This study characterises farmer’s preferences for breeding rams and tackles their willingness to contribute to the wool sheep Koundoum conservation programme through their quantified appreciation of the main phenotypic features of the sheep breed in the region. In Tillabéri region, i.e. the Koundoum sheep’s area of origin, the proportional piling tool is first used in 11 focus group discussions of breeders to determine the main selection criteria of breeding rams. The multi-attribute analysis me

The characterization of local sheep breeds, two Slovenian (Bela Krajina and Istrian Pramenka) and four Montenegrin (Bardoka, Sjenička, Pivska Pramenka, and Zeta Žuja), was done on the basis of morphometric measures and indices. The PCA of morphometric parameters extracted three components explaining 96.6 % of cumulative variance. A cluster analysis grouped Pivska Pramenka with Sjenička and Istrian with Bela Krajina Pramenka in two clusters, while Bardoka and Zeta Žuja were clustered separately.

The objective of the current research was to investigate 12 STR loci based on genetic diversity in sheep herds as well as the differentiation and relationship among the number of alleles and genetic links between Kazakh sheep breeds. Based on our results, all five populations examined show high genetic diversity because of a high effective number of alleles, a large number of alleles, high PIC values, and 12 completely polymorphic tested microsatellites.

The coat colour of animals is an extremely important trait that affects their behaviour and is decisive for survival in the natural environment. The trait serves to distinguish between breeds and varieties. Coat colour is also an important economic trait. Understanding the genetic background of variation in one of the most important phenotypic traits in livestock would help to identify new genes that have a great effect on the coat colour type.

Compared with worldwide normal sheep with reddish muscle, the Nanping black-boned sheep is the only mammal similar to silky fowl with black muscles. The effects of mutations of the gene for tyrosinase-related protein 1 (TYRP1) on the black muscles and coat color in Nanping black-boned sheep were investigated.