A Study on Day-grazing to Protect Sheep against Stray Dogs

1. Day-grazing to Protect Sheep against stray dogs was compared with usual all-day-grazing from 13 July 1978 for 81 days. 8 male lambs (about 5 months old) were alloted to both treatments. A commercial concentrate was offered to the half of them (about 250g/head daily). The day-grazing lambs were grazed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the first 42 days and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the last 39 days.2. The day-grazing lambs grazed actively. The maximum grazing time of the day-grazing lambs without concentrate reached to 9.8 hours at 12-hour day-grazing and 7.8 hour at 8-hour day-grazing.3. Average daily gains of lambs in the groups of all-day-grazing without concentrate, all-day-grazing with concentrate. day-grazing without concentrate and day-grazing with concentrate were 169g, 206g. 118g and 188g, respectively.4. Although the day-grazing lambs without concentrate were 44.5kg of final body weight, 17.5kg of carcass weight, 45.8 % of dressing percentage and 5.3mm of fat thickness, the day-grazing lambs with concentrate were similare to the all-day-grazing lambs in terms of carcass characteristic. Then the results indicated that day-grazing method would not be suitable for fat-lamb production if lambs were raised without concentrate.