Breeding Practices and Traits Preferences of Goat Keepers at Lepelle-Nkumpi Local Municipality, South Africa: Implication for the Design of Breeding Programs

Abstract

Identification of breeding practices and traits preferences by farmers for selection of breeding animals to be parents of the next generations is the crucial step to the successful implementation of community-based breeding programs (CBBPs). The aim of the study was to detect breeding practices and traits preferences by farmers at Lepelle-Nkumpi Local Municipality, South Africa to determine their relevance in establishing a CBBPs. A structural questionnaire was designed and administered to 183 randomly selected goat keepers from 4 villages. Across the 4 communities, the majority of goat keepers were males with the traditional purposes, sales and meat production as their main reasons of keeping goats. Spring breeding season was practiced using natural mating system controlled mainly by means of castration and culling of poor reproductive or undesired goats for breeding. The most important common farmers’ preference traits among the four communities were twining ability, good mothering ability and body size in breeding does, and mating ability, growth rate and body size in breeding bucks. However, the selection of breeding stock might also include qualitative traits such as coat color of goats. The results from this study are useful for designing CBBPs for indigenous goats in Lepelle-Nkumpi Local Municipality.

A bibliometric analysis of the literature on goat breeding

“…Underlying data Figshare: Data obtained from Web of Science: A bibliometric analysis of the literature on goat breeding, DOI: https://doi. org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25574451.v1 (Tyasi et al, 2024).…”