Behaviour and dietary preferences of browse species by sheep on natural pasture in Ninh Thuan province in the south-central region of Vietnam

Abstract: This MFS was conducted in Ninh Thuan province, in the south-central of Vietnam, a developing country in the south-east of Asia. The Ninh Thuan province consists of large areas of natural rangelands, which are used for animal grazing. The area is unique in Vietnam because of the hot and dry climate, which means that the vegetation is limited and the botanical composition very special. Due to the low amount of rainfall over the last years there has been a decrease in productivity and changes in the botanical composition. Ninh Thuan has the highest production of sheep in Vietnam and in 2005 there was a total number of 56,800 sheep. The sheep are of the breed Phan Rang, which can only be found in this area, and is very well adapted to the harsh and dry climate. Sheep are grazers, but when feed is scarce they are dependent on browsing.One herd of between 20-200 sheep was followed on pasture during 17 days between 4th of April and 13th of May, in order to study their behaviour and browse preferences. Observations were taken every 15 minutes to a total number of 438 registrations. The sheep were on pasture approximately between 7 am and 5 pm with a break between 11 am and 1:30 pm. Activities that were recorded are walking, grazing, browsing, eating dead plants, and other activities such as sniffing, scratching, suckling and urinating. Twelve interviews with local farmers were also conducted in order to achieve an insight of the farmers? view of the agricultural situation. The results showed that the most common activities are grazing (61.2%), walking (22.5%), eating dead plants (7.0%) and browsing (6.6%). There was no significant difference between the proportions of different activities in the morning and afternoon, but still a higher proportion of browsing could be seen in the morning. The most preferable browse species among the sheep were Xuong R