Ovulation rate (OR) and litter size (LS) were recorded in local hair sheep of Martinique and in local x Lacaune-viande crossbreeds, in order to assess prenatal losses. Local hair sheep LS and OR were 1.91 and 2.41, respectively. Prenatal losses increased with OR, from 0.22 (OR = 2) up to 1.50 (OR > 3). The ewes (69.7%) with LS = 1 had actually lost at least one ovum, against 25.9% of the ewes w...

The paper studies the economy and ecology of sheep farming at the farm level and includes 2 different categories of the animals, ewes (adult females) and lambs. The model is analyzed in a Nordic economic and biological setting. During the outdoor grazing season, animals face limited grazing resources so that the weight gain of lambs is determined by the per-animal vegetation consumption. On the...

A technique using fresh feeding signs as an index of density was validated and used to survey the effects of sheep grazing on vole population densities in four upland habitats in the northern Peak District National Park, UK. In grazed areas Molinia caerulea grasslands supported most voles, Nardus stricta grasslands supported fewer and Eriophorum vaginatum and Calluna vulgaris-dominated areas su...

Transmission patterns of Fasciola hepatica were investigated on beef cattle (n=3) and sheep (n=3) farms in Sweden between 2011 and 2012. The dynamics of fluke infection, particularly estimated time of infection, were screened each grazing season by ELISA detection of antibodies in lambs (n=94) and first grazing season calves (n=61). Colostral transfer of F. hepatica antibodies from seropositive...

1 In this work we propose a novel method to analyze and recognize automatically 2 sound signals of chewing and biting. For the automatic segmentation and classi3 fication of acoustical ingestive behaviour of sheep the method use an appropriate 4 acoustic representation and statistical modelling based on hidden Markov models. 5 We analyzed 1813 seconds of chewing data from four sheep eating two ...

Intensive livestock grazing was an important cause of reduction in surface fire occurrence in many Western forests. This effect occurred primarily during the late 1800s and early decades of the 1900s. Very large herds of sheep, goats, cattle and horses removed the grass cover in under stories of ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests. In 1890, for example, there were more than 5 million sheep...

The distribution of sheep was monitored for three years on part of an unimproved high-country summer range composed of several land units with different phases of degraded tall tussock and short tussock grassland. Sheep distribution was found to be non-random and to vary seasonally. Available dry matter and water content of inter-tussock vegetation were monitored on well vegetated land units fo...

BACKGROUND Grassland degradation caused by overgrazing poses a threat to both animal husbandry and environmental sustainability in most semi-arid areas especially north China. Although the Chinese Government has made huge efforts to restore degraded grasslands, a considerable attempt has unfortunately failed due to an inadequate consideration of economic benefits to local communities. METHODO...

BACKGROUND Current plant--herbivore interaction models and experiments with mammalian herbivores grazing plant monocultures show the superiority of a maximizing forage quality strategy (MFQ) over a maximizing intake strategy (MI). However, there is a lack of evidence whether grazers comply with the model predictions under field conditions. METHODOLOGY/FINDINGS We assessed diet selection of sh...

Many biodiversity experiments have demonstrated that plant diversity can stabilize productivity in experimental grasslands. However, less is known about how diversity-stability relationships are mediated by grazing. Grazing is known for causing species losses, but its effects on plant functional groups (PFGs) composition and species asynchrony, which are closely correlated with ecosystem stabil...