Effects of Ambient Temperature on Certain Ovine Fat Characteristics

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Abstract
Three separate experiments were conducted to study the effects of different ambient temperatures on composition of ovine fat. Each experiment was designed to investigate a different aspect of temperature influence on certain fat characteristics. In the initial experiment, temperature extremes caused highly significant (P<.01) differences in iodine numbers (IN) and melting points (MP) of the fat between the groups of lambs, and shearing also had an additional significant (P<.05) effect on IN and MP. In Experiments 2 and 3, the lambs were switched from one treatment to the other utilizing a crossover design to determine whether the degree of unsaturation of lamb fat could be changed at will by changing ambient temperature. All lambs in Experiment 3 were fat biopsied and allotted to the temperature treatments in a manner which allowed the average initial IN of both treatments to be equal. Results of Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the lambs synthesized an increasingly higher degree of unsaturated fat during growth regardless of temperature. However, lambs exposed to low temperature treatments deposited fat which was more unsaturated than fat from high temperature treated lambs. The results indicated that environmental temperatures have an effect on the degree of saturation of subcutaneous lamb fat.

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