Morphological characteristics of local non-descript Goats of Guntur, Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

In a field study covering 240 farmers spread over 60 villages in 15 mandals, data were collected on the morphological characteristics and morphometric characters of 1141 local goats of Guntur district from September to December, 2019. The predominant coat colour was multi-colour (43.82%) and bicolour (43.38%). The head profile of most of the goats was slightly convex (58.63%), followed by straight (41.37%). Majority of goats had pendulous ears (82.30%) and wattles in both males (82.25%) and females (69.14%). Majority of goats did not have beard (85.28%) and both sexes were horned (93.51%). The overall mean body length, height at withers, chest girth, paunch girth and body weight of local goats were 68.3±0.2, 79.7±0.2, 77.8±0.2, 77.8±0.3 cm and 35.4±0.2 kg, respectively. The body weight of goats was significantly (P<0.01) positively correlated with chest girth (0.80), paunch girth (0.69), body height (0.64) and body length (0.64). The study suggested that selection of homogeneous population from surrounding districts and conducting study in large population so as to recognize local goats as a breed.