The living habits of Sheep

Sheep are common breeding animals. The body is plump and full of hair. The head is short. Males have large spiral horns, while females have no horns or only small horns. The coat color is white. Sheep are now raised all over the world. Timid in disposition. Estrus in autumn and winter. The gestation period of the female is 145 Mel 152 days. Each birth gives birth to 5 litters per fetus. The life span is 10 Mel 15 years. Sheep are thirsty and can provide human beings with products such as meat and fur.

Strong gregariousness

Sheep are gregarious and rely on each other and crowd together when they are disturbed. When driving away, there is the behavior of "head sheep" and the sound of keeping in touch. However, due to the strong gregarious behavior, it is easy to mix sheep when the distance between sheep is close. Therefore, mixed groups should be avoided in management. The gregarious behavior of different sheep breeds is different, coarse wool breeds are the strongest, and wool breeds are better than meat and wool breeds.

Strong foraging ability and wide range of feed utilization

The sheep has a narrow beak, thin and flexible lips and sharp teeth. It can eat short grass that touches the ground and make use of forage that many other livestock cannot use. And the sheep have strong limbs and hard hooves, and can walk and eat at the same time. The use of forage feed is extensive, such as a variety of forage grasses, shrubs, agricultural products and cereal seeds can be used. The experiment shows that sheep can eat 80% of the plants fed, and the utilization of crude fiber.

The rate can reach 50% to 80%.

Love cleanliness

Sheep have the habit of being clean. Sheep like to eat clean feed and drink cool and sanitary water. Fodder and drinking water are unwilling to eat and drink once they are polluted or have a bad smell. Therefore, when supplementary feeding in the house, it should be fed less and added frequently, so as to avoid waste of forage. At ordinary times, we should strengthen feeding and management, pay attention to the cleanliness and hygiene of sheep forage, sweep the trough and change drinking water frequently.

Like dry, afraid of damp and hot

Sheep are suitable to live in a dry and cool environment. The sheep house is humid and muggy, and the pasture is low-lying and humid, which is easy to infect sheep with parasitic diseases and infectious diseases, resulting in the decline of wool quality and the increase of hoof rot, affecting the growth and development of sheep. The sweat glands of sheep are underdeveloped and the heat dissipation function is poor. the effect of damp and heat on sheep should be avoided in hot weather, especially in the south of China, high temperature and humidity is an important reason affecting the development of sheep production. In addition to building the sheep house on the slope with high terrain, good ventilation and smooth drainage as far as possible, the sheep bed should be built in the sheep pen or the sheep house should be built into a building with a leaky floor.

Gentle, timid and easily frightened

Sheep have a gentle temperament and are the most timid of all kinds of livestock with poor self-defense ability. Sudden shock is easy to "blow up the crowd". It is not easy for sheep to get fat when they are frightened. Managers should usually be kind to sheep and should not yell or beat them, so as not to cause shock at the same time.

Sensitive sense of smell and hearing

Sheep have a good sense of smell, ewes mainly identify their own lambs by smell, and vision and hearing play an auxiliary role. After giving birth, the ewe licks the amniotic fluid on the surface of the lamb and is familiar with the smell of the lamb. When a lamb sucks, the ewe always sniffs the back of the lamb and uses the smell to identify whether it is her own lamb. Taking advantage of this feature, when raising lambs, as long as the foster lambs and multiple lambs are smeared with nanny's amniotic fluid, the foster care will be successful. Individual sheep have their own smell, a flock of sheep has a group smell, once the two flocks of sheep are mixed, the sheep can tell whether they are the same flock by the smell. Once they are separated from the group or separated from the lambs in grazing, they echo each other by long cries.

Nesting characteristic

Because the wool is thicker and the body surface radiates heat more slowly, it is afraid of heat but not cold. When it is hot in summer, there is often the phenomenon of "sticking up a nest". That is, the sheep will put its head under the belly of another sheep to catch cold, tie each other together, the hotter it is, and the hotter it is, the hotter it is, the hotter Therefore, summer heat prevention measures should be set up to prevent nesting, to make sheep rest and enjoy the cool, sheep farms should have shade equipment, trees can be planted or shade sheds can be built.

Strong disease resistance

Sheep have strong disease resistance. Its disease resistance varies from variety to variety. Generally speaking, the disease resistance of coarse wool sheep is stronger than that of fine wool sheep and meat breeds, and that of goats is stronger than that of sheep. Sheep in good condition have a strong tolerance to the disease, the disease is mild and generally do not show symptoms, and some even can barely graze with the herd before they die. Therefore, it is necessary to observe carefully in grazing and house feeding management in order to find sick sheep in time. If you wait until the sheep have stopped feeding or ruminating before treatment, the effect is often not good, it will bring great losses to production.

The flirting characteristics of sheep

Rams are sensitive to external hormones secreted by ewes in estrus. The ram sniffed the urine from the vulva of the ewe and curled its nose against its lips. Sometimes it slapped the ewe with its forelimbs and made courtship calls, while at the same time it made hip climbing. Ewes in exuberant estrus, some take the initiative to approach the ram, or stand still when the ram chases, the little ewe is timid, the ram panic during the chase, and accept mating only after the ram chases hard. Therefore, because ewes are not in estrus, ewes should be found by using estrus in artificial assisted mating or artificial insemination.