This study aimed at using a multivariate approach to describe the body structure of Djallonke sheep in northern Ghana and to determine which approach explains better the variation in body composition. Live weight (LW) and linear body measurements including heart girth (HG), neck girth (NG), chest depth (CD), height at withers (HW), rump height (RH), body length (BL) and pin-bone width (PBW) were obtained from 172 sheep aged between two and three years. The fixed effects of sex and age were tested using the general linear model (GLM) while the Nearest Neighbor method of Hierarchical Cluster Analysis was used to group body traits into clusters. Principal Component Factor Analysis was used to describe the variation in body traits where extracted factors were varimax rotated to enhance interpretability. The analysis of variance revealed significant (P < 0.01) differences in the morphological traits of the two sexes with higher values recorded for the male in all traits examined except in PBW, which was insignificant (P > 0.05). Age had no significant influence (P > 0.05) on the body traits. The sheep weighed 26.92 ± 0.89 kg averagely and had averages of other body measurements to be: 71.74 ± 1.23, 40.52 ± 0.79, 27.73 ± 0.52, 60.72 ± 0.86, 59.61 ± 0.87, 58.87 ± 1.06 and 12.81 ± 0.23 cm for HG, NG, CD, HW, RH, BL and PBW, respectively. The product moments of correlation were positive and significant (P < 0.05, 0.01; r = 0.18–0.99) for all pairs of traits. The body traits were categorized mainly into two clusters with the first cluster comprising the HG, HW, RH and BL while NG, CD and PBW formed the second cluster. The grouping of the traits was slightly different in Factor analysis where two underlying principal components (PC) were extracted to discern the variance structure of the Djallonke sheep. The first principal component which consisted of CD, HW, RH, BL and PBW explained 61.26 percent and the second, 12.92 percent thereby giving a maximum of 74.17 percent generalized variance in body measurements. The traits loaded on the first principal component are closely associated with bone growth hence describing the general body size conformation while the traits (HG and NG) on the second component seem to describe only the thoracic region. It can be concluded that both the Hierarchical Cluster analysis and the Factor analysis grouped body traits similarly but the later is to be recommended because of the additional ability of indicating the amount of variation explained by the developed factors.

A total of 700 adult female goats from Sétif area (Algeria), were investigated for eight qualitative morphological traits and 17 body measurements. Sampling included three environmental areas: Northern, Central and Southern area. Coefficients of variation ranged from 10.9 percent to 34.7 percent, showing high heterogeneity. Canonical analyses showed that differences in body measurements between the three area-populations were large and significant in all traits (P < 0.001). The shortest Mahalanobis distance was found between North-Center populations (2.8), while that between Center (4.0) and (8.6) between North-South populations were the largest. Discriminant analysis showed that most goat-populations were classified into their environmental-area, North (73.0 percent), Center (66.8 percent) and South (79.3 percent) with a few misclassified individuals. Correspondence analysis indicated no large differences between the goat populations; they were more homogeneous for qualitative traits. This information will constitute the basis for further characterization and develop conservation strategies for Algerian goat populations

A household survey and measurements of different body traits from 120 households and from 1 009 goats were collected to characterize the production system and morphological features of Western lowland and Abergelle goat breeds of Ethiopia. Goats were kept for multifunctional roles in both areas, but mainly to generate cash. The average ± SD of flock sizes per household were 10.8 ± 7.25 and 48.56 ± 52.21 for Western lowland and Abergelle, respectively. Production characters such as body conformation, multiple births and milk yield were reported as major selection criteria of breeding goats. The majority of Abergelle goats have red brown (23.8 percent) and brown (19.7 percent) coat colours with short and smooth hair. All Abergelle goats have horns, 11.1 percent have wattles, 8.0 percent of males have ruff. White (20.4 percent) and a mixture of white with other colours were the predominant coat colours of Western lowland goats. A total of 42.3 percent males and 5.1 percent females of the Western lowland population have ruff. The least square means of body weight, chest girth, body length and height at withers of Western lowland female goats were 24.00 ± 0.19 kg, 65.27 ± 0.23 cm, 54.8 ± 0.21 cm and 62.60 ± 0.22 cm, respectively. The corresponding values for Abergelle female goats were 18.34 ± 0.22 kg, 61.03 ± 0.27 cm, 51.00 ± 0.24 cm and 58.99 ± 0.25 cm, respectively. Breed improvement programmes in these areas should take into account the multifunctional roles of goats, goat breeding practices and traits preference of the farmers.