This study evaluated the usefulness of morphological characteristics to distinguish two important indigenous goat breeds in Nigeria. Fifteen morphometric traits were measured on West African Dwarf -WAD (n = 160) and Red Sokoto -RS (n = 142) goats that ranged in age of up to 19 months and were reared extensively in villages in southern and northern Nigeria. Univariate analysis revealed that the body measures of RS goats were significantly higher than those of WAD goats. Canonical discriminant analysis gave better resolution, as only seven external morphological characteristics of strong discriminating power were extracted. The most discriminant variable between the two goat populations was rump height, followed in order by body length, horn length, face length, chest girth, neck circumference and head width. The discriminant function obtained correctly classified 100% of individuals from the sample of known goat populations. The classification accuracy of the function was cross-validated using the split-sample method, and indicated a 99.7% success rate (99.4% of WAD goats and 100% of RS goats were correctly assigned to their source genetic group). This study indicates that a discriminant tool may be used successfully in the field to separate WAD and RS goats. The present results could be complemented by molecular characterization using DNA markers for better management and conservation strategies of genetic resources for indigenous goats.

This investigation aimed at evaluating sexual size dimorphism in Uda sheep using multivariate discriminant analysis. Eleven morphological traits were measured on a total of 296 adult sheep of both sexes randomly selected in Nasarawa State, northcentral Nigeria. The univariate analysis showed that Uda rams had significantly (P B0.05) higher values in nine of the morphological traits examined. Measurements that were best able to separate the rams and the ewes as revealed by the canonical discriminant analysis were head width and face length. These two variables were included in the single discriminant function used to classify the two sexes. The discriminant model was able to allocate correctly 70.8% of Uda ewes and 58% of rams to their a priori sexes. Ward's option of the cluster analysis further revealed the morphological distinctness of the population. The discriminant function obtained in the present study could be useful in management, ecological and conservation studies.

The study is aimed to assess live weight and some morphometric traits to serve as the basis for documentation and utilization in improvement programme of the locally-adapted ducks. This study observed five phenotypic characteristics and assessed live weight, and seven morphometric traits in 200 adult domestic ducks (105 drakes and 95 ducks) in the humid zone of Nigeria between February and August 2012. The observed characteristics were plumage colour, shank colour, eye colour, incidence and colour of caruncle. The seven morphometric traits included; body length, breast circumference, bill length, neck length, wing length, shank length, and foot length. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation and regression coefficients. Plumage colour was predominantly pied (black/white) with a relative prevalence of 69.0%. Shank colour was mainly yellow with a relative proportion of 62.5%. About 62% of the study ducks were yellow-eyed; the remaining ones had black eyes (38%). One-half (50%) of the study sample had caruncle; the remaining half had no caruncle. Red caruncle was predominant with the relative prevalence of 58.5%. The mean live weights of drakes and ducks were 3.16±0.814 kg and 2.05±0.449 kg, respectively. Coefficients of the phenotypic correlation between live weight and morphometric traits both in ducks and drakes ranged from 0.914 to 0.987 (P<0.01). The correlation coefficients showed that body length had the strongest relationship with live weight followed by wing length (r = 0.987 and 0.984). Regression analysis showed that body length and wing length had the highest coefficients of determination (R2 = 0.974 and 0.969), indicating that they were the best predictors of live weight. Also, the sampled Muscovy ducks showed a substantial level of variation in live weight and some morphometric traits, thereby pointing to probable gainful selection efforts. The regression equations in this study could serve as useful practical tools by livestock farmers, researchers and rural development workers for weight estimation in the field and for selection purposes.

Red cells extracted from blood samples taken by jugular venipuncture from a total of thirty-six traditionally managed adult West African Dwarf rams and ewes were subjected to starch gel electrophoresis, stained to reveal the activities of different allelemorphs at hemoglobin locus and analyzed. The studies was aimed at examining genetic variation as well as pattern of segregation at the locus and unveil possible association that might exist between the phenotypes and selected zoometrical traits. From the three theoretically phenotypes expected to be produced in the population by the two co-dominant alleles identified, only two: HbAA and HbAB were observed. The observed genotype frequencies conformed to Hardy-Weinberg's equilibrium. Proportion of polymorphic loci was 10.10% while heterozygosity (H) was 0.218. Investigation showed that the Mendelian segregation at the loci tested was not congruent with investigated quantitative traits vis-à-vis horn and hair lengths tested. The hemoglobin phenotypes are independent of the traits tested.

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