Abstract
The effectiveness and competitiveness of sheep breeding directly depends on increasing the productivity of animals and improving the quality of products obtained from them, and this has been achieving by targeted breeding using the genetic potential of sheep breeds. The solution to this problem can be implemented through the rational use of breed resources of domestic and imported sheep breeding. Sheep breeding in Kazakhstan is the oldest branch of animal husbandry, which plays a major role in providing the national economy with specifi c types of raw materials and food. Sheep produce the largest amount of various products: wool for diff erent purposes, mutton, fat raw materials, sheep’s milk, sheep skin-fur-leather raw materials, lamb pelts. The whole of Kazakhstan and the West Kazakhstan region are characterized by a wide variety of natural, climatic and economic factors that have a specifi c infl uence on the development of sheep breeding in certain regions. In the West Kazakhstan region breeding work is carried out in a herd of Akzhaik wool-and-meat producing sheep to improve individual productive indicators by using the genetic potential of the gene pool of diff erent semifi ne-wool breeds, so breeding and improvement in order to increase the productivity of Akzhaik meat-wool sheep with double productivity is relevant and has great economic signifi cance. The inheritance and correlation of productive traits in Akzhaik wool-and-meat producing sheep obtained from diff erent mating options have been studied in the paper. It has been established that the inheritance of the main economically useful traits is additive in nature in an intermediate type with minor deviations towards one of the parent forms. The coeffi cients of heritability of live weight, clip, length and fi ber fi neness of wool are within the average values. The highest correlation coeffi cients (0,65–0,70) have been found in all groups between the length and fi ber fi neness of wool.