Goats and sheep grazing on cereal stubble after harvesting

Cereal stubble after harvesting is an important feeding resource for small ruminants in Greece during summer. At that period forage in rangelands is dry and of low nutritive value. Hence, shepherds are forced to lead their flocks for grazing to barley and wheat stubble. At the low elevation zone of northern Greece, such grazing takes place from middle June till end of September. In this paper, the diet selection, nutritive value and grazing activities of goats and sheep grazing on cereal stubble after harvesting were investigated. Forbs were the main component of diet selected by goats and sheep (63.6% and 72.4 % respectively) while cereal stubble contribution was significantly (p0.05) higher for sheep (21.3%) than for goats (11.9%). Goats selected significantly (p0.05) higher amounts of woody species than sheep (23.7% and 0.4% respectively), which preferred greater amounts of grasses than goats (5.9% and 0.8% respectively). Nutritive value of diet selected by sheep was better than goats probably due to the greater contribution of forbs. Feeding was the main activity of both animal species followed by moving and standing. Ruminating and lying were not observed for both animal species probably due to the time spent resting between the two grazing bouts.