Increasing Local Sheep Growth Performance through Rapid Selection at Fattening Farm

Abstract

Sheep fattening farms have recently been growing rapidly to produce better quality of sheep meat, however the bussiness could make a crucial loss of good quality of local sheep because they can be sold. It is therefore elite flocks of sheep in a fattening farm should be selected. The experiment was conducted at PT Tawakal, a sheep fattening farm located in Caringin, Bogor. One hundred and sixty nine young male sheep (less than one year old) were selected based on physical judging and their average daily gain (ADG) into two groups having the highest growth rate (above 150 g/head/day) and lowest group (leass than 65 g/head/day). Selection differential and its progress of the selected flock was also calculated. The results showed that there were 13 heads of fast growing and 11 heads of slow growing sheep with the average daily gain of 173.8 ± 26.3 g/head/day and 53.9 ± 15.7 g/head/day, respectively (P<0.01), while the ADG of their population was 98.5 ± 43.6 g/head/day. Based on selection differential calculation (75.3 g/head/day), it was found that selection progress was 7.53 gr/head/day of ADG per year and therefore it may need 6.8 years to improve sheep population to achieve ADG of 150 g/head/day, a relatively short period of a genetic improvement program. It is concluded that rapid selection approach can be recommended as among other selection methods used to increase growth performance of local sheep thus continuously in general, to develop sustainable sheep agribussiness.