Genetic improvement helps sheep give birth to five lambs in Oman

Muscat: For the first time in the Sultanate, a sheep has given birth to five lambs, as part of the genetic improvement of Omani breeds programme, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries announced.
Normally, a sheep gives birth to one or two lambs at a time. The odds of a sheep giving birth to five lambs are reportedly one in a million. While a few cases of sheep having quintuplets have been reported in Britain and Australia, Oman saw its first case this week in Bahla.
This came about after specialists from the animal research centre at the Wilayat of Bahla used the genetic improvement programme to impregnate the Omani native sheep.
The ministry said, “The programme of genetic improvement for the production of twins in Omani sheep has succeeded in producing two, three, and four lambs from a single mother. This is the first time we’ve got five lambs from a single mother since the establishment of the centre in 1990.”
The ministry added that the Omani sheep breed had positively responded to the programme, which will lead in achieving the highest genetic return expected in the future.
Abdullah bin Rabee Al Wa’eli, Director of the Animal Research Centre in Bahla, said: “The genetic improvement programme of the local Omani sheep and goat dynasty began some 10 years ago in the centre in wadi Qurayat, with the aim of increasing the number of births produced per mother during the birth season or so-called vertical expansion in animal offspring.”
Al Wa’eli added that the centre used the selective breeding programme, using new methods of the animals’ breeding and offspring.
Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant males and females will sexually reproduce and have offspring together.
"There are characteristics for the selection of mothers such as the fertility rate, number of births and milk production. Lambs that were born are also selected according to the characteristics of twins, body weight at birth and milk production,” he explained.
About the programme, he said that such a genetic improvement programme takes a long time and requires several generations of selection to reach the desired goal. The Omani lamb is one of the local breeds characterised by high rates of growth. The average weight of the mature animal is 38kg. The average fertility rate is 90 per cent and the birth rate is some 170 per cent.
It is worth mentioning that the Omani lamb is one of the few breeds in the Arab world that can so highly produce twins, which calls for conducting research at the molecular level to search for the Booroola gene, the gene responsible for producing twins in sheep through raising the rate of ovulation in females and hence increasing the number of births per female.
The Booroola gene is a major prolificacy gene that leads to twinning in sheep, and hence, can improve animal productivity.