engleski

Improving milk production in Croatian autochthonous sheep breeds

In Croatia today there are about twenty pure-blooded sheep breeds, out of which nine autochthonous breeds. In Croatia sheep are primarily bred for meat production. The production of lamb meat is mostly represented in the coastal areas where there is a lot of rocky ground and stone, poor vegetation, thicket and underbrush, and there are very few possibilities of breeding other types of livestock (except goats). However, for the past ten years the production and processing of sheep milk has been growing. Primarily, for milk production is used about 10-12% of total sheep population in Croatia (70 000 animals). During the year 2007, 2.553, 000 kg of sheep milk have been purchased and processed, while in year 2004 total amount of purchased and processed sheep milk was 1.536, 000 kg. Almost all quantities of produced sheep milk in Croatia are processed into cheese (on family farms or industrially), using traditional technologies. During last few years there is an increasing interest of local farmers, especially in Istria, for implementation of machine milking. During last decade they have conducted almost exclusive selection on milk yield, that can lead in long term to udders more difficult to milk by machine and more suspectible to mastitis. Namely, udder health status directly affects the hygeic quality om sheep milk and dairy products because traditional sheep cheese production is mainly based on raw, termically non treated milk. Consequently, recent research interest of our Department is investigation of some functional udder traits in order to modificate current selection programme (especially in Istrian sheep) and nominate new breeding goals related to udder.

Istrian sheep; Pag sheep; milk yield; udder morphology; cheese production

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