2.5 Derivation of foraging parameters
2.5.1 Calculating the dry
matter intake (DMI)
Sheep were weighed on June 20th, August
15th and September 10th to calculate
DMI and energy expenditure. We estimated the daily DMI of collared sheep
by using the measured live body weight and previously derived
relationships between live body weight data and daily intake from
experimental trials of various studies for farm ruminant animals (Van
Soest, 2018), which was given by
\begin{equation}
DMI=M^{0.75}(CF)\nonumber \\
\end{equation}Where DMI is the dry matter intake (kg/day), M (kg) is the live body
weight of the sheep, and CF is a constant factor that represents the
intake coefficient, which depends on the
sheep’s physiological stage,
breed, sex, and environmental factors. Generally, the CF was selected as
3% of the body weight of sheep (Van Soest, 2018). We computed the FCE
by dividing the dry matter intake (DMI) by the body weight gain. FCE is
a measure of how efficiently an animal converts feed into body weight
gain.