Demographic, Genealogical and morphological characterization of Pantelleria donkey

A demographic, genetic and morphological evaluation on Pantelleria donkey's population was carried out to give a contribution for the exploitation of this old donkey breed. Genealogical data were analysed by the software Minbreed v 1.0. Pedigree is composed by 4 generations. The inbreeding of the population (Fwhole population = 0.4 %) resulted very low than the expectations; therefore, the inbreeding coefficients resulted low in the males F male, = 0.9 % and in the females Ffemale = 0.0 %. On the other hand, the mean relationship among the 378 couplings resulted very high a1j = 15,1 %. The morphological study was carried out on 20 subjects. For each animal the most important morphological parameters and bio-metric indices were studied. Lateral conformation body index, in males was 104.84 vs 97.71 of females, in accordance with the values of dolichomorphic type equides; this tendency to dolichomorphism put in evidence morphological elegance and the high speed of these donkeys. Interesting was also volume index value, used to estimate the skeletal strength.