Lacaune sheep

This was the result of a large-scale, rigorous selection program organized by a French government agency.

This program included artificial insemination of several million ewes over the years, a vast array of government support for recording the performance of the progeny on many farms with respect to the milk yield and other outcomes, improved knowledge about animal management and nutrition for sheep milk production, and the willingness of many farmers to participate in the program and take advantage of what was being learned.

The combination of these and other factors brought about an improvement of 6.3% per year in milk yield per ewe in the breed over the 30-year period.

"[4] The success of the large-scale breeding program has not resulted in the extinction of the pre-existing, lower-milk-yielding Lacaunes.

[3] When being milked, Lacaune sheep have an oxytocin release that is higher than other breeds with teat stimulation.

Lacaune have a smaller area in their gland cistern of their udder than other dairy sheep breeds like East Friesian.

They also have the highest udder depth of all the milking sheep breeds which correlates to their higher productivity.

[7] Due to the surrounding landscape, Lacaune dairy sheep are most adapted to pasture management.

Due to the intensification of the dairy production systems, Lacaune sheep spend part of the year in the sheepfold.

One study showed that Lacaune have a higher production in the beginning of lactation than at the end compared to other breeds.

Lambs are allowed to suckle for 5 weeks and then are weaned off so the ewes' milk can be used for production of Roquefort cheese.

Intensive management and testing were done with these sheep that produced, after a few generations, breeding rams that were able to transfer their genetics to the rest of the populations through mainly artificial insemination.

[10] Today, the program has expanded its focus to improving other important aspects such as udder quality, lower somatic cell counts, and milk components.

One of the reasons that this programs became so successful was the intense decrease in the cost of genotyping and sequencing the genome in animals.