Caracterización de ovinos Criollos argentinos utilizando índices zoométricos

Abstract

The rational use of animal genetic resources, involves studying their zootechnical and productive characteristics by objective data. To fulfil this premise in the case of the Argentinean Creole sheep breed, much remains to be done. It is the first sheep breed in the country, is distributed in almost all provinces and occupies the third place of the current sheep stock. The objective of this work was to study the morphology of Creole sheep from four Argentine provinces using zoometric indexes, in order to recognize their ethnic characteristics and functional abilities. We worked with 203 adult sheep according to their dental chronometry: 59 belonging to Buenos Aires province (BA); 40 to Corrientes (CO); 60 to Santiago del Estero (SE) and 44 to Salta (SA). Eight zoometric indexes were calculated: four belonging to the ethnological type: Cephalic index (ICE); Thoracic index (ITO); Corporal index (ICO); Pelvic index (IPE) and four belonging to the functional type: Relative depth index (IPR); Pelvic transversal index (IPT); Pelvic longitudinal index (IPL); Short-sightedness relative index (ICR). Descriptive statistical analyzes were performed, ANOVA and Tukey test to detect differences between regions, linear correlations between indexes and Principal Component Analysis for ethnological and functional indexes separately. The results regarding to the ethnological indexes show that the four regions shared racial characteristics in common, although they present variability within population, the sheep from Salta are more homogeneous and then those from Buenos Aires which present more variability probably because of adaptation of animals to the different environments. The functional indexes indicate that in the four regions, sheep are suitable as meat-wool dual purpose animals. Salta’s sheep resulted to be the most uniform one and to have the best meat conformation.