Community-based characterization of hararghe high land goats in darolabu district western hararghe Ethiopia

Abstract

Goats are important to economic and social livelihoods of smallholders in Darolabu district. The study was conducted from October, 2010 to March, 2011 with an objectives to characterize Hararghe highland goat breed in its environment, to identify breeding objectives and trait preferences and predict body weight from body measurement. The district has been stratified in to lowland, midland and highland agro ecologies for this study. Structured questionnaires, focus group discussion, field observations, recording morphological characters, body weight and linear body measurements were used to collect data. One hundred eighty households were sampled at random and 930 Hararghe highland goats were considered for morphological characterization by categorizing into sex and age groups in different agro ecologies. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to handle qualitative and quantitative data, respectively. The main effect of agro ecology, dentition and sex were fitted to the model to analyze quantitative data. The result depicted that the overall mean family size per household was estimated to be 9.68±2.95. The mean flock size of goat in lowland, midland and highland were 34.0±32.02, 10.50±4.73 and 7.0±2.46 respectively. The rate of change in inbreeding coefficient per generation when flock is not mixed in lowland, midland and highland were 0.065, 0.2033 and 0.2165, respectively. Ninetyfive percent of household in lowland, 98.3% in midland and 86.7% in highland fatten goat with finishing period of 12.28±8.2, 12.71±8.87 and 12.31±8.59 month, respectively without significant variation (P>0.05) among the three agro ecologies. White, brown and grey coat colors are the first, second and third preferred colors for both sex with an index values of 0.38, 0.38 and 0.24 respectively. Mean age at first service of female were significantly (P<0.05) shorter in highland than lowland and midland ant it were 14.1±5.6, 13.1±5.7 and 12.0±4.7 month in lowland, midland and highland, respectively and the corresponding age for male were 12.8±4.8, 12.4±5.6 and 13.0±5.2 month, respectively. The average kidding intervals were 8.6±2.28 month in highland, 8.0±1.96 month in midland and 7.6±1.86month in lowland. Litter size of 1.38±0.20, 1.32±0.28 and 1.36±0.35 month was observed in lowland, midland and highland, respectively. Goat milking is practiced by majority of the respondents (90%) with average lactation length of 3.6±1.4 month. Ninety percent of goat owners in the study area practiced uncontrolled breeding. Conformation, milk yield and twining ability were ranked first, second and third for selecting breeding doe with an index of 0.22, 0.18, and 0.17 respectively and the corresponding rank for males was conformation, coat color and pedigree with an index of 0.28, 0.20 and 0.12 respectively. Disease, genotype, feed and water were ranked the first, second, third and fourth constraints for goat production in the study area having an index of 0.30, 0.21, 0.19 and 0.09, respectively. Sex, age and agro ecology had a significant (p<0.001) effect on body weight and most of the body measurements. The mean body weight, body condition, body length, heart girth, height at wither, chest width, pelvic width, rump height, rump length, ear length and horn length for female goat were 23.74±0.21kg, 2.68±0.03,57.2±0.23cm, 66.6±0.23cm, 59.6±0.21cm, 15.02±0.18cm, 13.3±0.15cm, 63.7±0.19cm, 14.3±0.06cm, 13.04±0.05cm and 8.47±0.15cm respectively. The corresponding values for males were 29.6±0.31kg, 3.04±0.04, 60.7±0.34cm, 71.4±0.35cm, 64.4±0.33cm, 16.3±0.26cm, 13.6±0.22cm, 68.8±0.29cm, 14.9±0.09cm, 13.07±0.07cm and 10.25±0.27cm, respectively. Most of the body measurements had positive and high correlation with the body weight and heart girth showed the highest and positive correlation with body weight. The prediction equation developed has showed that, heart girt is the body measurement that has revealed higher explanatory power (R2 ) to predict live weight. A linear regression equations using heart girth as an explanatory variable showed a prediction equation of (y = -31.42 + 0.83x) for female and (y = -36.21 + 0.92x) for males, where y and x are body weight and chest girth, respectively. The goat production could be improved through exploring the indigenous knowledge in husbandry practices and genetic improvement strategy that considered producers trait preference, breeding objectives and active involvement of the community. The traditional eye ball goat marketing practices has to be changed to live weight based marketing to make the producers beneficial.