Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Sheep Provide All Kinds Of Society Needs

In order to understand sheep farming and the dynamics that come with it, it is important first that we know some of the characteristics of sheep. Sheep are primarily kept as farm animals mainly for their wool, meat, and to some extent their by products like cheese and milk. These characteristics of sheep must be carefully considered if you intend to understand their behavior and how to effectively manage them. Sheep are gregarious animals, they are better kept in numbers and that makes them social creatures.

These animals have a strong sense of flocking. If kept in a good number of four or more they will exhibit flocking dynamics that would make them easier to control or when herding. However, keep in mind as well that when sheep are kept in solitary or their numbers dwindle or natural predators are absent, the same flocking behavior may be lost or momentarily stopped. At this instance, you would need the services of a herd dog that with their in-bred herding skills will greatly help in your herding and keeping your sheep flock within sight.

 Domestic sheep are descendants of the wild sheep of Europe and Asia. Today there are more than 200 breeds of sheep throughout the world. Only 30 or 40 breeds are of major importance, however.

The breeds of sheep most common In the United States can best be classified according to the kind of wool they produce. The breeds are grouped as fine-wool, medium-wool, longwool, and crossbred-wool sheep.

Sheep are raised either for wool or meat. Meat from sheep less than a year old is called lamb. Meat from older sheep is called mutton. Medium-wool and long-wool sheep are used more for meat than for wool. They are raised chiefly in the East and the Middle West.

In Texas and the mountain states of the West, sheep are raised mainly for wool. Western sheep ranches often are very large. They may have as many as 10,000 acres of land and 1,000 or 2,000 sheep. The sheep ranges must be large because in the dry parts of the West there is not much grass for each acre of land. A large range area is needed to give the sheep enough grass. The sheep eat grass right down to the roots, and time must be allowed for the grass to grow back where they have grazed. Thus they must be moved to other grazing areas fairly often. In the past flocks of sheep were taken by shepherds into the wilds to graze. Now the usual practice is to graze the sheep on fenced-in pasture land. Sheep are often taken to pasture in trucks.

The sheep usually are rounded up twice a year for shearing, in the spring and in the fall. At the time of fall shearing, the lambs are separated from the ewes, or mother sheep. The lambs are considered old enough to be on their own.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Why The Snake Need The Hibernation

Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with many more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca.

Hibernation is the animal to winter dormancy, it is a kind of active process. Although animals in the winter temperature and environmental temperature during the close, especially variable temperature animals, but when it meets the appropriate stimulation or by their own rhythms to awakening period, its body temperature can rise in the short term to restore normal body temperature. Animals in the winter, the midterm, breathing and heartbeat frequency, breathing oxygen consumption are greatly reduced. Dormancy animal the physiological function mainly by the change the nerve center control. In the endocrine glands are withheld all stop activities, various metabolic level lower generally. But to awakening, the physiological activities of the various organs according to the order quickly returned to normal, the process to use a lot of energy. After the whole hibernate period, hibernating animal will significantly reduce weight.
The snake is a variable temperature animals. It is often as the temperature of the four seasons of temperature changes, the body's metabolic rate and activities also and temperature changes is closely linked. Temperature is high, metabolic rate is high, frequent activity; Low temperature, metabolic rate is low, and the activity weakens. Generally speaking, from the late spring to early winter, it is golden season snakes activities, particularly in the scorching summer and the days of high gas cool autumn, snakes activity most active, often on everywhere, night and day, looking for food, common saying says "the eight hang nine tie up seven tree", image illustrate, 7, 8, 9 this three months is the peak of the snakes activities. But the snails like hot also have certain limits, especially in the summer heat, they like in the shade, grass and the cool places such as the habitat. From the fall in winter, with the temperature gradually declined, snake metabolic decreases, when its physiological activities slowed to a certain level, gradually into "hibernate" period. General snake from late November has already begun to don't eat not to drink, not exuvial, successively into the holes hibernate, then they are often dozens or even hundreds of article in the GaoSao clustered in the article in a cave or hollow tree dormant for the winter. For the following to warm spring, the ice snow melt away, just from a state of dormant wake up, and to start a new life. One hole to hibernate period from about three months time, the main form of fat storage depend on in the body nutrition materials to slow added to maintain its minimum life nutrition material.

The skin of a snake is covered in scales. Contrary to the popular notion of snakes being slimy because of possible confusion of snakes with worms, snakeskin has a smooth, dry texture. Most snakes use specialized belly scales to travel, gripping surfaces. The body scales may be smooth, keeled, or granular. The eyelids of a snake are transparent "spectacle" scales, which remain permanently closed, also known as brille