STUDY REGARDING EVOLUTION, CURRENT STATE AND PERSPECTIVES IN SHEEP BREEDING IN ROMANIA Emilia ION (RĂDUCUğĂ), Ion CĂLIN, Ion RĂDUCUğĂ

After the integration of our country within the EU have occurred major changes in the sheep breeding sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolution and situation of sheep breeding sector in Romania in relation with the sheep livestock, the number and size of sheep exploitations, sheep breed structure, improving of genetic potential of livestock and sheep productions. To achieve these objectives we have studied the official statistical data, we calculated the percentage difference between the reference years and we interpreted data obtained. The results showed that the sheep livestock has increasing with 20.8% in 2012 compared with 2002 and with 15.1% compared with 2006. In terms of number and size of sheep exploitations, the results showed that in the year 2012 there were 271,266 exploitations of sheep of which 63.9% are individual exploitations that have an average number of 4.2 heads sheep per unit. However, compared with the existing situation in 2002, the number of exploitations is 2.4 times lower in the year 2010, especially based on decreasing of small exploitations respectively those which are framed in class less than 10 heads. Compared to the total number of sheep from our country, namely 8.83 million heads in 2012, the percentage of the number of sheep included in official control is very low, respectively 3.3%. The study shows also that meat production and milk production in particular have increased significantly over the period considered, while the wool production increased slightly.