Feed intake, digestibility and passage kinetics in grazing horses

Feed intake and digestibility are important indicators for sufficient nutrient supply, but they can be assessed only to a limited extent in horses on pasture. In horses, feed intake is embedded in a complex behavioural pattern of searching, selecting, chewing and almost constant movement called foraging. The objectives of this study were to estimate organic matter intake (OMI) and organic matter digestibility (OMD) in six horses, 24 h/day on pasture, based on plant alkanes and synthetic n-hexatriacontane (C₃₆) excretion. A multi-compartmental model was fitted to the marker excretion and the C₃₆ mean retention time (MRT) was estimated. The travelling activity influences the intestinal passage and digestion of the forage. For this reason, the travelled distances were tracked during the daylight hours (i.e., 13 h/day) by the global positioning system (GPS). The C₃₆ MRT was 17.5 h based on an excretion curve, in which all horses were considered. Fitting individual excretion curves was less successful due to limited data points available for each horse. Depending on the plant marker, an OMI of 1.4 to 2.8% of body weight (BW)/day was estimated, which is analogous to a dry matter intake (DMI) of 1.5 to 3.1% of BW/day. The estimated OMD ranged from 0.45 to 0.68, dry matter digestibility (DMD) analogously from 0.39 to 0.65. The estimates obtained using n-nonacosane (C₂₉), followed by those obtained using n-hentriacontane (C₃₁), seemed to be the most plausible compared to the literature. Using C₂₉, a feed intake of 2.5% of BW/day (group) or 2.1% of BW/day (individuals) was estimated on organic matter basis, which was 2.7% of BW/day or 2.3% of BW/day on dry matter basis. An OMD of 0.64 and a DMD of 0.61 was estimated using C₂₉. Individually travelled distances ranged from 0.09 to 4.64 km in 1 h with differences detected among the days (p < 0.01), but not among the hours monitored within a day. Despite clear limitations, the methods seemed to be reliable to assess feed intake on pasture and to track movement activity. In modern husbandry systems, foraging should be as much unrestricted as possible to satisfy natural behavioural needs.