Abstract

The productivity of the reindeer industry in the 51 herding districts in Sweden is affected by a large amount of factors on different geographical and temporal scales. Combinations of factors characterizing the environmental conditions for reindeer husbandry were identified and showed to be strongly correlated with variations in productivity, both between herding districts and between years. Productivities were described by estimated herd growth rates and carcass condition of slaughtered adult females and calves. These dependent productivity variables were related to the environmental independent variables using multiple linear regression and structural equation models (SEM). The independent variables were either considered as stable (e.g. topography, vegetation and infrastructure) or temporally changing (e.g. season lengths, weather events, disturbances and animal slaughter strategies). The most relevant independent variables identified were used in a cluster analysis to suggest a grouping of herding districts. Larger variation in productivity was found between herding districts than between years. Different variables were found to be important for between-district and within-district variations, respectively. Season lengths and animal densities were found noteworthy at both levels of variation. Other relevant variables found were ruggedness, snow condition, predicted harassing insect activity, supplementary feeding, proportion of calfs in slaughter and previous-year animal condition. Snow precipitation, predicted ice-crust formation and forage quality were presumed to be relevant for reindeer productivity, but were not found to have large impacts on productivity at this scale. These factors may have been neutralized or mitigated by husbandry measures, statistically included and thereby explained by other variables with strong effects on productivity, such as animal density variables. Several of the variables that were found to be important for productivity are correlated with climate and weather and therefore predicted to be central in a climatic change context

Keywords

Animal condition; density dependence; Rangifer tarandus; SEM; slaughter statistics

Published in

Conference

NOR 2009 - 15th Nordic Conference on Reindeer and Reindeer Husbandry Research

SLU Authors

• Lundqvist, Henrik

  • Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Norell, Lennart

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Danell, Öje

  • Unit of Reindeer Husbandry, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
Animal and Dairy Science
Veterinary Science


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/22884