Prolificacy and its relationship with body measurements in Cameroon native goats

Abstract

The study was carried out between October 2013 and June 2014 in two agro-ecological zones of Cameroon, the Western Highlands and Bimodal Rainforest. The aim of the research was to contribute to a better knowledge of reproduction parameters of Cameroon native goats specifically, to evaluate prolificacy and secondly to correlate this to some phenotypic traits with further interest as rapid onfarm prediction of a potential prolific does. To evaluate the prolificacy, a field survey was carried on 446 Cameroon native does which have given birth at least once. The association between prolificacy of 275 does from the abovementioned 446 and some body traits such as height at withers (HW), body length (BL) and chest girth (CG) was performed using correlation technique follow by a one way ANOVA. The results have shown that, 13.00 % of birth types are singleton, 63.00 % twin, 22.43 % triplet, 1.35 % quadruplet and 0.22 % sextuplet. HW, BL and CG were significantly (p < 0.01) correlated to the litter size. This have been confirmed by ANOVA (P < 0.05) follow by a Duncan test which also show that CG explain better the variability in litter size. It is suggest that such phenotypic traits could be used in a selection index. The investigation of candidate genes for prolificacy is envisaged for the next future.

Key words: Reproduction, native goat, litter size, phenotypes, Cameroon