d−1zilpaterol. after three days of withdrawing zil...

The Ardennaise breed is emblematic of the Belgian poultry diversity. We compared two varieties of the breed, the golden black and the silver black. The comparison encompassed: (i) the morphology of adult birds, (ii) the growth, carcass characteristics and meat quality of broilers 22 weeks old, (iii) the laying rate during 52 weeks and the egg quality. Significant differences were observed in th...

To re-examine the relationship of birth weight with carcass and meat quality of pigs at market weight, offspring (n=378) of 63 sows were assigned to three birth weight groups; 25% low weight (LW), 50% middle weight (MW), and 25% heavy weight (HW), with runts (<800g) being excluded. LW pigs exhibited the lowest postnatal growth performance, the lowest lean mass and the greatest degree of fatness...