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The sheep performances in a grassland-based system is improved when combined with beef cattle

Vazeille, Karine and Jury, C. and Prache, Sophie and Sepchat, Bernard and Troquier, Christophe and Veysset, Patrick and Benoit, Marc (2021) The sheep performances in a grassland-based system is improved when combined with beef cattle. In: Book of Abstracts of the 72nd Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science , Wageningen Academic Publishers , p. 374 .

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Summary

The specifications and the high price of feed in organic farming require implementing forage fattening. Based on the principles of agroecology, we hypothesized that the livestock farming system performance (animal productivity, environment and level of inputs) would be improved by associating beef cattle and sheep, allowing better valorisation of forages and parasitism control for the sheep. Three suckler farming systems (cattle (CAT), sheep (SH), mixed sheep-cattle (MIX)) were managed for 5 years into separate farmlets in INRAE Herbipole experimental farm, in order to test this hypothesis and the feasibility of producing beef and sheep-meat with only grass in a context of permanent grassland at 1000-1,300 m asl. The results showed that MIX sheep took advantage of the association, with a lower use of concentrates and anthelmintics and a better lamb growth rate compared to SH. Despite a satisfactory degree of fatness, the carcass of young cattle were considered too light by the industry with poor price. The high need for conserved forages for beef fattening in winter, coupled with droughts, has generated additional costs through the purchase of hay.

Item Type: Conference paper, poster etc. (Poster)
Agrovoc keywords:
Language
Value
URI
UNSPECIFIED
farming systems
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_2807
UNSPECIFIED
beef
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_861
UNSPECIFIED
sheep finishing
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_f4524cca
UNSPECIFIED
grassland management
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_3364
Subjects: Themes > Farming systems
Affiliations: European Union > Core-organic > CORE Organic Cofund > Mix-Enable
France > INRAE - National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment
Depositing User: AEprints Admin
Date Deposited: 16 Dec 2021 13:57
Last Modified: 09 Oct 2025 10:48
URI: https://aeprints.org/id/eprint/155

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