Body linear traits for identifying prolific goats

Avijit Haldar,Subhransu Pan,Saurabh Ghosh,Prasenjit Pal,C K Biswas ,D Majumdar

doi:10.14202/vetworld.2014.1103-1107

Abstract

Aim: The present study was conducted on prolific goat breed to identify body linear type traits that might be associated with prolificacy trait in goats. Materials and Methods: Two-stage stratified random sample survey based data were collected from 1427 non-pregnant goats with the history of single, twin and triplet litter sizes (LZ) between January 2008 to February 2011 for 3 years in 68 villages located in East and North East India. Data on sixteen body linear traits were analyzed using logistic regression model to do the step-wise selection for identifying the body linear traits that could determine LZ. An average value for each identified body linear trait was determined for classifying the goats into three categories: Goats having the history of single LZ, goats having the history of twin LZ and goats having the history of triplet LZ. Results: The LZ proportions for single, twin and triplet, were 29.50, 59.14 and 11.36%, respectively, with the prolificacy rate of 181.85% in Indian Black Bengal goats. A total of eight body linear traits that could determine LZ in prolific goats were identified. Heart girth (HG) measurement (>60.90 cm), paunch girth (PG) (>70.22 cm), wither height (WH) (>49.75 cm), neck length (>21.45 cm), ear length (>12.80 cm) and distance between trochanter major (DTM) bones (>12.28 cm), pelvic triangle area (PTA) (>572.25 cm 2 ) and clearance at udder (CU) (>23.16 cm) showed an increase likelihood of multiple LZ when compared to single LZ. Further, HG measurement (>62.29 cm), WH (>50.54 cm), PG (>71.85 cm) and ear length (>13.00 cm), neck length (>22.01 cm), PTA (>589.64 cm 2 ), CU (>23.20 cm) and DTM bones (>12.47 cm) were associated with increased likelihood of triplet LZ, when compared with that of twin LZ. Conclusion: HG measurement was the best discriminating factor, while PG, neck length, DTM bones, CU, PTA, WH and ear length measurements were other important factors that could be used for identifying prolific goats to achieve economic benefit out of prolificacy trait.

Highlights

Prolificacy is an important economic trait in small ruminants like goats on which millions of resource - limited rural populace and economically weaker sections of the society depend for their livelihoods in developing countries like India, Bangladesh and other Southeast Asian countries
The percent of Black Bengal does show different birth type based on litter sizes (LZ) presented in Table-2
The average LZ being 1.81 in this study is quite comparable with some world prolific goat breeds like Nubian, Pygmy, American Alpine, French Alpine, Saanen and Toggenburg with the average LZ of 2.0, 1.9, 1.9, 1.7, 1.7 and 1.6, respectively [9]

Summary

Introduction

Prolificacy is an important economic trait in small ruminants like goats on which millions of resource - limited rural populace and economically weaker sections of the society depend for their livelihoods in developing countries like India, Bangladesh and other Southeast Asian countries. Black Bengal goat is a native, well adopted, small-sized and meattype breed in eastern and north-eastern regions of India [2] and in Bangladesh [3]. This goat breed is famous for its quality of meat and leather with high prolificacy rate [4]. It is not known which one is prolific in Black Bengal goat population.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion