Study on the Incidence of Twin Lambings in a Lacaune Sheep Population

Abstract

The Lacaune sheep breed was started to be recently imported and in small numbers on the Romanian territory, and
the number of animals of this breed is still low, so, it was considered necessary to carry out a study on a sheep
population from the NE area of the country, where a herd of 382 Lacaune sheep was imported from France. The aim
of the paper was to study the adaptability of the breed in this area using prolificacy as its main criterion. The study
was made in the period between 2020, September to 2021, April, including the 2020 September-October mating
campaign and the 2021 February-March lambing campaign, the period in which the factors that could influence the
reproductive indices were studied, but also the overall development of the flock. After the lambing period, the
collected data were processed and it was concluded that the prolificacy index registered values that fall within the
values recorded in the specialty literature and that are considered as standard values of the breed. There were 282
females studied, 186 of them lambed twins and out of this number, 48 of the females were primiparous and 138 were
multiparous. In the studied farm, the prolificacy had values of 144,4% for primiparous and 179,3% for multiparous
females, like as the specialty literature data, where the “Lacaune du lait” sheep breed has an average prolificacy of
145% in primiparous and 170% in multiparous. These data reveal that the breed has adapted well to the conditions in
the area, not negatively influencing the prolificacy index, which indicates that animals of this breed can fully express
their genetic potential and could even improve their performance if a good management is applied.