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cje ›› 2009, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (11): 2299-2304.

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Behavioral patterns of 5-month old Aohan fine-wool male lambs under stall-feeding.

YAN Le-yan1;YUE Du-bing1;LUO Hai-ling1;ZONG Ze-jun2   

  1. 1State Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China;2Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Research Institute, Chifeng 024031, Inner Mongolia, China
  • Online:2009-11-10 Published:2009-11-10

Abstract: By the methods of focal sampling and all occurrence recording, a continuous observation on the behaviors of 5-month old Aohan fine-wool male lambs under stall-feeding was conducted day and night in an experimental sheep farm in August 2007. The male lambs spent (519.37 ±14.27) min·d-1 for ruminating, (326.43±5.44) min·d-1 for eating, (94.67±10.41) min·d-1 for moving, (98.18±12.97) min·d-1 for standing, and (357.69±14.91) min·d-1  for resting. A diurnal rhythm was observed in the behaviors of the lambs, i.e., the time for eating and ruminating was longer at night than at daytime, while that for moving, resting, and standing was longer at daytime than at night. In the whole day, the time ratio for ruminating to for eating was 1.59:1.00, and the total number of ruminated cuds was 581.83±45.57. Understanding the behaviors of the male lambs would help to the improvement of management practices for rearing Aohan fine-wool sheep under stall-feeding.

Key words: Golf course, Grub, Temporal niche, Spatial niche, Athletic areas