IN-SITU FORMATION ON TRANSHUMANT LIVESTOCK SYSTEMS

This communication aims to describe an innovating formation activity adressed to the students of Animal Nutrition in the graduate of Agricultural Engineer. The formation activity consist of learning in situ the way of working and the structure of a kind of livestock production system that include in the way of production the seasonal migration of livestock. This is an ancestral livestock practice that since Alfonso X has been carrying out over the Iberian Peninsula. This kind of production scheme consist of moving ruminant livestock from higland areas to lowland and template ones in winter and conversely in summer, searching the best pasture to feed animals during all the year. This production scheme present several serious threats between which we find for example the destruction of the “vias pecuarias”, the routes where the livestock move. Nevertheless, this scheme involve an important culture richness and advantages for the environment preservation, so that it is important to train the future university professionals on these production systems, to encourage the preservation of them together with the productors. To that effect two years ago the National Association of Seasonal Migration of Livestock in Spain set in motion an iniciative that consist of accepting persons during the migration period of livestock who are interested in his way of production and life. This initiative has been profited by our University to offer practice training to our students in the context of the Animal Nutrition course. So that, before the travel the students carried out a previous class work about the differents aspects of the systems based on the seasonal migration of livestock. During the travel, the students realized a field work to obtain information about the zootechnical management of livestock and also information about the way of life of productors. After the travel, the students carried out a write report with the results of their field work, and made a presentation exposing the main aspects of their experience. An interview on the radio completed the exposition of the activity. The talked and written capacities of students and the habilitities showed on the field work were evaluated by the profesorate and by students from anothers courses of the graduate.