Farhad Hosseinzadeh Shirzeyli, Abolghasem Lavvaf and Asad Asadi

pp. 507 - 511

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to identify the relationship between body measurements and body weight in four
breeds of Iranian sheep (Mehrbani, Zandi, Shaal and Macoei). Measuring of body dimensions such as withers height, chest
girth, body length and hip width were done. Analysis of variance for environmental factors and main effects indicated that
sex effect was significant in all studied breeds (p> 0.05). Moreover, all main effects (withers height, chest girth, body length
and hip width) were also significantly related to body weight in all four breeds. All investigated body measurements showed
high phenotypic correlation with body weight. The most lightly correlated trait with body weight was body length, with
correlation coefficients of more than 0.95. Also correlation of body weight with chest girth in sheep breeds of Mehrabani,
Zandi and Macoei were very high (0.97, 0.97 and 0.94 respectively), but lower in Shaal breed (0.88). Withers height showed
a high correlation with body weight in Shaal sheep (0.98), while this correlation was lower in other breeds (0.91 to 0.93). Hip
width in all four breeds had the lowest phenotypic correlation with body weight (0.75 to 0.86). In conclusion, the results of
this study showed that some body measurements can be used as accurate indicators to predict body weight.

Keywords

• meat sheep
• body size
• body weight
• linear regression
• correlation