Research Article
Marek Janiak, Anna Sawa, Mariusz Bogucki
Department of Cattle Breeding, UTP University of Science and Technology, Mazowiecka 28, 85-084 Bydgoszcz, Poland
Abstract. The effect of bovine carcass category on dressing percentage and EUROP classification results was determined on 2627 head of slaughtered cattle, using the FREQ and GLM procedures of SAS. The largest categories of slaughter cattle were bulls (30%) as well as young bulls and cows (each around 28%). The most numerous carcass conformation class in all the categories was class O (71.91%), followed by R (15.07%), P (11.88%) and U (1.14%). Moderate fatness of bull carcasses was observed for both A and B age categories. Young bull carcasses generally contained less fat than heifer carcasses. Dressing percentage coefficients were similar for young bulls (category A) and heifers (category E) (P ≤ 0.01), as a result of which no statistically significant effect of sex on dressing percentage was found for young slaughter cattle. The age factor caused much greater differences (P ≤ 0.01) in dressing percentage values for the slaughtered females (categories D and E) than for the slaughtered males (categories A and B).
Keywords: slaughter cattle, dressing percentage, EUROP classification
Accepted: 23 Dec 2016
Published online: 6 May 2017
Accesses: 1259
Janiak, M., Sawa, A., Bogucki, M., (2016). Effect of age and sex of slaughtered cattle on dressing percentage and EUROP classification results. Acta Sci. Pol. Zootechnica, 15(4), 41–54. DOI: 10.21005/asp.2016.15.4.04.