To provide the local goat population with an adequate genetic management scheme under arid environment, the study aimed to evaluate the use of fourteen alternative models attempting to evaluate to dissection of additive genetic (AG) and permanent environmental (PE) components of direct and maternal effects and their consequences on estimated breeding values. Records of 938 local kids over a period of 16 years were used in this study. Data were split into four groups corresponding to four periods along the weight recording period. Periods 1/2/3/4 contained weights in an interval with upper-lower limits of 1-20/25-60/65-120/125-150 days of age. Models including or ignoring maternal genetic or permanent environmental effects were fitted for all traits. For all periods, the best models were those including the AG component for both direct and maternal effects and the direct PE effect. Heritability estimates of both the direct and maternal effects ranged from low (0.02 for maternal heritability in P1) to moderate (0.17 for direct and maternal heritability in P2 and P3). Period 1 showed the lowest values for heritability of both direct and maternal effects, which also showed the largest estimate of the ratio of residual to total variance (around 0.2) compared with the other periods, withdecreasing ratios as age increased (from 0.13 for P2 to 0.07 for P4). Both direct and maternal EBVs showed high correlations between models fitting direct AG and PE effects. For direct EBVs, correlations were above 0.99, indicating that the same animals are expected to be selected under any model that includes those components, regardless of the maternal effects included. For maternal EBVs, correlations were also high, but slightly lower than for the DEBVs between models including DGP effects and maternal genetic effects. Overall, our recommendation for genetic evaluations of direct and maternal effectsin this population raised in extensive and harsh conditions is to use weight records preferably collected during the period of high milk production of dams, for which direct and maternal effects are expected to show full expression. Complete pedigrees and several generations of dam-progeny recording are needed to obtain a proper separation of environmental and genetic components.