Participatory Identification of the Breeding Objective Traits of the Small Eastern African Dwarf-Goat in Burundi

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine the most relevant breeding objective traits and their relative importance of the small Eastern African dwarf goat reared under the smallholder production system of Burundi. Data were collected using two methods: proportional piling and ranking of owned dams and kids. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyze data obtained from proportional piling, whereas those derived from the owned animal ranking were subjected to multinomial logistic regression. The Kruskal Wallis test indicated that disease resistance, body size and maternal ability were the most highly ranked traits with relative importance scores of 26.6%, 26.5% and 23.7% respectively. In the ranking of the owned dams, the most important traits were disease resistance, body weight, twinning and maternal abilities. In the ranking of the kids, the most important traits were disease resistance and body weight. Both the tools revealed that farmers accorded greater importance to adaptation traits, such as disease resistance, than to production traits, such as body size and conformation. Reproduction traits such as twinning and maternal abilities were considered to be of the lowest importance. It was discussed that disease resistance and body weight should be considered as breeding objective traits in the low-resource system of Burundi, while improving these traits would indirectly reduce kid mortality and increase the size of flocks up to the household’s management capacity.

Keywords: Breeding goal, Dwarf goat, phenotypic selection, farmer preference, adaptation, harsh environment, Burundi