THE DEVELOPMENT AND CORRELATION OF THE SEVEN-DAY-OLD AND SIXMONTH-OLD LIPPIZANER BREED FOALS

Abstract

Observation at he foals development, especially in their first months of life, gives a possibility of their successful selection. A correct offspring treatment from the early age and a quality feeding of lactating mares ensures a successful foals breeding, which has a positive influence on their further development. Eighty two six-month-old foals were included into the research. Measuring of the withers height, chest girth and cannon bone circumference were done seven days after foaling and at the age of six months. The measuring data were processed by the statistical program SPSS/PC (Nie et al., 1975). A correlation between physical measures of the seven-day-old and six-month-old foals was summed. Withers height of the six-month-old in relation to the seven-day-old foals increased by 35%, the chest girth by 69% and the cannon bone circumference by 34%. The correlation among attained values was highly significant at the level P=0.01 with correlation coefficients ranging between r=0,363 and r=0,820. The aim of this research was to get an insight of the mutual connection of foals development in the early phase, i.e. in the suckling phase.

Keywords

• the Lippizaner breed
• offspring
• growth and development
• correlation