Results Concerning the Fattening Performances and Carcass Traits in Young Sheep Hybrid Norwegian White x Turcana and Turcana Breed
Abstract
The sheep hybrids are of high efficiency due to their carcass traits that demonstrate better commercial traits, compared to their parental breeds. In Romania, the sheep hybridizing is manly performed in order to obtain individuals with higher meat yield of their carcass. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the fattening performances, traits of the main body components, and carcass conformation in Norwegian White x Turcana young hybrids compared to Turcana young sheep. All studied individuals were fattened for 79 days within two experimental series (2008 and 2009). The estimated statistical parameters are focused on 10 young rams fattened and slaughtered, belonging to both breed structures, considered by entire experiment (both experimental series). The average values and differences between them reflect the superiority of the Norwegian White x Turcana young hybrids compared to Turcana youngs for all analyzed traits, except gigot length and basin depth. Significant and distinct significant differences in advantage of the hybrids were recorded for the following traits: weigth in the end of fattening (slaughtering weigth) total gain, average daily gain, warm carcass wegth, internal organs weigth, large and small carcass length, carcass width, thorax depth and crupper width. We consider that these results demonstrate the presence of the heterosis effect in hybrids.a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
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