Modeling the relationships among technological properties of sheep individual animal factors, milk composition, and minerals using generalized additive mixed models.

The dairy sheep industry faces ongoing challenges in optimizing cheese production and enhancing efficiency across different breeds. This study provides crucial insights into how breed-specific factors, lactation stages, parity, and milk composition, including mineral concentrations, affect cheese yield and nutrients recovery in the curd. The aims of this study were to characterize individual sheep milk samples for cheesemaking efficiency by measuring 3 cheese yield traits (%CY; fresh curd, TS, and water retained) and 5 recovery of nutrients traits (%REC; fat, protein, lactose, TS, and energy) and to examine how these traits change throughout the lactation, considering different sheep breeds, parities, and variations in milk composition and mineral concentrations.