Hi,
The story is complicated indeed: ruminants, such as cattle and sheep,
can extract more energy from high fibre forage than hindgut fermenters
such as horses. Hindgut fermenters, however, generally have a higher
intake/throughput rate than ruminants, so instead of digesting better
they just eat more!
Freeranging cattle generally eat more shrub, wood and tree seedlings
than horses.
Geese, on the other hand, can select much better: where the larger
animals take large bites and thus have to deal with lots of less
digestivle stems in their leaves of grass, geese seem able to pick these
out.
My supervisor did his thesis on digestive strategies in rumintants and
nonruminants. I'll be happy to send you his and other relevant papers of
our group on this subject.
All the best,
Jasja Dekker
PhD student
Resource Ecology Group
Dept. Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University
Bornsesteeg 69
6708 PB Wageningen
The Netherlands
phone: +31 317 484 320
http://www.dow.wau.nl/tropecol/
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