 | Abstract 125Grazing behaviour and selective feed intake of Malaysian goats under permanent crops.Murken,-A; Mukherjee,-TK Inst. Tierproduktion, Tech. Univ., 1000 Berlin. Giessener-Beitrage-zurEntwicklungsforschung,-I-Symposien. 1988, 17, 267-273; 7 ref. In a study of the prospects of integrating goat keeping into Malaysian plantations, the main plants present on oil palm plantations 3-4 and >15 years old and on a 20-year-old, scarcely used 40-ha plot under coconut palms, and the fodder selected by male goats over 3 periods of 2 weeks in the interval between the dry and wet seasons, were recorded. The diet under the oil palms consisted almost entirely of Pueraria phaseoloides grown as a cover crop, Paspalum and Digitaria spp. and young oil palm leaves. Goats under coconut palms, where some of the land was low lying, chose Ischaemum muticum, Imperata cylindrica, fruit and leaves of the mangrove Sonneratia spp. and Mimosa pudica. Diet CP content was always adequate. It was concluded that small ruminants could flourish in plantations especially when a leguminous cover crop was present and that they could be useful in controlling climbers and ground vegetation. This abstract relates to the following species:
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