Milk and Reproduction Performances of Awassi Sheep in Tal Hadya Station, Syria, 2002-2011

Abstract

The data were collected from an experimental sheep flock that was maintained at ICARDA’s Tal Hadya station, Aleppo, Syria (now in Terbol station in Lebanon). By 1980, the foundation of ICARDA’s experimental Syrian Awassi (S) flock, a group of ewes that originated in the steppes of Syria, was formed. In 1986, the flock was expanded by incorporating ewes from the Aleppo region. The founding groups, which represented a random sample of the local population of Syrian Awassi, were not subjected to any selection plan, other than farmers' regular breeding practices. Rams from the Syrian governments’ Al-Kraim breeding program were used as sires for the S flock. Thereafter, only these rams or their progeny born in the flock were used as sires. As a result, the S genotype carries genes from rams sourced from the Al-Kraim program. In 1991, ICARDA acquired Awassi sheep of the Ceylanpinar Turkish genotype (T). In 1998, a few T ewes bred at ICARDA were inseminated with fresh semen from Ceylanpinar T rams (n = 21). The S and T flocks at ICARDA were kept pure and mated at random without consideration for milk production potential. In 1999, in addition to breeding the pure S and T flocks, T rams were mated to S ewes to produce F1 crosses. The offspring of the crosses, genotype TS, was born in 2000. Data collected from 2002 to the beginning of 2011 is available. The standard recordings were as follows: Milk production per ewe was recorded weekly after weaning until the end of lactation (when ewes produced 150 g per day). Beginning in 2003, ewes were milked twice daily. Milk production between consecutive control days was estimated to obtain the total milk yields (kg), along with lactation length (days). Milk samples collected on control days (pooled over the daily milkings) were analyzed for protein, fat, and solids-not-fat (SnF) content. Several additional variables were recorded for both lambs and ewes. The traits included in this data set are: birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW), pre-weaning weight gains (WG), lambing interval (LI), litter weight at birth (LWB), litter weight at weaning (LWW), lactation length (LL), lactation milk yield (LY), lactation fat yield (FY), protein yield (PY), lactose yield (LY) and total solids yield (TSY).