Influence of sward height on diet selection by horses

Autor:	M. J. Gibb, J. Hill, A. Naujeck
Rok vydání:	2005
Předmět:	Herbivore Veterinary medicine Perennial plant medicine.medical_treatment Foraging Animal-assisted therapy Vegetation Biology Animal science Food Animals Temporal heterogeneity Grazing medicine Animal Science and Zoology Selection (genetic algorithm)
Zdroj:	Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 90:49-63
ISSN:	0168-1591
DOI:	10.1016/j.applanim.2004.08.001
Popis:	Foraging herbivores are often faced with spatial and temporal heterogeneity within the vegetation they have available to graze and therefore have to make decisions where and when to graze. The study reported in this paper investigated the influence of sward height on diet selection by horses grazing perennial rye-grass swards. The study comprised two experiments. In Experiment 1, perennial rye-grass paddocks were mown to four sward heights (heights: 3.5, 4.5, 7.5 and 15 cm) to create a patchy environment. Within each paddock one horse grazed for a period of 1 h during which residence time, number of bites and frequency of visits per patch were recorded. This was replicated with all seven horses used in the experiment. The same experiment was repeated in Experiment 2, but without mowing the field and allowing 1 week of re-growth for each paddock. During both experiments horses entered equally often but resided significantly longer on patches with long grass (15 cm) than on those with short grass (below 4.5 cm; P P
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_dedup___::ef17e563d86e9adcd410da9873704658 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2004.08.001 Zobrazit plný text záznamu Full Text from ScienceDirect