Morphological characterization and evaluation of heat tolerance traits in Nigerian goat breeds

There are three main breeds of goat in Nigeria: The West African Dwarf (WAD), the Red Sokoto and the Sahel. Goats are renowned for their hardiness and can survive in most environments. The goats sampling was carried out from farms and markets across different states in Nigeria, according to the geographical distribution of the breeds published by Blench (1999). This experiment was carried out to analyse morphological variability among Nigerian goats. A total of 318 goats spread across the three Nigerian breeds were used in the following populations (57 Sahel, 187 Red Sokoto and 137 West African Dwarf). Data were collected on body weight, linear body measurements and heat tolerance traits and were subjected to analysis of variance using the fixed effects of breed, sex and location. Results showed that breed, sex and location significantly (P