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Associative Effects between Forages and Concentrates on In Vitro Fermentation of Working Equine Diets
Mónica Gandarillas1, Juan Pablo Keim1, Elisa María Gapp2
1Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Alimentarias, Instituto de Producción Animal, Universidad Austral de Chile, Independencia 631, Valdivia 5110566, Chile.
Animals : an Open Access Journal From MDPI
|August 27, 2021
Summary
Evaluating horse diets requires assessing whole mixtures, not just individual ingredients. Fermentation of combined forages and concentrates shows unexpected results, highlighting the need for diet-level analysis for accurate nutritive value determination.
Area of Science:
- Equine nutrition and digestive physiology.
- Ruminant and hindgut fermentation studies.
Background:
- Horses are hindgut fermenters, necessitating evaluation of postgastric nutritive value.
- Dietary fermentation can yield different results than predicted from individual feed components.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess gas production (GP) and volatile fatty acid (VFA) concentrations.
- To investigate associative effects in mixed equine diets.
- To evaluate fermentation of representative high-performance horse diets.
Main Methods:
- In vitro gas production experiment.
- Fermentation assessment of two forages and three concentrates.
- Evaluation of 70% forage and 30% concentrate mixtures.
Main Results:
- Concentrates and grains yielded higher GP and VFA than forages alone.
- Forage-concentrate mixtures exhibited unexpected GP and VFA values.
- Observed differences suggest significant associative effects in mixed diets.
Conclusions:
- Dietary fermentation requires evaluation of the complete diet, not just individual ingredients.
- Predicting nutritive value from pure ingredients is insufficient for equine diets.
