Advances in Sheep Production

While sheep production has an important place in many farming systems across the world, sheep products face an increasingly competitive market. In addition to traditional concerns about product quality, consumers are also increasingly motivated by issues such as livestock welfare, greenhouse gas emissions and the sustainability of production to maintain or enhance natural capital.

Advances in sheep production provides a comprehensive review of these challenges and the specific measures implementable to improve sustainability, animal health and product quality. The book also considers the contribution of breeding to improving non-production traits, management practices to improve lifetime health and performance, as well as ways of monitoring and improving health, welfare and nutrition.

In providing a detailed overview of the current status of sheep production, the book showcases the areas where improvement is required to achieve optimum sustainability, health, welfare and nutrition, as well as product quality.

Edited by two world-renowned consultants in the sheep sector, the book will be a standard reference for university and other researchers in small ruminant science, advisors consulting sheep farmers on aspects of health, welfare and nutrition, livestock nutritionists, as well as government and other private sector agencies responsible for ensuring sustainable sheep farming and product quality.

• Provides a detailed overview of the current challenges facing sheep production, including changing consumer and societal attitudes to sheep products
• Considers how sheep production can improve its sustainability through the implementation of key practices, such as the use of genetic improvements to reduce GHG emissions
• Reviews the recent advances in sheep breeding and genetic selection, as well as how it can be optimised to improve fertility and reproductive performance in sheep