Production system and participatory identification of breeding objective traits for indigenous goat breeds of Uganda

The success of breeding programs in improving indigenous livestock breeds in Uganda has hitherto been limited due to lack of involvement of the key stakeholders. Thus, participatory approaches are being promoted for designing community based improvement programs. The aim of this study was to characterize the indigenous goat production systems and assess in a participatory manner farmer preferred traits for establishing breeding objectives for indigenous goat breeds in Uganda. 217 farm households representing three goat production systems (combinations of breed and region) were individually interviewed to assess the socio-economic characteristics of the regions and the preferences of the farmers for indigenous goat breeds. The three breed/region combinations were 78 households with the Small East African breed in Arua, 81 with the Mubende breed in Mubende and 58 with the Kigezi breed in Kabale. An index based approach was used to rank farmers' choices of traits considered important for their production systems. Descriptive statistics show that overall the production systems were not significantly different in terms of the nature of the farms and the trait preferences of the farmers. The sale of live animals was considered a primary objective for keeping goats by farmers across all the production systems studied. Adaptation traits (disease resistance, heat tolerance and survival) were considered critical in the farmers' preferred breed. Production traits (better prolificacy and faster growth rate) and marketing ease were other characteristics considered by the farmers. The results from the study are useful for designing farmer-participatory breeding programs for goats in the different production systems in Uganda.