| dc.description.abstract | Sheep fattening agribussiness in Indonesia has recently been growing rapidly to produce
better quality of sheep meat, as this is a quick yielding business, less investment and smaller
land use in compared to breeding farm. This business uses good quality of local sheep and
grows them under intensive management and feed quality. This business, however, could
make a crucial loss of good quality of local sheep because many of them can be sold easily
from the fattening farms. At present, the farmers are also getting difficulties to obtain good
lambs to grow, as there is lack of the stocks. Breeding farms to produce good quality and
sustainable sheep production are urgently needed in this situation. Selection to get elite flock
of sheep is the first step to conduct further good breeding program. The objective was then
designed to study effect of sheep selection on body weight, average daily gain (ADG) at
different sex of sheep. The field experiment was conducted in ‘Mantap’ sheep farmer group,
Batur village, Banjarnegara, Central Java. The sheep were local crossbred sheep (Texel x
Merino x local sheep) that have been well adapted for decades in the area. The experimental
sheep were 69 lambs aged 2 - 6 months old, consisted of 29 male and 40 female lambs. The
sheep were chosen from good farmer’s farms recommended by the head of the group. The
sheep were then weighed every week for 4 weeks to get ADG data. The ADG were
categorized as fast growing (FG) sheep for those having ADG≥250 g/head/day and as slow
growing (SG) sheep when they have ADG≤150 g/head/day. Data were analyzed with T-test.
The results show that in general data there were no significant differences (p>0.05) of average
body weight (ABW) and ADG between male and female lambs. The IBW were 25.46 ± 5.20
kg and 26.2 ± 7.47 kg in male and female lambs respectively, while ADG were 226.98 ±
75.75 and 208.33 ± 80.63 g/head/day, respectively in both sexes. It was also found that ABW
of FG and SG lambs were similar (around 24 - 27 kg, p>0.05), on the contrary, ADG was
significantly different between FG and SG (around 290 and 140 g/head/day). These occurred
either within male and female lamb group. In both FG and SG sheep, sex did not have
different IBW and ADG (p>0.05). It is concluded that growth rate of the local sheep varied
within the experimental flock. Selection on the sheep growth is highly recommended to obtain
elite flocks of lambs to produce good quality and sustainable lambs in a village breeding
system. | id |
