SOME EARLY BEHAVIOUR ELEMENTS OF IMMEDIATELY WEANED AND ARTIFICIALLY REARED AWASSI LAMBS

SUMMARY
This study investigates the daily activity, development of biorhythms, presence
of abnormal oral behaviours (cross-sucking, pen-sucking) and early ranking of
immediately separated Awassi lambs (n=24), during the first three days after
grouping. Animals were kept in a four meters long and two meters wide pen.
Lambs were fed with colostrums in the first two days. From the third life day, the
animals got also milk powder, and its percentage was continuously increasing as
the time goes. Comparing the graphs of lambs’ activity at the three days of
investigation, it was found that there was no unambiguous repetition (periodicity)
in the behaviour of the animals on the first day. The lambs conformed themselves
on the second and third days of the investigation to the different technological steps
(e.g. preparing for feeding, cleaning, scaling) to a certain extent, and their activity
was changing according to the stockpersons’ operations. Two very intensive
periods (87-92% of the animals were active) soon before feeding (7.15 am and
12.15 pm), and two passive periods after feeding (0% activity) were observed on
both days. According to the human assistance , on the first day of investigation,
stockpersons had to help finding and using the teats for 87.5% of the lambs (n=21),
one by one. This value became lower (54.2% and 33.3%) on the second and third
days, and it was only 20-25% at the end of the investigation (n=5-6). The lambs
were adapted continuously to the artificial milk replacer and plastic teats.