Evaluations of Milk Yield, Udder and Teat Morphometric Traits of Lactating Goats Reared in Lowlands of the Bale Zone, Ethiopia

Guyo, Mesay; Tareke, Melaku; Bediye, Diriba

doi:10.3389/fanim.2025.1549784

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Anim. Sci.

Sec. Animal Breeding and Genetics

Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fanim.2025.1549784

Evaluations of Milk Yield, Udder and Teat Morphometric Traits of Lactating Goats Reared in Lowlands of the Bale Zone, Ethiopia

Provisionally accepted

Mesay Guyo ^*

Melaku Tareke

Diriba Bediye

Madda Walabu University, Bale Robe, Ethiopia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This study was conducted to evaluate milk yield performances, udder and teat morphometric traits of lactating goats reared in lowlands of the Bale zone, Ethiopia. For this study, 270 clinically healthy lactating goats were selected among three districts' of highly inhabited with goat population. Data of the daily milk yield (DMY), udder height (UH), udder width (UW), udder circumference (UC), udder depth (UD), teat depth (TD), teat length (TL), distance between the teats (DBT), teat circumference (TC), udder distance from ground (UDG), and udder volume (UV) of lactating does were measured early in the morning and evening before kids sucking among lactation stages, dam parity, birth type and sex of kids. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance, correlation, regression, and multivariate analysis. Daily milk yield, udder, and teat morphometric traits were significantly (p < 0.05) affected among the studied districts except UV. The lactation stage effect was significant (p < 0.0001) on DMY, and UC however, the effect was non-significant for UD, UDG, and TD. The dam parity effect was highly significant (p < 0.0001) on TD and DMY while, it was non-significant (p > 0.05) on UW, UD, UC, UDG, and UV. Kids born at second parity, single birth, and male sex were positively affected by milk yield performance of does. Moreover, UC, UV, and UW had significant (p < 0.0001), moderate to high correlations and positive associations with DMY. Besides, UC had the strongest association with DMY in predicting the milk yield of the studied lactating goats.Multivariate analysis also showed that the studied lactating goats had variation in all measured traits and daily milk yield performances. It was observed that uncontrolled breeding, poor management, and climate change were sources of variation for lactating goats reared in lowlands of the Bale zone, Ethiopia.

Keywords: Lactation stage, Milk yield, Parity, Teat, Udder

Received: 22 Dec 2024; Accepted: 17 Mar 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Guyo, Tareke and Bediye. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mesay Guyo, Madda Walabu University, Bale Robe, Ethiopia

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