Article Sidebar
Article Details
NAJ supports free online communication and exchange of knowledge as the most effective way of ensuring that the fruits of research and development practice are made widely available. It is therefore committed to open access, which, for authors, enables the widest possible dissemination of their findings and, for readers, increases their ability to discover pertinent information. The Journal adopts and uses the CC: BY license and is open access. This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Copyright for articles published in this Journal is retained by the Journal.
Main Article Content
Effect of Dam Mating Weight, Month of kidding and Sex of Kids on Growth Characteristics of Red Sokoto Kids
Abstract
Birth weight, body weight (BW), height-at-withers (HW), body length (BL) and chest girth (CG) were measured on 1000 Red Sokoto kids which comprised of 570 males and 430 females. The goats belonged to small holder farmers in Kano State, Nigeria. Data were collected and analyzed using a fixed linear model procedure based on SAS (1999) to determined the effects of dam mating weight, month of kidding and sex, on the measured characteristic (BL, HW and CG) at 1,3,6 and 9 month of age. The effect of sex was significant (P<0.01) on the measured characteristics except BL and CG at 9 month of age. Month of kidding had significant effect (P<0.01) on birth weight and body weight at 1, 3, 6 and 9 months of age. The effect of month of kidding was significant (P<0.01) on HW, BL, and CG at 1 month of age, but not significant (P> 0.05) on the later ages except CG at 6 months of age. The effect of dam mating weight was significant ( P<0.01; P<0.05) on all the measured characteristics except BL at 1 month of age, HW at 3 months of age, BL and CG at 9 months of age. Birth weight increased with increase in dam mating weight, this implies that dams with higher body weight at mating will give birth to heavier kids.
Keywords: Goats, sources of variation, growth characteristics, Red Sokoto kids.
