Abstract

Studies were carried out in three local government area in Ekiti state (Ado,Oye and Ikole LGA) to determine the phenotypic characteristic of West African Dwarf(WAD) goats. One hundred and thirty-two (132) West African Dwarf (WAD) Goats comprising sixty six (66) females and sixty six (66) males were randomly selected for the study. The aim was to document the body characteristics of the WAD goats in three Local government in (Ekiti State) and also to determine the effect of sex on the body characteristics. The experimental design was Randomized complete block design (RCBD) and means were separated using Tukey's test. Results showed that the body linear measurements for male and female goats varied between 64.00cm, 50.00cm, 46.00cm, 52.00cm, I1.00cm, 10.00cm, 7.00cm for females and 44.00cm, 43.00cm, 35.00cm, 37.00cm, 9.00cm, 8.00cm, 4.00cm for males for heart girth (HG), body length (BL}, wither height (WH), rump height (RH), Tail length (TL), Ear length (EL), and Hom length (HL) respectively.

The analysis of variance (ANOV A) for the seven quantitative traits considered in this study showed different levels of significance ranging from P= 0.05 to P= 0.01. Two traits (BL, TL) showed significant (P