Evaluation of Phenotypic and Morphometric Characteristics in Community Based Breeding Program of Gumer Sheep

A. Ebadu and E. Habtamu

Background and Objective: Community-Based Breeding Programs (CBBP) have been adopted to improve Gumer sheep. This study was undertaken to evaluate growth rate, prolificacy performance, characterizing morphological traits and to establish weight estimating regression models. Material and Methods: Data on 988, 854, 708 and 404 for birth, weaning, 6 months and yearling weights, respectively for growth rate traits and 678 for prolificacy traits were used for evaluation across the years of 2015-2020. Similarly, 85 males and 200 females were used for morphometric measurements viz, body length, height at withers, heart girth, horn length, tail length, scrotal circumference, tail circumference and ear length. The effect of non-genetic factors like a year of birth, sex, litter size, birth season, CBBP type and coat colour were analyzed by using general linear model procedures of the Statistical Analysis System (SAS). Correlation between morphometric measurements and stepwise regression procedures to determine the best fitting regression equation for the prediction of live body weights for male and female sheep. Result: The overall least square means for birth, weaning, 6 months and yearling weights of Gumer sheep were 2.09±0.02, 11.63±0.20, 15.76±0.42 and 21.14±0.64 kg, respectively. A high and significant correlation between body weight and morphometric measurements suggest that either of the variables provide a good estimation of live weight. The regression models for both male and female were Y = -42.29+0.46HG+0.53 BL with R²_adj = 0.87 and Y = -16.11+0.40 HG with R²_adj = 0.50, respectively. Conclusion: The body weight and prolificacy traits of Gumer sheep were in increasing trend and had high within variation which leads to further improvement for those traits through CBBP.

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