2.2 Grazing treatments and plant survey
The manipulative experiment was conducted with all 15 plots consisting of three herd compositions: lamb plots with light, moderate, and heavy grazing intensities, mixed lamb and dry ewe, dry ewe plots (Fig. 2a, c). We individually fitted sensors to one lamb and one dry ewe in each lamb and ewe grazing plot, while both a lamb and a dry ewe were fitted with sensors in each mixed plot. We monitored the accelerations of 17 sheep, comprising 11 lambs and 6 dry ewes, for a total of 53,280 tri-axis accelerations per sheep using accelerometer loggers to collect the behavioral data of grazers.
To monitor vegetation resources quality and quantity, the above-ground biomass (AGB), five quadrats of 1 m2 were randomly placed within each plot on June 20th, August 15th, and September 10th, 2022. In addition, the aboveground plants were collected and then oven-dried at 105 °C for 15 min and then at 65 °C for 48 h until constant weight. The nitrogen content in the dried plant samples was measured using the Kjeldahl method and then multiplied by a conversion factor of 6.25 to obtain the crude protein content (CP) of the plants (Sanna et al., 2019).