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Talk:Feed Intake
About recommendations for contemporary grouping
Guidelines explicitly advise against using mixed-breeder contemporary groups. However, when a given test involves combining animals from multiple breeders in a central test station, only a very small number of animals (three or four, in my experience) from a given weaning contemporary group are measured. I find this number too small for a CG and would rather use the pen as the contemporary group, even if the animals were raised in different environments prior to the test. I understand that the warm-up period helps level out differences from their sources. 181.225.209.88 15:58, 12 March 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the thoughtful question. The Guidelines recommendation for contemporary group formation for feed intake groups does suggest the alternative of fitting weaning contemporary groups AND test contemporary groups as separate fixed effects in the situation where groups may become uselessly small when combined. This is not an ideal situation as pre-weaning by test group interaction often exists. We have found that the variation between breeders in weaning contemporary group treatment can be substantial. This can result in different responses of growth and efficiency in feed intake tests and may not be completely corrected by the warmup period. It is definitely not recommended to omit consideration of weaning contemporary groups, which seems to be suggested by the question.
- We'd be happy to discuss this further here or personally. Feel free to reach out or post a response. Also, posts from non-logged-in readers do not show to whom we're talking. Perhaps putting your name or email in your post would help. Bruce L. Golden (talk) 22:01, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
