Smallholder Goat Breeding Systems in Humid, Sub-Humid and Semi Arid Agro-Ecological Zones of Uganda

A study was conducted in three districts (Arua, Soroti and Sembabule) in Uganda to characterise the goat breeding practices in Uganda. A set of detailed structured questionnaires was used to collect information from 160 goat owners in one-visit-interviews. Goats have multi-functional roles, though mainly kept as a regular income source in all the three districts. Goats were mainly acquired by buying while removal was by selling. Mating was generally natural and uncontrolled. In each village, less than 20% kept their own bucks. Breeding does were selected mainly because of performance, birth type and body size while bucks were chosen mainly on the basis of growth rate and body size across all districts. There seems to be a non quantifiable level of inbreeding depicted by the long duration (up to 4.0 years) buck owners take with their breeding bucks, coupled with the poor record keeping. Tolerance to disease was the only adaptive trait merely reported as a little considered trait, as they tended to consider such traits as naturally given to indigenous livestock. Although majority of the goats kept were indigenous, there appears a clear trend from pure indigenous towards crossbreeds. It can be concluded that, although from different ecological zones, goat keepers from Uganda seem to have similar realistic breeding strategies.