ABSTRACT
This work aimed to evaluate the fit of models Brody, Gompertz, Logistic and Von Bertalanffy to height at the withers of Mangalarga Marchador horses, weighed by the inverse of variance, in order to select the best model and predict growth and maturity of this breed pf animals. We used data of 230 equines from 06 to 176 months of age who were divided by sex and 16 age classes. The models were compared according to the quality assessors: coefficient of determination (R2); residual standard deviation (RSD) and Akaike information criteria (AIC). The estimation of the parameters from models was performed by the weighted least squares method in Software R. All models evaluated were suitable to describe the growth curve in both sexes. In view of the evaluators used, the logistic model was the most suitable to describe the growth curves in withers height in both sexes for the race Mangalarga Marchador. A strong growth at first age was also observed. The males reached a greater adult height, but females did so sooner, because they presented higher estimates for the maturity index.
Keywords:
age; logistic; morphometric measurements; nonlinear models
