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Factors Related to Weight Gain of Dairy Calves¹

Department of Animal Science

P. G. Homeyer⁴

Department of Statistics Iowa State University, Ames

ABSTRACT

Growth data on 659 dairy calves were used to determine the effects of breed, sex, season of birth, inbreeding, ration, and birth weight on weight gains of dairy calves to 8 wk, six months, and 1 yr of age. Breed, sex, degree of inbreeding, and ration were found to be significant sources of variation. Effects of season of birth were significant in the analysis of weight gains to 1 yr. Correlations of birth weight with weight gains were all less than .40. Early rate of gain had little or no effect on later gains, age at calving, and milk production. Although calf nutrition experiments should be designed to prevent confounding breed, sex, and inbreeding effects with ration effects, a portion of these effects can be removed by using birth weight as the independent variable in an analysis of covariance.

¹ Journal Paper No. J-4269 of the Iowa Agricultural and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa. Project No. 1324. Some of the data were collected on Project No. 1053, which is a contributing project to Regional Project NC-2.

² Present address: Dairy Department, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana.

³ Present address: Dairy Department, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.

⁴ Present address: C-E-I-R, Inc., 9171 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, California.