Behavioral response and genotypical features of grazing sheep in arid zone

Abstract

Abstract The issues of natural pastures with different intensities of grazing and behavioral response of fine-wool and hair sheep, genotypic characteristics of sheep by blood groups, variability in antigen frequencies, and their relationship with the adaptability of various sheep breeds to a grazing system are of particular interest. The behavior of sheep in grazing was studied in bands of ewes of hair fat-tailed Kalmyk, Edilbay, and fine-wool Grozny sheep breeds in the agricultural production cooperative Kirovsky, the Republic of Kalmykia. Under extensive grazing, pastures had a high yield of air-dry mass in June at the end of the growing season of steppe plant species, with Gramineae in the associations being more actively grazed than wormwood. Grazing hair sheep of the Kalmyk breed kept pasture 1.4 (P<0.01) times more productive than fine-wool sheep at an average load and 1.3 times at a low load. A favorable forecast for the development of natural pastures in the Republic of Kalmykia was the 1:2 ratio between Asterácea and Poáceae in the first two or three years of grazing and 1:1 in the ensuing years. The antigen pool of the Grozny breed was significantly different from antigens of hair breed. The antigen structure of the Edilbay breed was similar to the Kalmyk one. The blood group studies showed that the fine-wool and hair breeds had high antigenic similarities in terms of the O antigen, with its frequency of 0.879-0.724. The Cb antigen of the C system was frequent; almost all sheep, regardless of the breed, had the gene in 0.592-0.652 cases.