Live weight, exterior and wool productivity of Tuvan sheep

Abstract

The research goal was to investigate live weight, exterior and wool productivity of the Tuvan short fat-tailed sheep. The study was conducted in the Republic of Tuva in 2025 on the farm SPK PKh “Bay-Khol” of the Erzinskiy District. The indices of 6 month-old ewe-lambs (n = 20), 12 month-old ewe-lambs (n = 20), and 3 year-old ewes (n = 20) were studied. The live weight, exterior and wool production indices (wool clip, fineness and morphological composition) were studied. Statistical processing was performed by Snedecor V4 and MS Excel 2010 software. It was found that at the age of 6 months the live weight of the ewe-lambs (31.8 kg) was 57.3% of the weight of the ewes, and at 12 months (36.13 kg), it was 65.1% of the live weight of the ewes. It was found that at the age of 12 months, the ewe-lambs had significant differences from 6 month-old ones by chest girth by 18.97% (P ≥ 0.999), withers height - by 7.41% (P ≥ 0.95), and rump height - by 7.47% (P ≥ 0.95). It was determined that the wool clip index of the ewe-lambs (1.35 kg) was 75% of the average values of the ewes. The fineness of transitional hair (37.69 mkm) and guard hair (65.31 mkm) was 95.7% and 98.8%, respectively, of the average values for ewes. In terms of the wool morphological composition, the ewe-lambs exceeded the average values of ewes regarding down fibers (56.27%) by 5.8% and transitional hair (35.1%) by 1.72%. This pattern corresponds to the wool composition of adult Tuvan short fat-tailed sheep. The average positive correlation was found between the guard hair fineness and cannon bone girth r = 0.61.