Morphometrics characterization in White Fulani, Muturu and Pasundan cows

<p class="MDPI17abstract"><strong>Objective: </strong>This study was aimed to characterize three different cattle breeds based on the morphometrics.</p><p class="MDPI17abstract"><strong>Methods: </strong>Five (5) morphometrics which include body length (BL), chest girth (CG), withers height (WH), rump length (RL) and chest depth (CD) were measured in each animal. A total of 119 cows belonging to White Fulani (40 heads), Muturu (40 heads) and Pasundan (39 heads) were used in this study. The age of animal study was 20.93±1.62 months (White Fulani), 21.63±1.75 months (Muturu) and 20.46±2.99 months (Pasundan). Hence, two statistical methods of canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) methods were computed in this study to characterize of animals based on their morphometrics using SPSS 16.0 package.<strong></strong></p><p class="MDPI17abstract"><strong>Results: </strong>Mostly<strong> </strong>the morphometrics of White Fulani and Pasundan cows are similar while those of Muturu are significantly lower than the two other breeds. Four morphometric measurements of CG, RL, BL and WH were identified as a discriminator variables in animal study based on the CDA method. The CDA of morphometrics able to classify 85% (White Fulani), 100% (Muturu) and 74.4% (Pasundan) of the animal into their original breed group.<strong></strong></p><p class="MDPI17abstract"><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The closeness between observations from White Fulani and Pasundan might be due to them being both Zebu (<em>Bos indicus</em>) unlike the Muturu with a type breed of <em>Bos bracycheros</em>.<strong></strong></p>