Abstract

Sixteen heifers and an equal number of bull calves of western Baggara type were used to study the characteristics of carcass and wholesale cuts at Kuku Livestock Research Station, Khartoum North, Sudan. Each of the two sex groups was subdivided into 4 subgroups of 4 animals. All the animals were fed, ad libitum, a similar complete diet for 16 weeks from 4 November 2002 to 24 February 2003. Bulls carcass had significantly (P< 0.05) greater proportion of forequarter than that of the heifers, whereas heifers carcass had significantly (P< 0.05) greater proportion of hindquarter than that of the bulls. Heifer’s carcass had more primal cuts proportion than that of bulls, though the difference was not significant. Bulls carcass had significantly (P< 0.001) greater muscle proportion and significantly (P< 0.01) lower fat proportion in the forequarter than in that of heifers. Bone weight proportion of the heifers carcass forequarter was lower than that of the bulls, though the difference was not significant. Similarly hindquarter of the bulls carcass had higher proportion of muscle and bone, though the differences were not significant while the heifer carcasses hindquarter fat proportion was significantly (P<0.01) higher compared with that of bull carcasses. No significant differences were found in the yield of wholesale cuts weight as % of carcass weight other than the neck, chuck and blade and rump. The former two cuts were significantly (P<0.01) heavier in bull carcass, while the rump cut was significantly (P<0.05) heavier in heifer carcass. The proportion of muscle weight of the cuts as % of carcass weight was generally higher in all cuts except in the shin and rump cuts obtained from bulls as compared with that of heifers. On the other hand heifers gained higher proportion of fat in all carcass cuts as compared with that of bulls. Bulls had significantly (P<0.01) higher proportion of neck muscle and significantly (P<0.001) very high proportion of chuck and blade muscle and neck bone than that of heifers.