© Te authors. Tis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). 306 Original Paper Czech Journal of Animal Science, 68, 2023 (7): 306–312 htps://doi.org/10.17221/221/2022-CJAS Experimental evaluation of milk yield and selected traits of milk quality in Clun Forest ewes Jan Kuchtík 1 , Květoslava Šustová 2 , Tomáš Kopec 1 *, Ferenc Pajor 3 , Leona Konečná 1 1 Faculty of AgriSciences, Mendel University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic 2 Ambis University, Praha 8 – Libeň, Czech Republic 3 Institute of Animal Sciences, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Gödöllő, Hungary *Corresponding author: tomas.kopec@mendelu.cz Citation: Kuchtík J., Šustová K., Kopec T., Pajor F., Konečná L. (2023): Experimental evaluation of milk yield and selected traits of milk quality in Clun Forest ewes. Czech J. Anim. Sci., 68: 306–312. Abstract: In general, it can be stated that the economics of non-dairy sheep breeding in the Czech Republic experienced a worsening trend in recent years. One of the ways to improve this situation is to use some of these breeds also for milk production. One of the possible breeds usable for milk production, especially for the good milk production of mothers, is the Clun Forest (CF). The aim of our experiment was to evaluate the daily milk yield (DMY) and the contents of fat (F), total protein (TP) and lactose (L), pH, titratable acidity (TA), concentration of urea (CU) and somatic cell count (SCC) in CF ewes during lactation. In our experiment, the following means of individual traits for the whole lactation were found: DMY: 579 g, contents of F, TP and L: 6.73%, 5.82% and 4.98%, pH: 6.55, TA: 8.74 °SH, CU: 36.08 mg/100 ml and log SCC: 4.71. The stage of lactation had a significant (P < 0.01) effect on DMY, contents of F and TP and pH and TA. The results of our experiment show that CF ewes had lower DMY than dairy breeds (DB). However, the majority of the milk quality traits was comparable to DB. Moreover, the high fat and protein contents and the values of most other milk quality traits are good prerequisites for high cheese yield and optimal final quality of other sheep’s milk products. The results of our experiment suggest that CF ewes could be used for milk production while the milk production of CF ewes should ensure an improvement in the economics and competitiveness of smaller farms in particular. Keywords: basic milk composition; acidity of milk; somatic cells; stage of lactation enced by the decline in the opportunity to sell lambs to restaurants during the Covid-19 crisis and by lower subsidies for sheep breeding than for the breeding of beef cattle. Some breeders also significantly reduced their numbers of sheep or even stopped breeding due to repeated wolf attacks on their flocks. In general, the economics of dairy sheep farms in the Czech Republic is bet- ter in the long term than the economics of farms In the last thirty years, sheep breeding in the Czech Republic has been mainly focused on the production of heavy lambs. However, espe- cially on smaller farms, this production has been economically problematic for a long time. This fact was mainly manifested from 2016 to 2021. During this period, the number of sheep in the Czech Republic decreased by approximately 20%. In our opinion, this decrease was mainly influ- Supported by the research plan NAZV KUS QJ1230044 (Czech Republic).