Some Field Practices of the Sheep Owners’ Towards Management and Sheep Rearing in River Nile State-Sudan

Abstract

The study was conducted in southern part of River Nile State in northern Sudan. A total of 75 sheep owners from different households were interviewed individually using a detailed structured questionnaire on personal household information, herd formation, rearing systems and flock feeding, flock management including practiced productive and reproductive traits and production. The study aims to evaluate perception of sheep owners’ towards adopted rearing system, productive and reproductive traits. The obtained data were summarized in form of descriptive tabular and graphs. Also analysis of variance ANOVA followed by least significant difference (LSD). The results revealed that more than 65% of sheep owners had above 15 years of experience in rearing their animals and about 80% of them were either illiterate or had basic or “Khalwa” education. Also, it revealed that all respondents reared sheep followed by goat in the second rank. Northern riverine wool sheep (NRWS) is the most abundant sheep type in the study area. About 69% of sheep owners adopted open range system and semi sedentary and depend mainly on natural range and different concentrates in feeding their animals. The results showed significant differences (P<0.05) in weaning age and ram production age among NRWS, Ashgar and Abrag sheep subtypes record the highest value in most studied productive and reproductive traits. It also showed that wet summer was the most lamping season (89%) of sheep followed by winter. The major priority selection criteria of ewes and rams were size – feature while the main culling criterion was overage for both ewes and rams and low productivity arises in the second rank of culling criteria in ewes, where less sexual comes in the second rank in rams. The respondents showed that rams at different age group were higher in price among different age groups followed by ewes, lambs and yearlings. The peak time of price raising was wet summer. Internal and external V parasites were come at the first rank among frequent diseases in adult’s sheep and lamb followed by nutritional diseases and unspecific diarrhea in adults sheep and lambs respectively; also they showed that the main production handicaps of sheep production in the study area were feed shortage, diseases and security. The study conclude that few numbers of other desert sheep subtypes were found in the study area, sheep owners could inseminate their sheep twice a year based onbody condition and availability of feed.