Evaluation of the Progress of Community-Based Sheep Genetic Improvement Program in Horro Guduru Zone

Abstract

The study was conducted Horro district on farmers’ flocks of Horro sheep community-based sheep breeding program (CBBP) to evaluate productive performances and estimate the genetic parameter in Horro sheep in Ethiopia. A total of 2480 birth weight (BWt), 2441 three month weight (3MWt), 770 six-month weight (6MWt), 307 for both lambing interval (LI), and annual reproductive rates (ARR) traits produced from 1398 ewes,101 rams were used. The least-squares means analysis was performed using the general linear model procedure of SAS 2016 (SAS, Version 9.4) to determine the effects of fixed factors that were found to be an important source of variation in this study. The overall least-square means of BWt, 3MWt, 6MWt, LI, and ARR under varied from 2.76±0.01, 12.33±0.03, 16.57±0.07, 8.13±0.06, and 2.02±0.02, respectively. Variance components and genetic parameters were estimated for growth traits: Birth weight (BWt), three-month weight (3MWt), six-month weight (6MWt), and reproductive traits: Annual Reproductive Trait (ARR) and lambing interval (LI) in indigenous Ethiopian Horro sheep using VCE 2.4.6 under multivariate analysis. Multivariate analysis was used to estimate the genetic correlation between traits. Estimates of direct heritability obtained from the animal model were 0.16±0.01, 0.19±0.02, 0.28±0.35, 0.01±0.01 and 0.01±0.02 for BWt, 3MWt 6MWt, ARR and LI respectively. The genetic correlation between BWt and 3MWt, BWt and 6MWt, and 3MWt and 6MWt were 0.04, 0.01, and 0.07, respectively. The overall sheep flock size of the study areas was 15.09±0.43/household (ranging from 7 to 33). The proportion of male to female breeding ram and ewe was 1:6.34 which may affect the genetic trends due to lack of intensive breeding ram selection.The numbers of non ear-tagged animals between the two kebeles in the present study were significant at p<0.05, for laku 1.76±0.23 and Gitilo 2.65±0.21 respectively. The overall mean flock size of CBBP participants and non CBBP participants across the two cooperatives were 15.09±4.8 and 9.98±2.47 respectively. at p<0.05. All essential start-up elements of the programme were in place, exept that there were some problems of technical emplimantation forenstance management of keeping flock record books and weak relationship between the local government institution (Woreda live stock office). The major challenges observed during the study were feed shortage, disease prvelence, genetic dilution due to unclear separation of the flock of CBBP from non-CBBP.