Morphometric characteristics of the Mangalarga Marchador horse breed determined by nonlinear models

Abstract

The objective of this work was to evaluate the development of the morphometric characteristics of Mangalarga Marchador horses through nonlinear models. The transversal method was used to collect data on height at the withers (HW), body length (BL), and thoracic (TP) and cannon (CP) perimeters from 200 horses (75 males and 125 non-pregnant females), aged between 6 and 153 months. The parameters of the Brody, Gompertz, logistic, and von Bertalanffy nonlinear models were estimated using the R software. Models were compared and selected using the coefficient of determination, the residual standard deviation, and the corrected Akaike information criterion. For adult females, HW, BL, TP, and CP ranged between 146.45–148.34, 148.59–151.64, 179.07–182.88, and 18.25–18.76 cm, respectively. For males, HW, BL, and CP ranged between 148.55–151.80, 150.77–154.88, and 18.95–19.41 cm, respectively. The logistic model best expresses growth in HW for males and females, as well as in BL and CP for males, whereas the Brody model is the best predictor for HW, BL, TP, and CP for females. The increase in the values of the morphometric measurements is more rapid and homogeneous between the ages of 6 and 24 months, stabilizing at 60 months in both sexes.