The aim of this study was to characterize the metabolic status of specialized and dual-purpose dairy cows under lowland tropical dairy systems in Colombia, by evaluating body condition, serum concentrations of metabolites and hormones, in the transition period and up to 105 days post-partum, through multivariate analysis techniques. To understand the joint variation of hormones and metabolites evaluated during the experimental phase, the 21 variables under study (haemoglobin, haematocrit, NEFA, BHB, glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, urea, protein, albumin, globulin, AST, ALT, GGT, body condition, T3, cortisol, insulin, leptin, prolactin, GH), were analysed from a multivariate approach. A cluster analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) were performed to reduce the dimensionality of the information, and to identify the representative variables to explain the variation in the dat...

For three native Colombian horse breeds (Criollo Llanero Araucano, Criollo Colombiano and Paso Fino) and the Pure Spanish Breed (PRE), a total of 12 morphometric variables (weight, height at the withers, longitudinal diameter, thoracic perimeter, dorsal-sternal diameter, bicostal diameter, perimeter of the anterior cannon, height at the rump, length of the rump, width of the rump, length of the head and width of the head) were obtained for each sex from existing bibliography or from our own information. From these data, a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was performed from the correlation matrix and then a dendrogram from the Gower distance matrix. From the results obtained in the PCA, it is concluded that PRE tends to differentiate itself from the rest by its larger size, while the Criollo Llanero Araucano differs from all of them, especially by its cephalic conformation. The dendrogr...