Phenotypic Differences Estimation between the Sexes of the Romanian Mioritic Shepherd Breed

Abstract

Romanian Mioritic Shepherd Dog was selected from a natural population breed of the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. The aim of this study was the evaluation of the phenotypic differences between the sexes in a population of 26 males and 23 females of the Mioritic Shepherd Dog breed, for 9 body measurements: height at elbow, height at hock, head length, skull length, skull width, muzzle length, muzzle width, muzzle depth and muzzle perimeter. Following the study on the significance of statistical differences between body measurements recorded in the evaluated population, it was concluded that males from the people of the Romanian Mioritic Shepherd Dog studied in this paper showed superior and significant values for height at the elbow (p0.05), for muzzle width and muzzle depth. We recommend to dog breeders specialists consider the genetic improvement programs, and also our results presented in this paper.

Keywords

• phenotypic differences
• sexual dimorphism
• romanian mioritic shepherd dog
• males
• females
• body measurements