The aim of this study was to evaluate the differences between cold carcass weights (CCW) for the Catalan Pyrenean horse (Cavall pirinenc català) breed according to different variables: area of origin, farm, gender and age. Linear regression models were applied using a generalized linear model (GLM) procedure for CCW of 397 animals (217 males and 180 females) slaughtered in a commercial abattoir. Fixed effects GLMs included age, gender, farm and area of origin, and their interactions. The best model for explaining CCW included area of origin only (ßorigin=0.02541, Wi=0.67, R2=0.0518) thus indicating that sex and farm were not important explanatory variables, as might have been expected. This information may be useful for obtaining better estimates of carcass weight of this breed for carcasses from specific breeding areas. Manuscript profile

Eleven goat breeds of different origin (10 Spanish and 1 African) were considered for this study: Zambian Dwarf, Azpi-Gorri, Blanca-Andaluza, Blanca-Celtibérica, Blanca de Rasquera, Catalana, Malagueña, Moncaína, Murciano-Granadina, Negra Serrana and Pyrenean. Nine linear body measurements for females, as well as the body weight ratio between gender and body weight, were obtained from literature and compared. Our results showed that the two principal components (PC) accounted for near 94% of total variation. The PC1 included the ratio between sexes, body weight and thoracic perimeter while the PC2 included body weight and ratio of body weight between sexes. Interestingly, all these high discriminating traits - body weight, body weight ratio between gender and thoracic perimeter- are related with body weight. The clustering of breeds according to those three traits offered a good picture of breeds according to their origin, with a cophenetic correlation, a measure of how faithfully a dendrogram preserved pairwise distances between the original unmodeled data points, high. Manuscript profile

This study estimated the magnitude of sexual dimorphism in a relict sheep from Catalunya (NE Spain), called Fardasca,using geometric morphometric techniques. For these analyses, a total of 18 skull specimens (2 adult males and 16 females) were studied. Our results suggest that the breed is not cranially dimorphic, so sex determination using landmarks described here as criteria is likely to yield poor results. Manuscript profile