The objective of this work was to study the effects of age of cow at calving (IPV) and age of calf at weaning (IDD) as well as the direct additive genetic effects (AD) and maternal (AM), and the individual heterozygosity (HI) on visual scores of conformation (CD), precocity (PD) and musculature (MD) and average daily weight gain from birth to weaning (GND), for animals used to form the Brangus breed. The study analyzed 53,683, 45,136, 52,937 and 56,471 records on CD, PD, MD and GND, respectively for animals born from 1986 to 2002. The data were provided by "Gensys Consultores Associados S/C Ltda". The environmental and genetics effects on these traits were analyzed using the least square method applying mathematical models that included fixed effects of contemporary group (GC) and IPV, IDD, AD, AM and HI as covariates. All environmental effects included in the model showed significant influence on the evaluated traits at weaning, except for IDD on GND and AM on all traits. All traits were significantly influenced by AD and HI. These results indicated that environmental and genetic effects were important sources of variation for these traits and, consequently, they should be considered in genetic evaluations.
conformation; environmental effects; growth traits; individual heterozygosity; musculature; precocity
