Individual differences in sociability and the trade-offs made by sheep grazing in a patchy environment

Abstract

In a patchy environment, sheep may have to make trade-offs between being close to companions and grazing the preferred vegetation. It has been demonstrated that individual differences in sociability, measured as the tendency to graze close to others in a group, can predict behaviour in a motivational conflict situation (Sibbald et al, 2000). An experiment was carried out, in which sheep with different sociability indices were compared in a test situation which required single animals to move away from the group in order to graze, but where stress due to physical separation was minimised.