Sheep flock structure, dynamics, management practices, and wool production under bush encroached and non-encroached areas of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to investigate sheep productivity under bush encroached and non-encroached areas. The study was conducted in two communal areas, namely Idutywa (Mbewuleni village), which represented an open grassland with no encroaching woody species, and Alice (Sheshegu village) which was a bush encroached site. The purposive sampling method was used to select farmers with wool producing sheep who participated in the study. Experiment one employed a structured questionnaire to collect data on sheep flock composition, dynamics and management practices. A total number of 147 respondents were interviewed (73 in Mbewuleni village and 74 in Sheshegu village). The surveys revealed that just above three quarters of the households were male headed with close to half of the respondents being pensioners. Extensive farming was the production system employed across the two villages with community grazing as their source of feed. The sheep were allowed to graze separately during the grazing period with no other livestock such as cattle. The farmers experienced feed shortage, especially in the winter months and they prioritized feeding their lambs and ewes during this period. Shearing was done once a year in September or October. In both villages there was no controlled breeding and the lambing occurred during the winter period. It was found that the non-encroached site (Idutywa) had a significantly (P<0.05) higher number of sheep with 14% of the households having numbers above 121 sheep, while in Sheshegu about 8% of household above 121sheep. The major causes of mortality across the villages were cold weather, drought, predation and diseases. The interviewed households across the two villages mentioned that they dipped their sheep monthly. In the second study, a sample of 110 non-descript sheep breeds were randomly selected from the two villages (10 of each sex and each age group (which is 2 teeth, 4 teeth and 6 teeth) from each village with the exception of the 4 teeth old ewes from Sheshegu). The fleece samples were obtained from the selected sheep in October. The quantity and quality were determine based on wool weight, fibre diameter, colour, staple length, and clean wool. The results of the data analysis showed that the site had a statistically significant (P<0.05) difference on wool quantity between Sheshegu and Mbewuleni villages (2.8164kg and 1.6940kg), whilst the difference based on sheep sex was not significant (P>0.05), respectively. The older sheep produced significantly (P<0.05) higher amounts of wool compared to the younger animals. Wool quality was shown to be affected by locality in all parameters except for comfort factor. The clean yield effects were observed to be particularly more significant (P<0.05) when it came to the clean yield with Sheshegu sheep producing greater clean yield than their Mbewuleni counterparts. There was a significant (P<0.05) differences in the interaction of village and sex for crimp length (males had higher values) whereas that of village and age did not affect (P>0.05) the yield and crimp length. It was concluded from this study that age, sex and weight are the factors that affected wool production (quantity and quality). However, differences were not statistically significant (P>0.05) for effects of sex on wool quantity. Wool quality on the other hand was shown to be dependent on locality across all parameters with the exception of the comfort factor. Clean yield was higher in encroached as compared to non-encroached site. The conclusions from the study were that locality affected sheep flock structure and dynamics, because the encroached site had fewer numbers of sheep compared to the non-encroached site. In addition, the quantity and quality of wool produced differed with site, encroached site values being significantly different (P<0.05) to that from the non-encroached site.