Abstract:
To study the influences of early-life nutrition and genotype on growth and body composition, an accurate assessment of the carcass composition from birth to market weight is required. To achieve this without the high cost of foregoing returns from sale of carcasses, and to avoid extremely high labour inputs required to prepare carcasses for measurement of proximate composition, we are investigating methods to accurately predict carcass lean, fat, bone and proximate composition using commercial boning and computerised axial tomography (CAT) scanning. Specifically we want to identify the primal cut(s) that best predict the composition of the carcass. This paper presents preliminary data for the dissection of primal cuts and commercial retail yield.
