Phenotypic characterization of Balami breed of sheep in Maiduguri, north-eastern Nigeria

Abstract

A total of 227 Balami breeds (50 males and 177 females) were randomly sampled from the population of Balami sheep for body characterization. The study evaluated morphometric characteristics of Balami sheep to check the effect of age, sex, correlation and descriptive statistics The morphometric characteristics evaluated were; body weight (BW), body length (BL), height at wither (HW), chest circumference (CC), head length (HDL), head width (HDW), ear length (EL), horn length (HNL), horn circumference (HNC), tail length (TL), rump width (RW), rump length (RL), foreleg (FLG), hind leg (HLG), height at rump (HTR) and neck length (NL).The result revealed that age has significant (p<0.005) effect on morphometric characteristics of Balami sheep. Increase in age lead to increase in morphometric characteristics. Sex also has significant (p<0.005) influence on morphometric traits. Male shows superiority over female in HDW, EL, TL, FLG, HLG, NL RL, HTR, HNL and HNC. Females were high in HW and CC. Skeletal measurements such as wither height, and chest circumference are less affected by nutrition and thus indicate inherent size better than measures related to muscle and fat deposition such as girth measurements and body weight. The phenotypic correlation of morphometric characteristics of Balami sheep in this study varied in magnitude and direction. BW showed positive correlation with all the morphometric traits except HDL. The positive correlation of BW with other traits showed that they are controlled by same gene.

Keywords: Balami, Phenotypic, Characterization, sheep