Effect of Testosterone Enanthate Injection on Some Carcass Traits and Chemical Characteristics of Castrated Karadi Lambs Meat

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of testosterone enanthateinjection on some carcass traits and chemical characteristics of Karadi castrated lambsmeat. Twenty seven male Karadi lambs (3-4 months of age) with an average live weightof (28.7±3.8 kg) were reared in sheep farm, research station, Faculty of AgricultureSciences, University of Sulaimania and allocated randomly by weight to three groups(treatments) by the dosage of testosterone enanthate (6 lambs for each treatment): G1were not injected (control), G2 were injected by 200 mg and G3 were injected by 400mg (IM weekly). All groups animals were fed with the same concentrate diet (3% ofbody weight), barley straw provided ad libitum and water was free, all group lambswere castrated by rubber band two weeks before experiment begins. There were threeperiods of slaughter: 60 days from the beginning of the experiment, 90 days and 120days, at the end of each period three lambs from each treatment were randomly chosenand weighted, then humanly slaughtered. Many measurements were taken such as hotand cold carcass weight, carcass length, carcass thorax circumference, rib eye area andfat thickness ,carcass cuts weight, non-carcass adipose tissue weight, edible organs andoffal weight, also the chemical composition of Longissimus Dorsi muscle meat. Fromthe results, it could be concluded that there were positive effects of testosteroneenanthate injection, which was increasing of living body weight reflecting on hot andcold carcass weight increase with increasing age and period of treating with enanthate,that increase in carcass weight was related with increasing in weight of whole carcasscuts which was clearly noticed on second and third slaughtering period, and also thatincrease can be correlated with rib eye area which increase during the same periods ,that means the gain in weight is a result of body lean gain due to testosterone enanthateinjection. In addition, fat tail weight decrease may be explain as body energy turned toproducing or synthesis lean instead of fat.