Grete Helen Meisfjord Jørgensen defended her thesis on December 3rd 2010

Ane Gro Siri Skjelfjord

Physical and social environment for sheep - Effects on spacing behaviour, social interactions and activity budgets in housed ewes

Keeping sheep indoors in stimulus poor environments with high densities and fully slatted floors, often involve limited resources, frequent handling and little space to retreat or avoid social interactions. This may in turn affect feed intake, growth, reproduction and overall health. Through the five papers presented in this thesis we have aimed to investigate how the physical environment affects spacing, social interactions and activity budgets in housed ewes. Our findings are of both theoretical and practical importance. The Nor-x and the Spæl sheep breeds display different spacing behaviour in the same environment and this might be an effect of different selection pressures on production traits. Sheep prefer to rest against a wall and they compete for these preferred resting places. Being in larger groups did not decrease the aggression level among ewes, but synchrony of both feeding and resting behaviour declined and fewer sheep were observed to stand in queue for access to feed.It is possible that the limited wall perimeter in larger groups might have resulted in an increase in aggressive interactions for preferred resting space, underlining the importance of providing a sufficient number of resting places. Installing solid resting platforms on top of the slatted floors may increase resting comfort for ewes, these should however be placed in relation to walls, be 0.5-0.6 m wide and have a small slope in order to drain off urine. Installing additional walls on a solid resting area did not increase total resting or resting synchrony. Sheep do utilize an outdoor area as part of the total area throughout winter and no detrimental effects of weather factors were identified. A roof covering the outdoor area helps keeping the surface dry and the feed should be located away from the resting area in order to ensure undisturbed resting.

Updated: 06.12.10
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