The Relationship between Body Con Formation, Testicular, Carcass Traits, and Serum Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I Levels in Pubertal Male Boer Goat Crosses

Select Volume / Issue:

• Volume 1,Issue 3,May. 2014

Year:

2014

Type of Publication:

Article

Keywords:

Boer Goats, Body Conformation, Carcass, IGF-I, Testicular Traits

Authors:

Okere, Chukwuemeka; Keith, Latoya; Bolden-Tiller, Olga

Journal:

IJRAS

Volume:

1

Number:

3

Pages:

199-205

Month:

May

Note:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Abstract:

Body conformation traits (chest girth -CG, height at withers-HTW, body length -BL, body condition scores -BCS, body weight – BW, shoulder width –SW, and hip width - HW), testicular traits (scrotal circumference –SC, testicular weight - TW), several carcass traits, and serum Insulin Growth Factor – I (IGF-I) levels were monitored in twenty-five pubertal male Boer goat crosses at 3 week intervals for 12 weeks to evaluate the relationship among these traits. Overall, serum IGF-I levels have significant and positive correlations with most body conformation but not testicular traits; BL (r = 0.53), BW (r = 0.54), CG (r = 0.38), HTW (r = 0.38), and SW (r = 0.20), TW, r = 0.04, SC (r = 0.21 respectively. However, a negative relationship was observed for BCS (r = -0.02). Carcass traits were recorded as: 37.46 ± 3.43 kg for slaughter weight, 18.00 ± 1.88 kg for warm carcass weight, 17.43 ± 1.92 kg for cold carcass weight, 47.90 ± 2.18% for dressing percentage, 0.069± .02 cm for backfat, 0.099 ± .03 cm for adjusted back fat, 0.411± .16 cm for body wall fat, 36.38± 1.31 cm for leg circumference, and 1.50± 0.22 cm2 for rib eye area respectively. Correlations between IGF-I levels and carcass traits were either low or negative (adjusted back fat, r = 0.08; back fat, r = 0.19; body wall fat, r = -0.04; chilled carcass weight, r = 0.15, hot carcass weight, r = 0.28; dressing%, r = 0.11; leg circumference, r = 0.40; rib eye area, r = 0.27). Serum IGF-I concentration at pubertal stage of stage of growth was effective for prediction of many body conformation traits, but it was not a reliable physiological predictor of genetic merit of carcass and/or testicular traits in pubertal Boer male goats.

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