Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

! Agriculture and Forestry Research, Special Issue No 362 (Braunschweig, 2012) ISSN 0376-0723
Download: www.vti.bund.de/en/startseite/vti-publications/landbauforschung-special-issues.html
Results
Flock management: The field Survey included 56 flocks with a total of 9241 sheep heads with
average 165 heads per flock, distributed in 27 villages in Sulaimani province. The result revealed
that the proportion of pure Karadi breed was 43 % and the crossbred was 57 %. Results showed that
the owners reared goat, poultry, cows, ducks and horses with the sheep. The majority of farmers
kept their rams with ewes throughout the year with a ratio of one ram for every 18 ewes.
A proportion of 98.2 % of the owners depend on selecting rams from their flocks. All owners reported
that the criteria used to select yearling ewes and rams is the phenotype (conformation, head,
legs and fat-tail). Fifty percent of the owners mentioned that the size of flocks was increased during
last 10 years. Priority of all farmers is lamb production, as most of the income is derived from the
sale of lambs. The main reasons for culling animals are advanced age and infertility. Just 23.2 % of
the owners allocated part of their lands (1 hectare for each flock) for green fodders production, while
62.5 % of the owners cultivated their lands (2 hectares for each owner) for production of cereal
(wheat and barley). The average of the natural pasturelands area that owners were grazed their animals
were almost 2000 hectares. The owners reported that their animals spent 10 hours per day grazing
in the natural pastureland. The average distance from sheep pen to pasturelands is 1 -2 km. A
proportion of 94.6% of the owners reported that they store straw, barley grain and hay for winter
feeding. Results of the present investigation indicateed that 92.9 % of the farmers wish to cooperate
and participate with other farmers for improving production through the establishment of cooperatives
and contribute financially at a rate of 4$ per year per 100 ewes in the flock.
Milk production: Ewes are bred during summer to lamb during winter. Accordingly, milk yield
usually started early December till end of May. In the current investigation, the mean of milk yield
is 0.78±0.03 kg/ewe/day. This result tended to be higher in comparison with the result of many researches
(Salleh, 2010; Al-Rawi et al., 1997). While, it tended to be lower than that reported by
Kaskous and Massri (2009). Statistical analysis revealed that geographic district and rainfall zone
had a significant (p