The French Lacaune dairy sheep breed: use in France and abroad in the last40 years

The situation of the Lacaune dairy sheep breed has evolved dramatically dur ing the last 40 years. In the 1960s, this dual purpose breed had a low milk yield and was compared in its local basin of production (the Roquefort are a) with foreign high milk yield breeds, i.e. Friesian and Sarda breeds. The results showed very disappointing performances, both for lamb production f or the Sarda breed, and for mortality for genotypes with more than 50% Frie sian genes, the Friesian breed appearing to be poorly adapted to the local conditions. Therefore, in the 1970s a synthetic line called FSL (3/8 Friesi an, 3/8 Sarda, 2/8 Lacaune) was created to avoid having more than 50% of th e genes coming from an imported breed. Since the Lacaune genetic improvemen t program had become fully efficient in the 1980s, a crossbreeding strategy was disregarded in the Roquefort area. The Lacaune breed is now one of the high milk yield breeds, efficiently selected for milk yield and milk compo sition, type traits, and, in the near future, also for somatic cell count a nd udder score. Since 1992, 17 countries have officially imported Lacaune g ermplasm from France. However, to our knowledge, few comparisons are availa ble, except in Spain with the Churra and Manchega breeds, and initially in Switzerland and Germany, and then in Canada, with the Friesian breed. The r esults appeared to be favorable for the Lacaune breed, in agreement with Fr ench experiments carried out with two divergent (high and low milk yield) L acaune lines for a group of production traits including feed efficiency and milkability. However, we suggest to candidate importers: (i) to import Lac aune from the French Breeders Association to obtain the best available germ plasm; (ii) to verify the adaptation of the Lacaune breed to their local br eeding conditions, and/or to improve their husbandry systems (especially fe eding) to account for the high milk yield of the breed. (C) 2001 Elsevier S cience B.V. All rights reserved.