Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 25 ISSUE 2
Written by Stanimira SLAVOVA, Nevyana STANCHEVA, Teodora ANGELOVA, Jivko KRASTANOV, Daniela KOLEVA

This article is a review of studies carried out in relation to calculation of the economic impact of various productive and functional traits in dairy sheep in connection with setting economically reasoned breeding goals in the breeding programs. Milk yield was found to be considered the main selection trait ensuring the sustainability of dairy sheep farms, subsequently complemented by quality traits such as protein and fat content, and somatic cell score (SCS). It has been also established that improving the reproductive performance of animals, fertility, survival and growth rate of lambs are also important for modern breeding programs, given that a large part of the farm income comes from lamb sales. In Bulgaria, economic values and weights for dairy sheep have been calculated only for two separate flocks of the Bulgarian dairy synthetic population and so far they have not been taken into account in the breeding programs. Calculation of economic weights of productive and functional traits for this dairy population would provide valuable information on which traits are of greatest economic importance and which should be emphasized in the breeding programs.

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