- "Performance and utilization of Northern European short-tailed breeds of sheep and their crosses in North America: a review"
Thomas DL, Animal 4(8): 1283-1296 Aug 2010. The performance of the Finnsheep breed in North America relative to domestic breeds has been thoroughly investigated.
- "Effect of protein degradability on milk production of dairy ewes"
Mikolayunas-Sandrock C, Thomas DL, Armentano LE et al. Journal of Dairy Science 92(9): 4507-4513 September 2009. The objective of this experiment was to determine the effect of protein degradability of dairy sheep diets on milk yield and protein utilization across 2 levels of milk production.
- "Udder measurements and milk production in two Awassi sheep genotypes and their crosses"
Iniguez L, Hilali M, Thomas DL et al. Journal of Dairy Science 92(9): 4613-4620 September 2009. To improve the effectiveness of community-based breeding programs for increased milk production, the values of different udder measurements for predicting milk production traits during the milking period were assessed over 3 yr on 273 Awassi ewes.
- "Effects of supplementation and stage of lactation on performance of grazing dairy ewes"
Mikolayunas, CM; Thomas, DL; Albrecht, KA, et al., Journal of Dairy Science 91 (4): 1477-1485, Apr 2008. In trial 2, 96 two-, three-, and four-year-old grazing dairy ewes in midlactation (112 +/- 21 DIM) were randomly assigned to 4 treatments of 0, 0.41, 0.82, or 1.24 kg of dry matter/d per ewe of whole corn. Average test-day milk production increased linearly and milk fat percentage decreased quadratically with increasing amounts of corn supplementation. Milk protein yield increased linearly, and milk urea N levels decreased quadratically with increasing amounts of corn supplementation, suggesting an improvement in the utilization of pasture protein with increasing dietary energy intake.
- "Effect of prepartum photoperiod on milk production and prolactin concentration of dairy ewes"
Mikolayunas CM, Thomas DL, Dahl GE, et al., Journal of Dairy Science 91 (1): 85-90 Jan 2008. These data suggest that decreased prepartum photoperiod may be important for increasing milk production in dairy ewes and may provide a management strategy for dairy sheep producers to increase milk yield.