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Modelling lactation curves for dairy sheep in a New Zealand flock

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posted on 2023-07-31, 21:37 authored by Ana Carolina Marshall, Nicolas Lopez-Villalobos, Simon Loveday, Ashling Ellis, Warren McNabb

Lactation curves were modelled for dairy sheep in a New Zealand flock, providing information on the lactation yields of milk, fat, protein, and lactose, corrected for 130 days of milking. From 169 ewes, a total of 622 test-day records were obtained during the milk production season of 2021–2022 (from October to January). The flock produced an average of 86.1 kg of milk, 5.1 kg of fat, 4.5 kg of protein, and 4.1 kg of lactose, and moderate to large coefficients of variation were observed (27–31%) for these traits. The lactation persistency of milk, fat, protein, and lactose yields ranged from 52.3 to 72.7%. Analyses of variance for total yield and persistency were performed with an animal model that included the fixed effects of age (parity number), litter size, coat colour, and milking frequency (days in twice-a-day milking) and random residuals. Age and milking frequency were the only factors that significantly affected the yields of milk, fat, protein, and lactose. Age significantly affected the lactation persistency of milk and lactose yields, whereas litter size affected the persistency of protein, and milking frequency affected the persistency of fat. This study on this single flock provides valuable experience for a larger-scale animal breeding programme in New Zealand.

Funding

MBIE NZ Milks Mean More (NZ3M) Endeavour (MAUX1803)

History

Rights statement

© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Publication date

2023-01-19

Project number

  • PRJ0070817

Language

  • English

Does this contain Māori information or data?

  • No

Publisher

MDPI

Journal title

Animals

ISSN

2076-2615

Volume/issue number

13(3)

Page numbers

349

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