The pork industry is constantly seeking economical methods which will increase production efficiency and carcass quality. Three nutritional management “tools” at pork producer’s disposal that have been demonstrated to improve growth performance and carcass characteristics are: 1) adding rendered animal fats to diets; 2) adding the recently approved feed additive ractopamine to finishing diets; ...

Foraging in stopover areas influences nutritional condition of birds during spring migration. Our purpose was to determine if body mass, percent carcass water, and serum biochemistry would predict energy reserves (carcass fat and protein) in northern pintails (Anas acuta) at a spring staging area, Lake St. Pierre in Québec, Canada (46 degrees 11 'N, 73 degrees 08 'W). Northern pintails were col...

Live animal and carcass data were collected from market barrows and gilts (n = 119) to determine the accuracy and precision of using a single longitudinal scan, parallel to midline, in estimating body and carcass composition. Data from test pigs (n = 96) were used to develop prediction equations. Best results were obtained in predicting weight of boneless cuts (ham, loin, and shoulder), weight ...

Real-time ultrasound is a useful technology for measuring carcass composition in live animals and to select future seedstock for carcass merit. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the use of ultrasound to predict the amount of fat and muscle in Iberian pigs. A total of 163 Iberian pigs were ultrasonically scanned one day before slaughter, and carcass composition was also dete...

In the present contribution we compared the entomological succession pattern of a burned carcass with that of an unburned one. For that, we used domestic pig carcasses and focused on Calliphoridae, Muscidae and Sarcophagidae flies, because they are the ones most commonly used in Postmortem Interval estimates. Adult and immature flies were collected daily. A total of 27 species and 2,498 specime...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of dietary betaine over a range of concentrations (between 0 and 0.5%) on growth and body composition in young feed-restricted pigs. Betaine is associated with decreased lipid deposition and altered protein utilization in finishing pigs, and it has been suggested that the positive effects of betaine on growth and carcass composition may be gr...

The objective of this study was to quantify the genetic associations between a range of carcass-related traits including wholesale cut weights predicted from video image analysis (VIA) technology, and a range of pre-slaughter performance traits in commercial Irish cattle. Predicted carcass cut weights comprised of cut weights based on retail value: lower value cuts (LVC), medium value cuts (MVC...

Genetic and sex differences or variation in carcass characteristic and slaughter yield were studied using a total of 150 intensively reared and clinically normal chickens consisted of 50 each of normal feather, naked neck and frizzled matured chickens genotypes. The result showed that genotype as well as sex have significant effect (P<0.05) on carcass characteristics and slaughter yield at twen...

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 ...