Reproductive performances and kid's mortality of pure breeds and crossed caprine genotypes in the coastal oases of Southern Tunisia

Abstract

In order to improve goat productivity in the arid regions of Tunisia, a crossing scheme of the local goat population by high performance breeds was applied under oases conditions. To cross local population, Alpine, Damascus and Murciana Granadina breeds were imported and used as paternal genotypes in several cross generation. The survey of pure breeds and crossed genotypes permitted to collect the zootechnical performances during 16 years under an intensive breeding mode. The analysis of 644 fertility, prolificacy, fecundity, abortion and sterility and kid's mortality ratio showed an important difference between the studied genotypes performances. The local goat prolificacy rate was 153% in average. The kid's mortality ratio was the highest for Alpine breed and its crossed genotypes with a ratio of 4 and 3%, respectively. The first and the second generations, the crossed Damascus x Local had a fertility of 98 and 100%, showing an important heterosis effect. Also, the reproductive performances of the imported breeds were largely lower than those of the local population. Kid's mortality and reproductive performances are largely related to the genotype adaptative potentialities. © 2007 Asian Network for Scientific Information.