Abstract
An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of castration on growth performance, carcass characteristics and meat quality of Ardhi goat kids. Twenty-four weaner male kids with an average age of 3 months and 14.1 +/- 0.91 kg body weight were assigned randomly to one of two equal groups and the kids in one group were castratoed using elastrator rings while the other group was left intact All kids were fed ad libitum on high energy commercial pellets for 82 days and slaughtered. Castration had no significant effect on slaughter weight, feed intake, gain, feed: gain ratio, carcass weight and dressing percentage. Castrated goat kids had significantly (p<0.05) heavier liver weight, more body fat thickness and lighter head weight than comparable intact. There were no differences (p>0.05) between castrated and intact kids on all studied internal fat depot weights, chemical composition of the 9-11th rib joint and meat quality of the longissim. us muscle except for the separable fat percentage from 9-11th rib joint which was higher (p<0.05) for castrated as compared to intact kids.