Assessment of skin quality traits of Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus) at Lalele Crocodile Farm in Limpopo Province

Abstract

Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus) are widely distributed across Africa, and they sometimes conflict with humans as they prey on people and livestock. Crocodile skins are used to produce expensive luxury products such as belts, shoes, bags and clothes. However, smallholder crocodile farmers sometimes fail to cover their costs because of a high number of crocodile skins being downgraded. Hence, the current study intended to shed information on skin quality traits of Nile crocodiles and their economic values, which might help crocodile farmers and breeders in selecting traits to achieve premium skin grades. This study was conducted at Lalele Crocodile Farm using 177 Nile crocodile skins. The skins were graded on a grading scale of 1 to 4 using quality traits such as double scaling (DS), skin cuts or holes (SC), irregular scales (IS), skin scars or scratches (SS), wrinkles (W), missing legs (ML), skin osteoderms (SO), skin infections (SI), skin blemish (SB) and skin lesions (SL). Frequencies and percentages were used to summarise evaluated skins and Spearman’s correlations were used to determine the associations between the skin price and skin quality traits. Stepwise and multiple regression analyses were used to develop a model to estimate skin price. The results showed that only 3% of the skins were of first grade while the remaining were made up of 34%, 32% and 31% of second grades, third grades and rejects, correspondingly. The study revealed that skin price had a positive highly significant correlation with belly weight (BW) and body length (BL) (p<0.01), and a negative highly significant correlation with SG, DS, SS and SB (p<0.01), but a negative significant correlation with IS (p<0.05). The stepwise regression model with IS and skin grade (SG) was the best fitted model to estimate Nile crocodile skin prices. The study concludes that there is relationship between skin price and skin quality traits. Hence, minimizing the occurrence of the traits correlated to the skin price of Nile crocodiles can help farmers to better skin grades for higher financial returns. However, more studies should be conducted to investigate the factors causing occurrence of skin quality traits that cause downgrading and use them to guide farmers. Similar studies should be conducted on skins of different animal species.