Sources of variation in pre-sale weights of osmanabadi goat kids in villages of Maharashtra, India

This study pertains to pre-sale weights (about 3 months of age) of Osmanabadi kids recorded under the Osmanabadi Goat Field Unit of ICAR-All India Coordinated Research Project on Goat Improvement. Pre-sale weight records of 4394 kids born to 1604 does over nine years (2009 to 2018) in 10 villages from six districts of Maharashtra state were analyzed using mixed model restricted maximum likelihood analysis. The fixed effect of strain of kid was not significant, indicating that variation in colour and appearance among kids did not influence their weights. The influence of other fixed effects such as sex, birth type and dam parity on 3-month weight was as expected (females being lighter than males, triplets and quadruplets being lighter than twins and twins being lighter than singles, kids of dams from parity 2 to 4 weighing the highest, followed by kids of dams from parity 5 to 7, parity >7 and lastly parity 1). The effect of whether the birth date of the kids was accurate or estimated was significant, indicating an under-estimation of the age of kids by the owners. A direct genetic effect and a maternal permanent environmental effect (and not the maternal genetic effect) could be fitted in the absence of pedigrees. It was found that the variation in management among owners could best be accounted by fitting owner as a random effect. However, fitting the contemporary group (village-year-season) effect as a fixed effect was a better option than fitting it as a random effect. In village smallholder situations with inherent data recording limitations, as maternal effects cannot be accounted appropriately, it may be a better option to use traits of the dam such as body size and milk yield for selection of kids rather than kids’ pre-sale weight as a selection criterion.