Influence of Year, Parity and Birth Type on Milk Yield and Milk Components of Bandırma Sheep (German Black Head Mutton xKıvırcık)

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of year, parity and birth type (BT) on lactation milk yield (LMY),adjusted lactation milk yield based on 150 days lactation length (LMY150), lactation length (LL), average daily milk yield (ADMY) and milk components (MC) of Bandırma sheep. The study was carried out with 54 ewes in 2011 and 70 ewes in 2012 under semi-intensive conditions. LMY, LMY150, LL and ADMY of Bandırma sheep were determined as 70.31 kg, 73.29 kg, 142.02 days and 488.19 g, respectively. The effect of the year on LL was significant (P 0.01), but the effects of parity and BT were not significant. The effects of the year and parity were significant (P 0.01 and P 0.05, respectively) on LMY, LMY150 and ADMY, but the effect of BT was not significant. Fat, protein, lactose, total dry matter (DM) and non-fat dry matter (NFDM) were determined as 5.26%, 6.11%, 3.29%, 15.49% and 10.23%, respectively. Highly significant positive correlations were determined between fat content and DM (r= 0.998; P 0.01) and between fat content and NFDM (r= 0.949; P 0.01), whereas fat content was negatively correlated with ADMY (r=-0.992; P 0.01) and lactose content (r= -0.957; P 0.01). Significant negative correlations (P 0.01) were found betweenlactose content and other milk components except for protein content and ADMY. The results indicated that despitebeing a mutton type crossbred, lactation characteristics and MC of Bandırma sheep are also considerable.