Early lambing – kidding, prolificacy and twinning in the Nigerian breeds of sheep and goat

Abstract

This study examined early lambing-kidding, prolificacy and twinning in Nigerian breeds of sheep and goat using questionnaire administered by enumerators. Sheep and goat farmers in the study area were interviewed. At the time of the study, Nigeria had only 21 States plus the Federal Capital Territory, with each States having different number of local government areas. A total of four hundred forty nine (449) Local Government Areas were used in this survey. Five villages were randomly sampled from each Local Government Area and five questionnaires were administered to five randomly selected farmers in each village. Some breeds of sheep like Yankasa, Uda and Balami were frequent among the states in the north. Red Sokoto and sahel goat were frequent among the states in the north.
The Red Sokoto goat (4.43%) kid earliest than WAD goat (4.29 %) and Sahel goat (2.01%). WAD sheep (7.18%) was found to be most prolific, followed by Balami (5.17%) and Yankasa (3.88%) while it was lower in Uda (3.45%).The Sahel goat (5.49%) was the most prolific, followed by WAD (4.64%) and Red Sokoto goat (3.86%). Among the breeds of sheep, WAD sheep had more occurrence of twinning (6.82%) than the other breeds of sheep – Uda (2.57%), Yankasa (2.55%) and was very low in Balami sheep (1.21%).With the breeds of goat, WAD goat (3.31%) had more occurrence of twinning followed by Red Sokoto (2.88%), while Sahel goat had the lowest occurrence of twinning (1.14%).From this study, a successful breeding programme and plan could be made where selection is carried out among these breeds to increase the frequency of these desired traits in Yankasa, WAD sheep and Red Sokoto, Sahel, WAD goat. There is a need for a repeat of this work in this year 2016, where results obtained can be compared with the results obtained in this study.

Key words: Breeds, Kidding, lambing, prolificacy, twinning.