The French Lacaune dairy sheep breed: use in France and abroad in the last 40 years

Abstract

The situation of the Lacaune dairy sheep breed has evolved dramatically during 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 area) with foreign high milk yield breeds, i.e. Friesian and Sarda breeds. The results showed very disappointing performances, both for lamb production for the Sarda breed, and for mortality for genotypes with more than 50% Friesian genes, the Friesian breed appearing to be poorly adapted to the local conditions. Therefore, in the 1970s a synthetic line called FSL (3/8 Friesian, 3/8 Sarda, 2/8 Lacaune) was created to avoid having more than 50% of the genes coming from an imported breed. Since the Lacaune genetic improvement 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 composition, type traits, and, in the near future, also for somatic cell count and udder score. Since 1992, 17 countries have officially imported Lacaune germplasm from France. However, to our knowledge, few comparisons are available, except in Spain with the Churra and Manchega breeds, and initially in Switzerland and Germany, and then in Canada, with the Friesian breed. The results appeared to be favorable for the Lacaune breed, in agreement with French experiments carried out with two divergent (high and low milk yield) Lacaune lines for a group of production traits including feed efficiency and milkability. However, we suggest to candidate importers: (i) to import Lacaune from the French Breeders Association to obtain the best available germplasm; (ii) to verify the adaptation of the Lacaune breed to their local breeding conditions, and/or to improve their husbandry systems (especially feeding) to account for the high milk yield of the breed.