Preference of sheep among annual legumes is more closely related to plant nutritive characteristics as plants mature

Abstract

We hypothesised that the preference of sheep among a wide range of annual legumes at successive stages of plant phenology would be related to laboratory measurements of the chemical composition of the forage. We tested this by examining the relative preferences of sheep among 20 genotypes of annual plants at three phenological stages of plant growth using the Chesson–Manly selection index. Plant material was collected for laboratory analyses at each phenological stage and samples were analysed for nitrogen, sulfur, neutral detergent fibre, acid detergent fibre, in vitro digestibility and water soluble carbohydrates. Sheep differed in relative preference among the plant genotypes within and between each of the three phenological stages. Vegetative characteristics that were correlated with relative preference also differed with plant phenology. Measured characteristics of the plant material explained an increasing proportion of the variance in relative preference with successive phenological stages (4.8, 51.1 and 60.9% at the vegetative, reproductive and senesced stages; P < 0.001). The relative preference of the sheep depended on the overall quality of the vegetation. When the quality of the vegetation was high, relative preference did not correlate well with measured nutritive characteristics. However, when the vegetation was of low quality, sheep selected plants with characteristics associated with higher nutritive value. We conclude that sheep adopt different foraging strategies in response to changing vegetation characteristics and increase their preference for plants that increase their intake of digestible dry matter as the sward matures.