Improving Goat Dairy Production by Grading Up in an Oasis of South Tunisia

Abstract

A local goat grading-up project has been on going since 1980 in an oasis of an arid region of Tunisia to improve goat milk production under intensive breeding conditions. The local goat (Capra hircus) originated from the Nubian breed and was graded up by imported breeds. A dairy performance survey was carried out on pure goat breeds and crossed genotypes to help select a good improved breed to use in local goat grading up. In total, 1923 data on the lactation of pure breeds, and F1 and F2 cross goats were used to estimate dairy production parameters: total milk production (kg), lactation length (days), and daily milk average (kg/day). Individual quantitative variables were analyzed by ANOVA and by a post-hoc pair-wise test (Student, Newman and Keuls) (α = 5%). Results showed that the milk production of the local goat remained low even under intensive oasis conditions. The performances of imported breeds were much lower than those obtained in the country of origin. Crosses between goat breeds improved the milk performance of the local goat. The average milk production was 133.5 kg per lactation in the local goat (n = 10), 172.5 kg in the first generation for the three types of crosses without significant differences between them (n = 46), 188.7 kg in the second generation for the three types of crosses (n = 46), and 226.2 kg in the second generation for crosses with the Alpine breed (n = 14).

Keywords

• Caprin
• Production laitière
• Croisement
• Méthode d’amélioration génétique
• Oasis
• Tunisie