Live weight of rams of Dagestan mountain breed and crossbreeds obtained from crossing with rams of the Russian meat merino breed

Abstract

Relevance and methods. The article considers the experience of studying the effect of crossing Kalmyk sheep and dorper sheep-breeders in order to increase meat productivity. Crossbred rams of the experimental group had better indicators than rams in the control group in terms of live weight, depending on the conditions of pasture maintenance. Dagestan has a fifth of the Russian sheep and goat population and a quarter of wool production. In this area sheep breeding has a unique specificity, twice a year cattle are driven from summer to winter pastures and back. The distance between the pasture areas is more than 570 km. Of the total number of sheep, 71.5% falls on the Dagestan mountain breed.Results. To further increase the level of profitability of fine-wool sheep breeding it is of great importance to develop research on the economic and useful characteristics of young Dagestani fine-wool sheep and their crossbreeds with Russian meat merino sheep, depending on the driving and pasture system of keeping.