AN EVALUATION OF MILK-YIELD AND MILKING ABILITY IN FRENCH ROUGE-DELOUEST EWES

The French Roup de l'Ouest is a suckling sheep breed in Western France . In a commercial Rouge de l'Ouest flock, ewes are milked, and this st udy deals with the assessment of their milk yield and machine milking ability. Production traits (means and standard error) estimated during 2 yrs in 151 and 160 ewes through monthly controls were: milk yields 75.4 +/- 4.01 and 81.2 +/- 3.5 1 in 97.8 +/- 2.4 d and 112.3 +/- 2.6 d after suckling periods of 50.4 +/- 1.9 d and 46.0 +/- 1.0 d, respecti vely. Average fat contents in 151 and 138 ewes were 75.5 +/- 0.8 g/l a nd 76.8 +/- 0.7 g/l, respectively, and average protein contents were 6 0.2 +/- 0.5 g/l and 62.7 +/- 0.4 g/l, respectively. Morphological and physiological traits of the udder, assessed in 147 ewes through a prot ocol like that used for a collective FAO study of dairy sheep breeds i n 1984, showed the average udder depth was 92.6 +/- 0.2 mm, cistern he ight 13.8 +/- 0.5 mm, teat length 31.9 +/- 0.1 mm, teat diameter 16.8 +/- 0.03 mm, teat position, scored from 1 (at the rear of the udder) t o 5 (towards the front), 3.1 +/- 0.1 and teat inclination 26.5 +/- 0.8 degree. Milk flow curves were assessed on 67 ewes: 30 of them (47.7%) had two successive milkings showing that the neuro hormonal ejection reflex acts during machine milking. Between curves with one peak and c urves with two peaks, cisternal fractions (0.368 l vs. 0.169 l) and ti ming of the first peak (18.4 s vs. 9.8 s) differed significantly (P < 0.01), whereas there were no significant differences for total volume, machine stripping fraction and maximum flow rate. The results under t he described conditions and without specific dairy selection, gave ind ications of the ability of this breed to be machine milked and used as a dual purpose breed.