The Use of Grazing Control for Intensive Fat‐lamb Production

Abstract

A comparison of 3 systems of creep grazing, at a stocking rate of 6 ewes and 12 lambs per acre, indicated that lambs on a set‐stocking management with a lateral creep area grew at a significantly (P < 0·05) slower rate than lambs folded with a lateral creep area or those rotationally grazed with a forward creep area. A similar difference was apparent in the ability of the managements to maintain the ewes liveweights. However, it is suggested that these results were not the direct outcome of the applied treatments per se. Parasite burdens in the lambs were low on all the treatments and there were no significant differences between them.

The Use of Grazing Control for Intensive Fat‐lamb Production

“…Individual dung samples were collected at fortnightly intervals from all the ewes and lambs. Ewes' worm-egg counts were estimated by the method described by Broadbent (1). The lamb samples were all treated individually by carrying out a faecalworm-egg count on a 1 g sub-sample taken at random from the dung collected from that lamh.…”

“…However there have been few studies on the effects of grazing management on fat-lamh production and the effects of the various factors of grazing management have not been assessed where a creep area for the lambs has been used. An earlier experiment (1) had shown that the grazing systems under comparison could not be distinguished on a 'per acre' basis when the stocking rate was 6 ewes and 12 lambs per acre. Therefore, in 1960, a study of the effects of grazing systems and stocking rates on the output of fat lamb per acre was undertaken.…”