Vol. 11, Issue 12 (2022)

Author(s):
Saba Bukhari, NA Ganai, S Shanaz, HM Khan, Safeer Alam, Mubashir Rather, Nusrat Khan, Shabu Showkat, Ruksana Shah and Shabir Mir

Abstract:
Bakerwal (Kagni) are heavy goats reared in large flocks under extensive system for meat and household milk purpose by Bakerwal tribe of Jammu and Kashmir. A study was undertaken to study dam weight and effect of some non-genetic factors on birth weight and morphometric traits at birth of Bakerwal goats in organized farm. The data pertaining to dam weight at kidding (DW), birth weight (BW), Body length (BL), height at weathers (BH), Heart girth (HG), paunch girth (PG) were collected from history sheets of Bakerwal (Kagni) goats maintained at Mountain Sheep and Goat Research Station, SKUAST-K, Shuhama, Kashmir, India from 2016 to 2021. The effect of non-genetic factors on birth weight and morphometric traits was studied by least-squares analysis owing to non-orthogonal data using the technique developed by Harvey (1990) ^[8]. The coefficient of variation (CV %) of all the traits under study were low (7.37%) to medium (32.62%) indicating corresponding low to medium variability of these traits in Bakerwal kids. The overall estimates of 2.97±0.07 kg, 32.11±0.37 cm, 33.60±0.34 cm, 31.97±0.57 cm, 29.88±0.45 cm, 11.03±0.33 cm and11.15±0.50 cm for BW, BL, BH, HG, PG, CL and CC, respectively were obtained in the present study. The effect of period was significant (p<0.05) only on BL whereas the effects of sex of kid and dam weight were significant only (p<0.05) on the BW. The effect of birth type was significant (p<0.05) on the BW. The effect of period of birth was found to be significant (p<0.05) on BL and PG only in the present study. All the phenotypic correlation among all studied traits Bakerwal kids were positive (except between CL and BH) ranging from very low (-0.12) to high (0.54) between BG and BL. It is concluded that heavy goats produce heavy kids of larger size.