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Association learning by sheep for discriminating between ryegrass and white clover

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2018

G. R. Edwards ,
J. A. Newman ,
A. J. Parsons  and
J. R. Krebs
G. R. Edwards
Affiliation:
NERC Unit of Ecology and Behaviour, Department of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3PS
J. A. Newman
Affiliation:
NERC Unit of Ecology and Behaviour, Department of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3PS
A. J. Parsons
Affiliation:
Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, North Wyke, Okehampton, Devon EX20 2SB
J. R. Krebs
Affiliation:
NERC Unit of Ecology and Behaviour, Department of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3PS
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Extract

Recent grazing preference studies show that sheep offered a choice between large adjacent monocultures of perennial ryegrass and white clover choose a diet that is a mixture of the two species (ca. 0·7 white clover) (Parsons et al., 1994). One possible hypothesis to explain this is that animals need to sample different areas to know what is located there or the different plant species to know what eating each species represents and because of this include apparently less desirable foods (here ryegrass) in the diet (see Parsons et al., 1994). Edwards et al., (1996) showed that sheep can use spatial memory and so may not need to sample on an area basis. In this study, we tested directly whether sheep could distinguish between ryegrass and white clover without grazing them and whether they can form associations between the appearance of the vegetation and the food reward it represents.

Type
Poster abstracts
Information
BSAP Occasional Publication , Volume 20: Animal Choices , 1997 , pp. 84 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © The British Society of Animal Science 1997

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References

Edwards, G. R., Newman, J. A., Parsons, A. J. and Krebs, J. R. 1996. The use of spatial memory by grazing animals to locate food patches in spatially heterogeneous environments: an example with sheep. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 50:147–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, A. J., Newman, J. A., Penning, P. D., Harvey, A. and Orr, R. J. 1994. Diet preference of sheep: effects of recent diet, physiological state and species abundance. Journal of Animal Ecology 63:465–478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar