Spatio-temporal analysis of sheep and goats grazing in different forage resources of Northern Greece

Grazing animal moving patterns are largely affected by the shepherd himself but also related with the grazing season as well as the kind of livestock species and the available forage resources. In this paper, the spatial distribution of representative flocks of sheep and goats were recorded in different grazing areas of Askos village in Northern Greece in order to study the total time spent for the activities of feeding, moving, ruminating and standing in different forage resources during the day as well as the time they devoted for the activity of feeding during the year. It was found that sheep and goats used to a different extend the grazing areas, depending on season, and vegetation type. More specifically, during the spring period, both animal kinds spent more time (sheep 255 min/day and goats 298 min/day) in rangelands (mainly shrublands and grasslands) than in agricultural land (mainly temporal pastures and fallow land; 108 min/day for sheep and 123 min/day for goats). During summer, goats used more agricultural land (mainly cereal stubble and fallow land) than rangelands (325 min/day and 255 min/day, respectively), while sheep did the opposite (270 min/day and 398 min/day, respectively). Rangelands were mainly used during the winter period, when weather conditions allowed animals to graze (2475 min/day for sheep and 3025 min/day for goats). It seems that animals spent more time searching for feed in rangelands and this was more pronounced during spring for goats and in summer for sheep. Agricultural land and rangelands supplemented each other in providing forage throughout the year, while animal activities were diversified according to animal kind and season.