Abstract

MAMANI-LINARES, Lindón Willy  and  CAYO-ROJAS, Faustina. Effect of concentrate supplementation on the grazing and social behaviour of young llamas (Lama glama) in the Bolivian Altiplano. J.Selva Andina Anim. Sci. [online]. 2023, vol.10, n.1, pp.30-38.  Epub Apr 01, 2023. ISSN 2311-3766.  https://doi.org/10.36610/j.jsaas.2023.100100030.

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of concentrate supplementation on the grazing and social behavior of young intact llamas reared on native pastures. Treatments were: GR: llama on native pasture, GR+SCS: as GR, but supplemented with concentrate 1 (maize and soybean), GR+SWS: as GR, but supplemented with concentrate 2 (wheat bran and sorghum grain). Scan sampling every 10 min was used to record 7 grazing behavioral events and continuous focal sampling for 16 social behavioral events. Overall, grazing was the main diurnal activity (90 %) with 3.3 % in interaction and 1.5 % in leisure, among other activities. The main nocturnal activities (in pens) were resting (54 %) and rumination (35 %), while interaction between males and other behaviors had a low frequency. The occurrence of male-male interactions was higher during the morning after leaving the pens compared to the midday and afternoon periods. In these interactions, paw biting (8.2 per interaction) was the most frequent, followed by neck-neck interaction and neck biting. The period of supplement intake was longer for GR+SWS, as well as longer periods of rumination and more time spent lying down. On the other hand, GR spent more time interacting. In conclusion, concentrate supplementation improved live weight gain, had an effect on rumination time, but did not influence grazing and social behavior of llamas.

Keywords : Grazing; supplementation; weight gain; social behavior; llama.

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