Relation between pelvic and body measurements in bovine Girolanda females

Abstract

External and internal in vivo pelvic measurements were carried out in 110 Girolanda bovine females, using a tape measure, Hauptner pelvimeter and a Menissier-Vissac pelvimeter. Results were confronted with body biometric data and correlations were established between pelvic measurements and
tocological conditions of each animal distributed into three groups (nuliparous, primiparous and multiparous) according to the occurrence and the number of parturitions. The variables corresponding to the general body measurements and to the external and internal measurements showed significant
positive correlation (p = 0.0001) when individually confronted with each other. There was a positive correlation between mean external and internal pelvic diameters. The pelvic external variables were positively correlated with body measurements, but most of them were below 0.5 (p = 0.0001). The internal variables showed low correlations with height, length and thoracic perimeter and medium correlation with age and weight, except for the sacropubic with thoracic perimeter, coith which there was no significant correlation. It was concluded that pelvic measurements are correlated with body measurements and that they are influenced by the reproductive stage.