A Comparative Study on Growth, Carcass Traits and Tissue Distribution of Awassi and Hamdani Lambs

Abstract

The present work was carried out at the Animal Farm, Collage of Agriculture, University of Salahaddin, where 10 weaned lambs (4-5 months old) from each of Hamdani and Awassi, and averaged 22.0± 0.25 and 23.1± 0.34 kg in weight, respectively were divided equally and randomly allocated to two slaughter groups (30 and 40 kg).Each group of lambs was kept in a separate pen and fed a concentrate diet at libitum containing 16.2% crude protein and 2637 k cal. Upon reaching the prescribed weight, each lamb was slaughtered and their carcass was evaluated.

Results revealed that Hamdani lambs surpassed significantly Awassi lambs in growth rate (0.348 vs. 0.307 Kg/ day), dressing percentage (47.97 vs. 46.59%) and percent of fat tail (15.20 vs. 12.15%). In contrast, it appears that Awassi lambs had thicker fat thickness, and their carcasses contain higher proportion of lean (+ 6.11%) and fat (+ 9.13%) and lower proportion of bone (-18.37%) as compared to Hamdani lambs. Also , as the weight at slaughter increased, there is a significant ( p< 0.05) decrease in average daily gain, an increase in rib eye area , fat thickness , lean and fat content and lower proportion of bone. The percent contribution of carcass, non-carcass and fat tail to the total body fat was 51.72, 2.63 and 45.63%, respectively.

Keywords: Growth, Carcass traits, Awassi, Hamdani, Lambs