Relationships between carcass characteristics and offal components of Lagunaire, Borgou and Zebu Fulani bulls raised on natural pasture

Abstract

The correlations and Principal Components Analysis allow appreciating the relationship between several variables. Therefore, this study aims to establish the relationships between the offal components and the carcass characteristics of Lagunaire, Borgou and Zebu Fulani bulls raised on natural pasture and slaughtered in abattoir of Cotonou-Porto-Novo at 5 years old. Carcass characteristics, carcass conformation, carcass degree of fat cover and offal component traits were collected on 40 Lagunaire, 71 Borgou and 110 Zebu Fulani bulls. In Zebu bulls, except spleen weight, slaughter weight was moderately and positively correlated with heart weight (P<0.01, r=0.299), highly and negatively correlated with offal percentage (P<0.001, r=-0.369) and highly and positively correlated with offal weight and the others offal component (P<0.001, 0.324<r<0,824). Unlike Zebu bulls, the correlations between hot carcass weight and head percentage (r=-429, P<0.001) on the one hand and between hot carcass weight and offal percentage (r=-0.338, P<0.05) in the second hand were significant and negative and no relationship was observed between hot carcass weight and liver weight. In Lagunaire bulls, slaughter weight and hot carcass weight were less correlated with offal components traits than those in Borgou and Zebu bulls. The Zebu bulls were characterized by higher dressing percentage, rib fat percentage and carcass length, heavier hot carcass weight, carcass fat weight, offal and offal component weight, a good and very good carcass conformation (R and U) with slighter carcass fat cover. Whereas Lagunaire bulls were characterized by higher head percentage, offal percentage, rib segment waste percentage, rib bone percentage on the one hand and a poor carcass conformation and a low carcass fat cover in the second hand. The butcher aptitude of Borgou bulls was in the middle of those of Lagunaire and Zebu bulls, whatever the season.