LACTATION CURVE AND MILK PRODUCTION TRAITS OF SYRIAN DAMASCUS GOATS

Almasri, Obaida; Abou-Bakr, Samy; Ibrahim, Mohamed Abd El-Aziz Mohamed; Kahil, Othman; Asaad, Ziyad; Ghoush, Mohammed; Awad, Mohamed Attia Ahmed

doi:10.21608/ejap.2023.177189.1051

LACTATION CURVE AND MILK PRODUCTION TRAITS OF SYRIAN DAMASCUS GOATS

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research, Damascus, Syria.

² Department of Animal Production, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt.

³ Department of Agricultural Economic, Faculty of Agriculture, Tishreen University, Syria.

10.21608/ejap.2023.177189.1051

Abstract

This study aimed to describe the lactation curve using the Wood’s function, estimate the milk production traits and investigate the non-genetic factors affecting both, the lactation curve and milk production traits of Syrian Damascus goats. A total number of 334 weekly test-day milk records were collected during the year 2019 on 98 Damascus goats at Karhta station, Syria. The least squares means of the studied lactation curve traits were 2.6 ± 0.05 kg for the initial milk yield after kidding (parameter a), 0.45 ± 0.011 kg/week for the rate of rise in milk production to peak lactation (parameter b), 0.09 ± 0.001 kg/week for the rate of decrease in milk production from peak to the end of lactation period (parameter c), 3.40 ± 0.05 kg for peak milk yield (PMY), 5.09 ± 0.08 weeks for peak week (PW) and 55.71 ± 0.54 % for persistency of lactation (P%). The estimates for milk production traits were 413 ± 5.98 kg, 199 ± 1.23 days, and 2.1 ± 0.02 kg/day for total milk yield (TMY), lactation period (LP), and daily milk yield (DMY), respectively.
The results showed that parity exerted a highly significant (P < 0.01) effect on all the studied traits except PW and P%. Also, the month of kidding had a significant effect on all the studied parameters except P%. However, the type of birth had no significant effect on all the studied traits. It could be concluded that Wood’s function is a convenient tool to describe the lactation curve of Syrian Damascus goats. Also, Damascus goats showed a higher potentiality for milk production and a long lactation period under subtropical environmental conditions.

Keywords

Main Subjects