PRELIMINARY STUDY ON HERITABILITY OF MILK YIELD DURING THE DAY OF TEST IN MACEDONIANAWASSI SHEEP

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Institute of Animal Science, Skopje, Macedonia.

2 Awassi Mediterranean Farm - Selection Center, Kumanovo, Macedonia.

3 AgroBioInstitute, Sofia, Bulgaria.

Abstract

SUMMARY
About 400 ewe/test day records of Awassi sheep flock for the individual milk
yield in the morning, midday and evening milking, in the day of test and fat content
were used for assessment of heritabilities and genetic correlation by five-trait
Animal model with two random uncorrelated effects.
It was found that the heritability for milk yield vary from 0.14 to 0.40 with the
highest values in the morning. Genetic correlations between the four traits of milk
yield were all very high and positive. Heritability for fat percentage was 0.21 and
the correlations with yield traits were all high and negative.
The importance of the morning milking was emphasized and the necessity of
more extensive studies with more data.