Relations among birth weight and some body measurements at birth in Saanen kids

This study was carried out at the commercial dairy goat farm in Bafra province of Samsun, Turkey. Number of single born female was 14, single born male was 10, multiple born female was 18, and multiple born male was 20, which constituted the material of this study. All data of the kids collected after kidding when they set on feet. The effect of sex and birth type on birth weight and body measurements; height at withers, height at sacrum, body length and chest girth were measured. Result showed that sex and interaction term between sex and birth type has no effect on interested traits. Birth type has significant effect on all interested traits except height at sacrum. Single born kids yield higher values than females as expected. The highest Pearson correlation coefficient was obtained between birth weight and chest girth with value of 0.912. All data showed Johnson SU distribution which is closely related to Normal distribution. So, linear regression was used for model building with stepwise variable selection approach. The best model was obtained as birth weight=-6.532+0.238(chest girth)+0.055(body length) where coefficient of determination was 0.839. The result of study indicated that there was high relation among birth weight, chest girth and body length, except for height at withers and height at sacrum in Saanen kids