Description of growth in sheep creole (Ovis aries) in two populations from Córdoba, Colombia

Objective. Evaluate the model that best described the growth in sheep creole in the Department of Cordoba. Materials and methods. Weights of 55 Criollos sheep were used to select the model that best fit the data. Brody, Logistic, Gompertz and Von Bertalanffy models were evaluated. The parameters of the models were estimated using the NLIN procedure of SAS. The selection of the curve that best described the growth was done considering the Aikaike Information Criterion (AIC), the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), the Determination Coefficient (R2), and the Percentage of Convergent Curves (CCP). For the model that best described the growth curve, the percentage of maturity at 4 (M4) and 6 (M6) months of age and age at 75 (AM75) and 95% (AM95) at maturity was estimated. Results. The Brody model presented the best fit. Sex effect was significant (p≤0.05) for β2, M4, M6, EM75 and EM95. While the Farm effect had only a significant effect (p≤0.05) for β2. Conclusions. The Brody model best described growth of the studied sheep populations, its estimated values for maturity and age at maturity were low.