Background: Camel are able to survive and well adapted in harsh environment and reproduce in such environment due to their unique physiology and morphology. It is also serves as source of cash income, milk, meat etc. The study was conducted in four districts of Afar Regional State with the objective of determine the breeding practice and correlation of conformation traits with milk offtake of camel. Method: Purposive random sampling were employed to select districts and target farmers. Milk offtake, body and udder conformation traits were taken from 320 she-camels. All the collected data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20.0 (SPSS, 2017) and index was computed using weight average. Result: The breeding objective of the farmers in the study area were milk, meat, wealth and social statues. Primordial traits preference for selecting breeding she-camel was based on milk yield, body size and conformation, disease resistance, fast growth and adaptation with an index value of 0.119, 0.105, 0.10, 0.096 and 0.094, respectively. Feed and recurrent drought, disease incidence, poor veterinary service, lack of modern breeding program hinders the productive performance whereas, poor feed quality, long age at first service, calving interval, calve mortality and abortion were the major challenges for reproductive performance of she-camels. District had a significant variation on udder and body conformation traits. The mean value of naval height, naval length, body length, foreleg length, hind leg length, pelvic length, height girth and hump circumference were 2.04±0.06, 2.46±0.06, 145±1.39, 149.24±1.30, 163.78±1.19, 25.33±0.31, 236.05±1.47and 78.51±1.06cm, respectively. The average value of milk yield, distance between fore teat, distance between rear teat, fore teat circumference, fore teat height, udder size circumference, udder size height and udder size length were 837.46±7.66, 7.92±0.36, 7.06±0.06, 6.71±0.11, 5.09±0.08, 45.13±1.34, 6.80±0.27 and 14.30±0.33cm, respectively. The correlation coefficient between body conformation trait and milk offtake were significant positively correlated with height at girth and chest length. Highest correlation coefficient was obtained between milk offtake and hind teat circumference, udder size circumference and udder size length.Conclusion: It was concluded that camel had a conceivable for the multiuse role to produce income for pastoral and agro-pastoral livestock keepers.
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