The merits of Awassi sheep and its milk along with major factors affecting its production

OpenAlex İngilizce

Livestock is the major contributor in the agriculture sector, besides meat and hides, and milk is the chief product obtained in terms of nutrition from livestock. 85% of the global milk production is obtained from cows followed by buffalo (11%), goat (2.3%), sheep (1.4%), and camel (0.2%). In contrast to Cow, Sheep farming is famous in its worth as it does not depend on seasonality for its peak production and rich in milk fat contents. The advanced market of dairy products prefers the prebiotics and probiotics of sheep milk in comparison to other livestock. Awassi sheep is known as a very popular and proliferative breed in the non-European region due to its ability to absorb the environmental deviation and adapts the feeding fluctuation from steppe to the highly intensive system. In general, Awassi ewe can produce an average of 60-80 liters milk with lactation length of 150 days under different methods of production while an improved Awassi ewe can yield 504 liters milk within 214 days of lactation length under a well-managed production system. Turkish Awassi breed reported an increase from 67 kg to 152 kg in 7 years through proper selection and breeding. In the middle east, the Awassi is considered as a triple purpose breed but it's a very famous type of rearing is as a dairy sheep. Several factors including lactation length and number, birth type, electrical conductivity, season, parity, milking frequency and production year are considered important for the awassi sheep production.