Determination of animal unit and animal daily requriment of Makoii sheep breed in West Azarbayjan rangelands

Concepts of animal equivalent has been developed to express different kind and classes ofgrazing animal in common form. This concept is not fixed and usually determine on the basis of live weight and metabolic weight. More than 27 sheep breeds with different body size have been adapted and grazing on rangelands in different climatic zones of Iran. So it is not correct to use the same animal unit weight for all. Therefore it is necessary to determine animal unit for each breed. In this study, two herds of West Azarbayjan Makoii breed were selected, 3 and 4 years old ewes, 3 and 4 years old rams and 3 and 6 months lambs were weighted in two stages in each herd. For determination of dry matter requirement forage quality was taken into consideration.Daily requirement of animal for maintenance condition was calculated using NRC (1985) tables and MAFF (1984) equation. On the basis of results; animal unit was obtained 45.36 ± 2.75 kg which is near to animal unit weight calculated for whole country based on weight of all breeds.Daily requirement of animal was obtained 9.50 Mj metabolisable energy equal to 1.77 kg dry matter of available forage.