Abstract:
Abergelle goats are indigenous to northern Ethiopia, and dual purpose animal. Community-based breeding programs enhance its productivity and resilience, supporting farmers and sustainable agriculture. The objective of this study was to estimate genetic and phenotypic parameters for growth and milk production traits of Abergelle goats in community-based breeding program (CBBP) scale up villages. The data used in this study include six years (2018 to 2023) data collected for Abergelle goats community based breeding program scaling up villages in Alquzu and Addis mender. Data have been collected on growth and milk production traits, from the established village of goat community based breeding program area. The traits studied, birth weight (BWT), weight at three months (TMWT), weight at six months (SMWT), weight at nine months (NMWT), weight at one year (YWT), average daily weight gain from birth to three months age (ADG1), average daily weight gain from three month age to six months age (ADG2), average daily weight gain from six months to nine months (ADG3), and from nine months to one year (ADG4), and for milk production traits average daily milk yield (ADMY), milk yield in 84 days (MY84days) along with different lactation length. Direct heritability for growth and milk traits was computed using wombat software. Multivariate mixed animal model was applied to estimate genetic parameters. Multivariate analysis was utilized to estimate correlations between traits. The overall least square mean of body weights ± standard errors (LSM±SE) for BWT, TMWT, SMWT, NMWT, and YWT were 2.25±0.04, 7.5±0.03, 8.8±0.040, 12.1±0.067, and 15.3±0.092 kg, respectively. The overall LSM±SE of ADG1, ADG2, ADG3, and ADG4 were 58.2±2.27, 37.8±2.04, 19.2±0.7, and 10.5±0.12g per day, respectively. The mean values for ADMY, LL, and MY 84 days were 302.6±6.68 g, 9.4±0.23 weeks and 28.003±47.45 kg, respectively. The direct heritability estimates for BWT, TMWT, SMWT, NMWT, and YWT were 0.34 ± 0.070, 0.45 ± 0.062, 0.40 ± 0.040, 0.42 ± 0.07and 0.41 ± 0.14 respectively. Direct heritability for growth traits moderate to high, selection can improve the growth traits. The phenotypic correlation between birth weight and the traits TMWT, SMWT, NMWT, and YWT was found to be low. However, there was a high genetic correlation between TMWT and the other traits—SMWT, NMWT, and YWT—with values ranging from 0.71 to 0.87. The correlations between TMWT-SMWT, SMWT-NMWT, and NMWT-YWT were high and positive, indicating a strong genetic association. The genetic correlation of birth weight was lower but higher correlations were found among the other growth traits (SMWT, NMWT, and YWT), indicating one of these traits increases; the others tend to increase as well. Therefore, birth weight as growth trait had no strong relation with later stages of growth traits in this study for Abergelle goat in scale up community based breeding programs. The direct heritability estimates for ADMY, LMY, and LL of Abergelle goats were 0.08±0.005, 0.16±0.034 and 0.04±0.034.The repeatability estimates for DMY, LMY and LL were 0.50, 0.22 and 0.06. Both, heritability and repeatability estimates for milk production traits indicate the presence of moderate variation within the studied goat population and thus selection could be used as the best tool of genetic improvement of Abergelle goat for milk production.