Nutritional Ecology of Grazing and Browsing Ruminants

Abstract

Ruminants are, without exception, obligate herbivores subsisting as they do on a diet composed entirely of plant material. However, plant material is a diverse resource and within the Ruminantia there is a range of feeding niches with different herbivore classes focussing their foraging effort on different vegetation types (Hofmann 1989). The plant material available to herbivores comes in a range of morphological types with the major types being grasses, forbs, and browse. Grasses (including the morphologically similar sedges) are monocotyledonous plants characterised by a basal meristem, a low growth form and a relative lack of lignified support structures (except for some of the tall tropical grasses which could be considered to be morphologically classed as browse).