Morphological Indices in Evaluation of Type and Function and Stepwise Regression Analysis in Balami Sheep

A total of 227 Balami breeds (50 males and 177 females) were randomly sampled from the population of Balami sheep for body characterization. The morphometric trait measured were; body weight (BW), body length (BL), height at wither (HW), chest circumference (CC), head length (HDL), head width (HDW), ear length (EL), horn length (HNL), horn circumference (HNC), tail length (TL), rump width (RW), rump length (RL), foreleg (FLG), hind leg (HLG), height at rump (HTR) and neck length (NL). From the morphometric traits morphological indices were calculated such as Length Index (LI), Pelvic Index (PI), Body Index (BI), Proportionality (Ipr), Thoracic Development (TD), BC=Baron Crevet (BC), Compact Index 1 (CI1), Area Index (AI) and Relative Cannon Thickness Index (RCTI). SPSS was used for stepwise regression and Excel was used for calculation of morphological indices. The result of average value of morphological indices for LI, PI, BI, Ipr, TD, BC, CI1, AI and RCTI are 1.65, 73.92, 64.37, 155.22, 1.01, 2.01, 0.01, 653.80 and 676.23 respectively. The result of correlation among morphological indices of Balami showed that LI was significantly (p<0.01) and positively correlate with most of the morphological indices except Ipr and PI . The highest correlation was between TD and BC (1.00) and least between LI and PI (-0.01). There was a significant relationship between body weight and morphological traits with coefficient of determination range from (R2 = 92.61 to 96.60) except the relationship between body weight and body length with coefficient of determination R2=56.30. Information emanating from this study will be useful in classifying Balami sheep into type and function.