Morphological Characterization Of Autochthonous Sheep Breeds At Matopos Research Station : A Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithm Approach.

Abstract

Failure to characterize autochthonous sheep breeds may result to

the extinction of the important natural resource which can easily adapt

to the local variation in climate change. Environmental factors and

some human practices especially artificial insemination is leading to

the evolving of different pedigrees.Price determination is an important

aspect in designing pricing models, but what really contributes to the

weight of autochthonous sheep breed remains as the major question

which needs to be addressed. By merely looking at a sheep is it

possible to deduce its body weight another question of interest arises

again. This project addressed several issues associated with the characterization

of autochthonous sheep by establishing the relationship between morphological

traits and the body weight of an animal. The relationship was further

addressed through the application of several methods namely the principal

component analysis, generalized linear models, WinBugs model programming

and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithm Approach. The major

reason behind this project was to come up with conducive way which

saves resource limited farmers of sheep in being charged exorbitant

prices in trying to use the more advanced technology such as (DNA)

in characterizing indigenous sheep.

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