Meat productivity of mezen horse breed growing stock at the age of weaning (the case of trans-humance grazing)
The Mezen horse breed is a local breed of the Arkhangelsk region and is bred on the territory of the Mezen region. Currently, the population of the Mezen breed is low (the number of females is less than 200 heads). At the same time, the highly adaptive qualities of the Mezen horses and the low-cost technology of their keeping contribute to the development of developing horse breeding in the region, which is one of the ways to increase the livestock population. In this case, the stallions and mares, which most fully meet the breed requirements for a complex of breeding traits, are used for the purpose of reproduction on farms, and the rest of the growing stock can be used to produce inexpensive horse meat, while the production of colt meat being the least expensive. The analysis of the quality of meat productivity of 6-month-old stallions of the Mezen breed was performed for the carcasses on the whole and for six separate parts obtained in the process of cutting each of the carcasses. The largest specific weight in the carcass is the leg cut (37.7 ± 0.49%). It also has the highest muscle tissue content - 71.5 ± 0.25%. The high content of boneless meat is in the humeroscapular and the dorsiventral cuts - 65.7% and 65.9%, accounting for 23.3% and 22.6% of the total carcass weight, respectively. The average content of connective tissue was 4.7± 0.44%, bones -27.2± 1.21%. The average meatyield was 67.7±0.15%, or 66.9± 3.26 kg. In terms of chemical composition, the growing stock meat at the age of weaning has a high nutritional and biological value. The weight content of protein is 21.2%, moisture - 74.3%, fat - 3.8%. Colt meat has a high ecological purity, which is confirmed by the results of its analysis for the content of heavy metals, the amount of which is significantly below the maximum allowable concentration (MAC) level. In terms of organoleptic properties, boiled colt meat and broth obtained from it were given 7.3 and 7.5 points on a 9-point scale, respectively. The results obtained confirm the possibility of using growing stock Mezen horses at the weaning age for the production of colt meat in the Mezen district of the Arkhangelsk region.