Abstract
The study was conducted in Borana zone of southern Ethiopia to phenotypically characterize Borana goats kept under pastoral and agro-pastoral management systems. In total, 257 of goats comprising of 199 female and 58 male goats were used for the study. Qualitative descriptions of the breed showed that sampled animals displayed high frequency for plain coat pattern (82.10%) and white coat color (89.88%). In both sexes, toggle was manifested in 6% of the animals. Nearly, 48% of the animal sampled (male and female) were polled. The overall body weight (BW), chest girth (CG), body length (BL), wither height (HW), pelvic width (PW), body condition score (BCS) and ear length (EL) for female goats were 27.99 kg, 64.34 cm, 69.60 cm, 66.64 cm, 14.35 cm, 2.87 and 14.35, respectively. Within females, dentition significantly affected (P 0.05). Similarly, dentition had significantly (P < 0.001) influenced live body weight and other linear measurements in male goats. This study insight that Borana goats are superior to other indigenous goat breeds in many of the quantitative traits considered. Most of the parameters considered had positive and significant correlation with live body weight. Considering ease of measurement, chest girth (CG) could be used in performance recordings and bridge the gaps still present in keeping the performance of the breed to facilitate within breed selection scheme.
Highlights
The better adaption of goats to the arid- and semi- arid environments, high prolificacy and short generation interval [1] make them suitable for resource poor farming and pastoral communities
Goat improvement programs if any in Ethiopia were mainly depend on the notion to improve productivity milk yield through crossing of indigenous breeds with imported improved dairy goat breeds without critical consideration of the farmers preference and prevailing farming systems
This study focused on two districts namely Yabello and Dire
Summary
The better adaption of goats to the arid- and semi- arid environments, high prolificacy and short generation interval [1] make them suitable for resource poor farming and pastoral communities. Goat improvement programs if any in Ethiopia were mainly depend on the notion to improve productivity milk yield through crossing of indigenous breeds with imported improved dairy goat breeds without critical consideration of the farmers preference and prevailing farming systems. Those attempts were ended with insignificant impact both at the genotype and household level due to incompatibility of the genotype with the production system [4]. In Ethiopia, there have been on-going initiatives to upgrade growth performance of locally adapted goat breeds through crossing with imported Boer goats including in the pastoral envir onments where exotic breeds are hardly survive
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