Morgan Inness

B.Ag.Sci. Honours (2018)

Feed conversion efficiency of sheep grazing lucerne and cocksfoot based pastures (PDF unavailable)

Research Overview

Morgan compared dryland lucerne and cocksfoot pastures during their fifth year (2017/2018) at Lincoln University. It was a wetter than normal year with 745 mm of rain. Using Ashley Dene’s Coopworth ewe lambs, Morgan measured an annual liveweight yield of 1018 kg/ha and an annual apparent feed intake of 17 t DM/ha for lucerne compared with 433 kg/ha and 7.5 t DM/ha for cocksfoot. However, feed conversion efficiency was similar for both pastures at about 17 kg of DM for every kg of liveweight gain. Morgan was supervised by Dr Alistair Black.