Phenotypic Characterization of Cattle Based on Coat Colour in Obudu Grass Plateau, South-South Nigeria: A Discriminant Approach

Abstract

A total of 311 cattle comprised 145 mixed coat coloured, 100 white coat coloured and 66 brown coat
coloured were used to investigate the phenotypic characterization of cattle based on coat colour using
multivariate discriminant analysis approach. A total of nineteen morphological traits where measured.
Theses includes: body weight (BW), body length (BL), ear length (EL), horn length (HNL), head length
(HDL), head width (HDW), rump length (RL), rump width (RW), horn circumference (HNC), heart girth
(HG), cannon circumference (CC), cannon length (LC), scrotal circumference (SC), foreleg length (FLT),
hind leg length (HLT), rump wide (RW), rump length (RL), dewlap wide (DWW) and number of teat (NTT)
were collected on each animal. The data was analyzed by SPSS and the mean was separated using Duncan
multiple test. The multivariate analysis revealed that the phenotypic trait measured of brown coat coloured
cattle were significantly larger (P<0.05) than white and mixed coat coloured with the exception of HNL in
white. However, the stepwise discriminant analysis revealed that HNC, CL, UDC and HDW were more
discriminating in separating the three coat colour populations. The Mahalanobis distance of the
morphological traits between brown and mixed coat coloured cattle was the largest (14.16) while the least
genetic distance was observed between white and brown coat coloured cattle (7.43). The eigenvalues and
Wilk’s lambda test revealed the function 1 with percent (%) variance of 67.8 and Wilk’s lambda of 0.166
showed a good function to discriminant and grouping. The study concluded that the high value of genetic
distance (D2
) between brown and mixed coat colours indicates that if mated, it will give rise to hybrid
vigour.