Effect of cross breeding with Hispano-Bretón and Burguete on productive parameter and dynamics of growth of “Galician Mountain” foals

Abstract

The “Galician Mountain” (GM) horse is an autochthonous crossbred from the North of Spain adapted to an extensive production system. The objective was to study the effect of cross breeding with Hispano-Bretón (HB) and Burguete (B) on productive parameter and dynamics of growth of “Galician Mountain” foals. For this study, thirty-nine foals, twelve from crossing GM×HB and twenty-seven from crossing GM×B were used. Moderate biphasic profiles were observed from 120 days. The partial plateau phases and the total maximum growth or final asymptotes were experimentally well defined. The predictive ability of proposed equations to model the experimental data was high with a goodness of fit higher than 0.987. The sex of foals did not affect the growths and the differences among crossbreeds were not significant (P>0.05)