Nutritional Management of The Transhumant Sheep and Goat in Greece

Abstract

In Mediterranean countries dairy sheep and goat farming is based on grazing even though production system can vary from extensive, where nutrition is based on the exploitation of natural resources, to intensive, where nutrition can be a combination of grazing and parallel supplementation of feed. Transhumance is an extensive farming system where herds are moved to uplands in order to exploit the mountainous rangelands. Purpose of this paper was to study the nutritional management of transhumant sheep and goat herds in Greece. Non parametric analysis was performed to a sample of 551 transhumant herds. The results revealed differences of the nutritional management performed between different species and breeds of the reared animals. More specifically nutrition of goats and indigenous mountainous breeds was based mainly on grazing even to lowlands while nutrition of sheep and improved dairy breeds tended to be more integrated with combination of grazing to supplementation of feed.