Definition of a decision support system to control a sheep herd

The ovine breeding is still a vital activity in a number of areas all over the world. Under the pressure exerted by the European Community the farmers are constrained with heavy investments. These additional loads strongly burden the profitability of the traditional exploitations. They impose an evolution in the control of the herds which implies the use of new food, the quality control of milk and the meat, and genetic amelioration of the animals. Faced with this extremely significant cost, we propose to develop a decision support systems based on the modeling of the farms and the simulation of the various types of control of the herds. This kind of system allows: to reduce the number of the experiments and their duration, to highlight the key factors of a farm control of and to define practices having best profitability.