Feeding behavior of Santa Inês sheep in pastures of Cynodon dactylon and Andropogon gayanus
Sousa, Paulo Henrique Amaral Araújo deBorges, Laylson da SilvaBarros Junior, Cicero PereiraLima, Barbara Silveira Leandro deAmorim, Diego SousaAndrade, Tiago Vieira deFonseca, Wéverson LimaSousa Júnior, Severino Cavalcante deSá, Felipe Adalberto de
The objective of this study was to compare the behavior of sheep in different pastures, checking for possible differences in time spent grazing, leisure, and the number of bites of animals. 10 sheep Santa Inês were used, at the age of two years, with an average weight of 25.25 ± 2.65 kg. The experimental design was completely randomized with two treatments (Andropogon gayanus pastures and Cynodon dactylon cv. Vaquero) and five replicates per treatment. The trial lasted five days. Two evaluations were performed with duration of 24 hours each, for a day and the average of the two assessments was used in the statistical analysis. It may be noted that as the number of bits, the highest peak occurred in the early hours of the morning (22.16 bites per minute). Daily grazing time was higher (P 0.05) for grazing Cynodon dactylon cv. Vaquero (14.76 hours). For the time in daily idleness was observed the highest values for the pasture of Andropogon gayanus (12.06 hours). We conclude that the sheep had higher acceptability and grazing activity in Cynodon dacytlon cv. Vaquero pasture.(AU)
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