PSVI-14 - Effect of Morphometric Traits upon Social Hierarchy of Dorper Rams from Northern Mexico

Abstract: Usually, social order is defined by the animal size, live weight, or age. This study aimed to evaluate the association among horn presence (HP), and horn size (HS) on social rank hierarchy. Adult Dorper rams (n=24) with similar live weight (LW), body condition score (BCS), and age (AG) were subjected to a behavioral test to define the success index (SI, ranked form 0 to 1) based on male-to-male interactions, determining three social ranks: low hierarchy rams (LHR; SI = 0-0.33; n=9), medium hierarchy rams (MHR; SI=0.34-0.66; n=10) and high hierarchy rams (HHR; SI= 0.67-1; n=5). Afterward, skull, horn (HP and HS), and body morphometrics were measured. The GLM procedure of SAS (SAS Institute, Cary, NC) was used to analyze LW, AG, BCS, HS and HP with three social ranks and five to ten replicates per group. Rams within social rank were the experimental units. Differences were considered as significant at P < 0.05. Regarding HP, 80% of the HHR rams had horns, while 77.7% of the LHR rams were hornless, with intermediate values for MHR (50%), but no differences were found regarding HS between low, medium and high hierarchy rams (85.1±2.6, 84.3±3.3, and 90.7±4.7, respectively). In conclusion, while presence of horns have an important role for establishing social hierarchy, it is a complex trait influenced by factors other than horn presence or size so, we recommend more research in relation to other factors that could influence the position of rams in the hierarchy rank levels of the herds.