Effect of Breed, Sex and Age on Body Weight and Linear Body Measurements in Punjab Goat Breeds

Current study was performed to investigate the effect of i. breed, sex and age on body weight and morphometric measurement traits and ii. phenotypic correlation of morphometric measurement traits to body weight. Data on body weight and morphometric measurement traits i.e., live body weight, body length, wither height, pubic bone length, heart girth and chest width were collected from 792 individuals from seven goat breed of Punjab including five strains of Beetal breed; Barbari, Dera Din Pannah, Nachi, Teddi, Pahari and Pothwari. Body weight was measured in kilograms with the help of weighing balance and morphometric measurement traits were measured with measuring tape in centimeters (cm). Mixed Procedure with Restricted Maximum Likelihood methodology in SAS University Edition was used to investigate the effect of sex, breed and age on different body measurements of seven goat breeds under investigation. The findings revealed that sex had significant effect on body weight and morphometric measurement traits except for pubic bone length among all the studied goat breeds. There was also a significant effect of breed on body weight and body measurements. Beetal had a maximum adult weight (44.49 +/- 0.48 kg) followed by Nachi (37.45 +/- 2.32 kg), Daira Din Panah (37.24 +/- 2.36 kg), Barbari (36.99 +/- 2.21 kg), Pothwari (34.25 +/- 2.67 kg), Teddi (23.52 +/- 1.55 kg) and Pahari (20.81 +/- 1.78 kg). A strong positive correlation of body weight with all morphometric measurements was observed i.e., to heart girth (0.895), to body length (0.833), to body height (0.789), to chest length (0.741) and to pubic bone length (0.664). It was concluded that variations in body measurements and body weight depended largely on age, sex and breed. The results from the current study might have possible implications in launching proper selection program for improving meat potential of native goat breeds.