The effects of grazing management strategies on the vegetation, diet quality, intake and performance of free grazing sheep

The typical steppe is a major region for sheep meat production in north of china, but most of the area has now become degraded inducing serious constraints for livestock management. In this study we compared the effects of the grazing management strategies on herbage mass (HM), sheep intake, diet chemical composition, and digestibility, and on live weight gain (LWG) of sheep grazing in typical steppe of north china during the growing season. Five grazing management strategies which have different stocking rate at different season were evaluated. The grazing managements were no grazing in the late spring and stocking rate at 9.3 and 6.7 sheep/ha in the summer and autumn (SA1); no grazing in the late spring and stocking rate at 6.7 and 9.3 sheep/ha in the summer and autumn (SA2); continuous grazing at 9.3 sheep/ha through all seasons (SA3); continuous grazing at 9.3 sheep/ha through late spring and summer and changing to 6.7 sheep/ha in the autumn (SA4); continuous grazing at 6.7 sheep/ha through all seasons (SA5). The results showed that HM decreased from 1.0 t DM/ha at SA1 and SA2 to 0.34–0.37 t DM/ha in SA3 and SA4 (P