ABSTRACT

Reciprocal crossing and main crossing were used to determine the effects of reciprocal maternal and sex-linkage effects on growth traits using 47 kits produced from the main and reciprocal crossing of ten does and four bucks of two breeds of rabbits namely; Chinchilla (CH) and Dutch (DT). Data from the growth parameters namely; Body weight (BWT), Body length (BL), Ear length (EL), Height at withers (HW), Heart girth (HG), Shoulder to tail drop (STD), length of forelimb (LFL), length of Hind Limb (LHL) and Head to shoulder (HS) were analyzed by means of nonorthogonal linear contrast to determine the various effects. There was significant reciprocal effect from the trend of the parameters measured. There were more negative reciprocal effects than positive reciprocal effects. From week 2 to week 6, Body Weight (BWT) and ear length (El) values were all negative and the other parameters had few positive values. For maternal effect, few parameters showed relatively high values. It was observed that maternal effect was higher when the kits were below three weeks. Sex-linkage effect was negligible or non-existent. This being the case because growth parameters are governed by several genes. These genes might either be autosomal or sex-linked and most genes governing * quantitative characters are not sex-linked. Significant reciprocal effect observed indicates that Dutch males are preferred in crosses with Chinchilla Females for the improvement of body weight and most linear body parameters.