Abstract
Studies were carried out in three local government area in Ekiti state (Ado,Oye and Ikole LGA) to determine the phenotypic characteristic of West African Dwarf(WAD) goats. One hundred and thirty-two (132) West African Dwarf (WAD) Goats comprising sixty six (66) females and sixty six (66) males were randomly selected for the study. The aim was to document the body characteristics of the WAD goats in three Local government in (Ekiti State) and also to determine the effect of sex on the body characteristics. The experimental design was Randomized complete block design (RCBD) and means were separated using Tukey's test. Results showed that the body linear measurements for male and female goats varied between 64.00cm, 50.00cm, 46.00cm, 52.00cm, I1.00cm, 10.00cm, 7.00cm for females and 44.00cm, 43.00cm, 35.00cm, 37.00cm, 9.00cm, 8.00cm, 4.00cm for males for heart girth (HG), body length (BL}, wither height (WH), rump height (RH), Tail length (TL), Ear length (EL), and Hom length (HL) respectively.
The analysis of variance (ANOV A) for the seven quantitative traits considered in this study showed different levels of significance ranging from P= 0.05 to P= 0.01. Two traits (BL, TL) showed significant (P<0.05) difference among the goats. There is highly significant {P<0.01) difference between the male and female goat for HG.
Location showed no significant difference (P<0.05) for HG, BWT, WH, RH, EL and HL whereas there is significant difference (P<0.05) in the BL and TL of goats measured in the three locations with animals in Ado having significantly (P<0.05) higher BL (46.86cm) and animals in lkole having significantly (P<0.05) higher TL (8.68cm) than those in Oye (43.84cm and 7.86cm) respectively.
Sex showed highly significant (P
Location and sex interaction showed no significant difference (P>0.05) in all the quantitative traits measured. Coefficient of variation (CV%) for all the traits ranges from low (10%) to high (41%). The CV% was low for RH (9.81%), WH (10.20%), BL (12.61%), HG (13.84%), EL (14.83%), and TL (16.58%). The CV% was high for the BWT (37.40%) and HL (41.39%).
On the ANOVA table, the highest mean was recorded for HG (55.56cm), followed by BL (45.(jlcm), RH(43.30cm), and WH (41.12cm). The lowest mean was recorded forHL (5.36cm), TL (8.24cm), EL (8.99cm), and BWT (18.65kg). Pearson correlation analysis showed that body weights could be predicted accurately from HG, l· and BL, WH and RH.
The study strongly indicates that the HG was successfully used for predicting BWT of WAD goats measured in the three LGA's and the information obtained in this research would be useful . for phenotypic characterization of WAD goats and proffer assistance to breeders when conducting management selection and preservation programs.
Key words: WAD Goats, body weight, linear measurements.