Effect of Dam Mating Weight, Month of kidding and Sex of Kids on Growth Characteristics of Red Sokoto Kids

Birth weight, body weight (BW), height-at-withers (HW), body length (BL) and chest girth (CG) were measured on 1000 Red Sokoto kids which comprised of 570 males and 430 females. The goats belonged to small holder farmers in Kano State, Nigeria. Data were collected and analyzed using a fixed linear model procedure based on SAS (1999) to determined the effects of dam mating weight, month of kidding and sex, on the measured characteristic (BL, HW and CG) at 1,3,6 and 9 month of age. The effect of sex was significant (P 0.05) on the later ages except CG at 6 months of age. The effect of dam mating weight was significant ( P<0.01; P<0.05) on all the measured characteristics except BL at 1 month of age, HW at 3 months of age, BL and CG at 9 months of age. Birth weight increased with increase in dam mating weight, this implies that dams with higher body weight at mating will give birth to heavier kids. Keywords : Goats, sources of variation, growth characteristics, Red Sokoto kids.