Vet World Vol.15 March-2022 Article-25
Research Article
Veterinary World, 15(3): 728-736
https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2022.728-736
First study on phenotypic and morphological characteristics of Malaysian Kedah-Kelantan cattle (Bos indicus) and method of estimating their body weight
2. Animal Production Research Division, Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute, Savar, Dhaka- 1341, Bangladesh.
3. Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
4. Department of Veterinary Services, Pusat Ternakan Haiwan Tersat, 21700 Kuala Berang, Terengganu, Malaysia.
Background and Aim: Indigenous Kedah-Kelantan (KK) cattle are well adapted with distinguished reproductive capabilities; they account for more than 70% of the domestic beef production in Malaysia. The published literature on the phenotypic and morphometric characteristics of KK cattle are sparse and require further improvement. Therefore, this study was aimed to determine the phenotypic and morphometric characteristics of Malaysian KK cattle and method of estimating live body weight (BW).
Materials and Methods: Morphometric and phenotypic measurements were taken from 184 KK cattle (102 males and 82 females) sourced from three regions. Each animal's color pattern was recorded for their coat, muzzle, face, eyelashes, horns, tail switch, hoof, and legs through visual observation. Length measurements were taken of the body, face, ear, horn, tail, and rump. Several morphological features such as length, width, and girth were measured using a measuring tape, while wither height and hip height were assessed with a measuring scale.
Results: Brown is the predominant coat color in KK cattle (>82%). The overall means of head length, face width (FW), ear length, horn length, wither height, heart girth (HG), body length (BL), and rump length were 42.5±4.5, 17.3±2.9, 19.8±3.1, 9.9±4.4, 104.3±7.1, 127.4±13.2, 98.3±12.3, and 32.4±4.1 cm, respectively. Different morphometric parameters of length, width, and circumference were significantly (p<0.01) larger in males than females, except for tail length and TG. Correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis clearly revealed that BL is the best parameter for estimating live BW in KK cattle.
Conclusion: Phenotypic and morphometric measurements in this study showed that Malaysian KK cattle generally possess a brown coat pattern with smaller body size, while BL revealed to be the best parameter to predict BW. The data generated from this study would be useful as baseline data for the identification and selection of KK cattle based on their phenotypical- and morphological-features for further improvement of this breed. Keywords: characteristics, Kedah-Kelantan cattle, morphometric, phenotypic.
Keywords: characteristics, Kedah-Kelantan cattle, morphometric, phenotypic.
How to cite this article: Islam MS, Yimer N, Haron AW, Abdullah FFJ, Han MHW, Mamat-Hamidi K, Zawawi HBM (2022) First study on phenotypic and morphological characteristics of Malaysian Kedah-Kelantan cattle (Bos indicus) and method of estimating their body weight, Veterinary World, 15(3): 728-736.
Received: 30-10-2021 Accepted: 16-01-2022 Published online: 26-03-2022
Corresponding author: Nurhusien Yimer and Mohammed Sirajul Islam E-mail: nurhusien@upm.edu.my and siraj_blri@yahoo.com
DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2022.728-736
Copyright: Islam, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.