As mentioned before, parameters of the basic growth model (i.e. BW, FI and PDmax) were adjusted and consecutively fixed to match experimental values as closely as possible. As indicated in Table 4, assuming a PDmax of 150 or 160 g/day for experiments 1 and 2, respectively, led to reasonable predictions of average daily gain and feed consumption. In experiment 1, predictions of protein and lipid mass were similar to observations whereas the FA mass was slightly lower than observed. In contrast, the model overestimated backfat lipid and linoleic and linolenic acid mass. The predicted FA composition was similar to that observed, except for palmitic acid and minorFA, which were slightly over- and underestimated by the model, respectively. In experiment 2, predictions of body composition were quite different from the observed results. Protein mass was slightly underestimated whereas the model largely overestimated lipid and FA mass