Alternative Breeding Scenarios for Abergelle Goat Breed Suited to Arid Climate in Ethiopia

Abstract

The economic significance of goats in Ethiopia include small initial investment requirement, high survival rate during drought conditions, higher off-take and complementary feeding habit (ESGPP, 2009). These invite improving goat production and productivity in the country via designing appropriate community based breeding program (CBBP). Recent works on simulation study of pure breeding program of goat has presented various alternatives to the conventional CBBP of goats in Ethiopia (Temesgen et al., unpublished). In their works, the authors indicated that consideration of both dam line selection and systematic expansion of the one tier CBBP to two tier resulted in both higher predicted annual genetic gains and discounted profitability than the conventional one. However, the advantage of considering dam line selection on top of two tiers breeding program was not investigated. By its nature, the two tier CBBP could have two anticipated advantages: address emerging demands of the goat keepers to participate in the program and reduce high risk of inbreeding. Therefore, the objective of this work was to compare consideration of dam line selection in two tier CBBP of Abergelle (AB) goat to the dam line selection in one tier breeding program.