Determination of the minimum body weight and its feeding requirement for early breeding in horro Ewe lambs
2000
Ulfina Galmessa | Fikru Terefe | Solomon Abegaz | Gemeda Duguma | Solomon Gizaw
To determine the minimum body weight and its feeding requirement for early breeding in horro sheep, forty three weaned ewe lambs with average weight of 11.48 ± 0.71 kg and age of 106 days were allocated to three feeding levels; ad lib feeding (H group), 300 g/h/d (M group and 100 g/h/d (L group) each having 14, 15 and 14 animals respectively. Average age at first service, which is considered as the criterion for puberty in this study, was 206 (H), 280 (M) and 285 (L) days (p0.05). Between treatment differences in estimated mating age and lambing age were highly significant (p0.001). Estimated mating age for H, M and L ewes was 229, 267 and 315 days for H, M and L group (p0.05). Weight at mating was 21, 20 and 18 kg for H, M and L group, respectively, and the difference was not significant (p0.05), indicating that all animals tend to breed at similar body weight but attain this mating weight at different ages. It can be concluded that early breeding horro ewe lambs should be reared on ad lib feeding, at least, up to 7 months of age. This result also showed that ewe lambs can conceive at as low as 18 kg at the expense of age at conception.
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