Wool type of Poonchi sheep

A total of 53 wool samples of Poonchi sheep of both sexes were collected randomly and analyzed for different wool production traits at Fleece Testing Laboratory, Kartholi, Jammu. Wool colour in Poonchi sheep was white, black and different shades of black and white. The overall ranges of crimps per inch (CPI), staple length (SL) (cm) clean wool yield (CWY) (%), fibre diameter (FD) (μ), medullation (M) (%), wool count (WC) (no.) and range in diameter (RD) were 6.00–14.00, 2.5–5.5 cm, 60.00–70.73%, 22.86–28.66 μ, 1.33–2.69%, 56.00–60.00 numbers and 10–48 μ, respectively. The Co-efficient of variations (CV) for all the traits were very low to medium. The highest CV (%) was obtained for CPI. There was no significant difference between the sexes for any wool trait under study. It had been observed that the phenotypic correlations among wool traits were moderate to high. The correlation values ranges from -0.847 between CPI and FD to 0.670 between CWY and FD. The values of analysis of wool parameters suggested that wool of Poonchi sheep is of moderate fine type which may be due to crossbreeding with Merino and Rambouillet sheep breeds.