Weight records of 24.028 zebu animals from Guzerá, Nelore, and Polled Nelore breeds available from Brazilian Association of Zebu Breeders (ABCZ) database were used to estimate growth curve parameters. The measures were taken on animals which were born between 1960 and 2000, every three months, from birth to 24 months of age. Non-linear Brody, Gompertz, Logistic, Mitscherlich, von Bertalanffy, Richards, and Double Logistic models including sex, farm, year of birth, month of birth, raising system, and interaction sex*raising system as fixed effects and sire and dam, as random effects were compared. Considering the number of iterations for convergence and the adjustment criteria, Double Logistic was the best fitting model and the Mitscherlich was the worst one. The most important fixed effects were sex, farm, year of birth, month of birth and raising system. The major random effect was the dam effect. The variability observed in this study indicates the possibility of changing the growth curve by a breeding program.
Guzerá; mixed model; Nelore; Nelore Mocho; non-linear models; zebu
