The Karadi sheep which comprises about 18-20% of the country sheep population is native to the northern mountain villages and undulating dry-farming plains of Kurdistan region. Rams and ewes are polled, and it is fat tailed animal with an excessively large tail that ends in a thin nonfat terminal extended beyond the fat lobs. The sheep are white with black open face and pendulous ear. The black color often extends to the shoulders and other parts of the body. All Iraqi sheep including Awassi, Arabi and Karadi were exposed over a long period of time to the rigorous and sever semi-dry condition, drought, feed shortage and prevailing disease. Hence their adaptation to the conditions of the country was at the expend of important economic traits. Karadi sheep is hardy with potentials for improvement, their weight and milk display over whelming ranges. In addition, hormonal treatment have improved their reproduction performance, as well as crossing them with other native and exotic breeds is promising. Nevertheless, this breed is not well characterized and much work is needed to explore the potential of this breed for economic traits.

To investigate the effect of castration and live body weight at slaughter on fatty acid composition, a total of 48 entire male kids (24 Meriz and 24 Black goat) were selected at weaning (90-120 days of age) and weighing 10.99 and 11.21kg, respectively from commercial goat farm were used. After an adaptation period for a week, the kids of both breeds were randomly divided in to two groups, the first was castrated, whereas the second groups were left intact, and then were allocated to be slaughtered at 15,20 and 25kg live body weight. All kids were placed in individual pens and fed concentrate diet and weighed at weekly interval. After slaughtering and chilling the carcass for 24h fed. The L. dorsi muscle was removed from each carcass and utilized for fatty acid composition. Results obtained revealed that saturated fatty acids (SFAs)have the highest contribution, followed by poly unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and mono -unsaturated fatty acid (MUSFs). Kids goat had a significantly (p<0.01) higher content of each of C18, C14, C11, C18:2 and C18:3 than Meriz kids, whereas Meriz kids surpass significantly Black goat in C16, and the difference between the two-breed lacked significance in C18:1.Also, it was shown that castrated kids had significantly (p<0.01) higher proportion of all studied fatty acids as compared to intact kids, and all profiles of saturated fatty acids were significantly lower in kids slaughtered at 15kg live body weight compared to kids slaughtered at 20 and 25kg.

The objectives of this work was to study the effect of sex and weight at slaughter on meat quality in the longissimus muscle of Black goat and Meriz goat .Twenty four weaned kids from each breed were divided equally and penned individually into two groups .The 1st was castrated using rubber ring ,and the 2nd was left intact ,and was assigned to be slaughtered at 15,20 and 25 kg live body weight .The overall means of  pH, lightness ,redness ,yellowness, drip loss, cooking loss and tenderness were 5.94±0.009 , 46±1.16 , 20.01±0.68 , 35.68±0.78 ,0.25±0.01, 12.17±0.35 ,1.65 ±0.008, respectively. Results revealed neither breed nor sex had a significant effect (p>0.05) on pH, color, drip loss, cooking loss and tenderness. It seems that kids slaughtered at 15 kg had more lightness, have more drip loss, and lower cooking loss as compared with kids slaughtered at 20 and 25 kg.