Morphological differentiation between two Moroccan goat breeds

The objective of this study was to identify morphological measurements that best distinguish Moroccan Barcha and Atlas goat breeds. Ten measurements (body weight - BW, body length - BL, heart girth - HG, withers height - WH, rump height - WH, back length - BAL, neck length - NL, head length - HL, ear length - EL, and ear width - EW) of 876 adult animals of both sexes (547 Barcha and 329 Atlas) were studied. Average BW, HG and WH of Barcha goats were 37.4±11.1 kg, 75.0±5.26 cm and 71.8±3.41 cm, respectively. The corresponding values for Atlas goats were 38.8±8.92 kg, 76.2±5.56 cm and 72.3±4.11 cm, respectively. Most correlations were positive and significant, BW with BL (0.87) and BW with HG (0.91) being the highest for Barcha and Atlas breeds, respectively. The multivariate analysis of variance revealed significant (P