Meat quality potential of Creole goats fed two contrasted diets: fatty acid composition of fat and muscle tissues

Abstract

In order to prevent these risks, it is indispensable to learn more on the breeds and dread farmer's motivation for anarchic breeding practices. This study was aimed at prospecting farmers' management followed by an inventory and morphological characterization of these ovine resources in their own ecosystem. Investigation data were analyzed by SAS software (SAS Vs9). Ninety breeders were surveyed among which 91% stemming from the rural population show three main types of traditional systems exploiting ovine resources according to their food behavior and breeding environment: the extensive system (30% of the breeders) where supply is essentially based on natural pastures; the semi-extensive system (65% of the breeders), which associates breeding and where the agriculture is expanding in the sahel; the Urban and Outer-urban system (5% of the breeders) in which the main part of animals supply comes from household residues and some bought feed. Moreover, in these systems, cross-breeding is common, thus, about 51% of the investigated breeders have crossed subjects voluntarily or not in their herds. The characterization investigations were carried out on 324 Niger sheep; the breed phenotypic characterization for their production field, spread over 4 ethnic regions (Fakara, Sinder, Manga and Zarmaganda) and concerned 5 Niger native sheep breeds among which three meat breeds: the Oudah with two-colored fleece and Bali Bali with fleece are both of big size and raised by Fulani communities in southwest areas; the Tuareg Ara Ara breed is high on leg with average size being used in the north pastoral regions; two wool breads-the Koudoum found on the banks and Kourtè ye islands of Niger River and the Toubou or Hadine breeds in Manga (in the southeast); Besides these breads, there are two breeds introduced for strong butcher capacities-the Balami (native of Nigeria) introduced constantly by shepherds into border areas of Nigeria and the Sudanese (native of Sudan) introduced recently into Manga areas via the Chadian border.