Effects of feeding system and CLA supplementation on animal, carcase and meat characteristics of fattened lambs and ewes

To promote local food products could be a valuable strategy for preserving autochthonous sheep breeds. A total of 115 lambs and ewes of local sheep breeds (Alpagota, Bogna, Foza and Lamon) of the Veneto region were used to evaluate the effect of different feeding systems on the production and quality of lambs and mutton meat. We carried out three fattening trials involving 24 ewes and their 31 suckling lambs, 24 weaned lambs, and 24 heavy lambs, fed indoor diets with or without a rumen-protected conjugated linoleic acids (rp-CLA) supplement (C18:2c9,t11 and C18:2t10,c12) to improve the nutritional value of the meat. Controls were a group of 12 pasture-fed weaned lambs. The weaned lambs at pasture had good fattening performances (33 kg live-weight at slaughter, 45% dressing percentage), whereas lambs fattened indoors on hay and some concentrates had lower weight (28 kg) and dressing percentages (41%), and require improvements to their feed. Feeding the animals on total mixed diets resulted in good in vivo and post mortem performances of culled ewes (64 kg slaughter weight, 48% dressing percentage), suckling lambs (21 kg, 50%) and heavy lambs (61 kg, 48%), showing that valuable supplies of lamb and mutton meat can be obtained across different seasons. Supplementing indoor diets with rp-CLA does not modify the animals' performances nor the organoleptic traits of meat.