Czech J. Anim. Sci., 2023, 68(7):306-312 | DOI: 10.17221/221/2022-CJAS

Experimental evaluation of milk yield and selected traits of milk quality in Clun Forest ewesOriginal Paper

Jan Kuchtík ORCID...1, Květoslava Šustová ORCID...2, Tomáš Kopec ORCID...1, Ferenc Pajor ORCID...3, Leona Konečná ORCID...1
1 Faculty of AgriSciences, Mendel University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic
2 Ambis University, Praha 8 – Libeň, Czech Republic
3 Institute of Animal Sciences, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Gödöllő, Hungary

In general, it can be stated that the economics of non-dairy sheep breeding in the Czech Republic experienced a worsening trend in recent years. One of the ways to improve this situation is to use some of these breeds also for milk production. One of the possible breeds usable for milk production, especially for the good milk production of mothers, is the Clun Forest (CF). The aim of our experiment was to evaluate the daily milk yield (DMY) and the contents of fat (F), total protein (TP) and lactose (L), pH, titratable acidity (TA), concentration of urea (CU) and somatic cell count (SCC) in CF ewes during lactation. In our experiment, the following means of individual traits for the whole lactation were found: DMY: 579 g, contents of F, TP and L: 6.73%, 5.82% and 4.98%, pH: 6.55, TA: 8.74 °SH, CU: 36.08 mg/100 ml and log SCC: 4.71. The stage of lactation had a significant (P < 0.01) effect on DMY, contents of F and TP and pH and TA. The results of our experiment show that CF ewes had lower DMY than dairy breeds (DB). However, the majority of the milk quality traits was comparable to DB. Moreover, the high fat and protein contents and the values of most other milk quality traits are good prerequisites for high cheese yield and optimal final quality of other sheep’s milk products. The results of our experiment suggest that CF ewes could be used for milk production while the milk production of CF ewes should ensure an improvement in the economics and competitiveness of smaller farms in particular.

Keywords: basic milk composition; acidity of milk; somatic cells; stage of lactation

Received: December 13, 2022; Accepted: June 6, 2023; Prepublished online: July 26, 2023; Published: July 27, 2023  Show citation

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Kuchtík J, Šustová K, Kopec T, Pajor F, Konečná L. Experimental evaluation of milk yield and selected traits of milk quality in Clun Forest ewes. Czech J. Anim. Sci. 2023;68(7):306-312. doi: 10.17221/221/2022-CJAS.
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