THE ESTIMATION OF BODY WEIGHT FROM BODY MEASUREMENTS IN KILAKARSAL SHEEP OF TAMIL NADU, INDIA

Data on body weight and body measurements (body length, height at withers, chest girth and paunch girth) of adult Kilakarsal sheep have been collected from 124 adult animals managed at the farmers filed in Tirunelveli districts of Tami Nadu, India to estimate the body weight from body measurements. The data were subjected to standard statistical analysis using SPSS software and linear regression analysis was appliedby keeping the body weight as the dependant variables and different body measurements as independent variables. The overall means (±SE) for body weight, body length and height at withers, chest girth and paunch girth of Kilakarsal sheep pooled over sexes were 23.39 ±0.33 kg, 56.92 ±0.31 cm, 69.74 ± 0.33 cm, 71.92 ±0.44 cm and 69.44 ± 0.49 cm, respectively. The Pearson correlation coefficient between body weight with body length, height at withers, chest girth and paunch girth were 0.525, 0.531, 0.831 and 0.761, respectively. The R2 values for the regression equation, considering individual independent variables viz.body length, height at withers, chest girth and paunch girth were 0.276, 0.282, 0.691 and 0.579, respectively. The highest R2 value was obtained from chest girth variable followed by paunch girth. The R2 values increased with the addition of independent variables in the equation and the maximum R2 value was obtained as 0.783 from all the variables. The study revealed that the chest girth is the best predictor for the estimation of body weight and this alone contributed 69.1 per cent variation in the body weight of adult Kilakarsal sheep.