Abstract
Body weights at birth (469), weaning (394) and at six month of age (358) for kids utilized in this study were raised at private project in Duhok governorate, Iraq during two kidding season (2016-2017) and (2017-2018). GLM within SAS programme was used to analyze the data which include the fixed effects (age of doe, year and season of kidding, sex of kid and type of birth, regression on doe weight at kidding, and the regression of later weights of kids on earlier weights) influencing the studied traits. Restricted Maximum Likelihood Method was used to estimate repeatability, heritability, genetic and phenotypic correlations after adjusting the records for fixed effects. Variance components of random effects were tested for positive definite. Overall mean of weights at birth (BWT), weaning (WWT) and 6 month of age (WT6M) were 2.92, 15.32 and 24.45 kg, respectively. Differences among groups of age of doe in all studied traits were not significant, while year of kidding and sex of kid affect all traits significantly (p<0.01). Season of kidding affect BWT and WWT significantly (P<0.01). Single born kids were heavier (P<0.01) than twins in BWT only. Regression of BWT on doe weight at kidding (0.033 kg/kg) was significant (P<0.01), while the regressions of WWT and WT6M were not significant. The regression coefficients of WWT on BWT (1.906 kg/kg) and of WT6M on WWT (0.835 kg/kg) were highly significant (P<0.01). Repeatability estimates for BWT, WWT and WT6M were 0.47, 0.45 and 0.35, respectively; on the same order the estimates of heritability were 0.41, 0.61 and 0.79. Genetic correlations between BWT with each of WWT (0.45) and WT6M (0.55), and between WWT and WT6M (0.68) were highly significant. All phenotypic correlations between each pair of body weights were higher than genetic correlations and ranged between 0.48 and 0.73.
Highlights
Goat is an important multipurpose animals and there are no religious barriers to the consumption of goat meat and skins are very valuable by product [52], and considered as important domestic animals in many parts of the world, including Iraq, because of their adaptability to different environmental conditions [19], and utilizing poor quality feed stuffs [15]
The objectives of this study were to analyze non-genetic factors affecting body weights of mountain kids in a flock of local goat raised at Akre, Kurdistan Region, and to estimate the genetic parameters using an accurate method to be able to improve their productivity by breeding beside the suitable management
Body weights of kids revealed in this study lay within the range (1.09-4.42 kg) for BWT, (4.8-23.0 kg) for WWT, and (7.3526.72 kg) for WT6M which found by earlier studies conducted at several countries using different breeds [5, 13, 21, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 41, 46, 55, 57]
Summary
Goat is an important multipurpose animals and there are no religious barriers to the consumption of goat meat and skins are very valuable by product [52], and considered as important domestic animals in many parts of the world, including Iraq, because of their adaptability to different environmental conditions [19], and utilizing poor quality feed stuffs [15]. Body weights of 469, 394 and 358 kids were measured at birth (BWT), weaning (WWT) and 6 month of age (WT6M), respectively.
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