Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences

Research Article
Adv. Anim. Vet. Sci. 7(10): 888-897
Http://dx.doi.org/10.17582/journal.aavs/2019/7.10.888.897
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Abd-Allah S.*, Fatma M. Salman, M.M. Shoukry, H.H. Abd- El Rahman, M.I. Mohamed, A.A. Abedo

Animal Production Department, National Research Centre, 33 El Bohouth St., Dokki, Cairo, Egypt, Postal code 12622.

Abstract | This study was conducted to assess the various morphometric traits of Boer goats raised under desert areas conditions in Egypt. Data were collected from 20 animals of different sex and age groups. Ten standard morphological characteristics such as chest girth (CG), wither height (WH), body length (BL), chest depth (CD), paunch length (PL), cannon circumference (CC), head length (HEL), paunch girth (PG), paunch height (PH) and neck circumference (NC) were used to morphologically characterize the Boer goats with a live body weight of 43.30 kg. The coefficient of variation (CV) in all morphological characteristics ranged from 4.55% to 28.07%, while was lower in female 7.71 % compared to that of male 13.24 %. The effects of sex on the body measurements were analyzed and morphologicals harmony were determined through the pearson correlation. Our findings showed that the mean live body weight (LBW) of the male group was observed as 45.70 kg, while that of the female group was noted as 40.90 kg. Female goats showed numerically higher homogeneity compared to the male in all morphological traits. The body length (BL) of male recorded in these study were found to be 87.60 cm while that of female was investigated to be 83.10 cm, respectively. Also, the homogeneity between goats aged from 2 to 3 years was greater than that of other age groups. The highest and strongly positive correlation (p<0.01) was recorded between LBW and NC for male (0.99) and of PG for female goats (0.978). Neck circumference (NC) alone has explained the variation in LBW with an adjusted R2 of 0.99 for males. Stepwise regression analysis determined that CG, CD, CC, WH, PG and NC was the major significant contributors to the LBW prediction equation for Boer goats. LBW of goats can be predicted from NC with an adjusted R2 of 0.99 for male and PG, CG and CC with adjusted R2 about 100 percent for female. From this data, it could be concluded that the LBW can be predicted with high accuracy from some body measurements which can be exploited by goats producers for management, selection and genetic improvement of Boer goats and could be used successfully in new breeding programs in Egypt.

Keywords | Boer goats, Body weight, Morphometric measurements, Regression, Egypt.