Blood Profiles and its Relationship with Milk Production Traits in Agro-pastoral Goats

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate blood profiles and it relationship with milk production traits in agro-pastoral goats. A total of 250 does whose parity were between 1-6 and average weight of 28.84kg were used for this study, the animals were milked twice a week, and milk production traits investigated were average daily yield (ADY), total yield (TY), peak day (PD), peak yield (PY), lactation length (LL), and last day yield (LDY). 5 ml of blood was collected from each of the sampled animals by jugular venipuncture, using needle and syringe. 2mls of each blood sample were poured into a bijou bottle containing ethylene diaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) for hematological evaluation which were Pack Cell volume (PCV) and haemoglobin concentration (Hb). The remaining samples were allowed to coagulate to produce sera for blood chemistry analysis. The separated serum samples were properly labeled and stored at -20oC till further analysis. Serum samples were analyzed for different biochemical profile namely sodium (Na), total protein (TP) albumin, globulin and glucose.Correlations between blood profiles and milk production traits were obtained using Statistical Analysis system. The results indicated that the agro-pastoral goats were within the range of normal reference values for goats (28.47% PCV, 9.49g/dl Hb,1 36.40 mmol/L ,Na, 64.44g/l, Total protein, 31.12 g/l Albumin, 33.12 g/l globulin and 4.44 g/l glucose). The correlation between blood constituentsand milk production traits revealed that PCV, Hb and glucose were positively correlated with milk yield traits. Thus suggesting that increase or improvement in these blood parameters may increase milk production in goats.