Use of Supplements for Increasing Performances of Suckling Martinik Ewes When Fed Tropical Forages

Experiments have been carried out to determine the effects of supplementation upon milk production and growing performances with hair sheep Martinik ewes weighing 48 ± 4 kg liveweight (LW). In a first trial, 6 single bearing ewes (group GS) were offered individually a daily 0.5 kg of commercial pellets. They were compared to the control group (GN; 6 ewes) with no supplement during 10 weeks of lactation. Basal diet was chopped Digitaria decumbens grass ad libitum. In a second trial, level of supplementation was adapted to the ewes’ litter size: 6 twins bearing ewes (TW) and 6 single (SI). Mean milk production (oxytocin method) reached 1186 and 940 g.d-1 (P\u3c 0.05) for GS and GN ewes, respectively. Body condition score (BCS) of GS ewes maintained during lactation while those of GN ewes slightly decreased (P\u3c 0.05). No difference was recorded for lambs daily weight gain (DWG). Milk production varied significantly (P\u3c 0.05) according to the litter size: 926 and 1246 g.d-1 for SI and TW, respectively. The BCS of TW ewes decreased more than those of SI ewes (-1.4 vs –1.0). Individual DWG were different (P\u3c 0.01): 216 and 150 g.d-1 for single and twin lamb, respectively. It is concluded that use of supplements is necessary in intensive breeding conditions (high reproduction frequency and productivity), in order to allow high levels of performances when ewes are fed tropical forages

Production/maintenance cooperative scheduling using multi-agents and fuzzy logic

Within companies, production is directly concerned with the manufacturing schedule, but other services like sales, maintenance, purchasing or workforce management should also have an influence on this schedule. These services often have together a hierarchical relationship, i.e. the leading function (most of the time sales or production) generates constraints defining the framework within which the other functions have to satisfy their own objectives. We show how the multi-agent paradigm, often used in scheduling for its ability to distribute decision-making, can also provide a framework for making several functions cooperate in the schedule performance. Production and maintenance have been chosen as an example: having common resources (the machines), their activities are actually often conflicting. We show how to use a fuzzy logic in order to model the temporal degrees of freedom of the two functions, and show that this approach may allow one to obtain a schedule that provides a better compromise between the satisfaction of the respective objectives of the two functions

Quantitative review of ruminal and total tract digestion of mixed diet organic matter and carbohydrates

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