Performances de croissance-engraissement et caractéristiques des carcasses d’agneaux de races Ladoum, Touabire, Peul-peul alimentés ad libitum dans les Niayes au Sénégal

Intensive production of Ladoum sheep, considered by breeders as the best-performing Senegalese breed sheep has grown considerably in recent decades in Senegal. Thus, this work aims to compare the growth-fattening performances and carcass characteristics of three breeds lambs. It involved 31 lambs (12 Ladoum, 8 Touabire and 11 Peul-peul) of 25.4 kg live body weight (LW) of three months old and reared for seven months during which they were fed ad libitum with peanut plant forage, concentrate diet, drinking water and lickstones. The LW, feed intake (FI), average daily gain (ADG), feed conversion ratio (FCR), hot carcass weight (CW), dressing commercial carcass (DC) and 5 ^th quarter components (DEQ), proportions of carcass muscle (PCM) and fat (PCF) per lamb breed were studied. The results show that the LW, ADG, FI, FCR, CW, DC, DEQ, PCM and PCF were similar (p > 0.05) between the three lambs breeds. The consumption of concentrated diet versus groundnut forage and the white offal dressing in Ladoum lambs (72.5% FI and 5.5%) were significantly lower (p < 0.05) than those of Touabire (77.14% FI and 6.77%) and Peul-peul (78% FI and 6.1%) which remained similar (p > 0.05) in contrast to water consumption (4 vs. 3 liters/day). The thicknesses of total tissue (GR), longissimus dorsi, dorsal fat measured from the 3 ^rd to the last week ante-mortem, were similar (p > 0.05) for these three breeds, except GR which was significantly reduced at the 3 ^rd week ante-mortem in Ladoum breed sheep. It can be retained that Senegalese sheep breeds have real genetic potential, which could be expressed in good breeding conditions for better improving the income of Senegalese breeders.