Ivo Karadjole

The trend of body tissues share of Simmental cattle in about twenty years period

Abstract This work investigated the bone, muscle and fat tissue shares in Simmental breed. The trial comprised 917 young bulls, progeny of 81 sires, during the period of 18 years. Sires were in their progeny testing for meat production traits. Average young bulls final body weight was 557.73±1.78kg in range between 385 and 729kg. Average body tissue share was as follows: bone 19.21±0.10%, muscle 61.91±0.15% and fat 14.13±0.11%. Significant (P<0.001) phenotypic correlations existed between final body weight and share of muscle (0.34) and fat (0.16), and between shares of bone and muscle (-0.13), bone and fat (-0.42) and muscle and fat (-0.28). Trend of increase in final body weight, muscle and bone share followed by slight decrease of fat share in investigated period was noted. It is suggested that was due to selection of large and robust sires.

Problems with readings of electronic tagged sheep in dairy flocks

Abstract Reliable traceability system in animal production is a crucial part for protection of animal and human health. Small ruminants are usually ear’ tagged but this tagging system especially in extensive production systems is not reliable. The use of Radio Frequency Indentifying Devices (RFID, or electronic identification) is more suitable. Ruminal boluses (Rumitag 20 gr, HDX) are first chosen for ruminant tagging because they are easy and early applicable, easy to read and fraud resistant but they encounter some problems, mainly reading failure. In our trial we investigated reading failure on one sheep dairy farm. Six hundred and eight sheep have been milked during the trial and read for four times during milking. In all four readings we had quite high reading failure in comparison to other author findings. Probable cause for this very high failure could be the use of hand held readers in crowded environment which caused lot of double reading. This means that reading protocol should be improved. Unfortunately we did not have fixed reader so we could not compare readings.

Bovine Haematological Values during Fattening with Possible Implications for Muscle Growth

Haemoglobin concentration (Hb), haematocrit (PCV) and mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration (MCHC) were determined as indicators of oxygen-carrying capacity in 25 Simmental bulls during intensive fattening. Their possible relations to muscle growth were also investigated. The animals were the progeny of two sires. Blood samples were taken at 6, 9, 12 and 15 months of age. After slaughter, the right thoracic rib cut (7–9) was dissected into the longissimus dorsi muscle (LD), other muscles (OM) and total muscles (TM) (LD+OM). There was a significant increase in the mean PCV and Hb values during fattening. The PCV and Hb values were significantly correlated with the tissue share of OM or TM only at 12 and 15 months of age. LD muscle share was not significantly correlated with any of the parameters at any fattening time. It would appear from these results that muscle growth proceeds in two phases. The first is until the age of 12 months and the other from then to maturity.