Daily intake and the selection of feeding sites by horses in heterogeneous wet grasslands

Abstract

In spite of the importance of grazed forage in horse nutrition, little information is available on their daily intake at pasture. We determined the intake of 4 non-breeding mares of a heavy breed (average body weight = 674 kg), grazing during the summer in heterogeneous natural grasslands of the Marais Poitevin (France), an internationally important wetland where grazing is an essential process which maintains biodiversity. The mares ate large quantities of forage (21.9 ± 2.4 kg of organic matter per day, i.e. 166.2 ± 20.8 g of organic matter per kg LW0.75 per day) in comparison with previous published values and with the estimated requirements of these horses. The use of the vegetation was very selective, the mares spent about 70% of their feeding time on short grass lawns (sward surface ≤ 4 cm, biomass < 100 g.m-2), that represented only 10% of the area. This behaviour maintained the plants at young growing stages which are of better quality than ungrazed plants. These results are discussed in relation to the dynamics of the plant communities.