REGULAR ARTICLES Meat quality characteristics of Turkish indigenous Hair goat kids reared under traditional extensive production system: effects of slaughter age and gender Hayriye Deger Oral Toplu & Ergun Omer Goksoy & Ahmet Nazligul & Tolga Kahraman Accepted: 10 January 2013 / Published online: 25 January 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Meat quality characteristics of Turkish indige- nous Hair goat kids reared under an extensive production system were investigated in this study. A total of 60 Hair goat kids (30 females and 30 males) were slaughtered at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months of ages. Slaughter age significantly affected meat quality characteristics. Cooking loss (P < 0.01) and shear force value (P <0.001) increased with age. Meat color became darker red with increasing slaughter age (P <0.001). The percentage of fat of musculus (M.) semi- membranosus increased with age (P <0.01). The percentage of saturated fatty acids was significantly higher (P <0.01), whereas the percentage of unsaturated fatty acids was lower (P <0.001) in the M. longissimus dorsi of the kids slaugh- tered at 3 months of age than those in the other age groups. The females had higher intramuscular fat than that in males (P <0.001) and meat from male kids contained a higher percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acid than that from females (P <0.01). In conclusion, meat from Hair kids slaughtered between 3 and 9 months of ages had better quality than those slaughtered at the other ages and also meat from male kids had better quality than those female kids slaughtered at the same age under extensive production system. Keywords Hair goat . Meat quality . Slaughter age . Gender Introduction Goat meat has an important place in red meat production, especially in developing countries. Goat meat has a high percentage of protein and a low percentage of fat and it is also a good source of desirable fatty acids, since goats deposit higher amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids than the other ruminants, which makes it attractive to consumers as a red meat alternative (Banskalieva et al. 2000). Goat breeding in Turkey is based mainly on extensive systems carried out by smallholder farmers living in poor agricultural fields. Goats are important in the rural economy of mountainous and forested regions in Turkey (Yalçın 1990). Hair goat accounts for 98 % of the total goat popu- lation of Turkey, which is approximately 5.0 million heads. In the last years, there has been a drastic decline in the Hair goat population in Turkey—a decrease from 9.6 million in 1991 to 5.0 million heads in 2009 (Anonymous 2009). Goat meat is an important protein and income source for people living in rural areas and meat obtained from indigenous kids is preferred by the public in these regions of Turkey (Yalçın 1990; Güney 2006). There is no published information on the meat quality characteristics of Hair goat kids reared under extensive production systems and slaughtered at dif- ferent ages. This study was conducted to investigate the meat quality characteristics of Turkish indigenous Hair goat kids reared under traditional extensive production system as well as to determine the effects of slaughter age and gender on these traits. H. D. O. Toplu (*) : A. Nazligul Department of Animal Breeding and Husbandry, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Adnan Menderes University, Isikli, Aydin, Turkey e-mail: doral@adu.edu.tr E. O. Goksoy Department of Food Hygiene and Technology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Adnan Menderes University, Isikli, Aydin, Turkey T. Kahraman Department of Food Hygiene and Technology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Istanbul University, Avcilar, Istanbul, Turkey Trop Anim Health Prod (2013) 45:1297–1304 DOI 10.1007/s11250-013-0360-0