Placental traits and their relation with birth weight in Meriz and Black goats

At a commercial farm of goat, Duhok province, Kurdistan Region, Iraq, the relationship between placental traits and birth weight of kids together with some factors affecting these traits were investigated in this study. A total of 79 foetal placental delivered at normal kidding were collected from Black goat (n=33) and Meriz (n=46). The results revealed that neither breed of goat nor sex had a significant effect on all placental traits. A positive correlation between birth weight (BW) of kids and each of placental efficiency (PE) (r=0.38; P?0.01), placental weight (PW) (r = 0.01, P?0.05), cotyledon weight (CW) (r = 0.08, P?0.05) was found, and a non significant negative correlations was noticed between BW and each of cotyledon number (CN) (r = -0.05, P?0.05), and cotyledon density (CD) (r = -0.12, P?0.05). PW is positively correlated with the CW (r = 0.73, P?0.01) and CN (r = 0.41, P?0.01) and negatively correlated with PE (r = 0.80, P?0.01) and CD (r = -0.46, P?0.01). Results showed a significant positive correlation between placental efficiency and each of birth weight of kids and cotyledon density.