Modelling the growth of rearing cattle

Hanna Unterauer, Norbert Brunner and Manfred Kühleitner
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Hanna Unterauer: Department of Integrative Biology and Biodiversity Research (DIBB), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria
Norbert Brunner: Department of Integrative Biology and Biodiversity Research (DIBB), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria

Czech Journal of Animal Science, 2021, vol. 66, issue 11, 441-449

Abstract: Scientific growth literature often uses the models of Brody, Gompertz, Verhulst, and von Bertalanffy. The versatile five-parameter Bertalanffy-Pütter (BP) model generalizes them. Using the least-squares method, we fitted the BP model to mass-at-age data of 161 calves, cows, bulls, and oxen of cattle breeds that are common in Austria and Southern Germany. We used three measures to assess the goodness of fit: R-squared, normalized root-mean squared error, and the Akaike information criterion together with a correction for sample size. Although the BP model improved the fit of the linear growth model considerably in terms of R-squared, the better fit did not, in general, justify the use of its additional parameters, because most of the data had a non-sigmoidal character. In terms of the Akaike criterion, we could identify only a small core of data (15%) where sigmoidal models were indispensable.

Keywords: Akaike information criterion; Bos taurus; Bertalanffy-Pütter differential equation; simulated annealing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnlcjs:v:66:y:2021:i:11:id:98-2021-cjas

DOI: 10.17221/98/2021-CJAS

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