Estimates of (co)variance components for productive and composite reproductive traits in Iranian Cashmere goats

The objective of this study was to estimate variance and covariance components, in Iranian Cashmere goats. for birth weight (BWT) and weaning weight (WWT) performances of kids and total weight of kids weaned (TWW) per doe joined at first (TWW1), second (TWW2) and third (TWW3) parities by REML procedures using univariate and multivariate animal models. The analysis was based on 2313 records of kids and 940 records of does. Through ignoring or including maternal additive genetic or maternal permanent environmental effects, four different models were fitted for BWT and WWT performances. For TWW performances only two models (without or with service sire effect) were used. Models were compared using likelihood ratio test. Direct additive genetic and maternal permanent environmental effects had significant influence on BWT and WWT performances. These effects accounted for 9.4% and 15.6%. and 13.9% and 6.7% of phenotypic variation. respectively. No significant effect of service sire was observed on TWW. The estimates of heritabilities were 0.072, 0.109 and 0.082 for TWW1, TWW2 and TWW3, respectively. Direct genetic correlations among all performances were positive and low (for BWT with TWW) to high (for BWT with WWT and WWT with TWW). The corresponding estimates for phenotypic and residual correlations were moderate and lower than genetic correlations. The high genetic correlation among WWT and TWW suggests that direct selection on TWW1 or indirect selection on WWT would increase total weight of kids weaned per doe joined. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.