Agricultural Science Digest

UGC CARE (Group 1)
  • Year: 2025
  • Volume: 45
  • Issue: 6

Estimation of Genetic Growth Parameters of Lambs of Ouled Djellal Algerian Sheep Breed

  • Author:
  • A. Mennani1,2,*, H.Y. Haddam3, B. Bouchama4, M. Dib5, M. Dekhili6
  • Total Page Count: 6
  • Page Number: 1071 to 1076

1Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Sciences, Mohamed Boudiaf University, M'sila, 28000, Algeria

2Laboratory of Biodiversity and Biotechnological Techniques for the Valorization of Plant Resources (BTB-VRV)

3Applied Genetics in Agriculture, Ecology and Public Health Laboratory Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Life and Earth Sciences and the Universe, University of Tlemcen, Algeria

4Laboratory of Improvement and Development of Plant and Animal Production, University of Setif 1 Ferhat Abbas

5Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Natural and Life Sciences, University of Kasdi Merbah, 30000, Ouargla, Algeria

6Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Nature and Life Sciences, Ferhat ABBAS University, Setif, 19000, Algeria

*Corresponding Author: A. Mennani, Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Sciences, Mohamed Boudiaf University, M'sila, 28000, Algeria, Email: mennani.achour@univ-msila.dz

Online published on 20 January, 2026.

Abstract

The sheep population in Algeria is composed of several breeds including the Ouled Djellal breed, numerically the most important in the national herd. The Ouled Djellal sheep breed suffers from a lack of genetic studies carried out on it. This is why its genetic capacities remain unknown. In this regard, the success of any selection program is based on knowledge of the estimation of genetic parameters and especially the parameters of growth.

The genetic parameters of growth of lambs of the Algerian breed Ouled Djellal were estimated for five variables: birth weight (BW), weight at 10 days (W10), weight at 30 days (W30), weight at 70 days (W70) and weaning weight (W90). The data base used in this study consists of 817 records of birth weight (BW), 817 records of weight at 10 days (W10), 805 records of weight at 1 month (W30), 803 records of weight at seventy days (W70) and 800 records of weight at ninety days (W90). The year, ewe age, month of birth (September, October, November), sex (male or female) and birth type (single or double) were tested as factors with fixed effects. The direct genetic effects and the permanent environmental effects of the ewe were considered as random factors.

The use of the direct genetic effect model in this study gives heritability coefficients (h2a) of 0.17 (BW), 0.07 (W10), 0.07 (W30), 0.20 (W70) and 0.10 (W90). Thus, the values of the maternal heritability coefficient (h2m) vary around 0.20 (BW), 0.11 (W10), 0.04 (W30), 0.04 (W70) and 0.07 (W90). The heritability coefficients obtained were low overall, due to the influence of the environment and the non-normal mode expression of these variables.

Keywords

Direct genetic effect, Environmental effect, Heritability coefficients, Maternal effect, Ouled djellal breed, Repeatability