Phenotypic Characterization of Indigenous Sheep Breeds in Saudi Arabia

Saudi’s farm animal genetic resources have a particular role to play in managing the rural environment and assisting in maintaining wild biological diversity. Our indigenous livestock breeds are of great economic, social and cultural importance. The presence of livestock is a very positive feature for many who live in, work in or visit the countryside and livestock farming is frequently a core activity on which whole communities depend. The Kingdom has a rich and diverse population of livestock breeds sheep, goats, poultry, horses & Camel most of it are at risk. The conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources for food and agriculture is a widely supported international objective contributing to efforts to eliminate global poverty and achieve world food security. The data of the present study were collected form Noemi, Najdi and Hari breeds raised in Najd (96, 108, and 90 animals, respectively) Qassim region. Eight body measurements were studied, Wither heights (WH), Rum heights (RH), Body length (BL), Head length (HL), Heart girth (HG), Muzzle diameter (MD), Cannon circumference (CC) and Cannon length (CL). Noemi is taking the second size breed of the sheep breeds in Saudi Arabia. Hari is the smallest breed of sheep breeds in Saudi Arabia and it is the main breed in Hejaz and Asir regions which belong to the sheep with coarse hair and thick tail strain. The results of the present study on these breeds showed that Najdi breed has the biggest sizes in all body measurements 10.9% and 11.4% bigger than Noemi and Hari, Approximate respectively. By the other way in comparing Noemi’s breed with Hari breed, Noemi having the biggest sizes (10.5% Approximate) in all body measurements than Hari. Three categories of ages were presents in this study, eight, eighteen and forty-eight months. The first category eight months showed the smallest size in all body measurements by 11.2% in compare with eighteen months. No big differences were showed among eighteen and forty-eight months the different around 2% in favor of forty-eight category. In addition, the effect of sex was significant, male always have biggest body measurements in compare with female. The results showed that male have around 10.9% more in all studied measurements more than female. All the fixed effect (effect of- Age, Breed and Sex) are significant on all body measurements traits expect Cannon circumference (CC) trait. The correlations coefficients among all studied traits were moderate to high and highly significant. The highest correlation coefficient was found between RH and WH traits (0.872), and the lowest one was found between CC and HG traits (0.214).