Body condition scoring (BCS) is the method that many clinical veterinarians adopt as a nutritional assessment method. However, the BCS assessment can be inconsistent because of its subjective method. Therefore we developed a BCS palpation model to improve the precision of the BCS assessment. Furthermore, we studied a new BCS assessment by the morphometric method to further improve the precision of BCS assessment. BCS is assessed by measuring body length and the current body weight in this method.

Thirty-nine dogs which varied in their BCS levels were used. Breed, gender and age were neglected for the selection of the dogs. Measurement of body fat percentage: the deuterium water dilution method was used. After the blood collection, deuterium water of 0.2 g/kg was subcutaneously injected and the blood samples were collected 3 hours after the administration. The concentration of deuterium water in the blood was analyzed by radio isotope mass-spectrometry. Body length: the length between the scapula and ilium (BLs-i) and between the scapula and base of tail (BLs-b) was measured. Calculation of the body weight corresponding to each BCS: ideal body weight (IBW) was calculated as the body weight at the body fat percentage of 20%. The body weight corresponding to each BCS was calculated as follows: BCS of 5: more than IBW x 1.21, BCS of 4: IBW x 1.11∼1.20, BCS of 3: IBW x 0.91∼1.1, BCS of 2: IBW x 0.81∼-0.9., and BCS of 1: IBW x 0.80 or less.

The results suggest that the correlation coefficient between BLs-b and IBW was r=0.8355, p<0.01 and higher than the correlation coefficient between BLs-i and IBW. This means that measuring the length of BLs-b is more accurate than measuring the length of BLs-i. The results suggest that the IBW of each dog could be estimated by measuring the BLs-b. The correlation coefficient between the BLs-b and IBW in 5 long-bodied dogs (Miniature Dachshund, Welsh Corgi, etc.) was higher than it in the all subject dogs. This suggests that it is better to divide dogs into following three types: standard shape, long and square bodied dogs for the morphometric BCS assessment. In addition, individual BCS can be calculated from an estrangement percentage between IBW and current weight by using above formula. This morphometric method is simpler and more objective than the conventional method.

Disclosures

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