Research Article | OPEN ACCESS
Sheep Reproductive Performance and Lamb Survivability under Mature Oil Palm
1E. Larbi, 1S. Anim-Okyere, 1F. Danso, 1I. Danso and 2E. Marfo-Ahenkora
1CSIR-Oil Palm Research Institute, P.O. Box 74, Kade, Ghana
2CSIR-Animal Research Institute, P.O. Box AH 20, Achimota, Accra, Ghana
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 2014 23:4927-4930
Received: December 21, 2013 | Accepted: January 11, 201 | Published: June 20, 2014
Abstract
The study examines the seasonal reproductive performance of sheep reared under oil palm plantation and the subsequent survival of lambs up to weaning age. On-station studies were carried out from 2007 to 2010 at CSIR-Oil Palm Research Institute, Kusi (001.45 W, 0600 N and 150 m above sea level). The average total rainfall is about 1600 mm/annum with average daily maximum temperature of 32±2°C. Sheep productivity (% lambing, litter size per ewe, survival rate, monthly birth and death rates) were the variables measured. An annual average of 58 ewes and 4 lambs were used. Results show that while lambing rate was 98%, lamb survival was 63.84%. This implies that almost two-fifth of yearly reproduction was lost to mortality with significantly large number of lambs dying in August. Though there was high percentage of lambing, this was offset by high mortality of lambs.
Keywords:
Lamb mortality, lamb survivability, oil palm sheep-integration, sheep productivity,
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Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests.
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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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