Growth performance of mafriwal dairy cattle in Malaysia

The current Mafriwal dairy cattle breed in Malaysia is a dairy crossbred population consisting of imported first generation Sahiwal-Friesian crossbred imported from Australia and New Zealandin 1980. From 2011 to 2017, a total of 90 Mafriwal cattle from the Institute Haiwan Kluang, Johor Dairy farm were used in a study to elucidate the current trend in growth performance of this important genetic resource. The growth performance was evaluated by blood level, year of birth and sex. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software was used to calculate and analyse average daily weight gain (ADG) and weight (WT) at specific ages. According to different blood levels, the observations on the calculated ADGs (ADG200, ADG360, ADG540 and ADG720) showed consistency in performance at various blood levels. The mean of birth weight were 25.45 kg for blood level M60, 24.11 kg for blood level M80 and 21.08 kg for blood level M70. However, the weight (WT) at specific ages (BWT, WT200, WT360, WT540 and WT720) increased significantly especially at blood level M80. According to the year of birth, ADG and WT at different ages showed that there were no significant differences of Mafriwal dairy cattle. The mean ADG 200 in 2013 showed higher values at 0.41 ± 0.09 kg/day followed by ADG 200 in 2017 which was 0.393± 0.06 kg/day. According to sex, the mean birth weight was 23.68 kg for males and 23.70 kg for females; showing that the mean of birth weights were similar and there was no significant difference between mean birth weight for males and females. The mean average daily weight gain for ADG200, ADG360, ADG540 and ADG720 were slightly higher for males than the females. The weight at different ages (WT360, WT540 and WT720) also showed higher values for males than for females. However, at weight of WT200, the mean value for females was higher than the males. There was no significant differences between males and females for other weights (WT200, WT360 and WT540) but there was a significant difference between males and female at weight WT720.