Body weight, fleece weight, and wool characteristics of Texel × Romney crossbred hoggets

T. Wuliji¹ and K. G. Dodds²

¹E (Kika) de la Garza Research Institute for Goats, Langston University, Langston, OK
²AgResearch, Invermay Agricultural Centre, Mosgiel, New Zealand

Live weight, fleece weight and wool characteristics of crossbred hoggets comprising seven genotypes were analyzed for control Romney (CR), Romney selected for high fleece weight (HR), Texel x Romney (TR_F1), Texel x Romney intercross (TR_F2), Texel x [Texel x Romney] (TTR), [Texel x Romney] x Romney (TRR) and [Poll Dorset x Romney] x [Texel x Romney] (DTR). Birth-rearing rank, birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW), spring weight (SW), greasy fleece weight (GF) were recorded. Wool samples were measured for oven dry yield (%), bulk, fiber diameter, wool brightness (Y) and yellowness (Y-Z). Data were analyzed by residual maximum likelihood (REML), with genotype, year, sex, birth rearing rank and age of dam included as fixed effects, birth date as a covariate and sire as a random effect. Crossbred genotypes had 13 - 23% higher fleece weight than CR (P<0.05) but fleece weights were lower than HR (P<0.05). Wool bulk was increased by 22 - 37% and wool fibre diameter was reduced by about 1.5 m in most crossbred genotypes compared to Romneys (Table 1).Table 1. Genotype least squares means for live weight, fleece weight and wool characteristics.

Means with different superscripts differ, P<0.05; ^ns not significant within a column.