Growth of total fat and lean and of primal cuts is affected by the sex type

Abstract

Knowledge of tissue and cuts growth depending on the sex could be used to improve performance and efficiency. Computed tomography (CT) is a non-invasive technology that enables the study of the body composition of live animals during growth. The aims of the present study were (1) to evaluate variation in the body composition of four sex types (SEX) of pigs (castrated males (CM), immunocastrated males (IM), entire males (EM) and females (FE)) at the live weight of 30, 70, 100 and 120 kg, assessed using CT; (2) to model the growth of the main tissues and cuts; and (3) to predict the mature BW (MBW) of the four SEX and establish the relationships between the growth models and the MBW. There were significant phenotypic differences in the allometric growth of fat and lean among SEX. For the lean tissue, FE and EM showed higher values of the b coefficient than CM and IM (1.07 and 1.07 v. 1.00 and 1.02, respectively) all of them close to unity, indicating a proportional growth rate similar to live weight and that this tissue developed faster in FE and EM than in CM and IM. However, these differences were not related to differences in estimated MBW. There were significant differences in estimated MBW among SEX, being higher in IM and EM than in CM and FE (303 and 247 v. 219 and 216 kg), however, the MBW may have been overestimated, especially for the IM. The poorer accuracy of the MBW estimate for the IM could be due to a maximum live weight of 120 kg in the experiment, or to the fact that this particular SEX presented two clear behaviours, being more similar to EM from birth to the second injection of the vaccine (130 days) and comparable with CM from that point to the final BW.

Intramuscular fat content in different muscles, locations, weights and genotype-sexes and its prediction in live pigs with computed tomography

“…Thus, it seems that the growth of these muscles, at higher weights, is higher in the present work, probably due to differences in the genotypes used. Moreover, the allometric coefficients for ham (0.89-0.95) and loin (0.97) muscle weight with respect to the live weight of the pig were close to one in agreement with previous works that reported allometric coefficients between 0.87 and 1.13 for ham muscle and 1.01 and 1.03 for loin muscle (Carabús et al, 2014, Carabús et al, 2017.…”

Interrelationships between sex and dietary lysine on growth performance and carcass composition of finishing boars and gilts1

“…In addition, boars greater G:F might be explained by their greater growth potential and considering that there was no evidence of differences in ADFI ( O’Connell et al, 2006 ; Cámara et al, 2014 ). Moreover, in agreement with the literature, boars were generally leaner than gilts ( Cámara et al, 2014 ; Carabús et al, 2017 ) and had a reduced carcass yield, which might be partly attributed to the removal of the testicles ( Gispert et al, 2010 ). The differences in BFT were in agreement with Rikard-Bell et al (2013b) .…”

“…Consistent with the literature, this study observed that boars have a greater ADG and G:F than gilts and a similar ADFI. The greater ADG of boars has been related to a higher potential for lean tissue deposition ( Hendriks and Moughan, 1993 ; Rikard-Bell et al, 2013b ), starting around 50 to 70 kg BW ( Whittemore et al, 1988 ; Giles et al, 2009 ; Carabús et al, 2017 ). Studies analyzing growth data have observed that gilts’ ADG compared with boars’ ADG starts to decline around 40 to 70 kg BW ( Campbell et al, 1988 ; Quiniou et al, 2010 ; Cámara et al, 2014 ).…”

The influence of boar breed and applied method on the meat content

“…Quality of pig carcasses, i.e. the presence of muscle and fatty tissue, depends on the sex (Renaudeau et al, 2005;Renaudeau and Mourot, 2007;Serrano et al, 2007;Radović et al, 2008, Carabús et al, 2017, which was also found in our studies of fat thickness, yield and meat share. According to Wagner et al (1999), male and female animals had almost the same share of fat tissue with 25 kg (6.92 and 7.00%), but with 100 kg it was higher in boars (16.33%) than in gilts (13.92 %).…”