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Indian Journal of Animal Research

  • Chief EditorM. R. Saseendranath

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Research Article

Indian Journal of Animal Research, volume 52 issue 9 (september 2018) : 1263-1266

Prediction of body weight from linear body measurements in sheep

Sandeep Kumar, S.P. Dahiya, Z.S. Malik, C.S. Patil
1Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Hisar-125 004, Haryana, India
Cite article:- Kumar Sandeep, Dahiya S.P., Malik Z.S., Patil C.S. (2017). Prediction of body weight from linear body measurements in sheep. Indian Journal of Animal Research. 52(9): 1263-1266. doi: 10.18805/ijar.B-3360.

ABSTRACT

Measurements of body conformation in sheep are of value in judging the quantitative characteristics of meat and also helpful in developing suitable selection criterion. Data  on 349 Harnali sheep for body length (BL), body height (BH), heart girth (HG), paunch girth (PG), tail length (TL), head circumference (HC), ear length (EL), ear width (EW), face length (FL) and adult body weight (ABW) were analysed to study the relationship between linear body measurements and  body weight. The mixed linear model with dam’s weight at lambing as covariate was used to study the effect of non-genetic factors on body measurements and body weight. High estimates of heritability were obtained for BL, BH, HG, TL, HC, EL, EW, FL and ABW while moderate estimate was obtained for PG. The phenotypic correlations of BL, BH, HG, PG, HC and FL with ABW were positive and significant (0.32±0.04 to 0.59±0.08). The genetic correlations of HG, PG, HC and FL with ABW were 0.51±0.13, 0.42±0.19, 0.44±0.13 and 0.43±0.15, respectively. Various combinations of linear type traits to predict ABW were found to have coefficient of determination as high as 0.92. It is concluded that heart girth is the most important trait for estimation of live weight in sheep and the prediction equation is Body weight = -63.72 + 1.23 HG with R2 = 0.87.

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