PREDICTION OF BODY WEIGHT THROUGH BODY MEASUREMENTS IN BEETAL GOATS

Abstract

The present study was carried out at Small Ruminants Training and Research Centre, University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences (UVAS) Ravi campus, Lahore Pakistan. The goats (n = 230) falling in age group 13-18 months were included in the resent investigation. Live weight (LW) and other body characteristics recorded were body length (BL), height at withers (HW), chest girth (CG), rump (RP), and forehead (FH) were (inches) 27.16±3.94 (Kg), 27.00±1.35, 28.34±1.32, 27.00±1.41, 5.28±1.48 and 3.18±1.26, respectively. Significant and positive correlation coefficients between live weight and other body characteristics: body length, height at withers, heart girth, rump and forehead (0.805, 0.766, 0.767, 0.088 and 0.229, respectively) were observed. All measurements for different body characteristics were included in model. Stepwise elimination procedure was adopted to eliminate unfit body measurements (rump and forehead) in the model. Body length, withers height and heart girth were found to be best fit accounting for 70 % of the live body weight in females Beetal goats. The coefficient of determination (R2) for body length (64.8 %) was higher than other body measurements in single trait evaluation indicating it as the best trait for the predication of live weight. The most appropriate combination of body characteristics (R2 = 69.1 %) was observed between height at withers and heart girth for predication of live body weight estimation, where as rump and forehead were the poor estimators of body weight with coefficient of variation (R2 ) as 25.93% and 16.64%, respectively.