Relationship Between Growth Trait and Biometric Traits in Baluchi Sheep

The study was designed to investigate the relationship between growth trait and biometric traits in Baluchi sheep. This study was conducted to estimate the genetic and phenotypic biometric traits including daily gain (ADG) and height at withers (HW), height at back (HB), body length (BL), heart girth (HG), leg girth (LG) and testis girth (TG) in Baluchi sheep. Total data of 4542 records from six experimental herds of Jahad Organization Research Centre of Mashhad County were collected since 2001 to 2011. Data were analyzed using General Linear Model (GLM) of SAS. For the estimation of genetic parameters and genetic correlation between traits, animal model uni and multi-trait by restricted maximum likelihood (REML) of WOMBAT 32 (Meyer 2007) have been used. The mean heritability of ADG, BL, HG, HW, HB, TG and LG traits was estimated 0.13±0.01, 0.11±0.06, 0.21±0.07, 0.17±0.06, 0.32±0.1 and 0.2±0.06 respectively. The results of the current study showed that the TG trait has the highest heritability. The estimations shows genetic improvement will be predictable in biometric traits of Baluchi sheep. The genetic correlation between traits was positive, ranged between 0.15-0.97. Moreover, phenotypic correlation was positive and was estimated in range of 0.32 to 0.94.