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Voluntary intake and digestibility in horses: effect of forage quality with emphasis on individual variability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

N. Edouard ,
G. Fleurance ,
W. Martin-Rosset ,
P. Duncan ,
J. P. Dulphy ,
S. Grange ,
R. Baumont ,
H. Dubroeucq ,
F. J. Pérez-Barbería  and
I. J. Gordon
N. Edouard*
Affiliation:
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, UR 1213 Unité de Recherches sur les Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UPR 1934, 79360 Beauvoir-sur-Niort, France
G. Fleurance
Affiliation:
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, UR 1213 Unité de Recherches sur les Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France Les Haras Nationaux, Direction des Connaissances, 19230 Arnac-Pompadour, France
W. Martin-Rosset
Affiliation:
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, UR 1213 Unité de Recherches sur les Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France
P. Duncan
Affiliation:
Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UPR 1934, 79360 Beauvoir-sur-Niort, France
J. P. Dulphy
Affiliation:
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, UR 1213 Unité de Recherches sur les Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France
S. Grange
Affiliation:
Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UPR 1934, 79360 Beauvoir-sur-Niort, France
R. Baumont
Affiliation:
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, UR 1213 Unité de Recherches sur les Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France
H. Dubroeucq
Affiliation:
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, UR 1213 Unité de Recherches sur les Herbivores, 63122 Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France
F. J. Pérez-Barbería
Affiliation:
The Macaulay Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen, AB15 8QH, UK
I. J. Gordon
Affiliation:
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation – Davies Laboratory, PMB PO Aitkenvale, Qld 4814, Australia
*
E-mail: nadege.edouard@clermont.inra.fr
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Abstract

Food intake is a key biological process in animals, as it determines the energy and nutrients available for the physiological and behavioural processes. In herbivores, the abundance, structure and quality of plant resources are known to influence intake strongly. In ruminants, as the forage quality declines, digestibility and total intake decline. Equids are believed to be adapted to consume high-fibre low-quality forages. As hindgut fermenters, it has been suggested that their response to a reduction in food quality is to increase intake to maintain rates of energy and nutrient absorption. All reviews of horse nutrition show that digestibility declines with forage quality; for intake, however, most studies have found no significant relationship with forage quality, and it has even been suggested that horses may eat less with declining forage quality similarly to ruminants. A weakness of these reviews is to combine data from different studies in meta-analyses without allowing the differences between animals and diets to be controlled for. In this study, we analysed a set of 45 trials where intake and digestibility were measured in 21 saddle horses. The dataset was analysed both at the group (to allow comparisons with the literature) and at the individual levels (to control for individual variability). As expected, dry matter digestibility declined with forage quality in both analyses. Intake declined slightly with increasing fibre contents at the group level, and there were no effects of crude protein or dry matter digestibility on intake. Overall, the analysis for individual horses showed a different pattern: intake increased as digestibility and crude protein declined, and increased with increasing fibre. Our analysis at the group level confirms previous reviews and shows that forage quality explains little of the variance in food intake in horses. For the first time, using mixed models, we show that the variable ‘individual’ clarifies the picture, as the horses showed different responses to a decrease in forage quality: some compensated for the low nutritional value of the forages by increasing intake, few others responded by decreasing intake with declining forage quality, but not enough to cause any deficit in their energy and protein supplies. On the whole, all the animals managed to meet their maintenance requirements. The individual variability may be a by-product of artificial selection for performance in competition in saddle horses.

Keywords

horsesintakedigestibilityforage qualityindividual variability
Type
Full Paper
Information
animal , Volume 2 , Issue 10 , October 2008 , pp. 1526 - 1533
Copyright
Copyright © The Animal Consortium 2008

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