REVIEW OF THE SHEEP SECTOR IN THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA: DISTRIBUTION, FARM SIZE, BREED STRUCTURE AND MILK PRODUCTION CAPACITIES

Sheep breeding has an important role in the country even if changes are present in the sector. The majority of the national farms in the country are farms with a size up to 50 heads (35.75%), the second most present farms (35.12%) are farms between 301-500 heads. The highest number of sheep are bred in the Polog region (20.04 %), the second most dominant regions are Eastern (15.97%) and Pelagonia region (15.35%), while in the rest of the country regions sheep are present with less than 15%. Highly represented in the breed structure of the sheep population in the country are the Ovcepolka (26.96%) and Sharplaninska pramenka (26.42%), highly dairy productive sheep breeds are present with less than 1% of the national flock. A high presence of different types of crosses is present in the national flock. Favourable structure of breeding categories is present in the national flock even if decreasing trend in a total number of sheep is detected. Variation in the number of milking sheep and average raw milk per milking sheep is noticed. Future activities in the sector should be oriented towards the improvement of genetic capacities, improvement of breeding and feeding strategies