Body measurements and their association with age in growing Sahiwal animals*

Abstract

The body length (BL), heart girth (HG), height at withers (HT) and paunch girth (PG) of 262 growing Sahiwal animals were measured for the present investigation. The mean values in respect of BL, HG, HT and PG right from 1 month to 36 months showed a linear increase in all body measurements with advancing age. The age was strongly correlated with all the body measurements under study, with the correlation values falling in the range of 0.98 to 0.99. The correlation amongst the different body measurements varied in the range of 0.96 to 0.99. In growing animals the increase in body length, height, heart girth and paunch girth with each month increase in age were observed as 1.94, 2.96, 2.32 and 2.72 cm respectively. The R2 values of the prediction equations for prediction of body measurements for a given age in months ranged from 0.96 to 0.99 indicating very high degree of accuracy of the prediction. All the regression values were highly significant.