Sheep Behaviour

In the systems we promote, sheep will spend much of their lives grazing outdoors

Understanding Behaviour

Knowledge of animals’ natural behaviour is essential in ensuring we create an environment, manage and care for individual animals and flocks in a manner that enables them to express themselves naturally and to remain healthy with a high quality of life. The behaviour of sheep is likely to be a complex interaction between their genetics and the fundamentally important early life experiences with their dam, further complicated by their association with their peers, particularly around weaning, and the quality and availability of grazing (Lawrence and Dwyer, 2000).

Maternal Behaviour

Maternal behaviour is key to ensuring survival of lambs, particularly when a ewe has two or more offspring. Newborn lambs need milk and immunological protection shortly after birth, and early interactions between the mother and the young are critical in this respect. Bonding, and consequently survival, of twins can be considerably improved if the ewe remains at the birth site for a minimum of 6 hours, and this can be encouraged in part through feeding management. Two major factors contribute to the formation of this early bonding: postnatal vocal communication and sucking (Nowak, 1996).

The ewe makes a low level bleating noise, standing so as to encourage the lamb to find the udder and start suckling (Dwyer, 2013)

Research at the Scotland’s Rural College has shown that:

• lambs that are quick to stand and suck after birth have better survival than lambs that are slow to get up and suck.
• lamb behaviours are influenced by lamb genetics – breed, selection line within breed and sire of the lamb all affected early lamb behaviours. Lamb behaviour immediately after birth is heritable, suggesting that selection for lamb behavioural traits could improve lamb vigour at birth and increase lamb survival.
• lamb rectal temperatures are correlated with lamb behaviour. Taking a lambs temperature soon after birth could provide useful information on lamb vigour.

The ewe and lamb maintain a close spatial relationship over the first week of life. After this period lambs gather into peer play groups and up to 4 weeks of age they go increasingly longer distance from their dam (Morgan & Arnold, 1974). Nurturing and recognition are the key components of early maternal care, and the ewe expresses these through immediate licking and grooming behaviour, which enables her to learn the smell of her offspring (Poindron et al., 2007).

What About Breed and Behaviour?

As well as recognising their mothers’ voice, lambs also visually recognise breeds (Lawrence and Dwyer, 2000) and are attracted by the sight of the same breed in the absence of their mother (Walser, 1980). There are significant breed differences in grazing, activity and social interactions. Maternal influence plays an important role in shaping the behaviour of their offspring as they develop, although this is not evident immediately after birth, where breed differences are most evident with regard to sucking and early vigour and play behaviour.

Social grouping, associations and activity patterns in sheep are influenced by breed although it is not clear whether these are entirely genetic differences or differences associated with learning and adaptation resulting from different environmental and social experiences, especially during early life (Lawrence and Dwyer, 2000).

Sheep can discriminate between breeds and there is evidence of strong preferential mixing between sheep of the same breed (Winfield and Mullaney, 1973; Arnold and Pahl, 1974; Walser and Hague, 1980).

Eating Habits

Sheep may be encouraged to graze areas that they have been exposed to early in life

Social learning influences dietary habits, with lambs generally acquiring a preference for foods or grazing behaviours that they have learned about from their mothers or from young companions (Stolba et al., 1990; Lawrence, 1990; Lawrence and Wood-Gush, 1988). They also have a preference for feeds that are nutritious and avoid those that are toxic, again following early positive or negative experiences (Scott et al., 1995).

The location of preferred foods will influence where sheep choose to forage. As they grow, lambs will imitate the mother’s preferences for grazing location (Lawrence and Dwyer, 2000). It has been proposed that exposing social groups of sheep to underutilized habitat types early in life may increase their usage of these areas at later stages and therefore careful and strategic grazing management can offer the best opportunity to improve grazing distribution (Scott et al., 1995).

There is more information on the grazing behaviour of sheep in the section on Extensive Grazing.

For further information on behaviour visit the pages on

Sheep Housing and Handling

and

Shepherding