Prediction of Body Weight from Linear Body Measurements for Horro Sheep Breeds in Oromia, Ethiopia

The study was carried out in Bako Agricultural Research Center’s sheep farm and Horro district to determine the relationship between live weight and linear measurements and predict live weight from morphometric traits and morphometric measurements from 1589 Horro sheep (1131 female and 456 male) were used to determine relationships between body weight and linear body measurements. Accordingly, Body weight, Body length, Height at wither, Chest girth, Chest width, Rump length and Pelvic width measurements were recorded for each animal. Correlation and regression analysis between body weight and the linear body measurements were conducted independently for male and female within the different age categories defined using dentition. In most of the analyses, there was a significantly (p<0.001) higher correlation between body weight and the linear body measurements. Chest girth has showed the most higher and consistent correlation with body weight in both sex and the different age categories. Based on the correlation results chest girth was primarily used to fit the equation for prediction of body weight in stepwise regression. Thus, the general equations developed from the regression analyses were based only on sex rather than for different age categories. As a result the equations BW= -24.24 + 0.68CG for male Horro sheep, and BW= -29.03 + 0.75CG for female Horro sheep can accurately predict body weight of the breed at any age.