Genetic and non-genetic factors affecting morphometry of Sirohi goats

Aim: The aim was to estimate genetic and non-genetic factors affecting morphometric traits of Sirohi goats under field condition. Materials and Methods: The detailed information of all animals on body measurements at birth, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months of age was collected from farmer's flock under field condition born during 2007-2013 to analyze the effect of genetic and nongenetic factors. The least squares maximum likelihood program was used to estimate genetic and non-genetic parameters affecting morphometric traits. Results and Discussion: Effect of sire, cluster, year of birth, and sex was found to be highly significant (p<0.01) on all three morphometric traits, parity was highly significant (p<0.01) for body height (BH) and body girth (BG) at birth. The h(2) estimates for morphometric traits ranged among 0.528 +/- 0.163 to 0.709 +/- 0.144 for BH, 0.408 +/- 0.159 to 0.605 +/- 0.192 for body length (BL), and 0.503 +/- 0.197 to 0.695 +/- 0.161 for BG. Conclusion: The effect of sire was highly significant (p<0.01) and also h(2) estimate of all morphometric traits were medium to high; therefore, it could be concluded on the basis of present findings that animals with higher body measurements at initial phases of growth will perform better with respect to even body weight traits at later stages of growth.