The variation and utilization of behavior of caged five sheep breeds for increasing production

Abstract

Potential utilization behavior to improve of sheep productivity was studied in four parts of the study. Three topics of research conducted to study opportunity of behavior to differentiate and estimation of genetic distances between five sheep breeds, indirect selection on body weight gain and productivity of ewe and identification of SNP DNA markers for aggressiveness. Topic of recent research is to find a method in behavioral research which easier, more concise and accurate and can represent overall of sheep behavior. Five of sheep breeds, i.e. Barbados Black belly Cross sheep (BC), Garut Composite (KG), Garut Local (LG), Sumatra Composite (KS) and St. Cross Croix (SC) used in this study. A set of CCTV equipment used to observe a sheep behavior and recorded in a video file. Canonical discriminant analysis and hierarchical clustering according to the Average Linkage method and the dendogram performed in the study of genetic differentiation and distance estimation. Meanwhile, multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) is performed for qualitative variables. Arena tests performed to determine temperament of sheep and its relationship with growth rate and ewe productivity. Analysis of variance to behavioral variables and blood serotonin concentration and analysis of DNA polymorphism exon 8 of MAOA gene were performed between aggressive and not aggressive group ram. Paired t test and correlation analysis to estimate a correlation between partial data and the whole data were performed to fourth study. The results showed that body measurements of sheep can be utilized to differentiate and estimate a genetic distance between the sheep breeds accurately. Sound characteristics of sheep has a great opportunity to be utilized in the differentiation and estimation of genetic distance between the sheep breeds but need improvement in the sound data collection methods. Meanwhile, the utilization of behavior data to differentiate and estimate of genetic distance between the sheep breeds was less accurate. Differentiator variables for body sizes was tail width, horn base circumference, long horns, long tail, body length, and skull width, while differentiator variables for sound call characteristics was the third quartile frequencies, middle frequencies, maximum frequencies and time of the first quartile frequencies. Post weaning sheep which more docile to the observer has a daily gain higher. Ewe which have more bleats have total weaning weight and lamb survival higher than those of ewe which less bleats when separated from their lamb. Aggressive and nonaggressive sheep have the same behavior, though aggressive sheep had higher blood serotonin concentrations compared to the group of non aggressive sheep. In this study, aggressive behavior in sheep was not associated with a mutation in exon 8 of MAOA gene. The use of 6 hours partial data was the best partial data to predict all of sheep behavior accurately.