Animal breeding for welfare and sustainability requires improving and optimizing environmental impact, productivity, robustness and welfare. Breeding is a long-term exercise at the start of the food chain with permanent cumulative outcomes, disseminated widely. This chapter explains, with a focus...

In this chapter the factors affecting the growth of calves and milk production in dairy cows were discussed.

This review presents a description of the growth of broiler and laying chicken strains studied at the Laboratory of Poultry Science, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)-Jaboticabal. Two commercial broiler strains and four laying strains were assessed. Ross 308® and Cobb 500® broilers were reared ...

This chapter reviews the relationships of traits commonly used for selection in cattle to the underlying biological associations among growth, adult size and body composition. Focus is given on growth traits and growth curves, body composition (muscle, fat and bone, muscling and intramuscular...

Beef cattle production systems can utilize the efficiency of young animal growth in the development of muscle, typically measured as animal weight. There are numerous genetic and environmental influences that can contribute to variation in rate and extent of an animal's growth and size at many...

In Brazil, modelling is still rarely used as there are no local models that can be applied as tools to optimize poultry or pig production. Aiming at filling this gap and stimulating interest in modelling in Brazil, the Nutrition and Modelling research group of Universidade Estadual Paulista...

This chapter covers both the objective and subjective methods used to record and predict live animal growth and development and expected tissue deposition in the carcass of the animal when slaughtered. Focus is given on measuring and predicting liveweight and conformation changes by weighing and...

This chapter covers genetic engineering or gene transfer technology. Focus is given on gene transfer technique in fish, use of promoters in transgenic technology, gene integration, transgene transmission, transgene expression of growth hormone and reporter genes, reverse genetics, pleiotropic...

This chapter covers the energy and protein requirements of rabbits as well as their metabolism. The energy units (gross, digestible, net and metabolizable energy) and the methods used for estimating energy requirement are presented. The aspects of energy metabolism related to vital and productive...

The growth and body composition of meat-producing animals are analysed in order to determine the way in which the yield of the desirable parts can be maximized. The growth of animals and the component parts of their bodies are described using a growth curve. The process and control of growth,...