A new approach to measure herbage growth and determining botanical composition, live weight characteristics of geese grazing using different pasture mixtures Ozkan Ugur*, Demirbag Nurdan Sahin Ankara University, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Field Crops, Diskapi-06110, Turkey *Corresponding author: ugurozkan@ankara.edu.tr
Online Published on 28 November, 2022. Abstract Ozkan, U. and Demirbag, N. S. 2022. A new approach to measure herbage growth and determining botanical composition, live weight characteristics of geese grazing using different pasture mixtures. Animal Nutrition and Feed Technology, 22: 589–603. Geese farming is becoming very popular globally in the past few decades. The effects of the pasture grazing by geese, using different pasture mixtures on herbage growth, botanical composition and their live weight characteristics is a new concept in arid agriculture of Turkey and was the scope of this research. Three different pasture mixtures (K: 40% smooth brome (Bromus inermis Leys) + 20% alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) + 40% bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus); K2: 40% meadow fescue (Festuca pratensis) + 20% alfalfa + 40% bird's-foot trefoil; K,: 40% orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata L.) + 20% alfalfa + 40% bird's-foot trefoil were prepared using 3 replications on 2000 m2 land. Every artificial pasture on an area of 100 m2 was harvested 6 times during a grazing season; where equally distributed 162 indigenous geese (Anser domesticus) were grazed in season. The pasture mixture (Kj), with smooth brome, had the highest soil coverage (%), rhizomatous plant (%), scratching endurance (%), growth (%), live weight gain (g), percentages of 78.97%, 74.04%, 85.62%, 46.39%, 0.55 g, based on the values taken after every 15 days respectively. Similarly, the geese showed weight gain of 52.04 g/day. K2 mixture with meadow fescue had the highest herbage growth (2275.6 kg/ha), weeds (%) (3.50%). It was concluded that smooth brome and secondly meadow fescue artificial pastures could be preferably used for geese grazing. Top Keywords Artificial pasture, Cutting times, Herbage growth, Poultry, Soil covarage. Top |