The objective of this experiment was to study the carcass traits and their correlation with the tissue composition. Twenty-two intact male lambs, sired by Texel males, from crossbreed Texel -Ideal dams were used. At the beginning of the experiment (24 hours after birth), four lambs were slaughtered to serve as reference and a group of six lambs were slaughtered at weaning time and at 28 and 33 kg LW. The lambs were confined in individual stall with their respective mothers until weaning time (45 days of age). In that time, the diet was fed to supply the nutritional requirement of the dams and was constituted of 70: 30 forage to concentrate ratio. From the weaning until the slaughter time, the diet fed to the lambs was constituted by 60:40 forage to concentrate ratio. The cold carcass yield were 51.20, 45.14, 42.26 and 41.73%, respectively, for the slaughtered weight of 20.93, 28.3, 32.57 and 4.12 kg LW. The soft tissue/bone relation was of 1.74 and 4.24, respectively, for lambs slaughtered at birth and at 32.57 kg LW. The highest coefficients of determination and correlation were obtained for the carcass muscle percentage on the same tissue proportions in the rib. The coefficients of determination and correlation were, respectively, 71.65 and 0.85. For the percentage of bone and fat equations in the carcass, the highest coefficients of determination were obtained on the same tissues proportions in the rib.
carcass; lamb; meat production; sheep; tissue composition
