Relationships between cashmere production and other important economic traits of Inner Mongolia cashmere goats

Figures & data

Table 1. The mean, standard deviation (SD) and range of all of measurements for Inner Mongolia Cashmere goats.

Variables	N	Mean	SD	Minimum	Maximum
Fibre length, cm	7304	10.49	1.76	4.02	17.50
Mean fibre diameter, µm	6357	14.33	1.02	10.84	18.77
Live body weight, kg	7556	39.15	9.85	21.00	88.50
Cashmere production, g	7556	837.70	191.40	80	1573

Figure 1. The change in cashmere production with age.

Figure 2. The effect of sex on cashmere production.

Table 2. The parameter estimates of the fixed effects and covariate variables in the multilevel mixed model.

Parameters	Effects	Estimate, g	SD	t Value	p
${\gamma }_{00}$	Intercept	89.7800	47.6200	1.8800	.0616^ns
${\gamma }_{01}$	Year	8.2900	1.9100	4.3500	<.0001**
${\gamma }_{02}$	Herd	6.8900	1.6700	0.5300	<.0001**
${\gamma }_{03}$	Bs	3.5700	4.2800	0.8300	.4040^ns
${\gamma }_{04}$	Sex	−34.3100	6.6900	−5.1300	<.0001**
${\gamma }_{05}$	Age	−14.6800	8.2500	−3.1200	<.0001**
${\gamma }_{06}$	FL	26.5000	1.3100	20.0500	<.0001**
${\gamma }_{07}$	MFD	31.6700	3.0700	8.6400	<.0001**
${\gamma }_{08}$	LBW	2.2600	0.3400	6.7200	<.0001**

Bs: birth status; FL: fibre length; MFD: Mean fibre diameter; LBW: live body weight; ns: fixed effect or covariate variables have no effect on cashmere production.

**Fixed effect or covariate variables have highly significant effect on cashmere production.

Figure 3. The change in cashmere production with fleece grades.

Table 3. The parameter estimates of cashmere production for different fleece grades based on the multilevel mixed model.

Statistic	fleece grade, FG
	FG1	FG2	FG3	FG4
n	650	3057	2279	371
Mean, g	784.40	825.10	866.60	886.80
SD	172.60	191.50	196.60	199.20
C.V(%)	22.01	23.21	22.68	22.47
the change in CP per 1 cm in FL, g	16.08**	27.23**	26.84**	33.30^ns
the change in CP per 1 µm in MFD, g	34.25*	38.49**	31.90**	−5.86^ns
the change in CP per 1 kg in LBW, g	2.21^ns	4.92**	3.08**	2.82^ns

FG: fleece grade; CP: cashmere production; FL: fibre length; MFD: Mean fibre diameter; LBW: live body weight; ns: the economic trait have no effect on cashmere production.

*The economic trait have significant effect on cashmere production.

**The economic trait have highly significant effect on cashmere production.